Budget Workshop - Jun 11, 2026

everybody I before we start few a few comments first of all my vice mayor is making a fashion statement I want to make sure everybody sees this fashion statement we need to learn from our vice mayor I think that's I think more casual I started with the no tie and we got more people with no ties I love that except Geller Geller won't you got to change Geller Mar you know great Monica you took the sheriff's offices first with their budget what I think since I think Sheriff Tony is watching I think we should pull the plug so he can't watch and drive him crazy why don't we just you know we got to screw with them so who's who's the IT person that could pull that plug let me see what we can do okay all right and I'll just I will say good morning thank you mr. I'm handy I'm handing it off to you Monica go ahead thank you sir good morning everyone so this morning we will be covering three areas the first one will be BSO's requested budget we will then switch over to general capital and then the third part will be the the commissioners priorities discussion again so we'll we'll start off with BSO and with that we'll have two separate presentations that we're going to share with you this morning the first will be our office of management and budgets overview of BSO's budget and then of course we have our guests from BSO under Sheriff Robson and Colonel Yadena and who else would I would definitely see you walk in good morning Daphne press also from their budget office and the wills will kick off to them I'll start with Jennifer thank you hey good morning mayor vice mayor and commissioners I'm Jennifer from the budget office and I'm here to present BSO's FY 27 requested budget so on our first slide here we have an overview of the FY 27 proposed budget by BSO and we have it broken into two categories so we have a total of generally funded resources so that's the general fund regional plus it's the dispatch contract so there is a request for nine hundred and thirty seven point four million dollars an increase of one hundred three point five for twelve point four percent the next line down is the contractual services so this is the law enforcement contracts and the fire rescue contracts there is a request for an additional forty nine point forty nine point two million at eight point seven the last grand total line combines the contract plus the generally funded resources for an increase of ten point nine percent the numbers on the FY 26 adopted budget they do not include any of the items that were in the first budget amendment so it's purely just the adopted budget these items on here they are net increases as I get to further slides I'll explain what was removed out of the FY 27 budget the 12.4 percent then that's what he's asking from the county the 10.9 is because the cities are only 8.7 but he's asking for 12.4 put from the county is that correct 12.4 from the generally funded resources the contract services also includes on an increase for the airport and the port I'm sorry I thought you meant the contract cities it's it's the cities plus airport and port so what number is it from the county that he is asking for the one of three the 12.4 percent the 12.4 from the county for from the general fund thank you and but when you say county it's general fund county senator it's general fund county because all the also county is airport and seaport right but general fund the other part is and you will hear this because it's not truly a 12.4 and Jennifer will go through the things that were removed from their budget request that have historically been in there including utilities and things like that yes we'll get basically stopped reading when I saw the 12.4 number we will get through that in just a few minutes so moving into the general fund regional services including the contract with dispatch there's a request of 937.4 million and so this pie chart reflects the allocation in percentages for law enforcement compared to corrections and fire rescue this slide here is a change in positions and personnel costs comparing the FY 27 requests to the FY 26 adopted budget for the general fund and so we have it broken out into this the following five BSO departments and that's how we organized the information throughout this presentation so there's a 1.3 percent request on positions which there's approximately 50 new positions and that equates to 16.7 percent in personnel services dollars on here this is a breakout using the same five BSO departments law enforcement court fire regional communications and corrections and on here there's an average of the requests for FY 27 for salaries and benefits of a hundred and ninety five thousand dollars which is a fifteen point two percent increase and then we have some components below which is the law enforcement contracts which are cities airport and port for a nine point six increase and then we have fire rescue contracts which are cities airport and port of ten point two so there's an overall increase blended for all of the contracts and the general fund of twelve point eight percent the next slide here goes through the FY 27 Corrections Department operating budget there were some reductions to utilities and facilities maintenance when BSO submitted their 27 budget so there's three point two million reduced for electric two point four million reduced for water sewer five hundred thousand for garbage in the facilities management operating budget there is a combined reduction of two point three million four items such as air conditioning plumbing elevator repairs fencing landscaping etc so the total here is 8.4 was reduced from the requested budget for 27 from BSO and this is a funding shift that would need to be addressed in the county overall budget this next slide here is the snapshot of the consolidated dispatch dispatch contract with the county so this is requesting a budget increase of about 12 and a half million which is 17.8 percent and there's also a request for 27 additional positions moving into the contract budgets we have law enforcement first and we have the cities listed on the left and they make up 78 percent of the pie chart and then we have airport and port and special detail the overall increase in the contracts is 8.5 percent i do point out that port everglades there is a request for six additional positions so it puts that budget increase over 26 at 25.7 percent and the airport there's a request for 25 additional positions so it puts the budget request at 20.5 percent over FY 26 moving into fire rescue contracts it's an 8.8 percent overall 72 percent make up the cities on the left side of the screen we also have port and airport and i will point out that there are no positions requested for airport or port but there's an increase in port budget over FY 26 of 26.1 percent and the airport there's an increase of 42 percent of 42 percent over the FY 26 budget with with no new positions so moving into bmsd unincorporated area this is an overview of the central broward and west broward law enforcement budget as you can see there are no additional positions requested central broward has a proposed request of seventeen point four percent and west broward has a proposed increase of fifteen point two percent moving into the bmsd fire rescue budget there are no additional positions requested there is a budget request of fifteen point one percent increase now rounding out the bso overall fyi 27 budget request we have a general fund summary we have included the dispatch contract in this chart because it's a generally funded component and we have it broken down into fyi 25 actuals the adopted budget for fyi 26 of 833 million and then we have the request for fyi 27 of 937 million so from the general fund the generally funded resources there's an increase of twelve point four percent this slide here is the summary of the operating capital request there this is a revised slide we made a revision and we passed it out to everyone before the fyi 26 adopted the fyi 26 adopted amounts for the general fund are on here at 13.3 the fyi 26 adopted other which is the fire contract and the law enforcement contract is 19.8 and then we have bso's request for fyi 27 in the general fund of 2.9 million and then the other is fire and law contracts at 20.2 the next slide here is the fyi 27 capital budget as requested requested by bso so these are requests for construction repair or capital improvements of county buildings operated or occupied by the sheriff so we've separated this to the left side is department of detention facilities so those are requests for sixty seven point two million and then we have other facilities public safety building evidence warehouse fleet for three hundred twenty five point six million so there's a total request for twenty seven of three hundred and ninety two point eight million clarify something please out of the entire budget three hundred plus million is to address capital fixtures and capital improvements let me just clarify so this is not in that twelve point four number this is an addition this is an addition to because that's this is capital that was operating i just want to clarify thank you yes and so to recap here we have a screenshot you can see here the the the numbers are in line with the prior slides it shows for the general fund including the dispatch contract the twelve point four percent it shows the contract funds increase of the eight point seven and so the total agency wide on here is that ten point nine percent when it's all combined and our summary slide here just reflects the same information prior to the fixation and prior to the prior here and now but there seems to be the case in the past that it's all based on the last slide you know we're the last slide so there's the real question that you're from a prior to the current and so we've got a telephone call and that you're from a larger population to the fact that you've already got a phone and you've got a phone call but I'm going to get a phone call to hear what you're from And so I was going to get a phone call and I don't really want to get a phone call so I and I took that I am not too much for more to ask that I can see So, Undersheriff, I don't know if we're going to start with you and then you – thank you. Is that a motion on the floor? So this is a unique position here. Now that I feel like the prosecution has rested, can I start the defense? That's for all the lawyers in the room. Good morning, Mayor, Vice-Mayor, Commissioners, County Administrator, and staff. I'm Undersheriff Steve Robson, and on behalf of Sheriff Dr. Gregory Toney, I want to thank you for the opportunity to be here and to present in this workshop for our 26-27 budget to you and in the audience. You know, it's not lost upon anyone here or watching online, if you haven't pulled the plug, that this is a unique presentation of which I think we're all in uncharted territories. And there's an elephant in the room that I think we need to address the elephant in the room right off the table. And it's weighing heavy on all of us. So I think it's just best to acknowledge it because I think addressing the elephant – and Colonel Lorena will get into that – it greatly shapes the construct of our budget needs and our ask for what's coming up next year. And, of course, the elephant is our unresolved funding request from our current physical year that we rolled into next year's budget. And how we arrived at this juncture is really in the past because here we are, and I think we are all facing a new collective challenge. And that's this pending legislation on property tax and what that means. So it's understood – it's understood by BSO. And the county and municipal government funding landscape will possibly change greatly after this incoming physical year as we move into 27-28. BSO recognizes that not just for this body but for all the municipalities across Browd County, and especially the municipalities that partnered with BSO to provide their public safety. There are things that we cannot control, and there are things that we can control. And the things we can control are our relationships, our partnerships, and our collaboration. And the relationship between BSO and this commission transcends past budget and funding. We have a partnership. And that partnership includes the very building we're sitting in to provide your safety. It provides for the airport. It provides for the seaport, communications, and fire rescue. But it also goes into a lot of the collaborative efforts that we meet together on for a lot of the initiatives throughout this county. So truly we are partners, although at times it seems like we're not. And of all the missions, BSO serves proudly with this commission and its body. And I just want to put on the table that we are all public servants, and we all try to do our best to serve our county and the residents to the best of our capacities. But I also recognize we all have our own roles. And it's understood now more than any time in recent decades of the importance of forecasting, planning, collaboration, and true cooperation is imperative for all sides. We understand the need to plan for the anticipated tax revenue shortages, and it's our sentiment and hope that now is the time to come together and forge a path forward. We need a path to get this elephant out of the room. And I feel a resolution can be accomplished quickly, and I think that resolution would greatly reshape the construct of the budget presentation that we're doing here today. At its core, the current issue is about needed raises for BSO personnel, and it's outlined in a salary study that we conducted in 2025. And in our budget submission this year, we included that salary study for your review. But if you want a presentation of that salary study independently or collectively, I voluntarily do that for you to have a better understanding of where we're coming from about this salary study, and what our intended spirit is for the salary study. Can you start the presentation? Good. That's one slide. The raises are mostly directed at the recruitment and our retention needs. That's the core of it. That's the core of our ask from last year for the funding that's still unresolved. It's about raises at its core. And currently BSO starting salaries is at the lowest amongst all Broward law enforcement agencies. We're in last place. We're in last place of all other agencies in Broward County. And we're in last place by $4,000. It's not close. We're $4,000 behind the next closest agency in Broward County. We are just not competitive in the market space. And this has direct implications to our partnership. Vacancy percentages are in all of our districts, and they're all high. And that includes the airport and the seaport. And that's driving overtime, which I know has been a factor at this table when I watch other workshops. Currently, BSO has approximately 160 law enforcement vacancies. And I want to sit here and I want to look at you and tell you I signed more resignations yesterday. The salary adjustments are targeting attracting applicants and getting them higher wages faster so we can retain them. They are not – we are not giving large raises to our most senior personnel. It's the three- to five-year margin that's our largest attrition area. In the last three years, this is important, law enforcement has lost 689 employees in the last three years. Those are voluntary separations. That's not counting retirements, and that's not counting any discipline or terminations. That's voluntary separations, 689 in the last three years. Not everybody indicates why they're leaving, but the ones that did, 234 did list it's for other employment opportunities. That's 34%. Not everybody writes why they left because they don't want to put that on their paperwork. 51% left within three years. That's why it's an attrition issue. That's why it's that three- to five-year mark that we are focusing the salary study and we're trying to get these raises done. The attrition range – I'm sorry, the attrition rate, it's just not sustainable. And BSO does not have the equity based on our current vacancy rate to maintain the current level of salaries that we're at. I can't sustain it. We are losing people literally every single week. We need to stop the attrition, but the longer the implementation takes, the further we get behind in the market space. And it's important to note, BSO is not asking to be at the top. Our salary study and the implementation of our salary study only puts us at the median range of the county. We're asking to be competitive. We're not asking to be in the top. We're not asking to be in the top three. We're asking to be competitive. We're only asking to get the median. And if the salary study is implemented in full as we put forward, that's where we would be. So to go for a circle, our budget request had to include the unresolved funding from the current physical year in conjunction with the needs of our upcoming physical year. And Colonel Lorraine is going to explain in more detail, but if we can find a path to get rid of the current elephant in the room, I think our next year's physical year ask would look much different. And BSO feels the budget presented today, specifically next year, is responsible and it does focus on the salary urgency above all else. You can see with our capital requests and what we try to put forward, our emphasis and our focus for this coming year's budget ask is all about the raises. We've taken an internal review and we've looked at ourselves, and we are taking cost-saving measures everywhere. This includes the elimination of multiple executive command positions and restructuring our org chart. We've done that. We've cut approximately 10 executive command positions and I did not replace them. So we are trying to be responsible. We're looking internally. How do we flatten our org chart? How do we save money? How do we curb our spending? We're doing these things internally on our own. So I will close with my recognition of acknowledging the critical importance of relationships, collaboration and partnerships because I truly feel this is where we champion for the Broward County community. We have to work together. And I just want to point out that BSO is at the table. We're at the table to work with you to accomplish what we have to accomplish. But I also wanted to express the importance of the why of what we're asking for. And again, I welcome to present this salary study to any of you, whether it's collectively or independently, to have a better understanding as to why BSO feels we need these raises for our personnel. Thank you. Colonel Lorena. Thank you, Vice Mayor, Commissioners. I'm Oscar Lorena. The Sheriff tasked me with oversight of the agency budget. So I'll be continuing this presentation. County OMB did a phenomenal job of presenting a very thorough presentation already. Our OMBs work with the County OMB. The numbers are the same. So I'm going to go through the numbers quickly. But I'm going to answer some of the questions that I believe the Commission has on some of the items that County OMB brought up. So the first slide, it's just a breakout of where the money goes. The bulk of the regional, this is all regional, the bulk of it is to operate the jails, followed by general law enforcement. We also have fire rescue, court services, and regional communications. That's relatively the same every year. The bulk of our money goes to operate detention. The next slide, I wanted to touch upon, I think one of the concerns that was brought up is that 12% number, and that sounds high. But I wanted to compare our fiscal year 26 proposed to our fiscal year 27 proposed. That number's a lot lower. The challenge that we face is if we're not fully funded in one year, we have to ask for those funds the subsequent year. So from a procedural perspective, we do have a budget appeal on the table. So everything that's under appeal is included in the fiscal year 27 budget. We had proposed a breakout of the salary study for everybody except sworn detention deputies into two years. That really wasn't funded last year. So this year, we have to ask for the full amount of funding. We're always open to alternative mechanisms to get there, but the sheriff is firm. We have to provide these competitive salaries. The salary study was conducted by a firm, they're well known in Florida. They've done not only sheriff's offices, they've done salary studies for counties. They've done it for municipalities, including municipalities in Broward County. So we do stand behind that salary study. This is the same slide the county OMB showed. This is where you see the 12.4 number. And again, the bulk of it is based on personnel services. That's where the bulk of our money goes. Here's a pie chart showing within the agency the different categories where the funds flow to. Personnel is 80%. I'm sure it's the same in the county, I'm sure it's the same in most municipalities. Our greatest expense is employees. We're competing with other public safety agencies for employees. For fire rescue, for law enforcement, even for detention. So that's another reason why it's so important to implement that salary study. New positions, again, I do want to expand on some of the details here on the number. So this is mostly a rollover from last year, all the positions that we asked for last year, which are still under appeal. We have to ask for them again this year. However, I do want to touch on a couple of positions that, again, were included last year. On the detention management, those video visitation specialists, they're assigned to run the video visitation, the phone calls, so the inmates can speak with their families. The FCC changed the rules. That program was essentially self-funded. BSO can no longer collect that revenue. So we have to put these positions into the general fund. It's no longer self-funded. The fire rescue life safety educators, as well as the majority of the office of general counsel positions that you see, they're funded through our law enforcement trust fund. That's not a good strategy. Yes, a law enforcement trust fund should be for a program, something short-term, a piece of equipment. But funding salaries at a law enforcement trust, it's a challenge because how do we catch up on our raises? We don't want to be in a position where we have to seize funds, money from criminals through forfeiture. But it's important to BSO to move any LETF-funded positions, either into some sort of grant of available, if not the general fund. So the only new position that you're seeing here that you didn't see in fiscal year 26 is one assistant general counsel. I can assure you our attorney's office, they are swamped. In between RPOs, a civil process has gone up. So we are asking for one new assistant general counsel that you haven't seen before. Another topic that I wanted to hit on is we submit our budget on May 1st. After May 1st, the State of Florida change the pension rates. It is a big cost. And they change the pension rates for high risk. It's only sworn. So on the county side, I don't believe you have high risk categories. You may not see that big change, but they're familiar with it. But just the number of folks on the county side that are high risk is not a lot, apparently. But a lot of people on the BSO side are high risk. So it is important that I bring this up here. This is the percentage increase. It's a 3.35 increase. After May 1st, that Tallahassee passed, and numbers-wise, it translates to 6.7. So it's important to capture that. Regional operating, we held the line as much as we could. Most of the increases are contractual increases, CPI increases built into contracts. Corrections, you do see a reduction of 3.5, but I'm going to talk about that on the next slide. This is comparing, again, let me go back. This is proposed to proposed. This is adopted to proposed. And this is the exact slide that County OMB brought up, that Jennifer brought up. But again, let me talk on the next slide about the 3.5. So BSO reduced our ask for certain utilities and maintenance contracts in the jail. Those still have to be funded. However, BSO looks at it as the jail building, the facility itself, it's no different than the public safety building. So what we would like to see is maintain the jails in the manor as a public safety building. We're not the best out there to do construction. The risk is entirely on us. The water bills in Fort Lauderdale have skyrocketed. So we don't have reserves on our books. For that reason, we just believe it's a better way to do it. Now, historically, when I researched this, BSO had a separate fund for this. It wasn't part of the sheriff's budget. It was a separate fund, and that fund no longer exists. So we built these expenses into the sheriff's budget. And it's very difficult to have to choose between paying the electric bill and providing a raise for employees. That's not a choice the sheriff should make. This is also, I've spoken extensively with the county administration on it. There's some statutory interpretations. There's AGO opinions that supports BSO's position. But we do recognize that this expense doesn't go away. The jails do need to be maintained. The bills do need to be paid, the utility bills. Capital outlay, we are holding the line. It's going to be rough. But again, if salaries are the most important thing out there, it's more important than replacing, upgrading a computer, anything like that. We do need to ask for capital for leases that we have. One of them is the big one. It's a radio lease. The other one, which is the 115, that's self-contained breathing apparatus for fire. But we're holding everything because we need to put every dollar that we can into raises. Again, this was proposed to proposed, adopted to proposed. They essentially say the same thing. We're holding capital as much as we can. Before I close it out, I do just want to touch upon the slide that County OMB showed relating to capital projects in the jail. So, statutorily, that is not part of the Sheriff's budget request. The Sheriff cannot ask for that money. However, we can submit that for consideration. We do ask that facilities maintenance, I'm sorry, facilities management on the County side consider some of these major repairs. We do ask that construction management consider some of these items out there. There's some major repairs that need to be made. We're always open. We invite them to come over. Again, historically, there were some robust facility reports that were prepared. We're working with County Administration to start up that process again because we do need to take a good look at some of our infrastructure, some of our buildings. It's end of service life. So, that concludes the budget side of the presentation. Under Sheriff, I'll turn it back over to you. Good job. Tough audience. So, I just want to open the floor up for any questions maybe that the Sheriff's Office can answer for our proposal. You guys want to go around the desk here in the room? Is that okay? Lamar, you want me to start right there? Hazel, they always want me to start on my left side. I got to listen to her. Commissioner Fisher. Thank you, Mayor. I'll be brief. I just got to go in order. No worries at all. I guess I'm actually to Monica. When we talked about, and the Colonel just talked about those facility issues with the cost of water and sewer, electric, and so forth, to about $8.4 million, can the BSO arbitrarily just make that shift to us, or is this just an ask? It's our position that it's an ask. They actually control the utility bills, and they get invoices and all that, so we would, if this was something we were going to do, we would need to work with them, obviously, very closely to shift those accounts and everything, because we have no way, we don't get the bills, right? So they would get the bills as they currently do. And I believe that we've requested also actually some of the details behind that to kind of back up the dollars that were removed, so that we know that that's truly the full breadth of the utility costs that would be borne and shifted. So, again, obviously we pay for it either way, but it's just what bucket it sits in over on the BSO side or in the county side. The challenge then becomes, you know, the apples-to-apples comparison of the request, so meaning the 12.4 percent is reflective of all of that stuff already pulled out. So if you added that back in, which we had historically seen, that request is actually in the 13.5 percent range, I believe, because also you'll have, you know, a cost that we feel we would need to include is also the FRS that was not included. We had this a couple of years ago, the same situation. Right. There was about $8 million back then. We're facing it again this year with $6.7 million that we would need to cover the FRS costs. Because like Colonel Lorraine said, it has to be paid. Somebody has to pay. They have to operate, so. 13.4? Okay, 13.4 percent if you add in the utilities. Okay. All right. Also, on the 27 new positions, I just want a clarification on the dispatch, which is a 6.01 percent increase. As you all remember, when communications came to us and we stepped up twice, and I think the last time we had spoken to the sheriff that those positions were fully funded, right? We were like 100 percent funded at that point in time. So what are the 27 new if we just had the baseline of what we're doing now? What's the 27 new? So I'll – we had covered that last year, sir, but I'm happy to give a briefing on it. So we feel our – the dispatchers, the salaries are where they need to be. Sometimes dispatch may not be fully funded, but neither is BSO's budget in general. However, of those 27 positions, a certain amount, and please don't quote me on it, roughly six or so, it's for a special operations unit relating to Alyssa's law, relating to the panic alarms. We want to make that a standalone full-time unit. The rest of the positions, it's based on workload supervisory distributions, a general six-to-one ratio. That's addressed in the Fitch report. That's also addressed in something called APCO, which is the Association of Public Communication Operators. They use a staffing tool called RETAINS. That's just the name of it. So it shows that per X amount of communications operators, you need Y amount of duty officers, supervisors. Our ratio is not there. We – according to the standardized tools, we do not have enough supervisors to provide supervision to the duty – I'm sorry, the communication operators themselves. So for more supervisors, right? Yes, sir. Okay. On the contract of law enforcement for the cities, the port, and the airport, it's about an 8.5% increase, what I have on my data here. Has the cities themselves – are you asking them for the 8.5% increase? I go back to the issue with Deerfield, for instance, where they said they had five and, you know, share front of this, and Pompano, obviously, too. That's my district. So I'm just trying to figure out, are you going to be asking the form of additional 8.5? And they're going to – are you going to be negotiating with those cities to do that? Or how did you – I just want to – because some contracts they claim is only a 5% increase, right? So you're just asking for 8.5% and just say, hey, this is what we want from you, and you're going to negotiate with the cities? No, sir. Our consideration – we call it consideration for the cities. It's based on the staffing level that the city wants or the city has. Okay. I think that 8% is just an aggregate number because each city would be different based on their particular personnel. Of course, it's six positions for the port and 25 for the airports in there as well. Yes, sir. And these positions, again, they were – we proposed them last year. The airport, specifically, it's airport safety officers. We know traffic is an issue. The port, I'd have to look at the exact breakdown, but I do know it involves some deputies. Okay. And I noticed that the BMSD, there's no additional positions, but, of course, the budget increases about 17% per central and per west. Yes, and that's the salaries. That's the salaries, right. That's what I figured it was. That's almost all personnel services. Got it. There is no capital request, and there's probably a modest operating, but the bulk of that increase is based on personnel services. And same thing with the fire at that point, the 50.1, right? Commissioner Fisher, I have some specific response to the question you had about the law enforcement contract, specifically at Deerfield that you just asked about. Based on what was submitted by BSO, the contract increase for Deerfield is 10.4 in this request. We've got it by each contract city. We have all the detail here that Elijah put together for us, including even at the airport, all the contracts that are in. So can we get a copy of that later? We can do that. Okay. We can do that. Okay, great. Thank you. Okay. We'll get a copy out. Okay. Well, let's just see here real quick. I'll be short, Mayor. Hold on. This has always been kind of a question to me, and I want to share, because you and I, when I was a mayor in 23, just explain to me about are the helicopters, the three helicopters, of course, that we had funded the one. I don't want to get into that part of it. But are all three now operational, or are you still waiting for those helicopters to come in? No, all three helicopters are here, and they're all operational. We have two fire rescue helicopters, and there was one law enforcement helicopter that was procured. Okay, so this budget, there's no more requests for additional helicopters, correct, or is there additional? Good. You can answer better on this one. No, sir. There's no requests. We do have another helicopter that's being built. However, due to some savings on other projects that we prioritize, the helicopter, we're not asking the county for funds on that. Which brings up a good point, because obviously the focus here is getting the pay necessary for the officers, and you talked about savings there and here. And the county is at a disadvantage, obviously, because we go back to that issue that we cannot dictate to the sheriff's office where those money are just being spent, right? We can say, hey, we went to detention. You wanted eight more, blah, blah, blah, blah. We went to $8 million, whatever. But that goes back to the point is I'm assuming, but I want to hear it from you, that when you talked about there was savings costs for an additional helicopter, you know, it's difficult for us not knowing the exact budget and how an audit or whatever it may be. Is there additional cost there to pay for the salaries? I'm sure you've gone through that. It's just frustrating to us or me as a commissioner. I can't see it, right? I can't say, well, maybe you could shift this to the salaries. You could do this to the salaries. I'm not, as a sheriff's opportunity, that's what he does. But it just seems to me that there could be more monies that you could squeeze somewhere else, as you just did a minute ago, to help pay for the salaries. Yes, sir. The brief answer to that is I know the commission used that term one-time costs. A lot of that money, if not all the money, is the one-time costs. Once we commit to an employee, we pretty much we're going to keep that employee 25, 30 years. That's the challenge that we face. I can negotiate a savings on a piece of equipment that we buy and then apply that savings somewhere else. I can renegotiate a contract, and then there's a savings there. But I just find it very challenging to use the so-called one-time funds to put towards salaries because I don't know what I'm going to do next year. At a higher level, we're dealing with that now. We have to give some compensation to our employees. We're going to do our best to continue to work this out. But it's very difficult for BSO to commit to a raise to our employees next year if we don't know it's going to be funded in the following year. So that's a short answer of why. I think the best way to explain it is one-time funds are easy, just, hey, this is the priority. But I can't prioritize one employee over the other if the employee is still here. I hope that that gave you some ideas to how we view it, sir. Okay. Yes, sir. So you mentioned briefly when you started asking that last question about the $8 million in detention. So as you aptly stated, it was a three-year plan. Correct. A phasing in of that $24 million request. So this budget year, this that we're talking about right now, fiscal 27, will be the third and final year of that $8 million for three years that you guys had committed to, you know, obviously not to commit future commissions, but the first on the bucket list, you know, of the things they wanted in priority order. This would be the final year. So that would be another $8 million for that prior commitment. Okay. Okay. All right. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you all. Yeah, thank you. So, Colonel Urena, you kind of summed it up for me when you said, you know, you kind of feel you don't know where the money's coming from next year, and, you know, and you don't want to take it from someplace else where it would affect someone's salary or something like that. But, you know, I feel the same way, actually, about what we're sitting here doing right now because I'm looking at this and thinking to myself, where are we going to get this money from? And that's really the bottom line here. I mean, I think, you know, we're all sympathetic, I'm sure, about the salaries. And I'm, you know, it's very distressing to hear the numbers that are leaving. And I can understand why, if they can find it someplace else, Palm Beach, whatever, county, city, whatever. So, that would be my, obviously, my first priority would be, you know, to see what we could do to bring that up because that's, I think, you know, you can't continue with that kind of numbers, with those kind of numbers leaving. Let me just ask you, so the cities that we're talking about here, do they have officers leaving at the same rates as the county does? I don't have those specific numbers to answer that question accurately, but I would say, based on my own attrition rates, because of where I'm at and I look at where we are in comparison to other agencies, not just counties, but municipalities in our market area space, and I would say, no, their attrition rate is not what ours is because they're more competitive. If anything, we're losing people to them. They're recruiting us away. And it's important to note, too, to lose a three- to five-year deputy, what that investment is from the sheriff's office and really from the county, to lose that investment, it's hundreds of thousands of dollars per person over time, to lose that, to go to another municipality, and then I have to start from zero on that cost and start over again, not just the time to replace them, but it's that built-in cost that goes with it. And I just wanted to your point, too, yes, we are prioritizing that over all else in this budget, and even with the pending appeal, that's where we're at. That is at the core of it. That's why I hit on what I said. At the core of our ask that's still pending for this current physical year, it is about the raises, and that's what we need to get to. That's the hemorrhaging that I have to fix. So let me ask you about the appeal. I mean, I thought that was kind of... So what I can tell you is that we know that the appeal is still sitting, obviously, with the governor and cabinet, the administration commission, and to date there's no notice to us as to when that might be heard. How long do they have to do that? We're going to the next year's budget now. I don't believe that there's any set time frame. I think Drew and Aniko might be able to answer that better. There's a multi-step process. There's a staff-level process first, and we're supposed to get some advance notice of when that's going to occur. I think the next schedule dates are for September 11th or so for staff and for the administration commission September 15th. So unless there's something that's changed to a calendar, that's when we would expect it to next potentially come up. And you're right. We're at the end of a fiscal year. Senator, if I might, that multi-step process does have certain timelines for certain phases of the process. The phase that we're in does not currently have a timeline. So it is technically open-ended. I refer to it, and I'm not a lawyer, I refer to it as discovery, where the staff, the budget staff, can ask questions of both the Broward Sheriff's Office and the county and go back and forth with requests for information. The governor's budget staff. Governor's budget staff. To my knowledge, we haven't received any requests. I'm not aware that BSO has received any requests. So we're sort of sitting in that phase of the process. I mean, as you're moving into the next budget year, and what is the total amount of that request? It was 73 and some change, right? 73.4 or something like that, I believe. That is not included in what? As they stated, they did include that here as well. But we, in terms of our percent of increase that you're showing for the budget for next year for BSO. Yeah, it's there. It's at 12.4. But remember, it's really like 13 and some change because of the utility. That includes that appeal. It is included there because they are requesting a $103 million increase. And that, just to clarify also, when I talked about that $8 million of detention, that's also included in their request. That last year of the detention, that's included in their request as well. Could you just talk a little bit about detention? I mean, usually we end up with additional health care costs and so forth. Is that still the same? Yes, Commissioner, that's built into our budget request this year. Colonel Lorena would have the specifics on that for you as far as what we anticipate and project out of what those increases are going to be, the health care costs. These are the raises are built into this current budget year ask as well. But if I can just back up to your question, you know, about the appeal, that's why I addressed the elephant in the room and the uniqueness of this whole presentation. It's uncharted territory. I think for both sides that here we are presenting a budget that we've had to roll over on unresolved funds from the current physical year. And it's BSO's position that we have a great rapport with the county administrator. And I think we could probably come to someone sitting here, get that elephant off the room and get it off everybody's chest. And then we can focus on next year and really the year after that I think is what's important for us is not this coming physical year, it's really the year after if this wave comes and everybody's looking at cuts. How do we come together and collaborate to project out and forecast? Where do we both need to be here to move forward together as a body? Hopefully everybody will understand and realize the impact of that if that were to happen. Hopefully not. But, you know, I mean, if you end up giving increases, you end up giving increases to people and then if that were to hit us, I mean, that's a whole other. So there's such uncertainty to the whole thing that that's what's a little, you know, discomforting because I just don't feel like whatever we do, we know really what the outcome is going to be. So that was it. So and have we had an increase, again, I'm just trying to remember now if we signed anything off on increases in health care for detention this year? I think we... So not in, I think it's pretty much been stable, what we've been expecting on the inmate inpatient care. That's what you're talking about. No, it's gone on. I apologize. Please. So historically, the inmate catastrophic health care, the BSO request from the county is around approximately $3 million a year. There has been a change this year where we have come with three agenda items so far to where we had the $3 million, then we had about $2 million, and then we had another $5.9 million. And so there's a backlog of invoices through WellPath that BSO has said that are outstanding and need to be paid. So we've come forth with quite a larger amount in fiscal year 26 than historically we have. Thank you, Jennifer. Sorry, I spoke. Thank you. So that is in addition to what, is that included in this budget for the increase of detention health care? Let me, let me, so WellPath is our third-party provider under contract for BSO for inmate care inside the jail. We have a contract. The contract, I think it's maybe like CPI, so it's modest increases. What, Director Steele? It doesn't sound modest when you're talking about another additional $5 million. That's a separate issue, Senator. Catastrophic inmate care can be something, maybe pre-booking or actual admission. So to give you one example, a municipality arrested a suspect under a state statute violation. It was a serious state statute violation. The suspect was injured. He goes to various care facilities. That was about a $2 million cost, just for one person. That cost is, statutorily, it's borne by the county. It's the county's general fund, actually. So that's how we work with the county O-1B to process those issues. But any inmate might have a stomachache, he's treated in the jail, that's already part of our budget. But it turns out that he goes to the hospital, maybe an appendix or anything where he's admitted, that becomes part of what's called the inmate catastrophic. Those costs are very difficult to control. They're not under contract. I can tell you that we aggressively reduced the bill as much as possible in negotiating with the hospital. So we're not sending the invoice just for the first rate. You know, we do a pretty decent job of negotiating. But no, sir, that's, yeah, that's, we've been working with county administration on that, but there's statutes that are very clear on the hierarchy of who pays. And ultimately, if the inmate doesn't have Medicare health insurance, which many times is turned down if they're committing a crime, it's statutorily arrests with the county. And there's actually a case on that, because you would think it's just as a result of the arrest. No, if an inmate's arrested for, I don't know, a DUI, and all of a sudden they have a heart attack in the jail, the taxpayer is on the hook for that. Okay. And I just want to close my remarks, just questions, just saying that I know this is a very difficult year, but I feel, you know, very strongly that, you know, the officers have to come first and the salaries for them, they're out there doing an incredible job for this community, keeping us safe at sometimes, you know, danger to themselves. So that would be something we just have to focus on and see if we can't work out. As you said, something for that can be the focus of this year, especially. Thank you. I echo those sentiments. My apologies for missing the presentation over the MPO. But I did have a couple of just overarching things. I really didn't want to add any recurring costs this year, primarily because of next year, because I don't think we know what's going on. And I guess my one question I had that I did want to know is, with Deerfield, with the, how many officers are in Deerfield? 152 is our staffing there. So next year, October is when Deerfield takes over, they have their own force. What happens to the 150 officers? So we plan to absorb them through our transition plan that we've given to the city. And the city has refuted the plan that we put forward. So we're kind of in that position right now. So I don't know. Yes, before October 1 of 27, I plan to absorb all of those officers into the BSO through our other district. But I see a request for 26 officers this year. No, I think that's for duty officers. That's for communication, sir. Okay. Oh, I see 27 for regional and 26 for general law. No? No, sir. I don't think so. Oh, you're right. So why, if we're going to be absorbing 150 officers, would we be asking for 26 new ones? Sir, we're not asking for 26 deputies. I'd have to see what page you're looking at. Ms. Pasadale. Commissioner Furr, if you look at, they don't have page numbers on their slide, but I'll tell you how many. What page number? One. They don't have page numbers on theirs, but it's three, four. It's listed as general law enforcement, but it's eight. So those specific 26 is the communication duty officers that Commissioner Fisher brought up, who are not sworn, they're communications, but I believe that they're categorized under general law enforcement, because statutorily that's how the sheriff breaks up his funding categories. So if I can, so the regional comms positions, the 911 positions. No, I get that. The 27. So that 26 is really a grouping, because this is just a different way of presenting all of the other positions that the colonel previously described, the attorneys, the eight positions for video, all of that. Okay, so we just kind of have it weird here. It's not uniformed deputies that you would. Okay. It's in the correct category of general law, but it's in different divisions. Okay, I just didn't know. Okay, I got it. Look at their eighth page. Okay. Their eighth page is kind of the breakout of their positions as they're requesting it. Okay, that was the main thing. There's a difference in the number, though. Okay, that was the main thing I was concerned with. And, again, I know you had asked for 27 last year on the – but you guys have been doing well over there. I look at the – Tracy's numbers that we get, and it looks good. Yes, sir. Good work is rewarded by more of it is the motto of the sheriff's office. But, yes, we are – You guys are doing great. Keep it up. I will say, sir, that the communication benchmarks – and I know Director Jackson's there. Since I was transferred out of communications, they shot through the roof. So I don't know if there's a nexus there, but the sheriff says I'm not coming back to communication. I haven't had a complaint since we've changed all that. And I used to get a bunch. And I haven't had any. So you guys are doing great on it. Thank you. I know. I'll probably get them now. I know. But this – I don't – I'm going to stay steadfast on this. I don't think this is the year to do – add more law enforcement or add dispatch. I just don't – you know, we don't know what's coming and adding recurring on anything. It doesn't matter what it is. It doesn't matter what department. It would be irresponsible. And I think we all need to be thinking that way. And then lastly, I do hope you can drop that appeal. I know when I was mayor at the time and I thought we had a gentleman's agreement when we did that budget. And I was very – I was very disappointed to see that appeal go afterwards. I've said the same thing to Sheriff Tony. Commissioner, if I could just comment on that. And you walked in after the presentation was over. But BSO is sitting at the table. Is – is what? We're sitting at the table regarding that issue. And we'd like to see a resolution as well. Okay, good. All right, good. That's all. Thank you. Well, the resolution's simple. Just dismiss the appeal. That's it. You know. Easy resolution. It's easy resolution. It's done. You agree, right? Thank you. Sheriff Tony agrees. He agrees. We all agree. All right, let's go on. Vice Mayor McKenzie. I'll be real brief. I know the undersheriff said that it's like we're in court and they have to defend. I'm not looking to be in court. I'm looking to resolve. And I think I have enough information to move forward with the commission to make a decision on how I want to go. I just have a question. The BMSD, the increase you asked for there? What was it, 17%? Yes, sir. The majority of that's personnel costs. But I'll defer that to Colonel Lorena. Yeah. What is that 17% for? Without having the specifics, I can tell you it's not capital. I can tell you the bulk is going to be salaries. But you also will have a portion of it that is operating. Is operating? And the only reason why I ask is because if you go back historically, my questions are pretty much the same. And there's 26 officers there. Am I correct? I saw 26 today. So in BMSD, there's fire. There's 26. And in law, there's 55. So on the fire side, you're exactly right. There's 55. 55 on the law, 26 on fire in BMSD. 55 on the law. So it was stated to me in year one, year two, and year three that those officers aren't fully committed to the BMSD. If there's a call for service, they're called out. Am I correct in that? So the 55 officers we have in the BMSD, the sheriff responded to my question because I was looking for a model that would patrol the BMSD within that budget for those 55 officers that they patrol that area only. And he said if there's a call for service, and maybe I'm wrong, those officers will be taken out of that area. Because what I don't see is a consistent presence of officers. And when I found out we had 55 officers, I was excited. But I also wanted to see how we could bring them into some type of coordinated effort to be managed in that area only. Because I have some serious policing issues in the unincorporated pockets. I think the city's take care of itself. I mean, they're going to tell you what's going on. You're going to be communicating with them often. But there's really no commander or there's no sheriff. There's no chief. You may have a colonel, and I've had some in the past that have worked with me. But we, meaning the community, and their feedback to me is that they don't have a police presence. So these 55 officers, are they just dedicated to BMSD, or do they float? No, sir. They are dedicated to the Central Broward District. They are- Never pulled out of the area. No, sir. Unless there is a critical incident. But that goes for all of our districts. We have a response plan to divert resources across the county if there's a critical incident. But on normal day-to-day service, no, they are responsible for that area. So what would I have to do to get a police presence that is satisfactory to the residents of the BMSD? In particular, I don't know about your piece, but at my community meetings, it is constantly brought up that there's no police presence. How do I go back and address that with our community? We had one meeting where the sheriff came out, and he scheduled another meeting to come out, but did not appear. There was a colonel or other sheriff in the audience, but he was going to come back with that answer to the BMSD. How do we do that, man? How do we coordinate that? So your first contact would be the district captain, 1L Phillips, and I'll give you my word that I will make sure that that is done? I think we've been, this is my fourth year. My question has never really changed in terms of what I'm looking for as a service. So I see the 17% asked, and when I leave this meeting today, those four unincorporated neighborhoods are going to ask me, when are we going to get A, B, C, D? Phillips has been great. The colonel before that, they were great. But I always think it's a response to be saying or asking for services that have put together a task force. This task force we assembled in the last few months, I mean, they came out of the box smoking. I mean, they were on point, but then it tickered down. And I don't think my request is anything other than just a normal request for services. And the activities that I see every day is not the activities that you all may or may not see in your digits. I mean, it's 27th Avenue. You know, it's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, almost 15 blocks on the same street that your office sits, the sheriff's office sits there. And I don't know how you don't see it. I don't know how you don't police it. And I'm not, it's not a knock. I'm asking for basic services on how we police. I'm not asking for people to jump out of cars and beat people. I'm just asking. These are some of the responses I've gotten in the past about we don't do that. And I, you know, that's not something I'm looking for. I'm looking for a simple, basic call for service that the constituents, the neighbors in those areas are asking me every day, every month when I go to these community meetings, when are we going to see a police presence? So that's all I'm trying to communicate. You're saying I got to talk to the Phillips to get this done, right? That's your first contact, but I have command staff here. I have Lieutenant Colonel DiGiovanni, Colonel Snackenberg, which run the Department of Law Enforcement. And I assure you that they will be in contact with Captain Phillips, along with the major. And we'll all sit down to address those problems. I welcome you to come to that meeting. And I hear you. I'll be there, but Phillips has been, he's been boots on the ground. To me right now, if I want something from Monica, and I see it's not getting done, I'm going to go back to Monica and say, hey, why isn't this being done? And then we figure it out. Why do I have to meet with a captain to get basic police services that I've been asking about for four years? Fourth year. I'm not, I want to, I would much rather see the plan of action to address these issues or report card, you know, every couple weeks, monthly, to just, to rid this question from a budget process. So, and that's why I asked today. Because I'm coming to this meeting. I'm a Broward County commissioner. The buck stops with me, with eight others, here. And you're asking me to go back to a captain to figure out how to police the BMSD. Commissioner, what I'm saying is the captain is responsible for day-to-day operations. He is my eyes in the BMSD. And he is the one that would be my starting point to facilitate the organization of those 55 deputies. And what are we doing day-to-day? So, so the district captain, with his resources, along with my executive management, we can answer your questions. And I just want to point out, we recently did a prostitution operation on 27th Avenue and made dozens of arrests. I saw it. Specifically for that. We just did that. I lived there. So I see, I see when it happens, all I'm asking is about consistency until we read the problem. Correct. So you drive into the parking lot every day of that building, right behind Checkers, that's First Street, right? Yes, sir. That's probably one of the worst streets in my district. And it has not changed. So that's probably why they're doing it. But I'm just going to admit they don't like them and they don't want to receive them service. That's all. How do we do that is my question. Before I leave, I'll make sure you have my direct number, sir. And please call me. And I will personally. I don't want to be a sworn deputy because that number will go up to 28. Commissioner, I hear you. I hear you. And as you said, you know, it stops with you. And as the undersheriff, operations at BSO stops with me. Okay. So I will give you. This is my fourth year, though. This is my first year. But I'll give you my number. Next year, I don't want to ask this question. I want to come back and say, I want to say victory. Victory for the BMSD. Yes, sir. JFK wore these, too. Senator Gellar, you're done? Ha. You want my hoodie? I say again, ha. All right. Senator Gellar gets paid for the lawyer. Yes. Like any good lawyer. Under Sheriff, when you said we had to resolve the elephant in the room, I thought you were talking about the constitutional amendment. I didn't realize. I think we have some different opinions as to what the elephant in the room is. And I am hoping that, and I'm going to ask some questions pertaining to that, and my able attorney will stop me if I'm asking anything that would be prohibited by the repressive Florida laws on elected officials. But I believe you said, under Sheriff, also, that Colonel Urena was going to address the issue of the constitutional amendment. I didn't hear a lot of that discussed. I agree with what Senator Rich said and what's been heard, and I've said this many times, that I believe that public safety is the single most important issue facing any government entity. But it is not the only issue. Sheriff, Tony and I have had this discussion multiple times where I've told him, Sheriff, the fundamental disagreement we have is you're elected by the voters to deal with public safety, but you don't have to raise the money to pay for it. We do. And all you care about is public safety as Sheriff. Sheriff, we, it may be our top priority, but it is not our only priority. In order, our top 15 funding out of our general revenue, besides BSO, our libraries, building, cleaning, maintenance, and security, parts and recreation, children, health care services, technology services so we don't get hacked, homeless services, county attorney, finance administrative, E911, addiction, recovery, animal care, that's 11. I have the list of the top 25. We're not going to defund all of those to fund public safety. If, I believe we're looking, Jennifer, at a 37% reduction in year two if this passes. Is that correct? In our GR availability? So it's $334 million and some change, 0.8. Out of about $600 million in GR? Roughly. But remember, the way we show all of the rest of the constitutionals as well is part of that. So it's a 19% loss in ad valorem revenue, right? And so that would be, you know, a significant portion of a reduction by that second year as well. And so, you know, as I've shared with all of you, as we start to look at if this does look like it's going to pass or what have you, this next budget year is going to be a very significant budget exercise that we would need to do. I'm sorry. I think 37% was on the original governor plan. That's correct. So I haven't really seen the numbers, but, you know, under Sheriff Colonel, if we're looking at very substantial reductions, I just, you know, you all need to understand that no area of our budget, including BSO, can be held harmless based on the numbers. And at a time where I think we're going to be looking, if this passes, at dramatic reductions everywhere, coming in at a, well, it says 13.4%, but I'll have questions. I think it's higher than that, is just non-sustainable. And my issue, you say you're here to be, negotiate and respectful. I've always been very respectful, Sheriff Tony. I have never said that, oh, he's doing a bad job as sheriff or he's this or he's that. My issue has always been he asks us for more money than we have available. And I'm afraid that that is continuing here. I've got a couple of specific questions. Some of these will be to administration, but let me deal with BSO first. I have a problem with the salary study that you did. And I'll be very candid. I thought it was non-credible, and I will tell you why. The salary study you did the year before that listed the data. This one lists conclusions. So as an example, the prior year, you said, well, we're not in the top 10 in the state in funding. And you listed the top 10 or 15 up to where we were in Broward. Based on that information, I was able to do my own independent review and say, yeah, you're right. We're not in the top 10 in the state, but we are the 67 counties. We ended up number 12, I believe it was. So we're in the top 20% statewide. This was in reference to jail salary. You also had said, oh, and we're among the top 10 where among the largest counties we're not well-funded. But you listed them, and I was able to do the math because I can math, math sometimes. And among the largest 10, we were actually, I think, number three or four. So you gave the data that we were able to do in independence analysis. This study did not provide any of the data. It just says these are the conclusions we've reached were this, were that. I can't accept that as a credible study because it's something that we can't review because you haven't shown the data. So I am asking if you're going to do a study that you want us to accept, it has to provide the underlying data for us to review. And I see you wanted to respond to that. I just request to have the opportunity to sit with you and go over that study in depth and maybe provide some of the empirical data that was generated to come to those conclusions. And I think that would alleviate your concerns. I would be happy to do that, although I will ask Jennifer and probably Mike to come. I was just going to suggest that because our entire commission would need to see that. Okay. BSO welcomes that. Okay. So, you know, with that data, I can better analyze without just looking at conclusions. I mean, I know that whoever pays the report. I agree. Yeah. I understand that too, Commissioner. But I also want to add too, where we're at in my attrition rates and my vacancy rates and my recruitment challenges, that math does math. And it does back up based on the conclusions of that study. So I just ask at face value to give some credence to what we're asking based on the data that we're presenting here, just to put the urgency of the need for the raises on the table. But again, I welcome the opportunity to come to you and alleviate your concerns and share that empirical data. And again, there is a nobody, at least I don't think anybody is questioning that higher salaries would be better. The question is, if our income is going down, it just makes it very difficult for any one expenditure. Y'all have, there's been a very slow but steady rise in the percentage of our budget that goes to public safety. And again, single most important issue, but not the only one. And we cannot continue increasing not only the raw numbers to public safety, but the percentage of our budget to public safety. Because the public also cares about libraries, homeless services, animal care, addiction. I mean, we can't keep defunding these more and more. So also, in reference, I mentioned reinsurance. I'm very familiar with insurance. I was national president of the National Conference of Insurance Legislators. We, virtually every health insurance plan has a reinsurance cap where it says that, you know, we'll pay the first X amount, and beyond that, if there are catastrophic events, reinsurance kicks in. Are you telling me that you don't have something like that? Sir, what I'm telling you is our general counsel, I know has worked with a county attorney on this issue in the past. I certainly cannot speak to the level of insurance as you can, but I can tell you that this specific issue is specifically addressed in Florida statute as how it's supposed to be handled. I think it's the priority of payment, but I don't think that deals with the question of reinsurance. Monica or Mike, can you, whoever our insurance person is, can you have them talk with BSO to describe how we do it? Because we have similar issues where catastrophic payments can put things out of whack, and that's why we have reinsurance. Monica, were you going to talk? Yeah, no, I was just going to say we do have reinsurance on our side, and we have begun engaging with BSO on how to address that because we do also see that as a big opportunity, and it was really brought to light with that big single claim that happened over the last six months or so that was brought to my immediate attention as well. Okay. I have two more questions for BSO, and then I'm going to ask Jennifer some. One is more of a statement. I think because of the uncertainty on the constitutional amendment, and, again, it is my personal belief, and, Drew, stop me if I'm about to say something. Stop him, Drew. Okay. Or Anika. It is my personal belief, as I said, that if this constitutional amendment passes, no entity that we fund, including public safety, is going to be held harmless or unaffected. That's all. Okay. So if that's the case, I would be more interested if there are non-recurring issues this year that we can deal with in terms of funding. That's one thing. I am just very, very cautious about any substantial increase anywhere because if you're increasing recurring, it's going to be much more difficult to cut that later. The last issue, and Senator, excuse me, Commissioner UD, and you've brought this up. I'm going to be Senator next year. You've brought this up in the past, but I – I wasn't on camera during. Right, okay. I was both. I wasn't on camera during. Okay, right. I wasn't on camera during. I was on camera. I never was. Okay. The issue is – and I see this at our contract, you know, with the airport seaport. When we pay for – we're paying for – I think we're paying for 55, 100, let's just say 100 random number positions, that I think that that means we're paying for 100 people to be working at, you know, all of the different shifts. If there's 50 in vacancies, are we still paying for 100 positions and getting 85 positions filled? And, Monica, you? No, we're actually paying for the units of service, so if there's 85, we're paying for 85, as an example. Okay, the – Jennifer, I'd like to ask you – Plus overtime, Senator. Okay, thank you. If you can turn to page 11 of your study, the proposed fire contract, actually page, I think it's – yeah. Do you know why there is a request for 26.1 and 42.0 in Port Everglades, an airport with no new position? The short answer, sir, it's salaries, salaries, personnel costs. Forty-two – 26 and 42 percent in – without any new positions? It seems high. On the airport – well, on the airport and the port, keep in mind that that includes 25 new proposed positions on the airport for airport safety officers and six positions. That's for law enforcement, not for fire. That's why I said turn to page 11, not to page 10. Okay, for – It's right there. This capital request on the fire – do you want to say something? I'm almost done. We're looking – so Mark informs me that we're looking to have the conversation on the fire side to look at how we might – Have a fireside chat? Exactly. Have a fireside chat about how we might be able to address the capital requests for fire rescue, perhaps, through negotiations on the airport capital side, not through BSO fire capital requests. So there might be another path to address some of those requests on the fire side. Okay, Jennifer. Can you turn to page 16? What I see is that there is a – on personnel service, a 16.7 percent increase, and capital outlay transfers and reserves, which are non-recurring, that there are large decreases. And so you've totaled a 12.4, which we've established is really 13.4. But the – I have a question on the methodology, because the 13.4 seems to be a blend of recurring and non-recurring, while the recurring, which is what I'm most concerned about, would be higher than the 13.4 percent. Is that correct? So there's a blend. So for the capital outlay, historically, for the BSO budget, we have anticipated an amount each year for, like, vehicles, equipment, and software. So there's a blend of – some's one time, and some is recurring. But what I see is capital outlay is down 78.2, and transfers and reserves are down 30, and you've averaged those to get to the 12.4, which is really 13.4. So if you take out the large one-time capital outlay, this is really higher than 13.4 percent. If I could jump in, Jennifer, because I asked her to switch to slide 17, just so you could see visually a little easier. See all those zeros in that column there that says FY27 general fund request? That is a concern of mine and of ours, because it – to me – and, you know, I haven't had the conversation about this specific thing with them yet, personally. But I know my team has. It's unrealistic to say zero dollars in vehicles. I mean, while it's a one-time, you know, technically one-time, every year there's – because you have to phase in replacement of vehicles and replacement of equipment and software. I mean, every – that's an unrealistic budget request of zero, in my opinion. So it does further – It will be higher than the 13.4 in recurring. Yes, and actually I was asking, with the adjustment of the FRS as well – does that have the FRS too? I mean, it's actually – it was in the 14 percent range when you add in the 6.7 million. Now, if we add in what historic levels of vehicles, equipment, building improvement type of things that are more realistic of what expenditures will be, that number does probably go into the 15 percent range, clearly. You know, I think that there was an attempt to say from – and again, I don't want to speak for BSO, but please, you guys chime in. It appears to me in this request, when you – when there's an obvious reduction to zero in these categories, what they're saying, and we heard them a little bit say earlier today, is that they are prioritizing the salaries. But I also think while prioritization of salaries is, you know, obviously their prerogative, I think it's also incumbent to have a realistic number in some of these other categories that we know there's going to be expenses in. But you guys, please chime in. Under Sheriff and Lieutenant Colonel – Colonel, I'm done. I just want to close by saying we recognize this is most important, but you have to understand that it's – your request is simply not realistic when we are facing the potential to be losing this much of our revenue. We can't – you're, again, already 54 percent of our GR dollars. We can't – it's just not sustainable for us to keep making large increases in the percentage. If we did what you want, your percentage of our budget would go way higher than the 54 percent if we – if this constitutional amendment passes potentially into the 60s. I haven't done the math, but it's just – it's not there. But we do want to be respectful and work with you and try and come up with what we can. But your request is not doable. Senator, I hear what you're saying. And as I said earlier, BSO understands the forecast of what this potential means of the shortages, not just to the county but to all the municipalities across the county and our partners. And we're looking at the forecast as well. And, yes, I understand what you're saying about what's realistic and zero dollars. And it is our emphasis on needing these raises for our people because that's something that I can't control the market. And, again, to – back to my comment about there's things that we can control and there's things that I can't control. And what I can't control is the cost of the labor market for what it costs to employ public safety people to serve our community. And that is the bulk of this money and what we're asking for. And I can't fix that, but I do say I have to be competitive. And right now, BSO is just not competitive in the market, which is why I go back to the salary study and the need to implement that salary study and these raises so we can – I can stop the attrition rate at BSO. So I do hear you. And BSO will continue to work with the county as if this comes to fruition with this new legislation. And we're here to be partners and collaborate. And please schedule that meeting with county administration. Absolutely, sir. Commissioner Dean? A lot of my questions have been asked, so I'm going to be very brief, but I just – a couple concepts. First, and I know I've spoken with administration about this. They know what I'm going to say right here. Based on the way the calendar works, because we're so – it's so uncertain what it's going to look like over the next couple years. I'm not voting really in this budget to increase any of our general core budget, any of our general funding. I'm not voting to increase anything this year unless you guys really convince me of it, because I know what's going to happen next year. You're going to come back, and we're going to talk about cutting hundreds of jobs as it is. So I'm not – I mean, I don't want to be obstructionist, but I'm just not doing it. So if you need more votes to get it passed, you're going to need more votes. Second thing that I have, and I take everything that's been said at 100% factually correct. I believe everything. I think we're all on the same team. I think we all want the same thing. Monica, my one question. What's the county attrition rate? So on the general fund side, so apples to apples, we're at about a 13.2% attrition, where I think comparatively, if that's where you're headed, is to BSO's 10.9%. So we're running higher attrition, and we have similar salary issues as well, obviously different categories, but yes. So I think that – I mean, I think public safety is dangerous, and it's the most important thing, and you have to pay people more to do those type of jobs. But I think every agency is going to be under the same type of pressure that we're going to be under in the future. So there's going to have to be another way that statewide we're going to have to look at delivering services to our residents. Our taxpayers – and I'm not even so sure I blame them anymore. Like, we all sat here, and we probably all thought the same thing. If you get a DUI in your appendix burst, you get better health care in jail than you do out in the public. Like, it's so hard to explain this to people, but that's the situation we find ourselves in. So first, as to the appeal, I think that there is an opportunity for the sheriff's command staff and Monica's leadership team to sit down and settle that. It should be settled. Personally, I'm not as worried about some of the other comments. I really don't care what the state does on this. If they vote that we have to give you all the money, then the state will have voted we'll give you all the money. If they vote that we give you nothing, then the state says that we give you nothing. We should do what's right because it's what's right that needs to be done. I don't know what those answers are, but I think that that appeal should go away. Plus, the fact, it's not going to be heard anyway. So, you know, they're not up in Tallahassee going to say we're slashing everyone's budgets, but, oh, by the way, we're making Broward tack on another $70 million. Not going to happen. If it does, it would be a field day for our PR team that we can push back on them the same way they always push back on us. That's number one. Number two, my only nuts and bolts question, because most of them have been answered, is if you're a fourth-year road patrol deputy or whatever the classification is, and you're in Parkland or Cooper City or at the airport or in the unincorporated area, you're at the same level in the agency, does that patrol person get paid the same amount of money by union or whatever? Yes, sir. Okay. I always thought that, too, but now when we hear all these different numbers come out. So if you say to us, we want you to increase salaries at the airport for our road patrol deputies at the airport by 10 percent, then what this commission would have just done is said, since we're doing that, now every other city has to match that because all the people get paid the same thing. So I think you're going to need to sit down with some kind of, maybe it's through the City Managers Association and the county, and come up with a number that we're not being accused on the county of saying, hey, you're going to 10 percent, and now you just messed up Cooper City, Parkland, Deerfield, whoever it may be. So those are larger issues than what we're going to do on the county. The next thing is, I go through your budget every year. I think you guys do a great job when I look at the budget. The unfortunate thing is none of the math works, and the math isn't going to work because the pie is going to get smaller and smaller, and your side is getting bigger and bigger. And I'm a lawyer, so I wasn't great at math, but I know it's not sustainable. It doesn't work. It's going to need to be fixed. And the voters who are going to vote in November are going to say they're willing to accept a more lean service. So we're all going to have to live with that, and the services aren't going to be the same. So I think that that's another thing. And then I'm going to close with one thing that you said, Colonel Lorena, and I agree 100 percent, and I feel the same way. You said pay the electric bill or pay staff. That's not a decision that the sheriff's office is really one that they're willing to make. And we're the same way. We have to do the same thing. Are we paying this? Are we paying that? We're all in the same boat. And the problem is when we cut something, we're usually accused of we don't care about public safety. We don't care if people get killed. We don't care with this. You guys have those same discussions that we have to have, and I'm glad that we're on the same page because nobody wants to cut one area of service versus another and then get blamed if something happens in that area. So I look forward to the two groups working out and bringing us a budget. That's a much lower number than this. Everybody in this room sitting here knows it, and we're going to all have to pull our belts tighter and work it out. Commissioner, if I can just respond quickly to that. Absolutely. That's what I said. That's the elephant in the room that's weighing heavy on everybody, and we really have to get that out of the room. And that will change the construct of the budget request for next year because it was piled on top of what the budget request is for this coming year. But we have expressed our priorities, and I look forward to working with your team. Right, but your priorities, we don't, like somebody said on that side, I think Lamar said, we don't see the nuts and bolts of your priorities. So, like, we can't see it. And I agree with the same thing that was said. Like, you can't take one-time costs and use them for recurring costs. You can't take this and use it for that. But you're able to save money in places, and you determined that you wanted to save money and put it to a helicopter. God bless. That's what you decided was better in public safety. You guys are the experts. I don't know. Maybe it was better to take that one-time savings and put them to cars because that's better all around. I don't know the answers to that, but we all have the same things, and smarter people in budget worlds are going to figure this out before I am. Commissioner Davis? Thank you. I also would like to see the data on the comparisons as far as salaries. Obviously, we certainly don't want the BSO offices to be at the bottom, and mid-range would be acceptable. So I'm all for that based on the data, showing that it's unacceptable that they get paid at the bottom if that is indeed the case. So I'll be for making sure that they are compensated appropriately. Excuse me. However, in terms of the new positions, that's where we'd have to kind of draw the line because I don't assume that we'll be doing any new positions ourselves at the county level based on what we have to look forward to. And so we wouldn't want to add positions and then have to take them back. So I think it's important that once you look at these numbers again, see how that can be mitigated and really focus on making sure those who are there get compensated appropriately and that you can hire and retain new officers. What else here? I'm not sure if this is appropriate to ask now, but is there a position that administration has as far as the percentage increase? For overall request? Yeah, there are 13 or 14. So we would look at it in a categorical way based on each of the requests, and so we're not looking at a set percentage per se. There are certain things that we certainly would be recommending that I know that we'd be recommending is clearly the $6.7 million in FRS that we're mandated to show, the $8 million of the third year of the detention raises that this body committed to doing, and certainly the utilities have to be addressed, obviously, whether it's on their side or our side. So that's another 8.4. So we're looking at a minimum of probably the $24 million range is rough order of magnitude as the bare minimum. And they're asking for over $100 million, right? And that doesn't include some of these things that I've just mentioned. So there's not a set percentage. We will be looking through some of the areas that were brought up here today of, like, the FCC, you know, those positions shifting to the general fund. I believe that that might have gotten rolled back by the FCC, so I think there's some other movement abilities there. So I can't just give you a percentage just now, but what I will share with you is, based on the feedback I get from you all today, I am hearing, obviously, a willingness to look at the data in the salary study, that I think that this body deserves to have some of that, as we would welcome that opportunity as well, because I think we've had some questions and not gotten comfortable with some of the data as well. And based on that, we would be bringing back a proposal to you all to react to. Obviously, in my recommended budget, there'll be something in there in the next month, based on how far we can get. But the budget, as you know, the process will still go into August. So there'll be some time after the summer break. Hopefully, we'll get some additional information. And if there's an adjustment that we would be recommending to you based on after my recommended budget, I will be sharing that with you all individually and as a body. So at this moment, we don't have sufficient information for me to be able to give you a percentage. And again, we'll be looking at each of those requests individually. Okay, great. And just to clarify, you mentioned 25 new positions at the airport. So I just want to say that a lot of these positions in the asks is a rollover from the unresolved funding for the current physical year. And we rolled those over. But again, in my opening, I just want to point out that BSO understands the landscape that we're looking at today with our forecast is different than when we proposed this budget this same time last year. So we understand that. We arbitrarily rolled everything over. But again, working with your administration office, BSO's at the table to talk about all those issues. Okay. And I know it was mentioned that you're probably going to have to absorb offices, like 150 of them. Correct. With Deerfield Beach transitioning back to their own department, BSO's positioning itself to make sure nobody gets laid off. We want to make sure everybody has a job and a position. So we are structuring our current hiring around that. But it doesn't match what our attrition rate is between now and when that transition goes into full effect. We're still going to have staffing issues. But yes. Okay. And hopefully some of those people can go over to the airport. Is that? So the ASO's are civilian positions. Those aren't sworn law enforcement positions. So there's just different categories of employees. But yes, we plan to redistribute our, to close some of the vacancies that was spoken to at the seaport and current vacancies at the airport. Yes. I will be redistributing those people from Deerfield Beach to all of our partners to include those entities. And so also that would address the overtime that is currently being utilized. It will address some of the overtime. Over at the airport. Right. There's different categories of overtime staffing and operations, specifically at BCAD, one of them being the checkpoint operations and that overtime. That's a different position. I can let your staff can answer that as well. We've been transparent with what that situation is, as well as Colonel Lorena and Director Gale. I would hope that that would be addressed by staff. If I might respond. So there's a couple of apples and oranges getting thrown out here. So let me just at least try to clarify a few things. So the ASO's are basically, they're non-sworn. So they're more on the traffic management side. You guys, please correct me if I'm wrong because I don't know all the duties for each of the categories in your office. So they would not be those 150 rough positions that you were asking about at Deerfield. Those would not be those. The 15 that I understand that you guys have referenced or that I've heard today that are vacancies at the airport, the 85 to 100, that number that we talked about, those 15 could potentially be there. But you're still looking at 135 positions, sworn people at Deerfield that would not be, you know, find a home in that scenario. So I do want to make sure that it's apples to apples being discussed. So I think that maybe one of the unanswered questions might be, you know, where would Deerfield, if that does go through, where would Deerfield find all those officers? So there might be even maybe some folks that would go to work for Deerfield, not just stay, and have to find a home, all of them at BSO. I mean, so that's another thing that probably would likely be part of this conversation, just realistically, just where our body's coming from, right, to do this work. Yeah, but I would hope that some of those folks would then go into the TSA area that you said 15. Oh, right. That was another piece. So I believe the question that you're asking that hasn't been answered is that the way we staff those checkpoints is purposefully designed to use the OT approach. That doesn't mean that we're asking existing deputies that are doing other duties to then go work additional hours there necessarily. Yeah, I understand, but I'm trying to get away from that. So the challenge there is that in order to add enough deputies to cover it, we'd be adding all of their full-time benefits, et cetera. And it's actually more expensive to add the 45, and the email that came out from Mark Gale kind of covers the details. It would be more expensive to add the additional full-time positions than it is to use the OT methodology. So we're actually saving about 50% of the cost. But that's adding new positions. I mean, if they're already existing. And I'd like to see the data on that because I don't believe in any scenario that overtime is a better use of staff than regular people doing the work. It just doesn't add up. So for me, I'd like to see more details on that. There's no way you can tell me that because I've been in government for quite some time. So I'm not buying that argument. But moving on, I think that's it for now because most of the other questions were answered. But I'm looking forward to our administration working with BSO to making sure that the current folks there, and that we can stop the attrition at the rate it's going and be sure to get the right people for these jobs. That's my main concern. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner, for your support on that. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'll take the mic. Thank you very much. I'll start by saying potential impact on our general revenue budget is real. I don't know if we want to act like it's not. If I'm voting, I know where I'm going. I don't know where my residents are going to look at the benefit, what is the benefit to them. So it is real, and we need to consider it right now as we're looking at our budget. I listen to my colleagues, and I agree in certain areas. But public safety to me is important and to all my colleagues here. But we do have different level of staff, and everything, whenever you're paid, it's that salary that sustains your household. So whether or not you're working for BSO under their contract or you're working with the general county, staff is important to what we do on a daily basis, right? I heard in our conversation there was mention of that Deerfield Beach, that 150. And it did not say we were going to accept some. At first, the presentation was we have to absorb all 150 or we're budgeting to absorb 150 employees. That's what I heard. So if that was not the intent, but then further clarification, it was stated that, of course, people would have choices and some might want to stay in Deerfield and others because the opportunities for moving up in a bigger and, you know, a small city compared to a large organization such as BSO is other opportunities to change from position and move up in that hierarchy. So folks would make those personal decisions on their own. So I'm glad to know that we're not recommending or it is not included or that will change in the next budget review that we go through. That number is not what I'm looking to see. But I want us to do our best in trying to keep as many employees as possible that we can afford. Okay? Trust that makes some sense. When you talk about the helicopters and that extra helicopter that we chose to use the funding, the excess funding for, I don't know if when we were making that decision we were thinking that, you know, staffing is going to be an issue this budget season. Let's prepare to do our part. And I don't know how much money that is. But between that funding and the law enforcement trust fund, although it's not a recurring budget, we can't rely on it solely for those positions. But it helps. Okay, especially in crisis. I am looking at, in a small city when we weren't generating revenues from certain residential properties, we had to do a special assessment, fire assessment fee. I don't hear that discussion because you have to provide a service, so there's other ways of generating revenues. I don't know if that is being considered. Other cities had to do that to be able to provide that service, that fire assessment fee discussion, folks. And other cities are doing, survived by it. Why aren't we having that discussion? When I speak to the BSO budget, it was alarming. If you're saying there's no position increase, but there's such a vast increase in that budget area. That further clarification was made, so I'm getting a better understanding as to what you're doing and how it's done. Not that I agree with the process. Okay, there's one other thing that I've personally, I touched on law enforcement. Okay, your special details and your overtime budget. Who are your special details and who's considered? What group of employees are considered? So special details, again, it's based off of Florida statute that allows the sheriff to provide security services generally to private entities out there, To give you an example, if you ever see a deputy in front of Walmart, that's a special detail. The special detail office is a group of people that administers a special detail. So Walmart... They pay for that service. Yes, they pay for it. That's what I'm saying. Okay, and then to sum it up, it's essentially a contract service on the budget side, so it's treated no different than a municipal services contract, except it's private payers coming in. So it's generally revenue neutral. Okay. I wanted that clarification because I was tying the special details to your overtime budget, but that is indeed not so. Right. I'm going to infringe on my colleague's BMS conversation. I don't know if that colleague, I'm talking to you, you are the one who talks BMSD more than any other commissioner here, that commissioner, first and then second, because they're the ones. But they always include all of us because Broward County is responding, responsible for funding, right? So I'm going there with you, and I hope this helps. I don't know if you were speaking to a structure, and when I look at the organizational structure that you can look at and you can know, I would take Lauderdale Lakes, for example. It's a city, small city, with X amount of employees, staffers for that, but then you have different zones, and you know how many officers are there in that zone at this time of the day, night shift, evening shift, all of that. Is that the structure you have over at the BMSD? Yes. From a budget perspective, BMSD, it's its own cost center. We have a cost center for Central Broward and a small cost center for West Broward. So from a strictly budget perspective, we operate that in the same manner as we would a municipal city, a BSO contract. I'll turn it over to the undersheriff to speak about operational matters. And compared to what I think my colleague was trying to, I think, if I'm not overstating or stepping outside, but because Broward County has something to do with it, I feel comfortable in asking the question. All right. So tell me exactly what is that organizational structure? So operationally for the city of Lauderdale Lakes, yes, you're correct. There are zones, and then there are staffing in those zones for the shifts. And that is pre-structured, and it is controlled on a daily basis, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. So for BMSD, tell me what kind of structure do you have? It's the same. We treat the BMSD area the same as we would treat any other district or city, municipality. There are zones, and those zones are patrolled, and they're staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week for those zones based on the staffing. We have what we call minimum staffing, so depending on the size of the respective municipality, the municipality might not decide to staff every single zone for every single shift, but that's a collaboration of cooperation between BSO and the contract with that respective city or area. Can we get a copy of the current organizational chart that you have that shows all of that? Absolutely. I don't have that with me, but I can make sure it's provided to you. And if I can add some clarity as well, and I saw a vice mayor looking at me. He stood up. Yes, because I was asking, I was pointing at him to, yeah, right, so instead of trying to mouth to him, look at page 13, but I was like, look here. So to clarify, when we talked about the 55. One minute. Yes, sir. We can't see this, and then you can't see that because of people's heads, so that's why I stood up. Yes. Are you trying to say Mr. Melton has a big head? Because he knows how to audit. And I brought up the glare thing, so we're still not in position to follow presentations most of the time unless we bring our own handbooks. And so it's difficult for me to see anything that you're telling me to look at now. Yes, sir. So on the presentation on slide 13 that we had shared earlier, so when I was talking, and to clarify the 55 positions in the BMSD, that is, and Colonel Yadena mentioned that there's a west and a central. So Central County is obviously in your district, that's 49 positions, but all BMSD as a cost center is the 55, and there's six in the west Broward section, which is Broadview area. So when you're talking about the task force and things of that nature, that is within that 49 positions, Vice Mayor. I just wanted to point that out, and to your question, Commissioner Rogers, as the BMSD breakout for that, that's where you can see it. They said they'll provide the actual org chart, which I think will be helpful as well, to see that. May I? I think she's looking for a model like comparison, how this looks, how that looks. Even with the 55 positions, are there 55 people or just 55 positions that aren't staffed yet? Sometimes they don't feel positions. How many, we have 55 offices right now, FTEs? There's two vacancies right now, so actually you have 53. So we're holding two vacancies of those regional positions, but the rest are filled. Thank you. When we speak about the airport and the seaport and all of those other areas that you service, the port director does have some say or does not have any say in your recommended budget. Do they have any? Because I would rely on them to tell me if they see the need, if there are any exposure because we don't have X, Y, and Z. They're not law enforcement. That we know, all right? So we rely on you. But I'm also curious, do they have some input? Are they comfortable with what you're recommending? So if I can talk process a little bit, the Broward Sheriff's Office does make their recommendation. That's, in some ways, that begins as a formal conversation. And then the airport, and it's true for both the airport and the seaport. And then they begin to sort of talk specifics about why BSO perceives the need for, let's say, six additional positions. Maybe it's because they're looking at the new hotel and the convention center growth, and they see that they feel that there's a need for that. That conversation begins after the actual recommendation to a great extent, not before the recommendation is provided to you all. And then, of course, you all as a body make a final determination by approving certain values for the budget. And to go one step further, by the time that we then bring a recommended budget to you, then I'm sitting with my port and airport directors to go through that and find the middle ground there, as in any negotiations that we do. But that would be based on service-level issues that both my directors feel either need additional resources or they feel that it's appropriate, and based on, obviously, what BSO is recommending as well on the safety side. Did they answer your question, Commissioner? I know you have something to say. Go ahead. I just wanted to add that it is about, it's the day-to-day operations that goes on throughout the year. So when it comes time to create these budgets for the following year in the budget planning process, we're both at the table with the respective directors and the command staff for the port and the airport. It is a collaborative decision-making process. And then there are some resolutions at the end. We've been meeting with both entities as we prepare the next physical budget year. Thank you for that. Final comments. And as it relates to the cities, whenever there's an arrest and then when the expense become the counties, I thought I heard some discussion around that. Further clarification. If someone lives in a city that they were arrested in, as opposed to someone that lives in another city and got arrested in one, when does the county take over whatever expenses you guys were talking about, okay, that medical expense? So, Commissioner, I'll take that answer. This is limited to medical expenses and it's based on statute. When someone's arrested for a state violation, state statute, which is the majority of arrests, ultimately the county will be responsible for medical treatment for that person that was arrested, with one exception. If the person's arrested for a municipal violation. So, if a city police officer arrests someone for a city violation, maybe open container, and that person needs medical attention, statutorily the city would be responsible. But if the person's arrested for, he has an illegal firearm or a robbery or anything like that, regardless of who arrested him, regardless of where he's arrested, if medical treatment is required, the responsibility will fall either on the sheriff, which were funded by the county, or directly on the county, depending on the circumstances. When you go to their insurance, do you have any other funding source from those? How does that work? The statutory funding source is the individual person themselves. If they have health insurance, if they have Medicare, Medicaid, and it's a hierarchy, but the payer is a last resort, is the general fund of the county. And how do you account for any of those funding being repaid in your budget? Where do we see those? Is that something we see or don't see? Yes, you do. That's the process that was spoken about earlier. I prefer to have the county answer on the exact process, because we essentially send the invoices to them. So, to clarify on that, so you will ultimately see it during the budget amendment process. It's not in a requested line item in the budget. So, those costs are not included in this direct request. I mean, just to clarify, we will pay for it, but through the budget amendment process, but not in this budget recommended. Even if we average whatever we did the previous year, it's not included. That's been our practice. If there's a will to... No, I'm not a financial person. You guys, the questions are asked. If it makes sense, it's for staff to make those recommendations, not me. Thank you. I know my limits. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor, colleagues. Okay. Monica, I think I have a way to solve the whole problem. You do? Yeah. So, the $900 million budget. We give 10% to the criminal element of Broward, say, stay away for a year. We save $800 million. You guys take a year off. How does that sound? Modern times require modern solutions, sir. I appreciate that. All right. Now, let's get serious. Real quickly. So, when I came here, your budget was $450 million. Fast forward. I haven't been here that long, but fast forward. It's doubled, and it's kind of tough because we get people calling. I don't know about my other commissioners, but I get people calling, screaming about what we're spending, and so you've got to understand the pressure we're under. One question I had is, you lost 600 positions, did you say? Yes, over three years. That was an aggregate over three years. So, and what was the average salary of each position? And cost to you, benefit salary? Yes, to me. We didn't calculate that out. We're actually working towards a comprehensive attrition study. It varies because that's various positions. $125,000 or more. We have a slide. We'll pull it up. No, no. I don't need. Just approximate. $185,000. If you've got to factor in benefits. $215,000. Look at the top line. So, $215,000. So, at $100,000, 60. So, that's $120 million saved. $120 million saved on 600 positions. You're talking $200,000 between salary and benefits. Right? That's all. Well, we've been replacing them as we go along. We are hiring, but that is the attrition rate. And you have to subtract. So, you're losing and you're replacing. You have to extrapolate that out where my current vacancies are. Right. Okay. Look, when you came to 911 and there was a problem, we stepped up. We realized that we need to pay these people. And I think what we talked about is we need to see the data, not just Senator Geller. I think we need another workshop to just go over that so we can make a good decision based on data. Well, let's start with what data they have and then we can go. One question that you guys put in your appeal. In your appeal, you may not know this, but in your appeal, you said that we would be able to audit the sheriff's budget. Is that still open? Can we have our team audit your budget so we can actually say, people come to us, oh, this is crazy budget. What are they spending it on? So, are you guys open to an audit so it just becomes transparent to everybody? The same auditor that audits the county's budget audits BSO's budget and transfers that information to the county. External. Yeah, the external. No, I don't mean the external audit. I'm talking about an internal audit. Is that what I'm talking about? I'm not a CPA. Yes, sir. And give you detailed information that the external CPA audit would not do. Just like we're audited, everybody can see how every penny we spend. Are you guys open to that so this can really solve a big problem with what we get? Mr. Mayor, just to clarify, when you say you're audited, you're audited by the same firm that audits BSO. That's my understanding. Monica? It's a financial audit versus operational audit. So, I think that that's what the mayor is referring to. So, yes, all of us are required by law to have external financial audits, and that's what you're talking about, the external audit. But I think what he's referring to is what the internal audit functions that Mr. Melton provides to all of our county agencies on a regular basis. Except your agency. That's something that we'll take to the sheriff, sir. Would you ask? I mean, he's listening. He's either swearing at me or he's saying, okay, one of the two right now. Wherever he is, sheriff. Yes. That's something. Or both. Mr. Mayor, with respect, that's something I would have to defer to the sheriff to answer that question. I think that's the real elephant in the room. Well, yeah, we got a bunch of elephants. We got a lot of elephants here. All right. So, would you find out about that? I think that really would save a lot of issues from what we receive, just so you understand it's not just us sitting here. And love the data, and I don't have any more questions because we've set it off. I appreciate and thank you for your time. You get back to us? Oh, Senator Rich, we're round two. You've got two minutes. No, not round two. I just wanted to say one thing. There's been a lot of discussion here, and I believe that the elephant in the room is the ad valorem tax. So, I just would like to say that this discussion today highlights, I think, for all of us how we all have to be working together to educate the voters on where the tax dollars go. And if people knew more and understood more, I believe that we would get, you know, a pretty good result. I can't go any further than that. But I think it is so important to educate the voters on the impact of where these dollars go to help them in their lives. And we can sit here and say what we want, but the public doesn't know. We have found that out. By the budget summary we gave out to people, people looked at it and said, oh, I didn't know my tax dollars go there. So, it is up to all of us to partner, collaborate, and get this information out. She said it in a better way than I just did. But we do get people all the time saying, oh, you're giving the sheriff this much money, you know, that's ridiculous. And if you could really get the nuts and bolts of, hey, this is what's necessary, this is why they need the money, this is for your protection, it would be helpful. Anyway, I look forward to your response, and thank you for coming. Have a great day. Thank you. We're going to do, so to my commissioners, we're going to do a lunch. We're going to do a lunch here, and just make sure you make out your checks appropriately, and that's it. Right, counsel? We're taking a 10-minute break. Who's the next person coming in? So, it's us. No, no, no, no, it's right that person. It's us. Okay. It's us. You guys ready? We'll wait for Mr. Udine to get going here. Where is Nan and Lamar? It's probably in Tallahassee. So, how long is this going to be, Monica? Yeah, 10 minutes. The presentation itself is very fast. It'll be depending on... Elijah, how long you got? 10 minutes maximum. 10 minutes? 10 minutes max. All right. Jennifer's... When he's mayor, he's going to make it seven. I'm going to be a nice guy. Jennifer is timing... I'm going to make it nine and a half, okay? Jennifer's timing him. Don't start his time until he starts talking, okay? Mr. Mayor, you want me to open this up? Okay. Wait, don't start his timer yet. All right. So, the next portion of our agenda today is going to be to cover major general capital project prioritization and funding strategy. General capital, as a reminder... Interrupt you. Here's finally... Mark Gale finally shows up for his raise. I just wanted to... Would you guys like to just adjourn and we'll come back some other time and talk about this? Yeah, he's in the room now. Oh, okay. Let's go ahead. As a reminder, general capital is part of our capital budget that is cash funded. It's PAYGO. So, it's different than the ones where we will do issue bonds and things like that. That's what we're covering here. Elijah, start his timer. Good afternoon, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and Commissioners. So, we'll go ahead and get started. So, we'll be reviewing several major general capital projects for prioritization, as well as our proposed funding strategy for those projects. What prompted this presentation is, as you will recall, in the FY26 second budget amendment, the board appropriated approximately $95.6 million of one-time funding to reserves to be used for future project commitments or for other governmental operational priorities. So, this one-time funding will be available for the board to allocate to one or more of these priority projects or other governmental operational priorities in the upcoming third budget amendment or the FY27 recommended budget. So, the three projects we'll be discussing today are the major general capital projects for board prioritization. They include the Government Center East Replacement, the Forensic Science Center, and the Emergency Operations and Communications Center. And the reason why we're focusing on these three projects is the board has prioritized all of these three projects over the past few years and has also contributed or allocated a significant amount of one-time pay-go funding to each of these projects. So, we want to take another look at these just as we try to maximize the pay-go funding available and get that board prioritization. We will start with the Government Center East Replacement. This project, as far as the status, demolition is ongoing with work expected to commence later this summer. Environmental monitoring is also ongoing, and staff is progressing to issuing a RFQ later this fall for progressive design-built services. That is pending any alternate board direction for Government Center replacement. As far as the financials, the total estimated cost is $663.6 million. As mentioned earlier, the board has appropriated $104.6 million to date. So, that would leave a balance of $559 million to fully fund this project at the current request. Just to explain, the 104 we haven't spent, that's just in the fund ready to go. Correct. Yes. And I think you all should just say the $663.6 is not for the full-blown building. It's for the modified building. Correct? It won't fit everybody. It's the one that you all had directed us to go. No, no, no. Skinny. That's correct. Skinny. It's a building that won't fit all of our current employees. Correct? That's not necessarily true. No, that's what they claim. Correct? Admin, is that correct? It is correct that it's not every single employee, but they were never originally contemplated. Because I think one of the criticisms you had for the Spirit Building was, oh, based on its configuration, we may not be able to get all of our employees. That's a problem. Now we've got to build this and that. And this is the same issue with the 663 if you were looking at all of our current employees. That's not exactly accurate. But the distinction is we are talking about the same number of employees, right? So let's just say it was the 700 roughly, right, employees. Those 700 would go into this new government center that you guys had told us to go there. 663? Yes. Yes. What was the bigger building for what employee group? What was the number of employees? But that's not what you guys landed on. You guys landed on the 712 employees. And that's the same group of employees that we'd be putting over at Spirit. So it is apples to apples. Okay. Is it a 663 X land? Yes. Correct. So the land is on top of that. That's correct. And also the numbers that we'd given you on Spirit was also X land. Explain X land, would you? So the Gore property where this is going is another $62 million we paid for it? It's 65. 65. And we're remediating it, which we have to. And that's costing how much? I don't know that off the top of my head. About? But we'll get that to you. I don't think that, I mean, with all due respect, the thing is, is there's a piece of property where the Gore building is. We paid 65 for it, and we made it better. So that property is worth X, because we remediated. Whatever X is, we can talk about later. And if we might, if it's okay, we certainly will answer any and all questions. But if it's okay, if we can just get through this, because really this is not a matter of debating. Four minutes left. I know. Not a matter of us debating or having. We wanted to understand what those numbers meant. The 104 isn't spent. Absolutely. It's sitting in a. Elijah, keep going. Thank you. It's just about how the dollars are allocated, that's all this is. Yes. Unless the chair has acknowledged, he is not allowed to speak. Okay. So moving on, the next project is the Forensic Science Center. This is the construction of a new 180,000-square-foot combined facility for both the medical examiner as well as the Broward Sheriff's Office Crime Lab. So the status for this project is demolition on the selected site is completed. And the RFP for the managing general contractor closed in April, and staff is currently reviewing those submittals. So also the design consultant submitted design programming back in mid-May. So the schematic design phase is currently ongoing. As far as the financials for this project, the total estimated cost is $325.9 million. To date, the board has appropriated $41.9 million. That includes both prior actuals as well as modified budget currently available. So remaining funds required to fully fund this project at the current estimate is $284 million. Lastly, the Emergency Operations and Communication Center. This proposed project seeks to build a new facility that would consolidate the existing Emergency Operations Center with the three satellite public safety and answering points into a single hardened facility. This project is still in the planning phase, and the RFP for design consultants is currently under development. So the total estimated cost for this project is $375.7 million. To date, the board has appropriated $251.6 million, so the remaining funds required is $124.1 million. So this next slide is a summary of a potential proposed reallocation of funding for the board to consider, as well as the utilization of that $95.6 million of one-time funding we talked about earlier. And this is, of course, only if the board should decide to proceed with PAYGO funding for these general capital projects versus using it for other governmental operational priorities. So as you can see there, we have the three projects listed with their total estimated current cost. That third column shows the PAYGO funding appropriated year-to-date. And then in the fourth column there, the proposed reallocation, this proposal would take the existing $251.6 million currently appropriated to the EOCC project and move it to the Government Center East Replacement Project. In addition to that, it would, in that fifth column there, the proposed appropriation of the 95.6 would take that PAYGO funding and also put it towards Government Center East, which would bring the estimated remaining funds required for Government Center East down to $211.8 million. As far as the Forensic Science Center, the amount remains at $284, and the EOCC would revert back to the full project cost of $375.7 million to fully fund this project. So now this next slide summarizes this proposed funding strategy. So here you see the three projects listed. For Government Center East, the proposal would be to continue to try and fund this project fully as a pay-as-you-go basis. So there would be no associated annual debt with that project. So the budget funding source would be our general capital outlay fund and one-time dollars. As far as the Forensic Science Center and the Emergency Operations and Communications Center, the proposal would be to seek bond financing for those projects for the $284 million and the $375.7 million for both of those projects. The pledging source for that debt would be half-cent sales tax, and that's also where the budget, you know, the funding would come from to pay that annual debt service. For the Forensic Science Center, the annual debt service would be $19.5 million estimated for 30 years, and for the EOCC, it would be $25.8 million annually over a period of 30 years for a total of $45.3 million annually. As far as next steps, this discussion with the Board will help determine which major capital projects to pursue with PAYGO funding and obtain consensus on a funding strategy for the other projects. That is, of course, that the Board should decide to pursue these projects with PAYGO funding and not use it for other governmental priorities. We did want to point out that there is an existing reserve for future funding of county facilities that is available and currently has a sufficient amount to cover that full $45.3 million of annual debt service that we talked about earlier. And one last note, the remaining general capital program will be reviewed at the August 25, 2026 budget workshop, and that would contain most of the annual projects you would see across the five-year capital plan, including recurring maintenance of things like our parks, libraries, and other general government facilities. So with that, I will conclude the presentation and turn it back over to the county administrator. Thank you. How do we do on time? Even with interruptions, nine minutes. Well done, Elijah. Thank you, Elijah. We do have a couple of answers back to your question, Mayor. We have, well, we don't know the remediation costs exactly, but we do have $600,000 in the budget for that right now. And then the demolition is roughly $700,000 to $800,000, which we would incur no matter what. So just that's part of the project in the land. Yes, sir. You recognize. I recognize. So when we bought the building for Lorenzen Center. Yes. You got to do the same thing, correct? Absolutely. Anytime you buy a piece of property, you got to... 100%. So it's not like this is a surprise that we have to remediate... Exactly. ...the asbestos, because it goes, it starts with us over there with Lenny. So... We've done that with all of our projects. But we have to do that on any building that we purchase. We did it with the hotel in Pompano, all of it. I think the amount... No, but... My... Steve, I want to just go over. My point is just my point, so thank you. Yes, sir. Okay, a couple comments. I agree with what Vice Mayor McKenzie says. And I was only bringing that up not because I know you have to remediate property when you... And that happens all the time. All I'm saying to you is by doing the remediation, we make that property a little bit more valuable, because somebody that's looking either for us or for somebody, for anybody, the property has to be remediated. And my only common concern about that was there's about $65 million in that land. That's what taxpayers paid for that land with the remediation and all that. So here's a couple things. So, and I'm only bringing this up in contemplation. And a lot of what I would have said, I would have said before the legislature put this thing on the ballot and what voters are going to vote on. And I never really believed in my heart of hearts that there was going to be five votes to spend three-quarters of a billion dollars in the future on Government Center East. It's very easy to debate it in conference rooms. But when the public really starts paying attention and understands, I never thought we were going to get there with three-quarters of a billion dollars on a new building. Fort Lauderdale couldn't get there with way less than that. But that's just my own personal philosophy on this, and that's why I said from the beginning I thought we should be looking at other spaces. And then the spirit thing came up. When I originally mentioned the spirit thing, and I am not here to sell anybody on that idea. What I would highly recommend is the nine people that are sitting there, sitting here, try and get with Drew or administration and see if you can take a little tour of what it looks like. I've done it. And when I started looking at this, I figured that the numbers were going to be significant savings. And I knew that this is not something – it's very hard to turn the Titanic around. But even with the numbers that county administration came back, we're looking – that's taking their full program. If I'm saying anything wrong, they'll correct me. We're looking at a $200 million savings for taxpayers. That's even taking their numbers at point blank. So I think you should go take a look at this building. The second thing I would say is, and I don't think it's been brought out there, I don't particularly believe all the numbers that Ziskovich and the county came back with on what we would need to do. So – and I'm not saying that the numbers are wrong, but it's just a perspective of looking at it. So we're in this conference room right now. We're having a meeting here. The electronics are not great because the building's not built for that. There's no open light on anything. Look at the ceiling. We'll leave it for what it is. This is – at anybody's definition, this is class D minus space. If we went up to class B plus, we would be performing such a valuable service for our employees and the people that use the building every day. So there's things that we could do. If you look at what's available in the spirit thing – and the reason I amended my motion statement, there's a 200-unit multifamily. I took that out of the whole thing because there's no reason for us to be in that business. And I think – Issa Mae can correct me if I'm wrong. So this building has – where we're in right now has X number of parking spaces dedicated to the building. We did a study on what we would need at Government Center East, and they said we would need 900 spaces to satisfy our needs. She's nodding her head yes, so that's right. The spirit building has 1,100 spaces. Now, when Zyskiewicz went to look at this, they said, well, Dania Beach is going to tell us if we want to put a government assembly building there. Now, even though we're 200 spaces more than we would build at Gore, they're going to require us to have 1,400 spaces. Now, that's a huge number in that $400 million. What I would say – and Commissioner Furr mentioned this at one of our meetings, and they called me too. So like Dania Beach said, we're going to lose out on some tax revenue if you came here. I would argue with that. I would argue that we're making their property more valuable if we did something like that. But let's just take their numbers at face value. We could then say rather than making us build 400 spaces for 27 Tuesdays a year, let us have a variance. Let us stay at 1,100. There's plenty of parking in that whole area, and we could save $35 million or something right off the bat and go to Dania Beach and say, in exchange for this $35 million, we're going to put it in our bond funding, and we're going to pay you the million dollars a year for a while that you're losing in taxes. So that's one thing. The second thing is, when I first got elected in – no, no, okay. No, no, I'm just prefacing this why it's going to come up because I don't want to have this whole – I'm just stating some facts when they talk about the general capital on the government center east. I think in my meetings with Monica that we've talked about, she's going to say we may not even be able to afford to do the government center east. What I was saying is that I was just saying that we should tap the brakes on all capital. Right. Projects, not one versus the other. It's any kind of cash funding of capital right now until November is the prudent thing to do. If that's going to be the recommendation from staff, I'm okay with waiting, and if the property is still available, it's still available. But what I'm saying to you is there's much different ways to do this. When I first got – and I'm just saying in general with capital projects, I had nothing to do with spirit. When I first got elected, the state attorney came to us because there was some kind of leak or there was something in the state attorney's office. And in one week, we had a vote on a new lease, and we said to them, you're going to move, and you're going to go into a new building, and you're going to figure it out. And the pursuit of justice still took place. We're in a building here that's 80 years old. You get one storm like what Fort Lauderdale had. They had a shutdown one day – well, because you're Fort Lauderdale. They had one storm, and all of a sudden on one week, they were like, you're never going back in this building again. That could happen, and then how does that get factored in? The spirit building, the way it sits right now with zero money, and it can be used for a lot of our departments there. Like we have – I was just – I went this morning into the budget office. It's lovely. It's beautiful. They happen to have a window. They have natural light. They work in – well, I mean, I wouldn't want to work there, but it's lovely and it's beautiful as far as what county offices are. Most of our other offices don't even have a window, so there's no natural light. There's nothing. They have X number of people in a budget department. There's plenty of space for people to move right into spirit as it sits right now. The building's all wired. It's all done. If you could get that, if you could steal that building and save a quarter of a billion dollars, I just think from a capital perspective, worth looking at. Thank you. So last time I spoke last, I want to interject something because we're all entitled to an opinion here, right? And I kind of think – Monica, I think we're being misled. I think we're being misled by those numbers from Soskovich. I think we're being misled by what you showed me. And you say we should stop all capital because we don't know what's going to happen on the ballot, but there has been money allocated. I think you showed me where there's money allocated that it wouldn't even touch any of our budgets. There has been $80 million. You showed me some – where? Show me where – It's right here. So it's on this slide. So if you look at the dollars that are general capital, which is cash, that have already been appropriated for government – For last year. You've got it for all of these. In the second column, the pay-go column, you have 104, 41 – So hold on, Monica. I get it. So my point is that if we listen to Monica and we lose that building – let's just hold off. We lose that building. We also may then be able to save – we were able to save at least under these Soskovich numbers, which I disagree with. Insane, right. That's at least a $200 million savings. By acting now, we could be saving our taxpayers between $200 million and $400 million. But by listening – Monica, by listening to what you're saying of let's just not do anything, we are potentially giving up a chance to save our taxpayers close to a half a billion dollars. And, you know, just like what Commissioner Udine said, how, you know, the courthouse, we moved over slowly. Not everybody moved in that courthouse at one time. We kept some people in the old building and then moved people over. We could do that with this building and the Spirit building as well. There's other alternatives. It doesn't have to be all or nothing right away. But we lose – by doing what you're suggesting, Monica, we lose the chance of saving a ton of money. And we're not dipping into any pots of money. We're not dipping into one pot of money of one program by moving forward with this because the money has already been allocated. So I don't get the recommendation, and I certainly want everybody to understand these numbers that Soskovich gave us. You know, as Commissioner Udine, as well as opinion, I think it's outrageous. And I'll go around – we have people that – Okay, I just want to ask a question before I get my time. Sure, Steve. Sure. Now, let's start with a presentation. What – where are we with the presentation? Are we doing a governmental center east – no, but I'm saying, I thought we came to go over a presentation and prioritize something. Right. Is that what we're doing? Government center. Right now, first thing on the list is government center east. Just government center, right? Right now. Nothing else. Let's do it. Yep. Okay. You speak to all. Right. I know, but we're just taking one at a time. Yeah, but it's like government center. What's the second one, Monica? Forensic Science Center Emergency Operations. Emergency Operations. Emergency Operations. That's the topic we're dealing with. Am I correct? Correct. Okay. All right. Thank you. We are in discussion. Government center. That's what we're discussing. Yes, Senator Geller. You've got three minutes. I can give a chance to speak. A couple questions. First, if we go with your – with these numbers, and if you say we should hold where we are because we don't know what the budget could be and maybe we won't have enough money to do things, would we – are you saying that instead of government center east or the spirit building that we might stay here? Because if that's not what you're saying, then we're going to have to spend the money somewhere and we should look towards economize. And I'll have my own comments. My second thing will be I'm not sure on spirit. But if we're not going – if you are suggesting we might have to stay here, then what you're suggesting makes sense on that. And, again, forensic and EEOC – or EEOC – sorry. If you're saying we might not do move at all on any of these, then maybe we should do nothing. But if you're saying that one way or another we're going to be moving, then it may not make sense. Can you answer that very specific question? Okay. So let me – I'm going to unpack a couple of things that you've made comments about. So you have asked what are the recommendations. Yes. What we have provided to you all and the reason that we brought this presentation to you was these are the three projects, major capital cash-funded projects that you all as a body over the last couple of years have asked us to prioritize to use PAYGO funding. Okay? Right. So that's the established, you know, presentation. But the purpose of this presentation was to get feedback from you all on do you want to keep the cash in those same projects? Do you want to move them around? What our recommendation has been over time was to move money, the cash, into the government center project so that there would be less bonds that would potentially have to be issued to do any kind of project. Which is why we have our AAA bond rating. That's correct. And we are probably one of only one in the state – I've asked my team to actually look into this – of any major county government in the state, and probably I'll challenge us against the country, how many have zero general obligation debt. We have zero debt on the general fund side. And you're right. It's right to the point of our AAA bond rating. But what we've asked – what we're recommending here is if we went forward with any of these cash-funded projects right now, this would be the recommendation of how to align the cash. Again, what you guys have consistently heard me say in all of your briefings individually is in light of this ad valorem potential situation we've got, is just pump the brakes on our cash-funded projects, all of them. County – But my question to you is I would – if what you're saying is – I notice on this you're suggesting that we may not do the EOCC right now. No, this is cash only. I'm not suggesting we don't do any of these. If you're taking the cash that – We would do bonds. We could do bonds. Go to the – who's got the clicker? But if you're taking the cash away from them that they have now – Look at slide 8. You've got it on your papers there as well as on the screen. Slide 8 talks about how we would potentially pay for these projects. How do we go and we would do half-cent sales tax for those other couple of projects? So there could be bonds issued for those projects. There is a way to fund them assuming there are general fund dollars, property tax dollars, to go towards those debt, the debt, the debt service on those, and the priority of the board. Obviously, it's a balance, right? We don't know what the landscape is going to be. So how much do you fund with cash? How much do you fund with debt? Monica, what I'm saying – and please listen carefully on that. I understand what you're saying. Is that if what you're saying is we've got the constitutional amendment, if it passes, that will reduce our money, and we may not be able to move at all because you may not have the money. If that's what you're saying, I'll say, well, that makes sense, and I would be supportive of that. If, on the other hand, you're saying let's pump the brakes, but we know that we're going to have to move somewhere, whether it's spirit or whether it's gore, then my experience is the longer we wait, the more it's going to cost. Then, as Commissioner Yudin has said, we might lose the spirit opportunity, though I am going to raise some questions on that in a moment. If what you're saying is we're going to have to move anyhow, at least with the government center east, then I'm not sure what the benefit is of pumping the brakes if we're still going to be moving anyhow. Is it your statement that we might have to stay here, or do we know that regardless of what happens, we're still moving? Well, the will of this body has said that you guys want to move, right? And you guys had told us also not to slow down on the government center project. And so we have been doing that as well. So right now it's getting down to a position of what does this body want to do? And if it's your thought as a policy. Hold on. I'm going to interrupt you. I'm sorry, since I get to run this meeting. We voted for you to move forward. We voted for Drew to move forward on what he's doing and for you to move forward. Why are you questioning? I don't understand. We need to know. You already know. We already voted. You're bringing up something that we voted on. Why are we being questioned again unless one of our commissioners, let me finish, put an agenda item on. We instructed our council to go and talk to higher council about the building in New York, correct, and bankruptcy. And we have instructed you to go and check out the building already. We've voted on that. Yes, sir. You are today now saying, now we need to know, you already have instructions. No. What is new? What I was saying. The constitutional amendment is the intervention. No, no, the constitutional amendment. If I can answer your question, Mr. Mayor. Yeah. What I was saying is I need to know where you would like us to identify to move cash. That was it. That's the whole point of this conversation. It's not about which project or what location. No, you said about putting a hold on things. That's what you also said, not just about moving cash. We have instructed you, instructed Drew, by a vote, and that's your mandate. And we have done that. So the only thing you should be saying today is where do you want us to move, if any, where cash? That's the question, because that's not, I don't think how specific you are. That's what you're saying. I didn't say that. I was trying to answer a question he asked me. Yeah. Mayor, Senator Geller asked a very specific question, and I'm not sure that it's been answered yet. But, and there is something new that's happened. I mean, this ballot proposal is new. So I guess the question is, and it's logical, we're all aware of what's new. We're not like idiots sitting like, you know what's going on. No, no, no, I understand. But it's a logical question. If you have to move, then you have to move, and you want to seize whatever the best opportunity is to move. If I've heard it described in private rooms as to, you know, maybe we need chewing gum and other things to hold this place together, because we may not be able to afford to move for whatever reason. That's a threshold question. I thought you had a recommendation on it, but maybe the board, you know, wants to set a policy on it. If the board's saying we're going to move, then yes. Right. We already said that. Now, if Senator Rich or somebody here wants to bring up an agenda item saying, now that we voted, I want to reconsider because of what's going on with the ballot, and we may not have the money, and which I could show where even the value of this building and the parking garage and some of the assets we have wouldn't even touch any program, wouldn't touch any budget, wouldn't touch anything. And so I kind of, like, we're getting into this debate here, like, with Senator Geller about, you know, are you recommending this, are you recommending – I think we already gave instruction. And unless you want to put an agenda item for Tuesday's meeting, let's just answer a question about how we want to get money allocated. But go ahead. In fairness, you know, again, I think that bringing this up across the intervening item was something that is legitimate to come up. But based upon what you said, Mr. Mayor, and what the county attorney has said, I'm assuming, Monica, that we're moving anyhow. And if we're moving anyhow, at least on GC East, I'll reserve comments on Forensic Science Center and EOCC. But I don't see any reason, if we do have this decision that we're all moving and that we can afford it even with the constitutional amendment, then I don't see the reason that we would have to deal with this now. Now, last issue is on the – in reference to the Spirit Building. I have a series of questions about that because, again, I know it requires substantial construction. Well, you're – I think we're talking about building another building and converting the smaller building. And we all know whatever construction costs are or estimates are, they're never accurate. But I also – you know, I have semi-jokingly said that we should move to plantation. But I think if there's two places that our government center makes the most sense, one is in the downtown Fort Lauderdale area, which is historically our county seat where we have our biggest buildings, or a second in the geographic heart of the county, which would be more in the plantation area. But I'm not sure that having a location that's really not on a major street, the Spirit location that is neither in the – it's off 95, but it's not on a major roadway. I'm not sure that that really meets the definition of where is the best place to put a government center. I want to remind everybody, when we were talking about a billion dollar, or actually a billion one or two at one point, I said I wasn't going to vote for that because I thought it was too much. So I agree with what Commissioner Udine is saying. It's not our money. We need to be responsible. But we also need to make sure that we're building a government center in the location where it should be, which I would argue is either in the central part of the county or in the downtown Lauderdale. I'm not sure. I'm withholding judgment on whether the Spirit is the good location. And having spoken as recently as yesterday with some people from the alliance, they think that's going to be a wonderful, terrific headquarters for some business to move into. I'm not sure that they would be thrilled with our buying it. I think that they have – they told me they've had 10 people already contact them about major companies wanting to come in, the kind we've been trying to attract, move into that space, and that might be a better use for it than us because I keep saying jobs – high-paid jobs, high-paid jobs, high-paid jobs. I think we need to consult with the alliance if they're getting serious interest in that and also people that would be willing to pay more than we'd be willing to pay. It may not – that might be a better option. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Just before I'm going to go around the table, is there anybody that agrees with Senator Geller on we shouldn't go forward because anybody – We can't get to five on the spirit thing. No, no, no. I want to know, is there anybody that agrees that we shouldn't move forward in looking at the Spirit Building, that we should not look forward – Steve, I – we hear – You're mischaracterizing what I said. I'm not saying that we shouldn't look at it. Steve, you're either one or the other. You can't sit there and say you're for the Spirit Building, but then it's not the right location. I said I have questions on it. I never said we should stop. Okay. I just said I have some questions on it. Okay. Well, I'm going to start with Lamar, and then we'll go this way. Go ahead. Thank you, Mayor. Just from listening to the comments that I've heard on this, I did not realize that we were going to be debating the Spirit Airlines Building today. But having said that, we are. Okay? And so that's fine. But as I said before in my statements before, this is a very specific process that the county must go through in order to even acquire this property. And so there is no more, hey, we can see seal if it's available. We have other options. We don't have any options if we want to go pursue this acquisition. You're 13 days away from putting an interest letter in and a stocking horse bid. You're 41 days away from this physical auction of the asset. So I know that legal has been working diligently on the PSA and all the legal bid procedures, which we all received, and I've dissected them in its entirety. But you don't have a choice if you want to go through it. But the talk that I'm hearing is we're assuming that we're going to buy this building, right? Commissioner Udine has put a $100 million cap on it. But we're saying, okay, we can buy Spirit and we're going to save $250, $400 million, which we might be able to do that. But there's absolutely no guarantee that we're going to acquire this asset. There are multiple individuals that are looking, corporations that are looking at these properties. So, number one, I think if we're going to go for it, I think $100 million is light. I think $100 million is light, okay, because I think you're going to probably have more competition, and you're not going to get the building anyway. But you've got 41 days to make that determination if you want to play the game, whether we're going to be a stalking horse. Again, that's 13 days away that we want to maybe be a stalking horse. These are specific criteria and bid procedures that this government aid entity has to follow. There's no more tomorrow. Somebody's going to buy this asset, and it's not going to be available probably in six months or a year because the people who are going to buy it are probably going to be an end user. This building is not set up for an investment opportunity. It's an end user site. Then you have the – and I don't want to get – I wasn't going to get into the details, but then you say, okay, we want to buy only the building and the training center, and we're not going to build – we're not going to be bidding on the 200-unit deal. That's fine. But the court has given bidders an opportunity to do that, to either buy all or separately. So if we just go in separately, I'm going to go back to the bankruptcy court, the highest and or best offer. That's what the court looks at. It doesn't say just because Broward County just is going to bid $200 million. That might be the highest or best. The highest or best might be all the assets that somebody won't want to buy, right, which knocks us out of the picture to begin with. So it's very strategic, and it's very specific. So if we're going to go for it – again, I thought we were going to discuss this on Tuesday versus now. I toured the property. I love the property. I mean, I think it's awesome. And if ultimately we can save that money, I'm all in. But there's so much more that we've got to decide as a government body here to whether we're going to play in this game, in this arena. And I could go through a myriad of other things, but you have to have the liquidity. And I'm asked Monica. Do you have the liquidity to pay $100 million? Today, yes, if it comes from one of these buckets. That's where all I'm saying is the cash that we have available today. And I know I've had conversations with other commissioners about what the value of different assets that we have, but that's not cash. So the cash that we have available would be from basically three or four buckets. It's reserves, which are not listed here because that's not what we're talking about today. And it's these three projects where there's cash. That's the answer. So that's my point is in 20 days after 20 to 30 days, if I'm not mistaken, Nika, after the auction itself, you've got to close this transaction. So you have to have the liquidity. You have to show proof of funds even to be a registered bidder. You've got to put up an escrow deposit to be a registered bidder. So this is a serious game. It's no more tomorrow. I'll tell you I can get my money back if I'm the buyer bidder and all of a sudden I want to do this deal. That's not the case. You're going to lose escrow, and you're going to lose the opportunity to bid. So you've got to be prepared to have the liquidity to close the transaction. So without touching reserves, we have $440 million. Without touching reserves. How much? Without reserves. Without, yeah, it's about three, it's $350 million without the reserves that we just pointed out in the last presentation. $300 million without reserves. And that's fine. I'm just saying, I'm just pointing out that this is not like you can just sign a contract and play with it for six months. No. Once you sign, once you sign, you write the check if you're the highest and best bidder. The court says, yes, we accept your highest and best offer. But, Lamar, you're right, but just clarify, none of your money is at risk unless you become the winning bidder, and that's why I limited to the $100 million. I agree with what you're saying. No dollars are put at risk by the government. You're absolutely correct. And if someone outbids us and we're the stalking horse, we get a nice check of 3% or 4%. Well, up to, up to 3%. Okay, we get a nice check. Somebody might want to be a 1% stalking horse, and therefore that's the highest and or best as well. Then they would beat us, and then we can come back. You're right. There's nothing at risk until the final thing says, okay, Kriani, you're the highest bidder. Now you have to have the liquidity to close that transaction. On an as-is-where-is basis, no contingency. Mr. Mayor, can I ask Lamar a question very quickly? Lamar, do you know, based on your vast experience in this area, and we're great that we have you here, as a government entity, and this may be the county attorney, do we have to vote publicly as to what our maximum bid is? Because if so, I think the chances of our winning are not very good if people know in advance what we're willing to bid. And before he answers, I ask that question because I say, could we do a shade meeting? Because whatever we say, it's going to be public, right? So we say, oh, we're going to bid $100 million. Okay, X, Y, Z come. He says, I'm going to bid $101, and you're out, right? So it doesn't give you the expandability. That's when I said the $100 might be light, but can we give Monica a range that she can play with? In your item, it was not. It was a flat $100. So that was one of my questions I would come up with Tuesday is, do you give a leeway? When I asked Drew about can we make it in a shade situation that we can keep that number secret, he said no. Just to respond to that, since you mentioned it to me, the only thing I disagree with, I wouldn't go a penny over $100 million. If it gets outbid, I spoke to the people at the alliance. They called me, and they said, out of respect, I just want to let you know we have people that are – I spoke to a lot of people that are looking at this. First thing is, most people are looking at it with the idea then they would come back to us and make us – put us in as a tenant. There's not that many end users that are taking that building. I do not support that. I would not be a vote for that. I only wanted if we could buy it. And I would limit – I would limit this bid to $100 million for the property, not one penny more. And then if someone takes it, we lose, and we come back, and we haven't – But if you're – if the board is bullish on it, and all of a sudden it sells for $103 million, you lose it for $3 million, you're going to be upset at yourself, right? So it's – We're not – we don't have the ability to have more meetings in the timeframe that's there. No, but we can give her $150 million and tell her what we're comfortable with off the record, can't we? Yeah, we can discuss this between – that specific issue between now and Tuesday, and you could give her the authority depending on a bunch of factors that we don't want to get into here. It may take – the voting threshold might be impacted. You're right. But let's see if we can get to five that would support this. If we can't – if there's five that would support this, then we should be going full force because I think that – I was of the essence at this point. The numbers that we're getting from staff are correct. I just disagree with them. So, like, you have to build – you have to build a – they're saying you need to build a complete chambers with no line of sight issues, removing internal beams of the building to restructure and re-support the building. There's 108,000 square feet in the center where they have the training center. Fort Lauderdale's met at the Parker Playhouse. We can rebuild that out for less than the, you know, tens of millions that they're talking about. Which is interesting you say that because you look at the options one and two and three. Option one was to – or one of the options was to build a second floor in the training center, right? Right. That was actually more expensive than to build a freestanding building on the parking lot for 34,000 feet. Because they have the land. Which was less expensive. Right. And if you wanted to put a child care facility, the space is there for free. Right. Exactly. So, again, if we're going to get serious, time is of the essence right now. And I don't know that we wait until Tuesday. I guess we have to now because we have to make a decision. It's just a workshop. But, you know, there's a lot of factors that we need to get into to everybody to have their eyes open going in and to give her the authority to make those decisions for us and have the lead way. And I think it's that – I'm bullish on the property. I like it. But I don't want to limit ourselves either, right? But also understand the procedures, the bid procedures, understand the terms of the transaction is not your normal deal. Mr. Mayor, can we ask the county attorney to present to us on Tuesday what we can and can't do? Senator, we're going to have an agenda item. Monica, sorry to interrupt you. We're going to need an agenda item. We have an agenda item. Great. Let's just go person by person and then, Senator. You said we have to put up escrow. So how much is that? And, I mean, if someone's going to come in and bid $101 million, we're going to lose it. Do we lose our escrow? No. No, no, no, no, no, no. In order to be a qualified bidder, right, there's certain criteria that you have to meet. And it's about 15 issues. But one of them is you do put up a 10% escrow to bonds it. So if your bid was $100 million, you would put 10% of that in escrow. You get that back. If you don't – if that high bidder doesn't close, then you might become a backup bidder. So let's just say that we're the back – there's a backup – the bid's $101 million, and we're the backup at $100 million. Our escrow is going to stay in place until that guy or guy closes. If they don't close, then they're going to look to us to close the transaction. So we're not going to get our 10% back right away. Ultimately, you'll get it back or you'll move it forward if you're not the high bidder. Correct. But you could be a backup bidder, and then it becomes hard at that point. And the other question is, Monica, which I would need you to comment on. I have no idea, if we buy it, how much is it going to cost to renovate this building, to fix it so that we can use it? Because what I'm saying is I'm one of those people that thinks we should not move on anything right now until after this ad valorem tax. Because whatever we do, if it's going to cost hundreds of millions of dollars, that's a red flag to put out there, in my opinion, to the voters right now. Okay. So I don't even know. I have no idea what this is. So as additional material, it came out late because we had gotten the information that we requested from Siskovich. That's what the mayor and Commissioner Dean were referring to. I think it was like $400 and some change. $415 million was the cheapest of the three options that were analyzed by them. in a very compressed time period. And, I mean, we have moved heaven and earth to try to get all of the information to you all. Well, I'm asking a simple question. What do we anticipate it would be to get this building into a condition that would be usable for us? The estimates that were provided were about $415 million going on memory. That's correct. The cheapest of the three options. And so that's... They're all well over $400 million. to do that. Okay. That's all I have to ask. James? Yeah. I do think this would be sending a bad message to the voters. I think if they're looking that we're about to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a new building, I think they're going to be thinking, eh, that's, you know, I think I'm going to be voting, you know, to limit the property taxes. I think that's almost a given. And I can't imagine voters not thinking that. And so I really think this is the time to cool it and just say, and it may mean we lose the spirit. The other side of it, and I have not had a chance to see the building yet. So I haven't had, and I was hoping to see it before Tuesday. So this caught me a little by surprise. The other part of it is, I actually, I mean, it sounds like it's a good building. I have no idea. I am a little concerned with its location. I have talked with Dainian officials. They're a little concerned. Location, to me, means quite a bit. It really does need to be on a transportation line, to me, where anybody can get there. I live not that far away from this thing. It is not, it is not an easy one to get to. You know, it's not. I mean, it's, you know, going down US 1 and Sterling and trying to find out where it is there, you know, or going the back road through Oakwood. And I know the area well. And it's, and as well as I knew it, I hadn't even seen that building because it doesn't show up until you go into the back parts. So it's not, you know, it's not like it's high profile. And to me, a building, the home of Broward County, the public building, should be a high profile. It should be a place where people see when you, when you drive into the county seat, as you see in many places throughout the county and in the country, you see a place that speaks to you. You see to, you see to a place that this is the public building. This is where, or this is where we, the people have a place. You're not going to have that there. As good as a building is, it might be. You're not going to have that. And, and I do think when you build a building from scratch with the, with what, what we would have in mind is what is needed. I think you really probably get a better, you probably get more of the building that you're wanting and needing. We have a lot of specific needs as a government besides chambers and that kind of stuff. Each department has their own individual, their, their own things. Law, legal has their thing. You know, everybody has their own thing. And, and, you know, I think if we were building it from scratch, we have the ability to pay for it over a long period of time. We don't have to buy and put a lot of money up front. We can pay, we can pay this over a long period of time. And people, I think, would understand that. Even if it's a higher price, I think they would understand if they, if they knew that they were getting the bang for the buck and that what was being built was going to benefit them, that it's going to be, it's going to serve them in a better way. They do want to make sure that they can get there. And that, that's part of it. When I look at the other options here with, particularly with the emergency operations and communications, I think most of us, most of us have toured the EOC. That's a high priority to me. I'll be honest. That's a, that is a higher priority in terms of what is, you know, they're, they're really jammed in there. And that's, that's tight place to work. That's a place that, you know, is where life and death is at hands. And I would, I would probably, you know, if I'm going, if I'm going to be ranking these, it would go from emergency operations to forensic to government center last. You know, I do think we'd need, I need a new government center. And I mean, all of those are needed, but that would be the, my, the way I would rank it. And I think that's probably where the public would rank it. I mean, I think, I think they want to make sure when they have a call to 9-1-1 that it's being answered. And it is now. It's doing good. They're doing good. But they are, they, it is a, you know, it's not, it's not ideal for those people working there. It's a, it's a harder place to work. It's better. Anybody working here is in a better situation than what they've got there in my mind. So that's kind of where, that's kind of where I'm falling right now. I do think we need to be conscious of the vote coming up. And, and you, we may, we may, you know, we could do this now and regret what that happens, happens on the back end of that. So I think we need to be very careful with this. I'm going to go. I'm going on a turn. I'm, I'm going in the line here. You've heard it like me time. Is it his turn? Is it his man? You know, whenever he wants. I shake him up a little. I, I, I respectfully, 100% disagree with Commissioner Furr and tell, I want to make sure I, explain it clearly. Let's start with health. If you guys, you weren't here, both of you weren't here at the time, our courthouse when I got here, judges and the people who worked there full-time were experiencing health issues because of the mold and asbestos and all the issues there. This building was built in that time zone. This building has, now it may not be in the air, it may be contained, but for this building is just the same way it was built as our old courthouse. You have people working here every day that are potentially, not actually, exposed to a building that is built with asbestos and other types of chemicals that they shouldn't maybe be working in. Maybe it's safe, I'm sure Monica's thinking, Mark, shut up, I can't believe you're saying that, but right now you need to understand this is not a, I wouldn't call this a purely healthy building and so let's put that aside. I think it sends a message to the voters that, you know what, we know that you need, you want us to save money and here's a chance because of, we're talking about taxes and costs, we have a chance to save hundreds of millions of dollars and that's why we're going to buy this building instead of getting some palatial or building that could fix everything the way we want it and be some, okay, some building that will accommodate everything, we're willing to squeeze into a building, we're willing to make efforts so we can save hundreds of millions of dollars and we're not going to be touching, we're not going to have to issue a bond for this, we have the money to buy it and we don't need to spend, as it was brought out about how they wanted to charge us, Senator Rich, on making the, not just the parking spaces where we meet, the commission chambers, the way they structured it and the costs was so ridiculous that we could cut that down probably 75% in cost based on what they were talking about in construction. Anyway, I think it sends a message, I think the message is we need to save money and if we're going to get a building sooner or later this building is done and it should be sooner because I'm going to advocate because of the health of people working here but just as to save money, we're looking to build a building, right, we're looking to build a building, we can save money and as Senator Geller said, the longer we wait the more it's going to cost. Prices aren't going down in construction, I think we end up saving the taxpayer hundreds of millions of dollars and if we can pull the plug, I do agree with Commissioner Fisher, I think we should give Monica a range of a certain amount and then we could meet with her privately and say this is what I'm comfortable with, this is what I'm comfortable with and she could take what we're all individually comfortable with and do what she feels best because she'll have that discretionary authority, okay, but I think you give her a range and we have a chance for the first time since I've been here to save hundreds of millions of dollars and I just can't see how, oh, you know, let's just, you know, wait and if it costs more money as Commissioner first says, you know, okay, I don't think that's prudent and so I would, you know, I'm all in. I shut up last week, last week. I didn't say anything with BSR. You were good. I find myself saying the same thing over and over and over again. We're tired of hearing. and when I put my vision, my heart into planning where we go, I just don't jump off the train in Daniel Beach to say that this is it. It's a great building. Cut the ribbon there. Great building. But I also have been participating with this commission, both as a city commissioner, county commissioner, to remedy ourselves from this building that some say is sick, some say is not sick or whatever, but we know that we must go. The shelf life of this building is over. I think Commissioner Furr hit it and knocked it out of the park. If we rush and do this, it's just been a couple months this has been brought to our attention. What happens to all the due diligence, all the work, now we got here? I do want to save the taxpayers money. That is always my first goal. But I don't know if we're making this decision that's going to do that because there's a lot of variables. We can get it for the $100 million maybe if all the things line up as our expert says, but then we know even with this building 60 years ago, we thought it was a great idea to find a retail space. You move forward 60 years later and we have to walk a mile to a conference room to have a conference. The commission change isn't what we want it to be but in a new building, we really get to put our hearts, our minds and strategize on how we want this building to look 60 years from now and we even authorized our county administrator to purchase a building. Purchase a building that has land underneath it. So we don't have to play with these different ABC scenarios that if we buy this piece, if we do that, this piece and then the land's over here. We own the Gore building. We were fiscally responsible in that act. I don't want to stop now and say that we could use cash on hands to do this. I think that's risky. It's not one of the models that I would choose. I thought I was coming here to talk about prioritizing this cash. It seems like we got off on the Dania Beach exit as opposed to really answering the question that was proposed and put before us today. I, at this time, and out of all the information I've gathered, I too have spoken to the Alliance. The Alliance seems to think they have a number of tenants that can go into that space and it would best fit them. They can move in tomorrow and set up shop with technology companies. Government, I don't think we can do it. I'd rather just see us at this point not move forward with spirit at all and keep our eye on the president. We have to stop, Senator Rich, because of what's coming out of Tallahassee. We can still plan, move forward, and gas up the car again to keep moving forward and not bring all this attention to using cash on hand today. Nope. I had some questions earlier. First of all, let me say, I actually listen to the debate of my colleagues and I agree with everything I've said and everything I've heard, even though it's been on both sides. I am truly undecided on this. And the reason is I agree completely with what both Senator Rich and Commissioner Furr said, that I think that whether we spend $200 million or $2 billion, the law of large numbers to the average voter it's the same amount and they're just going to say they're building themselves the Taj Mahal whether we buy spirit and spend more money or whether we develop on the gore. But I think doing anything prior to the vote actually could be dangerous. I have two specific requests prior to our actually voting on this on Tuesday. I want to hear from the county attorney what we can and cannot do publicly versus privately in terms of setting maximum bids because I think that if we just say it's $100 million, I have very little question we'll be outbid. Can we vote to authorize somebody presumably Monica or the attorney that's representing us a bankruptcy attorney whoever it may be to set a number or is it a range or you can and Anika will jump in and correct me if I'm wrong but you can you have to vote on this. You can authorize Monica to spend up to almost any amount if you know there's right now we've we've obtained information that is confidential information so that's why we're not having an open discussion about it right now but for strategic reasons with the right voting threshold you could offer any huge amount and then she could use her to determine it so you can work on the strategy of it. Thank you because that was a very important thing and the second thing is Monica Commissioner Bogan and I will disagree to some point where he says oh the numbers we've been given are garbage we've you know I okay I if there's if we don't like the Ziskovich number I don't know if we can get any other down than dirty numbers but if we only have one set of numbers from an expert I kind of am going to in the absence of any alternative from an expert we'll have to kind of accept those numbers if there are other numbers general numbers that you can get you know Commissioner Bogan or Commissioner Yudian say that they regard those numbers as excessive and there are other numbers that we can get from experts not well I think we can do it for $1.75 I'd like those numbers because I want to find out are we really do we really have the potential to save $200 or $300 million or is it going to be $80 million for non-purpose built space that matters to me when we're reaching this decision I will also ask you to check with the alliance as to how real some of their offers are if they're they believe that there are real serious verifiable not just hey what if if they've had serious discussions with other major national companies on coming down here and moving into that property and making that a regional or national headquarters candidly I think that would be better for Broward County if we can bring a major national or international company to have a regional or national headquarters there but if it's all just hot air then I think we need to look at it for ourselves I repeat what I'd said earlier I think I was first person to raise the suggestion that it may not be the best location as my friend Commissioner McKenzie said and I believe Commissioner Fisher said that so you know I have concerns about that but again at the end of the day if we can save really hundreds of millions of dollars there I have to consider that as a valid option I think we need to do what's best even if that does I don't know how the voters would take it would they say as Commissioner Bogan said look they saved us 200 million or would they say look those SOBs are spending 400 million you know buying the Taj Mahal I don't know these are the things I want to hear for Tuesday Monica and Drew and Anika and if you can provide answers to the questions I've raised I'd appreciate it I can give you one answer right now and that is we don't have other numbers that I can tell you because in the three weeks that we had we had we did exactly what the board said don't slow down on government center east and we also went full force on the spirit analysis we we got the appraisals and record speed we got professionals to to do the analysis they had to sub out the mechanical plumbing structural I mean all of that analysis was done very compressed could it be finessed more absolutely but we didn't have time because of the time constraints that are with the process do you believe those numbers are accurate well to the bet I'm not an expert and that is either so I would have to rely on on the experts that we have hired to do so so that's where I just I just telling you we don't have another set I just want to say I believe the numbers that Isamae presented were accurate I don't think that they're ridiculous in the way they were presented but multiple things can be true at once Isamae is right the city of Dania Beach requires an extra 400 parking spaces they're going to require us to have 1400 parking spaces if we have that and if we want to change the use to government administration the city of Dania Beach would also want some tax in lieu dollars to make out everybody knows we've been doing this long enough where they will give a variance there's enough parking there I've never seen more than 50 60 people here on a Tuesday so I think the numbers were correct but multiple things can be true at once they have it where the commission chambers that they're talking about doing the build out has zero line of site issues there's no beam holding the roof up but it's 108 thousand square feet we could have a commission chambers with a beam holding the roof up it works the same way when you go look at a new house to buy a new house you may want a pool someone may want a 10 foot pool but you may say I'm going to take the 8 foot pool because it's good enough for what I need I'm just going to respond to a couple things I respect what Commissioner Furr says I think they make valid points about being in the core of the downtown what I would say just drive by there at night down 95 and look over your left shoulder but be careful when you drive south down there but look because it would look pretty good with the Broward County the second thing is I also agree with the concept that the public is not going to want to see us do anything but the government center east project which again it's very easy to talk about it but there's going to be five people when they come back and say you're going to spend 675 million dollars by their own by everyone's definition they can't bring that back to us before November because otherwise there'll be TV commercials from Tallahassee saying they're going to spend 675 to build a building for government bureaucrats so I don't believe that that's a story for another day what Commissioner Fisher said everything he said is 100% correct and this could be something where we might want to do it and we may want to put a bid in and we may lose that happens all the time that's why I would never bring this to this board if we were going to save 100 million dollars wouldn't be worth it to me this even by these numbers that everyone's calling ridiculous is 200 million savings just with these numbers and I can come up with 100 million is to come up with 100 million in the back of the napkin if we told her how to do it exactly what commissioner rich had mentioned about building to our exact specifications this isn't a rehab of a building this is a class a office building oh somebody mentioned this is a class a office space our county attorney could move in there next week not they wouldn't even have to wait there are 600 there are 6 30,000 unit floor plates on each floor furnished with cubicles so I heard our planning department would require a little more room on their cubicles okay it's not 400 million dollars so there's a lot of things we can do as owner if we wanted to save money commissioner McKenzie I agree with what he says is the optimal place would be in the core of the downtown because that's what people think when they think government center but again at three quarters of a billion dollars versus 400 plus land it's a big number it's a big difference now as to how we go ahead and buy it we bought the Gore property on summer recess Monica came during the Gore property and bought it the second piece of the Gore property and then they came back and we did things I know when you buy land in Broward County you have to remediate you don't have to remediate any of this land this land is on a brown field but it's approved for office space use it's already been remediated so I'm not saying that all I'm saying is if we did buy the spirit property for 100 million dollars at worse could we flip the Gore property for 60 I don't know that's what we paid for it so that brings our cost basis to 40 million according to what county administration gave us government center east and the parking garage here are worth about 50 million dollars minimum that brings our cost basis to negative 10 on the spirit property and now we got to do some re no commissioner rich that's true that's their numbers now you got to then do rehab well that's in all of their assumptions somebody buys land we still have land that value it's worth per their thing what they said look at the end of the day I see three people are against I see that there are probably three or four that may be for it I'll listen to my other two colleagues if there's not five votes on Tuesday we should move on with life that's what I prefer to do I don't want to do the work on it if you told them go get new numbers it's going to be the same type of thing the contingencies are really high this is afterwards if we own this property we could do whatever we want as owners he's correct if we can't count the five today there's no use moving it forward I don't want to spend $100,000 on legal fees chasing this deal and going through all this process doing that so it's better for us to determine now rather than Tuesday you don't want to buy the billion yourself I'm just saying if you can't count the five there's no use pursuing it again this comment from the alliance that's why the process is the way it is if we sent our letter of interest in and there was national companies that wanted this they don't by the way but if they did they would just outbid us and we would shake hands and move on with life we're big boys and girls we would have a chance to do it if it doesn't work we don't lose anything no time has been been saved and we're never going to build government center east to three quarters of a billion dollars anyway okay thank you as far as the spirit building it seems to be there's based on the numbers there's not that much significant savings based on what we've got it just isn't the bottom line is if we don't win the bid we're back to this situation government center east because as far as I hear and we've talked about this before most people want to leave this building you've got at least more than five wanting to get out of this building so we're going we would stop doing the things that we're doing when the next step is isn't the next step to demolition okay because I hear some people say we shouldn't do anything until after next year but that's not the approach I think we should continue doing what we're doing because whether it's the spirit or this we decided that that's the best interest of the public we should not be in this we've been in there long enough everybody can understand that you need a government center that folks can be proud to come to and not feel that there's all these steps all these potential hazards health issues and so you know there's not a question that's whether we need to get out of the building my concern is that with the spirit airlines it's just so sudden you have somebody questioning whether these numbers are right somebody saying the numbers are right and then there's all these hoops we're going to go over in such a short time period and there's a cash issue you know we've got to expand cash when maybe we don't have to but have more time on the Gore building to decide how we're going to fund it so I think it's really rushed and I wouldn't want to that we accept that we get accepted on the offer and then we have to take the building and then we find out there's these other costs so there's these other situations and now we're stuck have to do because we rushed it so I think we need to for me stick to the plan that we had originally and go forward because regardless how much money you spend there's always going to be people going to say you're wasting they're saying right now that government is wasting money so you're never going to get around that everybody's going to say that the government wastes money no matter how you try to polish it up and do what you got to do yet we've got to continue the path that's why we were elected to make tough choices and to be able to back up what you have done and not worry so much about well oh they're going to say this they're going to say that then you would never move so for me I'm about continuing the path that we have already set ourselves on instead of deterring and allowing for Dania Beach who doesn't want us there in the first place you got a city that is saying that they're going to be losing out if we come there and then you have the alliance saying well you know that's not the best move either and there are other companies that are going to be able to go in there you know as Senator Getter said high paying jobs all these other things that we have to consider instead of selfishly trying to push ourselves into Dania that doesn't want us there so that's my two cents and I'll leave it at that before I recognize Commissioner Rogers Commissioner Davis just so you know according to Lenny if we just focused on the Gore building we're talking about getting in there between five and six years from now so we're not moving out of here quickly at all and I guess what's your position on moving forward on both projects both the Gore building we keep moving but what about your position on the Spirit building Spirit building I'll be on what Commissioner Udine said I wouldn't want to go over the hundred million because otherwise you're going to get into more costs and more costs and it's going to be just like going to the Gore set okay so move forward on both at the same time but only at the hundred million not leaving it up to give Monica a range and next thing you know we're spending two hundred million five hundred a billion Commissioner Rogers I think that was clear Mr. Mayor as to where I stand also but let me you stand the same way you're saying can I finish I'm sorry you said it's clear very clear when I'm done okay okay okay I just want to acknowledge what Monica did here by forcing us to have this discussion today and not on the commission meeting next week because we needed to be not stressed when we're dealing with taxpayers dollars so I'm gonna say I'm glad we're having this discussion it's clearer to me as to as I listen to my colleague the auction person that is so talented so thank you for your input because I listened to what you're saying also you Dean always always respectful of you by the way that's Fisher Auctions in Papano Beach Florida for the for the public open for business so I'm just saying all right so and of course you Dean always the attorney that's looking out for the taxpayers and I just wanted joining and saying I'm looking out for taxpayers also right but I appreciate the discussion as it relates to the Gore building we did give strict instruction it was very clear to all of us that we're moving forward whether or not now I'm hearing moving forward to me means getting out of this building moving forward to me means this building is not healthy enough moving forward to me means that I don't have to walk across the bridge and up them stairs and coming over handicap proof it is not so there's a lot I could list as what is wrong with this building especially women trying to walk in here in my heels I should not have to change my shoe to get across your bridge so this building is not ready for me and was never ready for me when I got here but this is what I'm telling you we need to get out of this building if not we have things that must be modified to meet the needs of every one of us but we need to get out of this building so I'm saying we're moving forward as it relates to the to Dana Beach or city one of the 31 municipalities that we must listen to when we're trying to move into their city if they want us yes or no I'm saying road configuration to give us that grand entrance that we're talking about that you can't get to I believe we have the right I've seen roadways go around in circle I've seen roadways many things happen to get you what you would want so I don't see that as not being a possibility wherein the entrance to the building seems as if it's a main thoroughfare because we can change how the road configures just to meet our needs as it relates to savings I think we need to continue what we're doing with the Gore building but I don't think we need to step out of the opportunity to own the other building also in Dania the spirit building I think we need to however I don't know what the range is whenever we have that one-on-one with Monica but we need to give the chance I don't mind owning two buildings real estate is a good investment for anyone but I'm also not going to not recognize what the alliance is stating if what they're telling us is factual because we're talking about high paying job bringing more people in to Broward County taxpayer will see that if you have a building that is not owned by government there's revenues to be made from commercial property taxes so but I'm willing to give us an opportunity to see if we can own that building and that's my comment thank you so Monica I believe there's five commissioners sitting here that are saying move forward on both on both we still haven't answered the question that she's asked us why we sat down here how does she want us to allocate the buckets right that question has not been answered but a council needs to speak because I spoke out of line no you you didn't just you know this is an old building but there's no we can't say it's a sick building I just want to make that clear it's an old building for sure and yeah but you also have to Drew I know you're defending what could happen but we had to remediate this building too no question and there'll be time and time again in the future where we have to revisit that based on the weather conditions and things that happen so we need to be consistent urgent to get ourselves out of this building and and vice mayor just so you know I'm not trying me out on that at all I've been in this building 27 years that's what happened to you in a new building I mean this building that's why you're retiring how's your cough how's that cough that you got and that rash how's your rash no my only point is just like you said I'm just stating for the record but yeah I get it but I just do I still think any one of us can take a statement and turn it for what we want it to be but at the end of the day we all agree that this building is is that it's shelf life and I just think we need to stay on the path that we charted I'll use the Fort Lauderdale Police Department are you speaking is this the second round yeah but you were talking so I took over okay we need to answer the question that Monica posed but I don't think I think we voted up or down Monday we can go back to this Tuesday is Monica asking us she tried but we had a meeting on I hijacked it but hopefully it's going to make Tuesday a lot easier yeah but you know what that's the problem Tuesday will be a lot easier yeah if we don't have discussion again we just voted up or down because otherwise we're wasting all this time for someone to turn around again and change the scenario of where we're going we started six seven years ago with this idea we finally put our feet down here in the last year and said keep moving forward now this is a detraction this is a distraction no no no we're moving forward with everything how can you move forward with two things I'll tell you how Lenny is getting the remediation but no one talks about the other project the same way you talk about the project that you're demonizing which is hold on you say how long this is going to take to get done right what's the reality of spirit how long it's going to take you say we'll be in the next year we won't be in the next year it'll be three to four years before we get in they're based on our needs our wants and how you retrofit a building we don't know we're not the experts at the table and the money but you never once you never once said 200 million dollars what is that to what we do each and every day we don't know what that number is going to be on either project using the numbers as Commissioner Eugene said using even the inflated numbers all I'm saying is we need to be realistic and focus on one project so can I ask a question Mr. Mayor of staff thank you so I don't want to see you get new numbers I don't want to see you spend money to get new people what I would like to see you do between now and Tuesday is if you can come up with some ideas as an owner of the new facility of where you think we could save dollars like I heard some people say that Dania Beach they don't want us there but I was told that they do want us there because this increases the value of all their neighboring property I don't know so as to the new as to the potential spirit thing I'd like to see that just if there's some ideas like can the parking be worked out that could be a phone call that you can ask I mean if there's no possibility then these numbers are real but even based on the numbers that were presented with all these contingencies it's a $200 million savings the second thing I want to know is when do we have to vote on the Gore Center new government center building because that's the vote where we are going to have to take the vote to vote for $675 million so we did not vote for that so what you're talking about as I understand it is that what is the vote for the RFP basically to go out to for construction the full design of the building that has not happened yet and that would likely be in the fall now clearly you know we could delay it by a month or two based on the November right election and the results of that so that was always planned for the fall because demolition is this summer and that was and then we were working on getting the RFP finalized why would you delay it I'm just saying if the will of the board was to delay by a month to see what happened on how the RFP to go out on the Gore property nobody's saying to delay anything I mean you know we all said we want to get out of this building people are saying it and this is why we keep finding ourselves by the way fighting each other because she had the floor no no I had the floor by the way I'm saying it do not bring back before this November election a vote on this government body spending 675 million dollars for a new building okay I mean you could bring it back but if you bring this back this is not let's hold on you know Kevin Keller look what you started it's unbelievable what you started it's unreal it's unbelievable so why don't we just stick with one easy question Monica could you phrase a question so we could get within 60 seconds we go on answer it what's the question what's the elephant in the room Monica what's the question I think you just dropped the mic on that Monica what's the question how would you like me give us give us options reallocate this is the proposed reallocation why don't we just keep it as is what is as is as it is today or as it is recommended and proposed why don't we just keep your recommended until I agree because Spears not on that move forward why don't we just keep recommending until further notice okay could we go over the recommended because that's not it it is what's the other one no the other one is this is the recommended to move cash that's what I was asking you but you could always move cash if needed no when we're gone on summer break you always have the authority to move cash only when it's authorized by the board but we we had we also had an agenda item giving you the authority while that's separately that's not to move money around though that is to move that is to move projects forward based on contracts specific contracts see that's why we came back here today with the small chance council on the small chance that we do the you know what no mayor need to move money now if hold on a second I have let's go back to what we voted on with spirit initially it's not what we're talking about today we said to authorize some legal fees and exploratory now we're here today trying to change what we agreed Tuesday you would give her the authority back then no forget that when we first started talking about spirit when it came up 30 days ago it was to authorize a small pot of money and do some exploratory stuff now today we're we're trying to change it on Tuesday but what we agreed to I'm not asking you to answer because you're very good at twisting it I need to know from the record what do we agree to because that's what I'm talking about today now we're talking about actually going into an agreement to bid that's Tuesday we agreed just to explore something I haven't gotten that answer yet nothing's changed right vice mayor just today the reason why this was discussed today you're trying to force us to do something well no I mean there's a very short time we spent years trying to get a government center I'm talking to but we spent years with this now and that's in 30 days you're trying to force me to make a no dean did now I'm still serious about what I agreed to seven years ago with this commission now in 30 days I cannot sit here and say fiscally responsibly that I can honestly believe that this spirit deal can work so I'm asking the attorney to please clarify to me what I agreed to two minutes ago he doesn't remember he's getting old he doesn't remember what he agreed to there's been no formal vote by this board to move forward to put a bid in on spirit that would happen on Tuesday and all you're doing now is Monica is trying to manage the cash to show how she would propose paying for these three capital projects with the possibility that the first one slides out and theoretically becomes the spirit project or or Drew or Drew just to make well I just the 95.6 million that's in reserve that's in the second to right column that is different right I just wanted to be clear I just didn't want them to get confused on the way you said it explain that you're moving the 95 the 95.6 million dollars is what was in the last budget amendment it was moved to reserves I explained it all to them in their individual briefings about today on this general capital discussion as to where to move the reserves now that was not withstanding the item on Tuesday that would give the authority if there's that vote to do something different than what we did today but my recommendation is to move the dollars is everybody happy with her current recommendation it could be changed is there any issue it could be changed I would not move 95 million to the government center east I would not move 250 million from reserves to the government center east it's not in reserves it's in currently in the emergency operations bucket you see that column I would not move 95.6 million from reserves to the government center east I would not take the money out of the emergency operations center and move it to government center east I would fund the emergency operations center because it's more important to me than government center east I would keep the 95 million in reserve and I would save 250 million on doing something different in government center east that's my comment does anybody else have comments about it but if that's the case I need to keep order you let him talk we're talking about the numbers now right let's go in order okay I get a chance to talk about allocations in these do you want to go along proposed or do you want to change it thank you I want to make sure that we're moving forward with the government with the government center east that's the Gore building if we put the money it's not allocating the funds to a different category does not say we are spending the money I want all of us to understand that you agree you're just allocating in a different line item can always be changed so for me can I see the other slide please you have two options right sorry I don't know which one you're asking this one the government center you know the one I asked for before I don't know which one she's asking that one okay so this one you would not be moving the money from the reserves is that what we're saying here there's no no okay I think what we may have confused so okay so go back this one is budget authority okay the next slide is assuming that happened then these are the dollars that would be left that we need to find to finish the projects based on the estimates they're two different things that's correct okay but I'm okay with it okay thank you mr. mayor she she finished it's you dean's turn now all right then all right so two questions first go back one slide okay the 1046 or the 211 that are currently proposed for government center east I want to be clear that that's government center east or but that could also if we are if we decide on tuesday to go with spirit that that's the pot of money that we be taking it out of is that correct it's not necessarily correct it could be one of the other cash buckets meaning either forensic science I'm sorry emergency operation center or reserves right now there's 95.6 million in reserves that was not allocated to any of these projects that was in the budget amendment I'm trying to make sure is if on Tuesday and again I'm undecided what I'm going to do but if we decide that we will be a bidder on the spirit property that I don't see spirit having any allocation there I just want to make sure that there is money if we vote Tuesday somewhere for us to do the bidding on spirit my recommendation if that were to be the case would be to go first to reserves not pull it from another project the the reserves is only 95 million there would be we have other reserves one time reserves that we could go to just like we did for the 20 million dollars in resilience again there doesn't have to come that's a separate conversation but that doesn't have to come from a project today's exercise was capital budget general capital dollars the cash and how you wanted me to put it in my recommended budget to you all this is how I come to you and ask you for general policy guidance and that's all I was asking today now I know that we've had another more robust conversation but if Tuesday there are the will of the board says to go forward the bid my recommendation because there's the language in that motion statement Anika correct me if I'm wrong the language in that motion statement tells me gives me the authority to move and do any necessary budgetary actions that includes moving money from reserves or other areas my I'm telling you even though there's general language my recommendation should you guys want to do that it would be taking it from reserves I would not be pulling it from a project okay and my second and last question is for you just on that for a reserve move transfer we'd recommend having a budget resolution that goes before that we would do that thank you my second and last question I don't know if this is to you or to Lamar if we're talking about bidding arbitrarily a hundred million because I've heard discussion that nobody wants to do more than that am I correct Lamar that this is not for the entire package of assets that's being offered but only for part of the package is that correct you you are correct it would be the office building the land in between the office building and the training center and the training center so it would it would exclude the 200 unit residential property just to the south of it so it would just be basically the office component with the training center okay and if we did that that's let's say we authorized a hundred million and one then the we have what four hundred something million what is the cost that Ziskovich said it would cost in addition to the hundred million or whatever it is the cheapest of the three was four four fifteen four fourteen point five okay so we would then be looking if we were able to get it at a hundred million we'd be looking at five fifteen point five versus the six sixty three is that correct that's apples to well technically you would have the six sixty three plus the sixty five you sold you bought the gold from so being the seven thirty nine and change you follow so you have to do apples for apples because if you're going to do the four fourteen plus hundred it's the five fifteen then you got to six sixty three plus the sixty five five that you've already paid for the land okay if you want to apples for apples that puts you seven thirty nine gotcha all right my questions have been answered thank you thank you mr. mayor so we're not talking about the project that's in front of us that was put up two hours ago i will vote no for spirit no i'm talking about the chart they went on tuesday to move this forward use moniker recommendation which is the ninety five point six and then we figure out how to get the other money at a later date i would not jeopardize projects that have been planned by this commission uh to get done so i don't want to i don't want to sacrifice any of these but it seems like we put it out there today to create a diversion of some sort when all we had to do was say let's stick to what we were saying about spirit earlier and let's take the money out of reserve if that scenario is vetted out and it comes out in our favor at the auction but that's not what we did so i would like to see us do it taking it out of reserves if we get to that point if there's not fine for us to move forward and vice mayor to anika's point what we'll do is we'll work with the attorneys to make an additional motion statement for it to take right now 95.6 as towards the purchase if this should move forward with five votes don't jeopardize anything that we've already been working on for this pie in the sky i'm just going to go down i'm going to skip go ahead i wouldn't take it out of the eoc the proposed allocation i wouldn't do that that's my main comment thank you senator rich yeah i was going to say that i i think that the eoc is incredibly important and and to this whole community and we can't jeopardize we can't jeopardize that so if we're going to move money anywhere into it i would put it you know in there to make up the difference between what you have and what's going to cost and i just want to remind everybody we keep talking about spirit you know and the hundred million dollars and you may you may think that the ziskovich thing was too high whatever but the lowest number was four hundred and fourteen million dollars just remember that when you're talking about the cost of it you know it's not a hundred million dollars it's whatever it is and whatever they gave us for construction costs i can assure you there will be more than that commissioner fisher yeah just as a timeline because i want everybody to understand because hypothetically we say on tuesday we want to pay the hundred million and we want to be a stalking horse right which means that you put a stalking horse bid in those stalking horse bids are due july the 8th excuse me they're due before that july uh june 24th but july 8th the court's going to determine who is the stalking horse right so we could be we could be early on knowing whether we're in or out from the very from by july the 8th my point is somebody else comes in and puts a stalking horse at 150 then we're out of the game anyway so just fyi so we should know if we're going to play the stalking horse game and not just be a bidder for the for the auction on the 23rd we'll know by july 8th what that stalking horse number is i guess regardless of whether we play so somebody might come in and do 120 and our bid's only 100 million we'll be out of the picture anyway so july 8th is going to be kind of the date we'll know on that thank you okay i think that takes care of the second part of this i i wanted to see if if our next budget maybe will take the third part of this i think um i see some people were a little tired want to be done do you guys want to finish the third part of this meeting we could do for tuesday we have a budget hearing we could do the third part because this stuff that we've already gone over the third part on our priorities why don't we take that up on the third part tuesday and we'll adjourn it today is that good i have one question what is the difference between amount under study and reviewing further let me flip to that real quickly um we've got amount under study reviewing further differences did you ask what is the difference or what's the dollar difference what is the difference oh so the definition okay so the definition of let me pull my thing really quickly just so you understand what it is it's it's basically the let me have just someone have the chart real quickly sorry i just want to it's only 2 30 can we continue this meeting yeah we did it is okay so it just means just just so you know what it means amount under study means those are the 20 items that you all circled and have the support of the board so far the other ones are the other 24 or 25 now there was 44 20 said yes that's the first column that was consensus because you all asked me to bring it back and it was supposed to be coming back yes you did it was going to be on the 16th and then commissioner davis was not going to be here and so she asked for you all to consider it today ask her we're done the meeting's over right unless you want us all here what do you have a consensus do I have a consensus of adjourning yes yes yes yeah you don't even need a quorum are we adjourned you're adjourned if you want to go did you have a question well that's a Tuesday we're going to go over this whole thing on Tuesday we are adjourned adjourned third time adjourned commissioner Rogers were you and commissioner are you you're here on Tuesday or you commissioner Davis is not as I understand I'm not but you know nobody considered that I thought we made it I thought we said we were going to do this today because but there's no consideration for me I guess because I'm the junior one around here can you be on by phone I'll be on by phone hopefully I have a good connection we could deal it first or last I'll accommodate your time so if you say let's do it first we'll do it first if we do it last we can do before a commission meeting we can do whenever you want to do it okay yeah whatever you want he's not going to be here we'll accommodate I wasn't going to be here either but I don't have a I couldn't get a hotel and that's going to be I don't know how to thank you so much for