budget workshop meeting. It's actually a Monday if you're following along at home. We're going to review our budget. We have our constitutionals here to share their information as well, and then we'll go through department by department. I would like to call the meeting to order, and we would begin with an invocation by Pastor Aaron Meehan from the Higher Purpose Pentecostal Church, followed by the Pledge of Allegiance. And if you would all please rise. Good morning, Pastor. Thank you very much for this opportunity to come and offer this invocation. It's always a privilege to be with you, and this is such an important time for us to come together. You are in the people business, as I am, and sometimes it doesn't feel like that, dealing with budgets and numbers and all that. But at the end of the day, we're in the people business, and that can sometimes be frustrating and not always a thankful job or a job that you get offered praise for. I recall when I was a little younger, I was a youth pastor. I'm young now, but I was younger even still, and I was a youth pastor at a church. I found myself being very frustrated over just dealing with some of the young people and some of the others, just discouraged. And I did something that I don't always suggest you do. It doesn't always work, but I did what I call the blind finger test. That's where you just desperately need encouragement. So you just grab the Bible, close your eyes, swing it open, and slam your finger down. And I did that this one day, just desperately needing encouragement. I closed my eyes, swung the scriptures open, slammed my finger down, and my finger landed on 1 Corinthians 15, 58, where it says to always abound in the work of the Lord for as much as you know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord. And if I can just offer a quick encouragement to you and the others who are here in this great work for this wonderful county to always abound in this work and know your labor is not in vain and that you are doing great work. And I thank you and the people do thank you. So in my prayer, I'm going to pray a blessing over the work that we're doing in this meeting today and your continued work after this meeting. If we could bow our heads, Lord, we thank you, Jesus, for this opportunity to come together for our county, for our people. We pray that you would bless this meeting. Let there be peace. Let there be joy. Lord, we pray that you would bless every bit of work, everything that must be discussed, including the budgetary processes and the other speakers who will be here today. We pray your blessing over this meeting and their continued work. And I ask that you encourage them today to know that we thank them and that you are with them. In Jesus name, I pray. Amen. Amen. Thank you very much. I pledge allegiance to the flag. Thank you, Pastor, very much. Just as a informational, this is our budget workshop meeting. The purpose of this workshop is to establish our tentative millage. The tentative millage will be set hopefully at the end of the day or the end of this meeting, unless for whatever reason, the meeting continues until tomorrow. And with that, I will turn it over to our county administrator, Mr. Don Donaldson. Good morning, commissioners. We will start off by giving you a brief presentation on how the budget was put together, some pertinent facts on our community related to revenues and expenses. Concluding that, I'll have a few additional remarks, and then we'll go right into the review of the budget items. So we'll start with Ms. Jennifer Manning, and I'll join her. Good morning, commissioners. This is Jennifer Manning, OMB director. The presentation will include an overview of the major revenues, the tentative budget revenues and expenditures, the basis for the budget development, the tax analysis, as well as the impact based on July 1 valuation, the FY24 budget development summary, and prior year impacts, and the basis for recommendation. We have three sets of major revenues, and the first one I'll talk about is the local revenues. Those revenues include add the ad valorem, impact fees, building permit fees, ambulance fees, development review, review fees, and so forth. The ad valorem revenues are budgeted at 95 percent based on state statutes, and generally we collect anywhere from 85 to 90 percent between November and December. So the lion's share is collected before January or February. At this point, we have collected all our ad valorem taxes, and we're at 101 percent. Oops, sorry. Our impact fees are collected at bill and permit issuance, and that's based on changes made a couple of years ago. We do not budget those impact fees until we have collected it. So we're very conservative with our budget, and you know, when you look back in 2005, we were collecting over 15 million dollars, and we're currently in 2022, we collected 5.4 million. Our billing permit fees are pretty much in line with what our projections are. It's only two percent above. The ambulance fees are definitely trending or outpacing our expected amount, and that's due to increased call loads as well as enhanced collection changes. The tourism taxes is doing phenomenally, but I mean, it's an increase due to high demand and a higher anticipated average daily rate. As far as development review fees, it is trending higher, and you know, we're conservative with that as well, but we are getting a lot more applications for development review. The franchise fees are high, and that's based on increasing the rate and the electric cars. Sailfish splash is in line with expected budget, but we are expecting it to exceed by the end of the year. Our interest rate is definitely outpacing what we projected, and that's based on the investment opportunities and the changes in the market. And like last year, the last couple of years, we've been investing at about less than a percent. For this year, we're at four percent. And of course, it's also contingent on how many, how much funds we have available. And then I'm going to move on to the, we have these slides that I, that's just in the presentation for informational purposes, and those are just the major revenues. The next revenues, unless, did you want to look at all the slides or you just later on? No? Okay. All right. So the next set of revenues is the state revenues, and those are projected by the state. Some of the revenues are two months behind. For example, the half-cent sales tax and the fuel taxes, they are two months behind, and communication tax is one month behind. We are, you know, we've been seeing that the communication tax has been, it's just slightly higher than projection. The revenue sharing is definitely much higher than we have projected. And we are very conservative with the revenue sharing and half-cent sales tax because of past experiences. And the same thing with half-cent sales tax. The, the fuel taxes, we are, you know, seeing a steady decline of those fuel taxes and mainly due to electric cars. And this has resulted in gradually shifting some of our revenues to the road MSU to you that are related to road MSU because we don't have an alternative revenue source at this time. And these are also slides that represent the communications tax, revenue sharing, and you can see our collections over the years. Half-cent sales tax, and you can see it outpacing what our projected amounts are. And the gas tax, it steadily, it just goes up, you know, it's either going down or going up slightly. So we know it's not a sustainable revenue source for the future. The next set of revenues, and these are the final set of major revenues that I will be presenting as a water and sewer utilities as well, the garbage assessment and the golf course. So the water and sewer charges, and that's based mainly on having new customers added to the system. And the garbage collection assessments, those are budgeted at 95% and added new customers to the base. Sailfish sands, you can see it is outpacing the projected amount. I just want to make, to mention that those revenues are just based on course revenues, not any club or anything like that. And these are the slides that represent those revenues. Now we're going to go into the budget development. You know, why are we here? You know, the Florida statutes require us to be here. You know, the county administrator has the powers and duties to prepare and submit a budget to the county commissioners in consideration for the adoption of the operating budget, capital budget, and capital program. And the FY24 tentative budget was submitted to the board as a working document so we can change it at any time during this workshop or at the public hearing. And changes will be made throughout the day, or if we go into the 18th, we will all change it then. The total revenues and expenditures. The total of revenues for the tentative budget is $643 million. And that represents ad valorem for general fund, as well as the MSUs, local sales tax. It has assessments, franchise fees, a large amount for miscellaneous revenues, which includes water and sewer and ambulance fees and so forth. And then you have revenue sharing. The total expenditures is also $643 million. And that represents 19% for personal services. They have 28% for operating expenditures. The capital budget is 11%. The debt service is only 3%. The constitutional officers are 19%. Transfers and reserves is at 20%. So the budget development includes the tentative CIP that was approved in April. And just to let you know that the numbers that the numbers are based on July 1 valuation. That increased a little bit over 12%. And the total ad valorem for general fund, as well as MSUs equated to about $31 million. These are the taxable values for the various taxing authorities. And as I mentioned, the county-wide and MSUs went slightly over 12%. And when we look at the districts, they went from for District 1 to 11.6, 12.2 for District 2, 13.7 for District 3, 10.9 for District 4, and 11.82 for District 5. Okay. So the budget development, of course, I mentioned that July 1 values was based on July 1 values, and funding the constitutional officers. The departments maintain the same level of levels as FY23, with the exception of the cost of doing business, such as the contracted services, as well as, you know, electricity and any other board-directed increases. We also look at the full-time equivalent positions. And just to note that those positions are requested because of increased workloads, as well as enhancements. And there are some fees that are covering most of those positions. And then, of course, the capital project. So the total ad valorem impact for the tentative budget is $43.9 million. The percent of increases allocated amongst the county-wide, which is 78% of that amount. And then the fire and the other road MSUs are 22%. The itemized ad valorem impact coming up will be the capital improvement plan, the constitutional offices requests, the BOCC requests, as well as the BOCC departments. And I just wanted to note that for the BOCC departments, we did not use any of the increased values for FY from the July 1 valuation. And the reason for that is we had fees that we increased some fees for services, as well as reoccurring debt service from paying off debt obligations. So we paid off the debt, and then we had the reoccurring funds that helped to absorb some of those increases. The capital improvement, the capital projects presented to the board in April was roughly $12.9 million. After looking at one-time expenses, we were able to reduce it by one million, roughly $1.1 million. And that's because we're looking at revenues, for example, like the ad valorem revenues. We collected more than anticipated, so we could use those funds for one-time expenses. So that revised the capital projects to $11.9 million. The constitutional officers, which includes judicial. The sheriff requested, $16.4 million. Supervisor of election, $379,000. And that's mainly due to being election year or next year. And those usually go back down the following year. The tax collector was $305,000. The clerk of the court, $290,000. The property appraiser, $153,000. Inmate care contract, $1.6 million. We had to have a new contract written. The mental health court, which was requested on a presentation in July, I think it was May, as well as prior to that, $450,000. And then E-911 is $419,000. So the total requests for constitutionals is $20 million. And I just wanted to note also that the increase in the value for the countywide is $22 million. So on the board side, we had technology requests, which was $2.1 million. And then we have the CRA obligations, which is $1.9 million. The property insurance, this is just a portion of the property insurance that could not be absorbed by other revenue sources, $765,000. The FRS impact, which is unfunded liability, was $725,000 just for countywide. And so the total countywide request for board is $5.5 million. The total impact overall between the county and the judicial and the constitutionals is $25.5 million. We were able to reduce the impact of the technology requests. And I just wanted to note that the technology request is a mandate from the legislation that changed last year. And we have to have those technology software. On that technology, did they give us a timeline? Does it have to be completed by 2024? Yes, by January of 2024. Yes. So it was mandated by the state. Yes. And it had to be completed by 2024. Yes. Yeah, for cybersecurity. That's a steep one to be completed in a year. I know, right? No, because it started since last year. So they said by January of 2024. Yes. So we were able to reduce, again, using the one-time revenues that we know we have by $945,000. And we reduced the technology portion of it. So the revised amount is between the capital. And for this is $24.5 million. And this is just a visual of what the pie looks like of everybody included for requests for the impact to the countywide fund. And as you can see, the lion's share is the sheriff, as well as the CIP. The other requests are pretty small, you know, but, you know, with exception, of course, inmate medical, and then, you know, the property insurance and CRA. Okay. Impacts to the, the Advolem impacts of fire, parks, stormwater, and roads equates to $7.6 million, of which we have contract obligation for fire rescue and FTE impact of 4.4. We have the FRS unfunded mandate impact of $2 million. And the fire portion of the CRA is $403,000. The cost of doing business, fuel, and equipment, and this is only on the MSU side, increased by $182,000. And this is not fire. This is for road and stormwater. There is an urban tree canopy audit that is $80,000, as well as street light and other maintenance that increased to $236,000. Mowing and landscaping is $272,000 requests. And this probably represents what those requests look like. Okay. And speaking of the FRS impact, in this, they went up for the regular rate, it's 14%. And then for special risk, which is very significant, 17%, and 3% for elected officials, 9% for senior management, and 14% for drop. And overall, and I'm not talking just fire rescue and counter-wide MSU, the impact was roughly over $3 million for FRS unfunded mandate that went from year to year. The tentative budget reserves were required by our fiscal policy to have 10% reserves, and we currently have that reserve in place for the general fund. And there's also reserves that is required for building utilities and solid waste of up to one year, and that is also met. This is the general fund. This is all the reserves that is in the total budget. And you can see the general fund has $22.6 million overall. And all the other respective funds have their reserves. So we have our salary reserves, we have contingency for certain funds, and future capital and so forth. Okay? Yes, thank you. Okay. So in summary, we, the proposed budget includes funding as constitutional officers, a capital improvement plan that was tentatively approved, investing in our employees. And, you know, we look at our contracted obligations and various evaluations. And then the funding of the property insurance, the CRA, FRS unfunded mandate, and prior board direction. So for example, the mental health court was a prior board direction. And maintaining a level of service for various departments. And with that, I will entertain any questions. And I know Mr. Donaldson would like to speak. Thank you. Questions for Ms. Manning on the presentation thus far? None at this time. Mr. Donaldson. Thank you, Commissioners. As Ms. Manning presented, when you look at the total budget, and including the few reductions in ad valorem requirement that Ms. Manning pointed out in the CIP and the technology program, it would require a millage increase of 4.582%. And so should the board want to lower that millage rate, keep in mind our budget is largely driven by staffing needs and just simply inflation to insurance and all the other things put together. That staff is prepared to assist either during or at the end on how we might achieve that. My recommendation is that the general fund is the primary category which you would find reductions and mostly in the capital where we added new funds in our capital program. I think it's also important to remote and repeat that the county departments that are reliant upon general fund did not require any increase in millage to support their budgets. And there's two reasons for this and Ms. Manning pointed out as well is that the staff and with your approval the pain off of debt with some of our increased revenues last year through fund balance and some of those other fees that the departments did have some increases but did not rely on any growth in our tax tax base to pay for them. In addition, our parks department which has had some enterprise-like projects going on have kind of hit their stride and has generated enough revenue where they didn't need even one dollar of new reoccurring revenue to fund their operation. So I think those are significant items to point out. But also, I think it's important to note that your departments are lean and I think your library is a good example of where they are in terms of, as you know, we're all competing for staff or staff positions while, and even when we're fully staffed, we're still a lean organization. And I think Jen Salas' comments the other day that they have, you know, some of their libraries, if they have more than two people out, they have a contingency, they may have to close their library. So we're, I think we're lean and mean in that respect. I think the budget presented to you is one that is the cost of providing those services. And so that's, again, where I point to the fact that our capital budget is principally where I would look to do any reductions if we were going to look at that. And with that, we'll take any questions or go into our presentations. Questions for Mr. Donaldson? Mr. Donaldson, before we begin, I was, I did not ask if there was any public comment prior to the beginning of your, both of your presentations. So at this time, I would take, if anyone is here from the public that would like to address us before we begin this process. Seeing none. Yes. We're going to start with the constitutionals. Correct, Mr. Donaldson? Okay. And I just wanted to point out, I have spoken to all the constitutional officers with the exception. Can you speak up a little bit? Sorry. With the exception of the sheriff, the other constitutional officers, I told them that we did not need a formal presentation because of their, their impact. It was not significant. Understood. I wanted to make sure that everybody knew that. I would afford any of them the opportunity to come forward and share any information. It's a good opportunity, even if it's not necessarily budget request related. But if they had something that they'd like to share, it would be a great opportunity to do that before we begin. Commissioner Smith. Mr. Chair. Don, just a, I guess a quick starting point where we are. So if we were to have a 4% plus or minus increase in our ad valorem, what would that require from the board in terms of voting? It would require a unanimous vote. I just, I knew that. I just wanted to kind of set the stage for that conversation. Um, because when you said that we may have to work on reductions one way or the other, I think just as long as everybody understands that whether we can get there or we can't get there determines how today we'll shape up. Is that fair? Yes. Okay. Before we begin, let's also, uh, I'd entertain a motion to adopt the budget as, excuse me, that would be easy, right? Just do it. Motion to adopt it. Did you say opposed? Yes. Well, at least we cut right to the chase. Motion, the budget passes. Let me guess. Uh, that's what I like. Thank you. Second on the agenda. Thank you. We have a motion by Commissioner Smith to approve the agenda. Seconded by Commissioner Hetherington. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. All those opposed? We're off to a good start. That was the unanimous decision. We're setting the pace for the whole entire day. Uh, commissioners, do you have any comments you'd like to make? Nope. I'm all set. Thon, you already made your comments? I did. Fantastic. Uh, we will begin with our Sheriff. Ms. Woods? She's not on my list. The Sheriff and his, uh, financial team is here. Sheriff, as always, it's an honor to have you here. You're very safe. Yeah, very, probably the safest room in the county today. Um, welcome. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much, Chairman KMP, Vice Chairman Jenkins, Commissioner Hurd, uh, Commissioner, uh, Heatherington and Commissioner Smith, uh, Administrator Donaldson, our good Sarah Woods and Sarah and our budget lady has walked off. So thank you. Thank you to her too. I was thinking of the pastor's opening remarks about opening the Bible and finding a scripture. I've tried that once or twice. It always opens to Leviticus. If you want to try to find inspiration in Leviticus, please tell me how you did it. It's, uh, but I believe that, yeah, we could find inspiration anywhere, but that's, that's been my, my experience with that. I also, uh, I'm here today with our staff. You've already introduced, uh, Kevin Youngblood, our chief financial officer, my chief deputy, John Budensiek and our staff are here to help me answer questions. If there are any, I was thinking as I come up here, I have some constitutional responsibilities of which the primary one, in my opinion, is conserving the peace, obviously, but not far behind is I'm obligated by statute to present a budget by a certain time. And so as I stand before you this morning, I'm keenly aware that, uh, our, our request is large. I am. There's no way to obfuscate that to, uh, soften it. It is exactly what I just said. It's a big increase. We are an expensive industry. I think I've said that before. We started the budget process months ago. Every, every single entity in the sheriff's office, uh, submits budget requests. So we have what I consider, uh, uh, a zero based budget, a legitimate one. We don't carry over from one year to the other. We sit down at entity by entity. So I mean, sergeants supervising a squad to the Lieutenant supervising a platoon to the captain supervising a division and so on. Uh, that's our strategy. We sit down and at a grassroots level at the base of the sheriff's office, we go about identifying these and then that's our format. So then we'll start off with a unshaved on budget. Uh, Kevin, do you remember what the first number that rolled in was? Uh, about 102.3 million. First, the big one before we started bearing down. It was, uh, I think almost 118 million, almost 118 million, uh, request dollars worth of requests that each one of those entities felt was important. So our, our process of getting to where we are now was, was pretty laborious. It was thought out and we asked the question over and over again. We legitimately asked this question, do we have to have this or is it just nice to have? And that's a difficult one in law enforcement because even nice to have can make the job. We can make us more effective and we whittled down. So what would that Kevin, how much did we whittle down? A little over 16 million. So 16 million came off of all of those requests. And so you're, we're left this morning with what, what I'm going to present to you. This should be a pretty quick presentation. You all have had the budget. Uh, I've talked to some of you. I know, as a matter of fact, I talked to all of you prior to going into the budget. Uh, our County administrator has been extremely helpful. Don, thank you so much for your guidance. We've listened to you. We've, we've moved just recently. You came back and said, look, could you help us here? And we, we looked at what we thought was our minimum and, and then took three quarters of a million off of that by deferring some of our hires. A lot of what you'll see today in the increases, I'll be able to explain on a slide in just a minute. I'd like to start off with a, uh, a video that we, we made for, uh, recruiting purposes. But I think, I think what I wanted you to see was how complex law enforcement is in the modern era and what goes into what we do. It's impossible for me to adequately convey to you all the nuances of what goes on. I listened to the morning report. We had double, double overdose during the night. One of them was a fatality. One of them expired morning after morning. We have an unbelievable level of unlicensed drivers in this county. So from overdoses to unlicensed, uh, drivers to one of our deputies, a female deputy, the other night stopped someone who was leaving the scene of, of having open fire on a house in Palm Beach County. And by God's grace was able to get through that and make an arrest. Uh, but in any given second during our, our 24 hours that we protect this community, things can go terribly bad. So that's the thought behind what Kevin's about to start for us. And this will be short. 911, do you need police, fire or medical? Police emergency immediately. Okay. Okay. My husband just shot two people and I believe he killed them. Good thing, single four. Good thing, single four. Roll over, roll over. So see who the suspect went, which direction. I'm looking for him now. How many seconds are going on right now? It's a nine month old baby. It's, it's all real. This isn't my TV. This is real. I'm the sheriff of Martin County where our motto is one team, one fight. The fight is here and the team is waiting for you. Thank you, Kevin. This is, uh, if you have any applications with you, you're all motivated a couple of us to sign, take old people. They let me work there. So this is our budget commissioners. I think the slide is up now real fast. You see it. I law enforcement, which is the bulk of what we do. That's all of our road patrol and everything you saw. Uh, some of this, uh, representation of what we do in that, uh, presentation is 68 million plus corrections. The Martin County corrections facility is at 25 million judicial, just keeping the courthouse safe. The judge is safe is format four and a half million. The school resource officer program. And I don't say it's almost, it's 1.8, not to, not the format, but I really would love to have an in-depth discussion with the board, talking about that, talking about, uh, our share, your share, the ad valorem share of that. And, uh, which I, I do think we could do better as far as getting the school, uh, to help more. Uh, we've, that 1.8, uh, is offset some that the money for the SROs is already out that they pay. This is ours on top of the schools, but the percentage of what we pay, uh, overall. Excuse me. What's the percentage? Is it 50, 50 between the county and the school district? No, it's not Kevin. Yeah. We pay about 36%. And they pay the school district pays 3 million compared to our 1.8. Okay. And what about crossing guards? That is full board. 100% us. 100%. And I'm, I don't want to get off track, but I really do think we, we could talk about that. Like who really should pay for school crossing guards and how much more of the budget should the school board take? I get that it all comes from the same taxpayer base, but for county purposes, it seems to me that the buckets should represent the user. And, uh, none, none of the numbers here represent the administration that goes into putting those school resource deputies out there. I, I have, uh, 31 personnel in the school and that's all law enforcement. That doesn't touch the administration that trains them, that keeps the cars. It just doesn't. So, uh, we'll, we'll talk about that and we can talk about it now if you want, but anyway, and then animal control is at a half a million. There's the total budget. So we look at that number. I look at that number and I really, you know, I know what it means. I saw the slide. I saw a percentage. Uh, it's out there. The public sees it. We see it. You see it. You'll have to raise the taxes. We have to use the tax base to, um, uh, fund it. You know, I've said before I was an appropriator once. I know what it feels like. Uh, I think you have a very difficult job because the question will recur over and over. You'll say to yourself on every single one of the people that come up here, the recurring question will be, is what you bring to the table worth the cost? That's the question. And let me try to just barely answer that with the next quick presentation after which I'll, I'll be winding down. I, I'm always careful not to be dramatic for dramatic sake. I get that that's a dramatic piece of a film, but I'm trying to answer the question, which is so difficult for all of us. What are we worth? I guess that depends on who you ask. What are we worth? If you ask that man who is, uh, hair's breadth away from death, as a matter of fact, the depth, the polyester shirts were starting to melt on those deputies, a lot hotter there than it would, you know, here, but the cost of getting that boat in the water, the cost of helicopters that can go out, it's expensive. But when we're trying to answer the question, is it worth it? I think that really depends on who you ask. If you ask that boater, yes. If you ask the business owner whose business is flourishing because people come in and say, I feel so safe in this County. I think he or she would answer. Yes. If you ask the mother who's anxiously waiting every day to make sure their child gets off the bus safely and was safe all day, I think she would answer the question. Yes. I think the person trapped in an overturned vehicle, we've had one since I met you last upside down in the water about to die. Our guys went in our guys and gals, alligator infested water, broke glass, pulled them out. I have more video to show them than any of you would have time to watch. But the answer from those people is yes. The question for you is, well, how do we fund it? And so I prayerfully will consider, I prayerfully consider what I did here. I'm not just saying that. And I prayerfully consider your difficulties dealing with this kind of appropriation. And I think with that, I would be pleased to end the presentation and answer any questions I might be able to. Thank you very much, Sheriff. Questions for our Sheriff. Commissioner Hurd. Yeah. Thanks, Sheriff. As always, a terrific presentation. And you know that I esteem you and that I respect you and value you and your department, and you do a fantastic job. You know, I have absolutely no reservations about saying that I think that you're the best sheriff in Florida. But I do have to fund an entire budget. And every department is critical. Every department is necessary. So social services, roads, stormwater, all these departments, fire rescue, all these departments are absolutely essential services that we provide. So we need to be able to make them sustainable. We need to make sure that when the bottom drops out, that we're going to be able to continue to provide those well-rounded services. And we've been on an inflationary direction for the last several years. Values are skyrocketing. It looks like there's no end in sight. But there is. There always is. There's always a crash. And I don't know what's going to precipitate it, when it's going to happen. But I know that it's going to happen. And we have to be situated at that time to be able to continue to operate and to provide all those services. And the 18 percent contract increases just are not sustainable. I wrestle with this. I look at our stormwater department. And if there's a Hurricane Katrina, or an Andrew, or a Dorian, or an Ian headed your way, you hope and pray that your stormwater department is the best in the world. And I know that they are. They're getting three percent raises. They're some of the hardest working people and the lowest paid people in the county. So inflation hits that department harder than it does anybody else. And yet, when those hurricanes are barreling toward landfall here, I know that they're going to respond and they're going to be the best stormwater department in the world. So I'm not going to be supporting your budget. It's no reflection on you or the service that you provide. We just need to tighten our belts a little or a lot. I know you to be an honorable and good commissioner and a fiscal conservative. I completely respect your position. And thank you. Thanks. Sheriff, let me chime in. I don't disagree with what I heard from my colleague. However, there is heavy lifting that needs to be done. I think when you made your presentation that you looked at your original budget with all of the wants and needs and you said, here it is. And then we all know who you are. We know your team. You start shaving it back and shaving it back. My personal philosophy, and I have never run into residents that have disagreed with me, that they feel the first dollar that they spend in their taxes is for public safety. I know that it's expensive. I know that the contracts, the numbers are high. And if, you know, just like everyone else, when you first hear those employment contract negotiation salary numbers, they're very surprising. until we have the advantage of hearing how the process breaks down, whether it's you and we're going to hear from fire rescue and our other employees, of course. But public safety is what the residents expect of us, first and foremost. All of the other departments, the departments that Commissioner Hurd mentioned, absolutely important. We'll be hearing from them and seeing them face to face later today. But the public demands, and appropriately so, safety. And when those hurricanes come, the people that are out patrolling the streets in catastrophe is your team and fire rescue. So yes, I'm an employee at a regular job. I am a hired employee for a boss. And there are different positions and levels within that company. Some make more than I do. Some make less. We all fall into the category. That doesn't mean that my work, my worth to my boss, or any of our employees to us, or your employees to you, they understand that where they are. That's how it works. So yes, I thought that the budget requests were high. But when I sat down and reviewed them, had an opportunity to speak to you, had an opportunity to see your team work. I'm okay with those numbers, because I think the public wants it and expects it. I think if we didn't do it that way, if you were not staffed properly, if you were not trained properly, if you were not equipped properly, and something terrible happened, immediately everyone would look to you and say, why, why didn't you have that? How could you not be prepared? And at that point, like you showed in that video, which I thought was about the sailboat, at least at first, I couldn't tell what was happening there. And you know, you got two of your personnel trying to lift what looked like a pretty heavy person up through whatever that's called on the top of a boat, straight up with their own strength. So now, if there was only one person there of your personnel, that person dies. And then so then we say, well, you know, we the budget fell in line, and it was appropriate, we were lean and mean. And what is the response? Now, maybe this, like you said, you're always careful not to look like doom and gloom. I still remember the video you showed us a couple of meetings ago at the jail. And I had the opportunity of being at the jail. I think it's important that our public understands that when, whatever the department does an excellent job, it somehow looks easy. And it doesn't require the personnel effort, training equipment that's necessary. So I will be supporting your budget as the largest piece of the budget. And there are certain things that we will be able to move around this week, excuse me, today, and in the months before we finalize the budget completely. We'll make hard decisions. But some of those decisions do not require life and death decisions to be made. And so, you know, I trust you and value you personally and professionally enough to know that you and your team brought forward the budget that you think is completely appropriate. And I won't second guess your professional opinion. Commissioner Hetherington. I would echo some of those sentiments because I think you posed a good question. What's, is it worth the cost? Because any resident that I ever talked to, public safety is something that they're not willing to negotiate or have a lower level of service. Now, the budget increases is a lot. And your piece is a lot, but the overall budget itself, it's a lot to go and face the average resident and say a 4.5% increase on the top of what they've probably had a 50 to 100% increase in homeowners insurance and, and some of these others. So it there's, we have work to do, but public safety is something that our residents have said that they're not willing to negotiate a level of service. And I know we've talked, you know, you did a very compelling presentation a month or two ago on mental health. Is some of this particular budget addressing some of those issues? I know we talked about the jail pod, which is a long-term endeavor, but is there a mechanism that we can help you to start saving for a long-term? Because we know that's not going to be a, um, a year, you know, one year hit, and it's going to be significant and expensive. And we'd like to see if we can address that over time so we don't have a big shock. But yeah, there's a, thank you for that question, Commissioner. I think there's a couple of questions in there. We have, I think this might answer part of it. We have formed a, uh, a study group, a staff study, including multiple personnel representatives from the county staff, and we are diligently working towards coming up with a, uh, a comprehensive proposal of what this will cost. I've also reached out to our legislative team, which isn't too hard for me, but I have, I've talked to a lobbyist. I'm trying to get the, the train on the track to move towards being able to have a coherent presentation for, uh, a, uh, mental health wing at the jail. Maybe the second part of your question is, is we try to turn down this, uh, the, or reduce the impact of, uh, mental illness and narcotics use in this county. And I say in both, cause they're conflated. You can't pull one off without the other people are self-medicating every, almost every dollar in that, every dollar in that budget is affected by the crisis in our communities today. Unlike a hurricane commissioner, which we see coming, we can kind of think through, that's really an operational challenge. My challenge is that we have a systemic problem with the culture in America today, not to go off the rails, but it so impacts the children, the suicide rate, the, the breaking up of the family, the challenges in our school system, the, the, the depression that people have today that manifests itself in drug abuse, drug overdoses, alcoholism. If I didn't have alcohol and drugs in this county, I could cut that budget way down. I could cut it less than half. That's the driving force on what you're seeing here today. And so that's what we deal with. And, and we are consciously trying to turn that down. We're doing more and more with Marchman acts, more and more with Baker acts, trying to get people into a, a, a plan that we don't have to have constant repeat calls. I hope that answers your question. And I, one more thing. Thank you for that. Um, you, we talked about the SROs and the school crossing, and I know some of that's mandated, um, particularly SRO, SROs in schools, and some of it's paid. Um, have we had that conversation? Do we need to have that conversation at a joint meeting on how this is funded? Maybe my colleagues have had it before my time here, but, um, it, it seems to me a real conversation. I get it that the average taxpayer that pays their taxes at the end of the year, it's still coming out of the same pot, but just in, as far as equity, I think it's a conversation that should be had. Well, I'm, I'm, I'm wide open to any form you would like. I have, we are talking about it and I'm kind of over a barrel because I have a contract with them. And so in between the contract, and then we have to jointly agree here and have to get the school board to buy in. At the end of the day, no matter what I have to be in there, that's a state law. We are still recovering from that state law. As far as manpower, we lost 30 something in depth. Well, some of those were already SROs, but we had however many, a lot of positions that we had to add to our budget because of the, the Stillman Douglas murder. So what is the term of that contract? When does that get renegotiated? I believe we have two years left. We're in the middle of two option years. So we do have, I believe until June of 2025. So then the conversation has to happen between now and now for the two years from now. Well, I think that'd be a good, that would be a good, um, conversation to have at our joint meeting. My colleagues agree that we can put it on the agenda. We agree. Anything else? Commissioner Hetherington, anything else? Commissioner Smith. Thank you, Sheriff. Thank you as always. Um, I think my comments are more about the mechanics of all this and how all this works. And the reason why I, I asked on about what would be required to get to our budget as presented having a super majority is that that's really not super, a unanimous majority. And that's something I think, um, that the legislature is going to have to grapple with and change. Um, you and I have talked before and, and the, the, the idea or the thought of there's X amount of new revenue in the county. And if we are to use that new revenue, how does it get divided and how should it be appropriately divvied up amongst the constitutionals, the county and roads and so on. And what's unfair, I think to you, to us is that it's all tied into a vote that requires five of us to do something. If we reach a threshold and go above that threshold and a majority, at least from what I'm hearing from the commission is that a majority of us believe that what you are asking for is some may not say reasonable, but it is reasonable. And in terms of what your job is and what you are required to do and sometimes not even required to do, but have to do because those the circumstances and that's what presents itself. That doc video, I'm not so sure that's in someone's job description, but that's what happens when you are on the scene and you have to do what you have to do. But at the end of the day, the legislature has tied our hands in such a way that the mechanics of this get very difficult. What I would much rather have in front of us is that if we are roughly 50-50 of the ad valorem, you're 50%, we're 50%. I would imagine that that portion of the vote, you could get a 5-0 vote from the county commission. The $6 million above that 50-50 allocation, roughly if those were what the numbers were, that's where it gets difficult because that would require a tax increase. And the legislature should give us the ability not to have to go to a certain majority if the sheriff asks of us to go above that number because he or she believes that that's the right number to operate their department. I just think that puts us in a really difficult position because any one of us could argue, as Commissioner Hurd did, stormwater to those who need it and when things go wrong is really important when it fails. But so is the guy on the dock who is, I don't even know if he's hoping that somebody responds to that kind of an issue, but whatever is going through someone's head process at that moment in time, someone has to be there. Whether it's fire rescue or you guys, someone will show up hopefully and make that happen. So I just think the fundamentals of how we get to that number for you, because for us to achieve that number for you, there's got to be reductions somewhere else in our budget to make that happen. And that's the rub. I mean, I mean, you know, the elephant in the room is that rub and it shouldn't be a rub. It shouldn't be a rub at all. If our sheriff comes forward and says, or our supervisor election comes forward and says, I need X, I'm like Ed. You're the sheriff, she's the supervisor election. I'm not going to stand in the way of saying you don't know what you're talking about. And why are you asking for that? It's much more for me, the mechanics of how we're able to vote and give you what you're asking for. So we will figure it out. I'm supportive of your budget, as always. But I think all of us, it's incumbent upon us to get with the legislature and come up with a better solution relative to a sheriff's budget, which is a lion's share of an ad valorem section of a county's budget. I just, I think you have to separate out that piece of it. The other constitutionals, I think, are perfectly reasonable and in line. And those are dollars we can absorb, generally speaking. How we get to your number and how do we give you what you require to operate a county like we have is a whole nother story. But it takes the legislature to fix that. Thank you, Commissioner. I mean, can I? Of course. Is that reasonable? Does that sound? Oh, yeah. I think this whole, yeah, the whole funding dilemma is, is a challenge for you all. And that's particularly challenging. I understand the spirit of that law, because I think, I think raising taxes is a big deal. And as a fiscal conservative, I really, I really do come up here, not with hat in hand, but with my hat off, knowing that this is a big deal. This is not a small deal. But I guess a different sheriff for me, there's 67 sheriffs in this state that all have the same responsibility and probably operate differently, but have the same responsibility. It would seem to me that the legislature should understand that and understand that that requirement to operate this state gives us the kind of state we have. Without it, you don't get to do all the other things this state gets to enjoy. And fiscally conservative or not, Republican legislature controlled or not, and Governor's House, I just think there has to be for that a different way of getting to the request of what our sheriff wants because of how you even presented your budget in the first place. I'm not coming here asking for something that is over the top crazy, because that would have been the $118 million ask. Mr. Chair. Thank you. Commissioner Hetherington. Just, but if, when the sheriff is concluded, I thought, Commissioner Smith, you posed the question at the beginning of the meeting to Mr. Donaldson about the mechanics, but it was kind of a big, broad question. So for the people that are listening, maybe you could just briefly do an overview of what the legislature is requiring and how that breakdown happens and what's required of this voting. Yes, once the sheriff is done, yes. Mr. Donaldson, yeah, so that we don't think further. That was it, no. Sheriff, I think what's also, what's also important to, for our citizens to remember is you're duly elected. The people have decided that they want you to be our sheriff repeatedly. And so as far as I'm concerned, we're here as the financial mechanism to figure out with our staff how to pay what you are looking for. But if people have an issue with the way you are managing, I always say that the days of, you know, the Wild West sheriff is really over. You are the CEO of a law enforcement organization that, that is technology and mental health and, you know, logistics and from the water to literally land, air and sea. If the people don't like the budget that you have presented or the way you and your team are doing the job, they have a mechanism to, to tell you they disagreed with you. So from my perspective, us approving a budget that you came forward with, with professionals, um, it's our responsibility, at least in my opinion, to figure out how to get you the money that you need. Commissioner Jenkins. I appreciate everything that you do. And I agree with all four of the statements that my fellow compadres up here have stated, especially that we have the best sheriff in the state country. Um, I get to look at it a little bit different perspective and appreciate the position you're in owning, being a business owner for 40 years. Um, I agree with Commissioner Hurd's statement that this is not sustainable. It's not sustainable for a small business, a family owned business with 125 employees, you know, with employee retention, the cost of insurance. We're in the same boat, it, it, and a much smaller scale. And I appreciate what you have to do, um, to make your operation work. Um, and I will always support you no matter what. And you are the professional and I know what you're bringing us. You have done in my heart. I know you have done whatever you can do to make those numbers work as best you can, but something worldwide from government to the smallest business has got to change because nothing's sustainable in this right now. And, uh, especially I just wrote a very large check for our insurances for our business, which was knee buckling. Um, and, and I don't know how anybody's going to sustain themselves here. If unless something dramatically changes. So I appreciate the position you are. I support you 100%. Thank you, Commissioner. If I could just share this thought in response to what you said, the dilemma that we face, unlike any other business, unlike really even, even the stormwater people is my recruitment and retention is the very essence of what I do as it is with your business. But I was, I would imagine that if you're, we're paying your people significantly less than John Smith's landscaping down the block, or I can't remember all your industries, but whatever they are, you would go out of business. And, and I didn't bring this up, but it's, it's really a segue into part of the dilemma we're under. We, we are the border county with Palm Beach, which is the highest paid sheriff's office in the state. And people will drive from Port St. Lucie where they want to work through my county into Palm Beach to work. This increase has already hit the grapevine. And should you approve it? We are already, we actually, for the first time in, I think the history of the world, got a request into, uh, HR from a Palm Beach County deputy. It would so much rather live here. It just couldn't afford to take the pay cut. So should you fund this budget? We will be on a fantastic trajectory to continue the recruitment winnowing down that we do. You can't hardly get hired here. It's amazing. Anybody gets to do it. We have literally when people come here and get rejected, they can go to another department and get hired almost without any further work. And we've already rejected them. That's why you see the kind of work you see. That's where you see the efforts that, uh, the men and women of the sheriff's office expense. So that's the, that's the conundrum for us, commissioner is that we're not competing with, um, Indian River County, which is substantially less than us. We're competing with Palm Beach County. I know you hate that, that, that grates on me to have to say it. It's like, if they don't want to work here, go to Palm Beach County. It's not that easy. They won't start here. I can't get the people to come in here. We're not losing them to Palm Beach. They're just not coming here. And that's part of the driver is our overtime. We can't, we've had trouble getting our positions filled. This will fix that. And I, we will have a much more robust, uh, force if, if you all prove that. Well, I appreciate that. Every time you say something brings up a comment, uh, how important the job is, you know, when you reject a potential applicant for a multitude of reasons, I'm sure when you were saying that it makes me think of one, especially in your world, one wrong hire creates a situation on the street that leads to some of the last couple of years incidents, the rioting and the, and the social and civil unrest, one wrong hire. Most of what we hear that happens in the United States and thankfully not here was based on a single person's decision, whether they, you know, they were the wrong person or they were a person that was in the wrong set of circumstances, not trained properly. What would that cost be? That's worse than a hurricane. That's worse than anything, you know, that could potentially happen. One catastrophic bad decision could lead to a complete in turning us, our community inside out. So good for you. We could talk the rest of the day about the ups and downs. Uh, Mr. Donaldson, what are you looking for from us just to accept this? Are we voting as we go here? Um, we would, in this particular case, yes, we'd like you to, uh, approve the, um, um, the sheriff's budget. Um, and then at the end, once they're all accumulated, we can revisit again where we are with the overall budget. And if there's any adjustments need to be, we can do that at the end. But at this point in time, I think the sheriff would be appreciated if he knew leaving here today that his budget has been approved. Okay. Thank you. Commissioner Smith. Mr. I'll move tentative approval of the sheriff's request. Second. Thank you. We have a motion by Commissioner Smith for tentative approval of the sheriff's budget. Seconded by Commissioner Hetherington. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Opposed. The motion carries four to one with Commissioner Hurd dissenting. Thank you, sir. Chairman, thank you so much for your time. Thank you to your team with you. God bless you. Thank you for what you're doing. And I live here humbled by your support. And I've appreciated your kind words. All of you have been extremely kind. My last comment is this. Sheriffs throughout the state fight with their county commissioners on a daily basis. I know some sheriffs that so hate their county administrator. I don't know how they don't come to blows. We have always been at peace. However this works out, you are all my friends. I believe in you and trust you. And thank you so much for what you do. One more thing, Sheriff. Congratulations upon the naming of the of the Place of Hope facility. It sounds like it's going to be a wonderful facility. Thank you. Yes, I plan to spend good time there and try to administer. Thank you. Thanks. Good for you, sir. Okay. Thank you very much. We'll take a moment. Let's, we'll do a couple others. Thank you to your team. Oh, you want to do? It's up to you. If you wanted to, do you want to wait and do it now or? Justice, what? Before the rest of the constitutionals? Sure. I'm just saying. Well, I just. I don't know if they're going to say anything. So let's just give them the opportunity. Clerk of the Circuit Court and Comptroller, Ms. Carolyn Timmons is here. We appreciate you being here. Anything to add or you just, you're comfortable with it as it is? Thank you. Commissioner Smith? Sure. Move ten to approval of the clerk's request. Thank you. We have a motion by Commissioner Smith to approve, tentatively approve the clerk of the Circuit Court and Comptroller's budget as presented, seconded by Commissioner Hetherington. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? That motion carries unanimously. Property appraiser, Ms. Jenny Fields. Jenny Fields, anything to add? She's here. Commissioner Smith? Chairman, move tentative approval of the property appraiser's request. Thank you. Second. Thank you. We have a motion by Commissioner Smith to approve, tentatively approve the property appraiser's budget, seconded by Commissioner Jenkins. All those in favor? Aye. Motion carries unanimously. Supervisor of election, Ms. Vicki Davis, she is here. Commissioner Smith? Mr. Chair, I would move ten to approval of the supervisor of elections request. Second. Ooh. I'm gonna have to go to the tape on that one and see. Photo finish. Thank you. We have a motion by Commissioner Smith to approve, to tentatively approve the supervisor of elections budget, seconded by Commissioner Jenkins. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. The motion carries unanimously. The next is state judicial and state agencies. Anyone here from the state judicial and state agencies? Seeing none? Seeing none? Seeing no one? Budget fails. Commissioner Smith? Move ten to approval. Thank you. We have a motion by Commissioner Smith for a tentative approval of the state judicial and state agencies budget, seconded by Commissioner Hetherington. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. All those opposed? That motion carries unanimously. Our final one is the tax collector, Ms. Ruth Petrushevsky, Ms. Ruth Petrushevsky. Okay. Commissioner Smith? Mr. Chair, move ten to approval of the tax collector's request. Thank you. We have a motion by Commissioner Smith to move the tentative approval of the tax collector's budget, seconded by Commissioner Hetherington. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. All those opposed? That motion carries unanimously. Mr. Donaldson, why don't we hear sort of the inner workings and the mechanicals of how this budget, how the process is going to work? What needs to happen? And then what we'll do is we'll take our 1030 closed captioning break and then start up with the rest of the budget process after that. Mr. Donaldson, welcome back. Thank you. Not that you weren't here, but welcome back to the hot seat. So, um, I just, um, question regarding, um, how, um, it's determined, um, uh, the votes for, uh, various funds, and I thought that I would just first put up on the doc cam really quickly that, um, you will be voting on the general fund, which includes all of these, uh, items. Then you'll have a separate vote for the fire MSTU, a separate vote for the parks MSTU. Stormwater Roads is a single vote as they're combined together. And then each of the, uh, individual districts, uh, commission district funds are also a separate vote. Now, I don't have the awe-inspiring, uh, videos that, uh, fire rescue or the sheriff has, but this is your administration's attempt at shock and awe, which is to scare you with what looks like a tax form, right? Um, and, and that's essentially the type of, this is what we have to fill out for each one of those forms to determine how your voting gets involved. And it has, essentially, the formula isn't straightforward, um, as ultimately what I'm telling you. I don't expect you to read what's on here, but, but I think what's important to note is that the, uh, the state legislature, I think it was in 2011 or 12, somewhere in there, made the changes to, to, to, uh, uh, uh, as a, a mandate to determine, uh, when, when a, a local community could vote for a tax increase. And it's largely based upon, um, how much you spent last year, what your millage, did you do a millage reduction or increase of the previous year, uh, what inflation is currently happening, what the rollback rate is and, and what kind of growth you had. And I think it's very important in Martin County to understand that one of the things that makes it challenging for us is, um, uh, the sheriff mentioned, uh, Palm Beach County is a, as a competitor. And I would say our two greatest competitors are not just Palm Beach County, but also the city of Port St. Lucie in terms of, um, how it affects our area. So we've seen, uh, certainly some growth in our tax base, but it's largely due to values and not due to actual construction. So one of the thing the legislature will reward you is if you have growth based upon new construction, you don't have this voting, um, it, it, that greatly this form when filled out, if you put that in terms of actual growth due to new construction, your ability to raise taxes is, is easier just to put it plainly. So, uh, so St. Luke Port St. Lucie added, I think, between 20 and 25,000 new residents last year. Um, they approve over 4,000 new building permits a year. Ours is around 400, you know, so they're over 10 times the amount of, uh, of currently where we're seeing right now. And, uh, and so their property values, they're able to, uh, I think they're adding over 80 new positions and 82 in Port St. Lucie, just to give you kind of the scale of what's happening around us. And so when you have that kind of, um, growth that does pressure on our services and staffing. And I think the recruitment is not just Palm Beach County, but elsewhere. But the point is ultimately is that the, um, the, uh, the, the vote that you're looking at is, uh, it is any kind of tax increase is significant, but just keep in mind that we are approximately, uh, at a millage rate similar to what you had in 2021 and 2022. Um, Martin County has always budgeted what we need as opposed to holding on to what we have. So we've lowered taxes when we didn't need it like we did last year. And we've unfortunately may have to bump it up some this year. Um, but I think in the end, you'll be, uh, my guess is that we'll be at a millage rate less than what we had, uh, in 22 and in 21. So that's, uh, hopefully that answered your question. I'll try to answer some more. All right. At least elicited new questions. Commissioner Smith. Uh, so I, I think part of the question was, uh, what is required, what is required of the board voting wise to get to the numbers that are being asked for? So, and, and how does that breakdown happen? Is, is it all, does it all come down to one single vote that has to be, if there were to be an increase or are those votes broken into multiple votes? And as the sheriff's vote, any separation from that vote or are they all included in one? So, um, it's the, it is broken into several votes. Um, but the, the general fund is a, is a single vote, which includes the sheriff, um, most of your county departments, the capital improvement plan, your constitutional officers. So I think in, uh, Jennifer's slide, it showed 72% of the, 78% of your overall tax structure is, is in that one vote. So that's really where the meat of your votes are. The fire rescue is a separate MSTU vote that has a, that it's applicationist form comes up with a separate result. And as we get to those, we can talk about them, but in terms of the overall, and then when you aggregate it, all of them together as your final budget, um, that was the, uh, 4.6% increase that I referenced is, um, is the, to, to, is where we are right now. So when I was talking with the sheriff about a thought process of how you get to a number, there's no ability for the board to separate out that 6 million of increase above what would be, if you were to break the budget into 50, 50, the county gets 50%, the sheriff gets 50%, and anything above that ask could be a separate unanimous vote. There's no ability to do that. I know, Stephanie's shaking her head, and I know the answer to that, but for the public. Yes, so that's, that's correct. It would be, uh, um, it would just be a conversation in the end from the, um, actual process. Um, it's just one vote. You, you, all of them, all of the, the general fund is a single vote, which affects all of those entities I described. So hopefully, um, and where we'll end up, I'm sure it'll, we'll get there, but I, I really do think that we ought to approach the legislature on the sheriff's budget, particularly as, as I, at least as, as I discussed, that it would seem reasonable that if, uh, if, if any given sheriff wanted to increase their budget, as Ed said, they're constitutionally elected as we are constitutionally elected. And there is responsible to the voters as we are. And so I would have, I would never have a problem voting in support of a sheriff's request above what was the anticipated revenue. If that's what was requested, I have, you know, I, I just don't, and we don't have the mechanism to do that today, but I think that's something we should approach them on to work with because it takes, it would make it, I think a lot easier on us and the sheriff that if the sheriff said, I really need 8 million, I don't need 6 million. And I cut my budget down by 2 million. Fine. If, if he or she wants to ask for that number, I'm happy to support it, but then it becomes a separate ask so that everybody understands what that ask is. That's all. But I know we don't have that today and I appreciate that. So we can add that to our legislative, uh, um, uh, agenda and, and talk about that. Thank you. Commissioner Hart. Yeah. I'm just curious. I know that we're, um, required to have a unanimous vote, um, if we want to raise taxes because we didn't have enough, uh, new growth, new housing growth to satisfy the legislation. So just out of curiosity, do you know how much Palm Beach County, how much of their, how about Port St. Lucie? We didn't ask for this. So I think it's over 8%. Wow. Of theirs was new construction. Wow. Ours was two. Yeah. 2.06. Wow. And has been for years. Yes. Yeah. I think, um, well, I think most residents realize that, uh, the more people individually that are paying into the pot, the less it is for everyone to pay. Now in Martin County, that's not necessarily the more people is not necessarily our goal. So it does require, as the expenses continue to increase, like Commissioner Hetherington said in the beginning, property insurance and all the rest of it. Um, I'm, everyone in this room, everyone listening has, no one's, uh, immune to the increases that we've seen across every category. Um, but so has the government. So has this organization. So some of it is decisions that we will get to make, and I think we're going to take out sharp knives on some of the things that, that we can, but a lot of the things as Mr. Donaldson and Ms. Manning said in their opening remarks are either mandatory unfunded mandates from Tallahassee or increases that we couldn't just say, we're not going to pay them. Um, the few things that are remaining, we will work on today. That's why we're here. But then from a personnel point of view, you know, we've heard everyone say it. The sheriff has said it, fire rescue says it, but then Mr. Donaldson mentioned that, um, Port St. Lucie, our immediate next door neighbor to the North is looking to hire 82 people. I'm, I'm assuming across every department. And so where do you think they're going to look first right here for our train, highly trained, highly efficient, effective, professional, knowledgeable, uh, employees? So if we just decide to look the other way and just hope for the best, uh, then they'll go. Because I mean, at the end of the day, look, that's a Doug Smith thing. At the end of the day, people have to pay their bills. And if you're offered 10, 15, $20,000 more to go up the road, even if you love it here, you potentially would do that. And that's also our responsibility is employee retention and recruitment. So there we are. Anything else for let's take our 10 30 close captioning break. We'll be back in 15 minutes. Thank you. 2023 budget, uh, BOCC budget workshop meeting. We have, uh, this morning gone through the constitutionals and did the initial sort of updates. And now we're going to begin department by department. And I believe these are in alphabetical order. I might, I guess I'm going to keep them in alphabetical order. We will begin with administration. It'll be presented by Mr. George Stokas and Mr. Matt Graham. Gentlemen, you are recognized. Good afternoon, Mr. Uh, good morning, Mr. Chair. Uh, George Stokas, assistant kind administrator with me as Mr. Graham, assistant kind administrator who also oversees efforts on the administration front. Uh, you'll see, I can kind of go through this and be more than happy in answering questions or addressing any comments or concerns. Our fiscal year 23 adopted budget was 13 million, uh, 254,000, 880. You'll see our increase to fiscal year 2024 budget was 16 million, 821, $821,641 for a net increase of 26.91% increase, which can be a little bit misleading. A couple of things have happened for your consideration is one, we are looking for the addition of an FTE and tourism and rest, tourism, restoration and ecotourism specialist. That's a non-advalorem funded project, uh, FTE or full-time equivalent or full-time employee that's paid out of the tourism office. What is an advalorem request is the full-time employee requested by purchasing or purchasing technician to handle the continuing, uh, purchasing, agreements and contracts that continue to go through our county business as well as they've seen a larger number of those and the complexity of those agreements get, uh, higher and higher. But really the majority of the increase is coming from the increase in our inmate medical insurance contract, uh, for our Martin County jail at approximately 1.6 million. Also just to note that's not listed as we did have, we did, uh, organizationally transfer our security guards that you see behind us here from the general services budget over to the administration budget, which is a little bit over a hundred thousand dollars. And that is the bulk of, uh, the changes that you're seeing in our tentative budget. And with that, uh, Mr. Chair, we're more than happy to answer any questions, comments or concerns. Thank you very much. Questions for administration. Mr. Sokas, I think it bears repeating. You mentioned it just briefly, but can you explain when you talk about inmate medical, what that exactly is? And obviously, well, I'm going to hand that over to Mr. Graham, because I think he can do a much better job. Perfect. Thank you. Mr. Graham. Uh, so we did have a previous contract. That contract has ended the previous contractor ended that, um, early and we had to go out and select a new provider. Well path, it was an increase of 1.6 million. And basically what happens is anytime somebody is, uh, an inmate, we are, um, required by statute to provide healthcare coverage for those inmates. So this could be anything from, you know, a cold to a serious illness, uh, injury or disease while in the care of the sheriff's correctional facilities. Thank you. My question is why would that line item fall into the administrative budget? It feels like there's several other places that should be. Ms. Manning, like why isn't that in the sheriff's budget? Okay. So it's always been under the county's budget because we are responsible for it, but we don't actually manage those services. The sheriff manages them. They did not want it in their budget for the past. I I'm telling you probably about 15, 20 years now. Okay. They don't want it. And they're as part of their budget because it's, you know, a side up. Yeah. So the jail is the county's responsibility, but the chair, the sheriff, um, runs it for us. And yes, we would look at this in quite a bit of detail. So, uh, a little more background is that the, um, the provider who had another year contract, um, due to staffing increases in costs could not meet their obligation. And they gave us a, gave the sheriff a notice saying they are no longer going to provide the service. We had to go out and do, uh, the sheriff did a, uh, uh, sort of an emergency procurement, if you will, um, because they kind of walked away and left the bag holding. The other part of this contract is, is that you have other services that when they have to transport an inmate to the hospital, there's other fees. Um, and with this negotiation, we've capped those fees so that we, this is the most we would pay. So it's, um, so in the end we have a, we, at least we have a contract that we feel, um, um, will, um, protect the county without having any other, any other hidden unanticipated costs. Um, and, um, and we're going to continue to explore, um, ways that we might be able to reduce inmate medical, um, costs in the future, um, with, uh, uh, Indian River County and a few others that are also in the same boat. So I know it's probably a lot more information than you wanted, but this is, this was a significant increase. Um, but I think the, the sheriffs, uh, worked with a provider to do it in a way that, um, caps are, are maximum out of pocket expense. So we shouldn't have any surprises next year. Uh, and then the second piece is to moving forward to look at other, other opportunities or other methods that we might be able to bring those costs down further. Thank you. Um, one of you, it's a $1.6 million increase. What's the total of that line? I think it's five point, roughly 5.5 million. 5.6, 6, 4, something. Yeah. So 5.6 million of your grand total, 16.8 million, a third of the administrative budget for something that we're not even a hundred percent sure. And I get that why it's being paid. It just, to me, I want our, our citizens that are watching to be like, why would the administrative budget be 16.8 million? Because nearly 6 million of it is for a specific line item for something else. And I'm assuming it's not just us being nice. It's a state requirement to offer these medical treatment options for inmates. Thank you. That put a lot of lights on, but commissioner heard you. Yeah. That was my question also is why here? It seems like it would be more appropriate in the sheriff's budget or in non-departmental. I mean, we can, we can move it to non-departmental, but because of that, that funding source, it's a, it's under medical services. So we have indigent care in that fund as well as, you know, other expenses that show up in those budgets. And I think. And commissioner, we administer those, we managing, we are managing those contracts. I think that's another reason why we have lots of contracts that administration takes care of and enforces performance. I just think, I just know that we have to be very careful about where our pools of money are because the legislature watches and imposes restrictions on us and regulations on us all the time. So we need to make sure that, that we have our, uh, line items in the right departments. And we could look to look, you know, to see, to move it to non-departmental. It doesn't hurt, you know, but yeah. I guess in my mind, I think of understanding what the administration portion of the budget is. I would potentially see that going to non-departmental because it obviously makes your budget look gigantic. And I, I was going to roll a couple of heads today, but I guess now I won't have to. Commissioner Hetherington. I agree. That was my question, but how in the final year of their contract, I know we had a lot of conversation when this was happening. They just decided they're going to walk away in their final year. There was nothing in their contract that required them to perform or? Yeah. There are, there were issues in there that require them to perform. Um, they provided a letter saying that they were leaving, um, that did not comply with the, we don't believe it complied fully with the contract requirements for the number of days. Notice we had to prepare any event. Um, I believe the company is going into bankruptcy and is unable to perform. So there was a lot of things going on with the provider that, um, that, that was, that was doing, that was providing. And there's still some ongoing, um, legal matters going on with that. There was a, there was a contractual issue before they said goodbye. Um, there was a, they, the previous provider, the one that terminated had, um, not been paying Cleveland Clinic for the, in the contracts, not with us. So the contract is between the sheriff and the medical provider, but the medical provider was not properly paying Cleveland Clinic. And there was a very large federal lawsuit. We were of course not involved in, nor was the sheriff and they lost. Um, and so that's what Mr. Donaldson is alluding to. They then came back, they, the provider trying to back bill. It's very complicated. We have a certain, the contract with the sheriff covers medical, uh, coverage for the prisoners up to a certain amount. And then once it exceeds a certain amount, then we use our stopgap insurance to cover it. And I was pushed my button to kind of explain that that's one of the reasons that it's handled in budget because it's, it's a little more complicated than just paying it. And the sheriff in this County runs our jail for us. Um, I think in St. Lucie County, the County runs the jail. I don't think the sheriff does. So it's kind of a anomaly based on our way of running the jail and having that done. It could certainly be moved into another account. I'm just explaining that there's insurance that has to be filed for. And so there it's, it's a fairly complicated, convoluted process to get everything paid for. But Mr. Donaldson's right. The original medical provider did breach their contract. And there's no way to recover any of that. It sounds like that that's up to the sheriff. I think there's some pursuit of that, but I think given where that company is, I think it's more better statement is the likelihood of us recovering. The funds are very low. I, I think the County and the Sheriff's department worked really well together in navigating this ultimate nine field minefield when there was a month or so that there was a great concern. We would be without any medical service at all, but we, we, many other Americans. Yep. So I'm just looking at the list to see where we could put it. Maybe library public works would take a $6 million bump. Okay. Commissioner Smith. When someone becomes an inmate, do they lose their insurance and do they lose their ability to recover those costs? So when they become, that's, that's, that's, you're, you're going into part of what's one of the issues that's the statewide issues that if you were, um, let's say you were a Medicaid recipient, you know, and became a jailed one, then you'd now become, even though you might've been able to get healthcare under Medicaid or whatever else, as soon as you come into the jail, you're now the responsibility of the County and we are your, we're responsible providing you health insurance or unable to get any of the federal, um, aid. So those are, that's why it's so expensive. And that's why other communities, um, uh, and our treasure coast communities are also in the same boat. We'd like to see if there's a way we could, cause if we could at least get to Medicaid based upon their, obviously they're indigent now with most of them, um, it would, it would help us out greatly. So I think this issue and the reason I asked that question was because of the answer. This came up years ago with the larger urban counties that you can imagine if our bill is 5 million, you can imagine what Miami-Dade is and not to be able to recover those costs or not to be able to bill the inmates for those costs is astronomical. And so I don't know where that all ended up, but it is certainly something we ought to add on our list again to re-engage with at the, if it's at the federal level or at the state level, um, that how do we get that fixed? And it affects all of us, but I, it's just, it's a, it's a large number and you can only imagine what it's like in St. Lucie County or on Miami-Dade or, or wherever. So we should add that to our legislative list. Absolutely. And I've had some preliminary conversations with some of our lobbyists on this very subject and we'll make it a formal addition to our list. I guess you'd have to balance out what they're in for versus what they have. Anything, any other questions? I entertain a motion. Second. There you go. I was going to say for lack of a second. Our own department. Second. Motion was made by Commissioner Smith to move tentative approval of the administration budget. Seconded by Commissioner Hurd. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. All those opposed? The motion carries unanimously. Thank you. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Our next department is airport. It'll be presented by Mr. Andrew McBean. Please sit in the hot seat. I mean the staff seat. Good morning, commissioners. Andrew McBean, interim airport manager for the Martin County airport presenting the fiscal year 24 tentative budget. Fiscal year 23 adopted budget was 1.808 million and the fiscal year 24 tentative budget is 1.90 million. This is a 5.12% change in the budget. The primary cause of this change was increases in the budget due to the cost of doing business. To the right here we have a couple of departmental goals. Those goals include completing the rehabilitation of our primary tax way, Taxway Alpha at the airport, as well as the continuation of a sound program at the airport for eligible homes in the surrounding community. Commissioners, are there any questions on the budget as presented? Move approval. Second. Ooh, you got a couple seconds. We have a motion by Commissioner Hurd for a tentative approval of the airport budget as presented, seconded by everybody else, but let's say Commissioner Smith. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed, the motion carries unanimously. Thank you, Commissioner. Thank you very much. Our next department is building. It'll be presented by Mr. Jeff Daugherty. Mr. Daugherty, good morning. You are recognized. Good morning, everyone. This is a presentation of the budget for the building department. As most people know, the building department is predominantly user-funded, not Avalorum-funded. We have a slight adjustment, basically the results of the collective bargaining agreement, salary adjustments, and residual multipliers of Social Security, Medicare, RFS, I mean FRS. We have one $25,000 adjustment for the increase in the cost of replacement vehicles, and outside of that, everything remains the same. Moving forward to next year, a couple issues that we're going to concentrate on as the new building code goes into effect the beginning of January, and I think on a larger one would be the milestone inspections for the condominiums out on the ocean. So we're going to do a lot of community outreach with those associations. And if there's any questions, we'd be happy to answer. Thank you. Questions for Mr. Daugherty? I move approval. Second. Yes, of course. Are the new code requirements Ian-related? No. Pardon? Are the new code requirements Ian-related? No. Every three years, the building code is changed, and it's scheduled to go into effect the first of the year, and that's on its three-year cycle. And the increased inspections out on the island are based on the collapse of that condominium tower down south, correct? Yes, that's correct, and it has two effects. One is the structural inspection, and it also requires a look at the reserves if there's funding to move forward as years come on. This is the first year, so we're going to have almost all our condominiums in this category. We believe there's about 120 of them. And from then on, they will be every 10 years after. Thank you. Any other questions for building? Seeing none, we have a motion. What? Did we already have one? Oh, we did. I'm sorry. Commissioner Hurd. So does the building department have to determine if the independent homeowner associations have reserves? No, this would just be for the condominium association. They're required to hire a structural engineer or architect that are capable of evaluating that, and as part of the valuation, do they have the funding set up to do whatever repairs could come up in three years, five years, seven, whatever the evaluation of the physical building takes place. And who makes the evaluation of whether or not they have adequate reserves? That has to be part of the study as outlined in the statute. Now, whether the architect engineer partner with an accounting or that type of firm, that's up to those. There's a form they have to fill out and submit in. Okay. Thanks. We have a motion by Commissioner Hetherington for a tentative approval of the building's budget, seconded by Commissioner Smith. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. All those opposed? The motion carries unanimously. Thank you. Thank you. Our next department is Office of Community Development. It'll be presented by Ms. Susan Kores and Mr. George Stokas. Ms. Kores, good morning and welcome. Good morning, Commissioner. Susan Kores, Office of Community Development. Our fiscal year 23 adopted budget was $567,000 and change. Our tentative fiscal year 24 budget is $687,749. That's a 21.28% increase. And I will follow in the footsteps of those who came before this morning and say that much of that is because of increases in insurance, salary, FRS, and inflation. The bit that is not would be the addition of one program coordinator to oversee our Art in Public Places program, our historic preservation program, both of which are countywide programs. And the two-thirds of that funding would come from general fund. One-third would come from increment funding. And that is because they would also be asked to do all of the marketing communication efforts for our six redevelopment areas. We tie that directly into our fiscal year 24 goals. We will complete infrastructure for the installation of the Rio CRA. And that's a milestone for us. That'll be half our CRAs. We'll have complete sewer and water. And also that we would look to develop marketing strategies to move our CRAs forward as we continue in our redevelopment journey. And we are doing the work that our mission tells us to do, which is streetscapes and infrastructure and the redevelopment of public spaces. It's important that the community, especially our future businesses and residents, understand and know what our CRAs can offer them. And that's a direct tie into our FTE ask. That is my presentation. I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you very much. Commissioner Hetherington. So if you, the one FTE, you said it was funded, would be funded two-thirds from the general fund. Correct. And then the remainder from the community redevelopment. Who's doing that? The historic preservation, I'm sure someone's doing this. Does that lie within your department? It does. Who's doing this now? So the Office of Community Development, basically, Commissioner, does three things. One is oversee the community redevelopment agency and all of that operation. And the two other things that we are tasked to do here is the Art in Public Places program. So we manage that and oversee that and the historic preservation board as well. That all runs out of our office. Commissioner Smith. I'm sure there's a good answer. Why only a third? Because they would, that position would be working for CRA for one-third of the time. And that would be increment funding would support that. Increment funding doesn't support anything other than CRA operations. So, for instance, historic preservation, if it were the house or refuge, it's outside of the CRA boundary, wouldn't be able to be billed for? Correct. Okay. Move to an end of approval. Sorry. Second. No, you had your light, so you get to go first. Okay. Thank you. Second. We have a motion, tentative approval of the Office of Community Development budget by Commissioner Jenkins, seconded by Commissioner Smith. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? The motion carries unanimously. Thank you. Thank you very much. Commissioner Hurd. What happened to the capital improvement plan and the commission MSTU? Ms. Merley. I thought we were going alphabetically. We have already reviewed the tentative CIP and the CIP workshop, but we can stop at commission MSTU if you'd like. Well, I don't see it on the list. So, were we not going to cover commission MSTU? No, we are. Yeah. I was going to do that at the wrap-up when we're talking millages. Just wanted to know what was happening with these. Or we can, yeah. I would suggest both of those would be at the end, the MSTUs, and then the CIP would be the final. Okay. Now we know. Our next department is county attorney. It'll be presented by our county attorney, Sarah Woods. Good morning. Sarah Woods, county attorney. We are a lean, mean staff of six, five attorneys, one legal administrator. If you'll notice, last year my budget was $1,515,000. This year, $1,652,000. My operational budget has remained exactly the same with no increase. All of the budget increases are due to salary. FRS, medical fringes. And that connotes to a 9.05% change, about $140,000 in change. We will continue to provide high-quality legal services to the board that comprehensively review and address legal issues raised in a timely manner. And we will continue to expand our full-service legal support to all county departments and advisory boards. And I'm happy to answer any questions. Commissioner Hetherington has one. It says, you said you're a lean, mean machine, which I agree, of six. It says eight full-time employees in the budget book. So are we short two employees right now? I'm fully staffed. What I feel we need to be staffed. We have five attorneys in one. The other positions we have not filled because we haven't had the need for them, but we've left it in. But I haven't filled them because I didn't feel that we needed it at this time. Good for you. Okay. Second. Thank you. We have a motion by Commissioner Jenkins to move tentative approval of the county attorney's budget. Seconded by Commissioner Hetherington. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. All those opposed? The motion carries unanimously. Someone dial 911. Our next department is fire rescue. It'll be presented by our fire chief and his team. Morning, Commissioners. For the record, Chad Chancholi, Martin County Fire Rescue Fire Chief. And this is? Matt Resch, fire rescue administrator. So as you can see, our FY24 tentative budget is roughly just under $59 million. Our change is roughly $13.42. The lion's share of that really comes from the additional 20 full-time employees that we onboarded towards the end of this fiscal year. And in fact, they just graduated the class last Friday, so they're on the street now, today. And there's also, we have an additional three full-time fire inspectors that we're looking to onboard. So those would be additional three full-time employees. But this is going to be a revenue neutral, funded just based off the funds that we collect doing the inspections in the county. And this is something just to keep all the businesses in compliance the way they need to and just be more efficient with these inspections and make sure that we're doing it on an annual basis. But again, this will be funded from the funds that we collected from them, those three additional. And other than that, it's just the typical of the inflationary costs, medical supplies, fuel costs, and everything else. But like I said, again, the lion's share is really your 20 full-time additional employees that we onboarded. With that, if you have any additional questions. Thank you very much. Commissioner Hetherington. So the three fire inspectors, they're obviously doing new construction, but there's an annual assessment on all businesses. I don't mean assessment as in fees, but you're inspecting businesses annually? Our life safety inspections that we do on an annual basis. And they pay an annual service fee? Yeah. So I'm going to invite up our Deputy Fire Chief, Rodney Robertson, and this is kind of like his wheelhouse, so I'll let him articulate a little bit. Morning. Morning. Rodney Robertson, Deputy Fire Chief. So floor statute says that the fire department has a duty to perform regular safety fire inspections. And right now, with our 5,000 businesses, we are only able, with our two inspectors currently, we're only able to get out there and do about 40% of them annually. So that translates to us only seeing a business every two to two and a half years. By onboarding these additional inspectors, this will allow us to do all the businesses annually, which will make sure that they all remain within fire code. And then also will help us generate, because we were only charging if we went out there to them. By us going out and getting all 5,000 businesses, we will be able to generate that revenue to be able to pay for that. So it's charged per service. They're not paying in their business taxes. I think you might have answered my questions. If we hadn't been going to them, how are we going to pay for the expanded services that you're going to be billing, because you are going to be going to these businesses? So we're going to, we're looking to, right now we're working with legal, and we're trying to make it to where it's going to be very similar to the business tax receipt. So in order for a business, every year they do that, we're going to do, they also have to have a fire inspection. So we're going to bill them at the beginning of the fiscal year. They will pay at the beginning, and then we will go out through that year, and, you know, we divide it up accordingly and schedule them so that they can have those inspections done. Is the cost based on the size of the business, or the square footage? Any other questions for our chief? Move tentative approval. Second. Thank you. We have a motion by Commissioner Smith to move tentative approval of the fire rescue budget, seconded by Commissioner Hetherington. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Opposed. Motion carries four to one with Commissioner Hurd dissenting. Thank you, chief. Thank you. Our next department is general services, and it will be presented by Mr. Sean Donahue. Good morning. Sean Donahue, General Services Director. Welcome. We were asking for a 3.72% increase largely due to operational expenses, increases in electric costs, fuel and, you know, gas and diesel costs are going up. We're also asking for a one FTE for an energy manager position. This would be to study the county's facilities, looking for energy savings. I think largely that facility could be paid for by future energy savings just by finding them and looking and keeping and maintaining the systems. Our future projects would be doing more energy savings contracts as well as doing the energy management position and then providing future electric vehicles and electric vehicle charging stations across the county. With that, I'll answer any questions. Thank you very much. Commissioner Smith. Mr. Sean, is that the work that we've been doing through the years with TRAIN? Are they the ones doing that evaluation on energy savings? TRAIN has done several of them. This would be a new advertisement if we go out again. We could pick through TRAIN. We could pick SPL. There's a multitude of companies that can do this work. Okay. And are we doing that across the board or are we just selecting specific sort of targeted areas? This study, actually, we would start out looking at the entire county as a whole. The last time we've done, say, lighting improvements was when LEDs weren't really around. They weren't that popular. They weren't that energy efficient economically. So now we can go back through and we can look for other ways to save energy. There's a lot of low-hanging fruit in this county. So that brings up a really good point. So when we did the must-go contract with TRAIN about 10, 12 years ago at least, I guess, that was to have effectively paid for itself in savings. And I think like two or three years it paid back the cost of doing it. They maintained all of the changing of the fixtures and upgrading. So are they going to be, again, looking at converting all of what we did with the athletic fields to LED? Is that the direction we're going? No. We wouldn't tap in unless it made economical sense. We wouldn't tap into old projects. We would look for other things that are happening. And there's a lot. Like I said, there's water. There's sewer. There's building envelope changes to make the buildings more efficient, as well as some HVAC and some other electrical changes that we can save. And the other thing I never understood at the time, and it just didn't make sense with the amount of money we were saving, it would be probably worth reaching out to the new superintendent of schools because they didn't do their athletic fields when we did ours. And it just never, it seemed kind of crazy that with what we were projecting in savings that they wouldn't have wanted to do them at the same time. And, you know, they've got their own mission and they've got their own ideas, but there's a new superintendent that seems to be really interested in doing aggressive ideas. And so it might be worth at least, not that they're going to tag on, but maybe there's a way for them to be in that conversation at the same time. Certainly possible. Because there's a lot of crossover between those fields and lighting and what we do. Agreed. Thank you. Commissioner Hart. Yeah, I've noticed throughout our budget that there are big discrepancies in standby pay and overtime, and yours is by far the lowest. And I assume that you have a lot of overtime and a lot of standby. So why are those costs so much lower than the other departments? We build into the budget with standby pay. We're not asking for new positions so they wouldn't go up. Complimenting you. I appreciate it. That's what that looks like. Everyone needs to look at your standby pay and your overtime pay and use that as a model. Thank you. That was rare, Sean. A rare moment. Double rainbow. Commissioner Hetherington. I'm trying to understand the FTE, and I thought I was kind of familiar with the train, but that's been a while. So it's to analyze the energy. This position is to analyze and assess where we could be finding savings. Is that right? Right. So are they going to be analyzing forever? Wouldn't that make sense? You could have someone study? I assume that you must have some kind of idea that there's going to be a return on investment by this person. So someone's at least analyzed it initially to warrant it being a FTE, right? Based on my experience, I've worked in other large corporations and agencies, and what I've seen with just some preliminary consultation with some experts, the county does have some opportunity to save significant dollars additional to where we've been before. There's two things that this person would do. They would look at and maintain the older ESCO contracts, make sure we're still on task, and then look at new potential opportunities for savings, and that can be as little as calibrating that thermostat that's on the wall or making sure that equipment is turning on and off at the right time and adjusting schedules for time of day, and then anything in between. So there's potential savings out there. I can come back with studies. I think this position should be paid for by future energy savings, but we've got to tap into that first and realize it. So it couldn't be done with a consultant to at least analyze. That would be my preference than putting in a full-time employee because there's so many costs associated with that. It's also a different way to go. The consultant wouldn't be as readily available for the time that I think we could spend looking for savings. We'd be paying by the hour, but this person could go out in the middle of the night and looking for lights that aren't turning off on the schedule and things like that. So there's some adjustments we could make to go consulting route, but I think we'd lose a little bit in that world. Mr. Donaldson. I was just going to say one of the things that Mr. Donahue also identified was that ensuring that the contracts that you did issue were actually being complied with was an area we were lacking on. We were able to put together a lot of details, and trains done a good job for us, and we were able to verify that they were saving us the money, but there hadn't actually been a detailed analysis through that was done. And it also doesn't mean that when they initially stalled it that we were operating it in accordance with the way that it would actually save you the money the way it was intended. So you need somebody to not only maintain those larger contracts, and I think Mr. Donahue has also pointed out that the ability to find other areas that may not be as lucrative for a big train contract that are on the smaller scale, that we can do a lot of savings on working on some of these smaller issues. And with that, combined with looking at some of these larger contracts, which I think we have not looked at recently, which I think there are a lot of opportunities to do some larger contracts to save us money, both of those will keep this person busy for several years. Thank you. Commissioner Smith. I think to Commissioner Hetherington's point, though, I think, and I forget exactly how TRAIN came about and where we started with all of that. I don't know if it was us going to them and saying, hey, we think we can do this better than we're doing it, or did they come to us? Because they did the courthouse, I think, right? They were involved in the... They've done improvements a lot. The re-energy side of the courthouse. I think they did the jail water consumption process for us, and then we did the must-go lighting. I think we did that. But again, I don't know what was the impetus. Was it our staff going to them saying, hey, we think we can do this better? Or was it them coming to us and saying, hey, we know how to do this? Because they were really the financing mechanism. They weren't so much the... They weren't so much the... They do both. So I think that's, I think, to answer your question, Commissioner, it was a little bit of both. We had some large capital needs, and the state came out with a, I think these were programs to encourage you, and it was something that was more leading edge when we first started this, and that energy savings could pay for your capital expense. So if you had a half a million dollar or a million dollars worth of HVAC that you need to put in, instead of just putting the standard pieces in, you not only put in a more efficient units, but also all of the electronics that control it with smart thermostats that the provider could then demonstrate that they could loan you, they could build the equipment for you, charge you a monthly fee that would be cheaper than if we just built it ourselves and pay the electricity over that time. So it does two things for the community. One is it allows us to pay for it over time, and also that monthly or annual payment that we're paying for is, can demonstrate that it would be significantly less than if we just simply bought it and used it the traditional way. Statute requires the project to be budget neutral in the sense that you're paying for it with future energy savings. We don't have that opportunity if we did it in-house. We had this presentation probably six, eight months ago where Trane came back in and shared with us what they had done over all these years. When we get to the point of you actually moving forward with it, I think it would be helpful just as a refresher to see what that looked like and how much savings there were really involved to give us a better perspective and just take that same presentation, bring it back to us, and say, here's where we are. But then also maybe a tighter outline of where do you really want to go with this thing. I think it's all great. I just, it'd be helpful to understand. Will do. Thank you. You want tentative approval? Thank you. Mr. Chair? I heard you. Thank you. We have a tentative approval. Second. Thank you. I just want to make one comment. I really just don't think I'm on board with, I mean, I support everything else in your budget. I just would rather see it done where you present something that we can analyze to see some of the savings. Just, I'm not, I'm not embracing to have another full-time employee. And, you know, no offense to the, but the department's budget, otherwise, I, I'm totally supportive of, but just not this FTE. Commissioner Jenkins. I'm kind of leaning the same way. I understand the whole, somebody to review all of those contracts that we're talking about. But at the same time, every facility that we have has a person responsible for it, right? So this building has one of your employees that is responsible for this building. Why isn't that person trained to do what you're asking to do for this specific building? So you just, I'm not into building bureaucracies here, right? So we have staff that are responsible for, whether it's a ball field or whether it's a, why isn't it, instead of adding a employee to do that countywide, why isn't there a training program in place to train the people that are actually responsible for these facilities to do exactly what you're asking? There are certifications required. Certified energy manager, CEM is one of them that we'd look for in this employee. The second thing is, if you're not diving into the train, which is what we have predominantly, energy software, if you're not in that day to day, it's use it and forget it. So each employee is not going to dive into that, into this particular building or any building on the, on the, in the call or in the campus, county, sorry, slip, on a daily basis. This, this position would, and they'd be looking constantly looking for energy savings, looking for things that are out of whack. So there's a little bit of a slip there that, that you won't get if we go in-house with it. I can certainly get a consultant to do this. Absolutely. I'm not, I mean, if, if that's the wish of the board, I'll, I'll come back with a consultant proposal and we can move forward with that. Commissioner Smith. So I, I have a thought and, and I'm, and I'm going back and forth with, I think it's a good idea and not, and, and that's why I kind of asked the, the idea about train because I know what they did for us and I know the capabilities that they have. I think what would be helpful, Mr. Donaldson, is maybe to get an agenda item before we finalize the budget, not today, but in the future. I'm okay with leaving it in right now, but I think if we did a presentation as to really what was involved and what the scope of all this is, the detail of it all, I think that would be helpful to understand. Is it someone who specializes in just X or is it literally going out to the industry, whoever it may be and saying, look, we have this enormous envelope. We have 75 buildings that we manage. Come and make us a proposal or bid on a proposal that includes all the above. I don't know if they do that or not or if they just say, we deal in the energy side of this for AC or we deal in the energy side of this for lighting. I'm guessing maybe they do both, but that might be helpful for those that are on the fence about, or not even on the fence, just saying I'm not supporting adding a person. I think it could use a little bit more conversation, a little bit more material to show this is what we can do with this or this is how we could do it this way. That's why I agree with that. Commissioner Hurd. Yeah, Ms. Murley, can you ballpark what our electrical usage is per year countywide? I could if I had my numbers in front of me. It has gone up 12% in this last year. Is it 12 million? Is it 15 million? Is it? I'd have to go. I can come back to you. At any rate, it's a huge number. I can't believe it's taken us this long to hire an energy resources manager. I think at the time, it's high time that we hire someone to manage our resources because they're a huge part of our budget. You can hire two as far as I'm concerned. Well, isn't this interesting? We have two for, two against on something that you would have thought was relatively benign. That's what makes it exciting for the people that are going to come after you at the other departments. I could make an argument for or against. I was here when we did the train and the larger and the Musco lighting contracts. I thought they were home runs. They were basically managed completely and I thought the important point that you made, Mr. Donoghue, is they not only did the initial review and inspection of those processes, they also managed them. And to me, that's the tipping point, your explanation of why that person would be important. I thought Commissioner Hetherington's point that you could bring a person in on a finite time frame to review everything and once it's all been reviewed, it was reviewed. The thing that changed for me is what you said, that that person has three jobs. The first job is to go around and be like your dad and figure out, shut that light off and the temperature's too high. Like go around like people do and figure out where they could find energy efficiencies. The second was to continue to manage and review and oversee our existing and future contracts to do that. Like we assume that train is doing an excellent job and I believe that they are. Same with Musco, but we don't have anybody, like we have contract, where are they in your department, Ms. Woods? People that review contracts to make sure they're all being up to Mr. Donaldson? Who does that? So when a contract like that gets issued, the- No, no, I'm not speaking of this particular department. Performance measures? Performance measures on other contracts. Remember several years ago we put someone in place. It relies upon each department who the contract was under to be responsible for ensuring that it meets the requirements. So if it was a public works contract or general services, it's ultimately it would be the department's responsibility to determine whether or not they're complying with the contract. Okay, so that was the second portion of that job and then the third and most important portion. And, you know, the interesting part that there's five of us here is that then Commissioner Jenkins says, well, the people that are responsible for maintaining this building, can't they just do that? And then if there's certification and things like that and if they can go around and then check every thermostat and check, you know, other, you know, pumps and I could see going either way. It's not a great year to be adding FTEs, but I believe your calculations that the person could basically pay for themselves with the savings, especially in the initial years. I would lean in favor of having you add that position simply for the fact that it has an ability to pay for itself, the position. Who's staffed them? Ms. Merley. I have your answer. Seven and a half million just between electricity and street lights and that doesn't include any utility or other HVAC costs. Big number. Seven and a half million. Seven and a half million. Mr. Tony, would that person also be responsible for looking at street lamps and everything or just in the buildings? Probably just in the buildings because street lights are on and off. You know, there's no real savings. They have to do what they have to do. I'm looking for other things that happen, you know, in the middle of the night when the building is supposed to be set back. Temperatures are supposed to rise, so we're saving money. Is that happening? Those are what I'm looking for. Well, maybe this is a question for Mr. Donaldson then. If that person is a trained expert in finding efficiencies within the general services department, can that be an interdepartmental position where if parks and rec, we've all gotten calls from constituents that you drive by a park at 2 o'clock in the morning and the lights are all on. Could that person have the ability to review other areas for efficiencies? Well. Street lamps. You know, I get that the street lamps turn on and off, but sometimes if there's something got hit and the light is, you know, some of them don't go on and off. Some, you know, some bridge lamps are on all day and some don't come on at all. If we had an expert in the county that had, certainly our goal is to share that throughout the county and if it was, you know, color temperatures were better or whatever you could do to make it both the service that's being provided being better and the cost to deliver that service less. Absolutely, they could use that expertise that the individual would be housed in general services, but when parks was consulting on a new lighting project, if we had somebody who was more state of the art and where that was going, we would certainly rely on them for that. Well, Ms. Woods has five other attorneys in her department and they do all of the departments and all of our advisory boards within a small group of experts in the field. If you're looking to hire an expert in the field, I would be much more comfortable if that expert in the field collaborated with all of our other departments. And that would be a tipping point for me. So with that, we'll give Commissioner Smith the final word. Is there a motion? Not yet. Oh, let's start. Let's freshen it up. I thought I did make it. Are you the one? Okay. Oh, that's right. And Commissioner Hurd. Yeah. Oh, that's right. Yes. Old school, new school. We have a motion by Commissioner Smith for a tentative approval of the general services budget as presented. Seconded by Commissioner Hurd. Added. I assume that that means within the commentary that you'll come back with an agenda item at some point before we finalize our budget and have a more robust conversation about it all. That says I understand it. Yes. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. All those opposed? Yes. And two coughs. Yes. I said yes. Oh, I didn't hear it. It was a cough. It was a cough. I thought it was a cough. I'll save it for later. The motion passes four to one with Commissioner Hetherington dissenting. Thank you very much. Our next department is Growth Management. It'll be presented by our Growth Management Director, Mr. Paul Schilling. Mr. Schilling, welcome. You are recognized. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Paul Schilling, Growth Management Director. So for some insight in this budget item, the adopted budget is, as you see here, and then the considerations are there's a proposed 5.78% increase due to the variety of increases in fuel and other services and supplies based on external factors. As you all know, we are embarking on the evaluation and appraisal reports, so we're working on that diligently. We've enlisted the services of outside consultants to help us with that, and we end target workshops at the end of August and then in January. The considerations for the goals are to complete that process and also maintain the very, very high level of customer service that we all provide on a daily basis. And then it continued to implement the land development regulations in the Martin County Growth Management Comp Plan and maintain Martin County's high quality of living. So just some considerations with respect to the evaluation and appraisal report. Those are ongoing services. We're not enlisting additional staff. I have a wonderful staff. I'd like to take the opportunity to praise them. They work very, very hard in a very, very difficult business on a day-to-day basis. Some of the things we're struggling with potentially are, as one of the commissioners mentioned, just the market, the public market, the private market, and other staffing considerations with respect to. So I love my team that I have. I think they work day in and day out very, very hard. And if you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer them. Thank you. Commissioner Smith. Thanks, Paul. And I think your staff does a great job. I had this thought the other day, and I'll just take the opportunity that you're sitting here. This has really nothing to do with budget, but you're sitting there. A couple people have said to me recently, or through others and whatnot, they don't understand why the county, and I think we had some public speakers last week talk about the apartment complex out in Palm City that's being built. Allegedly. Allegedly, whatever it is. And the sense you get kind of from that commentary, and most people shouldn't have to understand how you do what you do. But people don't understand, I don't think, generally speaking. And so one of the things I was thinking that maybe what we ought to start doing, maybe quarterly or on some timeline, is do some like growth management 101. Like actually have an agenda item that kind of lays out what happens. Why does someone get a development application? How do they get a development application? What is land use? What is zoning? Why is there zoning? Why is there land use? How did they even get land use to begin with? When you go through a presentation with an applicant, there's an explanation, sort of, usually, about it has to be this, this, and this. And there's a list of criteria that one goes through to make sure that it's all lined up. We do that all day long. But the public comes in on a given project and doesn't understand that and says, well, just say no. Like, we don't want you to. And so just listening to that commentary last week, it just seemed like we do it at the Regional Planning Council. Every year when we have newly electeds or every other year when we have newly electeds, we do a sort of a 101 series that Dana has been doing for years just to kind of get everybody on the board up to speed as to what they do. And I was thinking maybe you ought to be doing that, too, or as a thought. You don't have to, but I think it would be helpful. And do it regularly. Like, do it on an ongoing basis because constantly people are moving in. And we even had some folks show up that said, I'm wanting to move to Martin County, but I don't like what you're doing, right? And so. Don't come. Huh? Don't come, then. One less person. But I think if on a regular basis, and I'm sure we do that in CARES, I'm sure there's a component that you could probably pull from CARES to do, but I think we ought to do that on a more regular basis. Yes, sir. A couple things. One would be the, and I'll use that as an example, the complex that you mentioned that hasn't even successfully achieved compliance, notwithstanding any scheduling of any board meetings. But the introduction of, and I'll be happy to look at that, what I'd probably prefer to do something along the lines of maybe YouTube videos or something to that, with that. Just because of the fact, and I get out in the community, I talk to the realtors, I talk to the builders. We do that next door here many, many times a day to people that are looking for answers. But I would be hesitant because of the heightened public interest in certain projects to somehow introduce that element into what was going to be a very, very benign fundamental discussion on our process. But I think you could apply it to any part of the process. I just don't think people understand at all the rights that people have with property. And I think it's very easy to take that description and use it however you wish. I don't think it has to apply to any given piece of property. It's the process, that what is our process and what, how did we even get land use? Why does Florida have land use? Prior to 1968, we didn't have zoning, right? And in 1984, we had land use, I think, right, was when land use came in. The comprehensive land. The comprehensive growth management plan. So, you know, I just, I, and you can't do it for every single commission meeting. I appreciate that. But I just think the educational side of that would be incredibly helpful. I get people ask me, like, I was, I was told the other day by some very close friends, don't prove any more development. Okay. What does that really mean? Like, you know, you, you know, you, you can't just say we're not going to do any more. Anyway. No, you cannot. But I don't, I don't think people understand that at all. I know they don't. I'd be happy to explore that further. Yes. Thank you. Commissioner Jenkins. And have to reinvent the wheel. Because, if you remember, Nikki, probably four years ago, did a video that knocked it out of the park. Now, that said, that video, some of the information in that video, we've been preempted and a lot of other things that needs to be updated. But this is interesting. We're having this conversation because this is a conversation I just had with, with y'all. And it was spurred by me sitting through a NAC meeting where our NAC board members didn't even understand the basic premise of property rights. And that is an absolute must. You know, I mean, not going to vote to approve a gas station because they don't want a gas station is something they can't do. Right. And, and by the way, it's completely out of their purview for the use part of that anyway. So, I think a lot of this, you should start with our NAC boards. Right. They're, they're, they're the ones that, I mean, they're part of the county. And if they don't get it, how do you expect the public to get it? But, yeah, if you can review Nikki's thing, because I was, she did an astounding job back in the day, or, you know, four years ago. And that's still on our development review page. And, you know, you bring up a really good point because we've been preempted on the amount of gas pumps. Right. We can't any longer say how many pumps a station can have as an example. Right. Well, we have Senate Bill 102 that now everybody is trying to grapple with and understand. Understand what that looks like. And there will be changes, I'm sure, as time moves forward. And so, it just, I think it just would be helpful for people to better understand. I'd, I'd be more than happy to educate and take that on. I've had Mr. Schilling to an event in Palm City where we had probably 60, 70 people come and he made a presentation and then did Q&A and he did an excellent job. So, we can continue to do that on weekends, night time. Sure. Commissioner Hurd. Holidays. Just need a little. Holidays, you know. It's a great opportunity for your wife and you to spend some quality time together in Palm City. Commissioner Hurd. Yeah. So, you're talking about doing these in the NACs. Not everybody goes to the NAC meetings, whereas there is a pretty large audience for MCTV. And I absolutely concur that our residents need more education on growth management policies and development review. And I, myself, love going to the internal development review meetings to see what projects are. I get the notices every week about what projects are going to be reviewed. And if people need to understand what minor developments are, what major developments are, which go to the board, which do not go to the board, and understand somewhat about compliance and how, if a project complies with all of our requirements, then we don't have any ability to say no. And I don't think people understand that. So, I think that it's a great idea to have some real-time development review as part of our agendas. Not every month, not every meeting, you know, maybe quarterly. I know that with our joint meetings that we bring up the projects that are under review. And just to expand upon that just a little bit would really be helpful so that the taxpayers, our residents, understand the limitations of growth management and development review. Thank you. And I do agree that the CARES presentation that I conduct with the help of the environmental staff is very, very, very educational. I know it's a limited number of seats, so to speak. But I agree with you. A lot of people are astounded that a decision-making body cannot just deny an application or a building permit for that same logs. So, thank you. Commissioner Hetherington. I agree with all those comments. The more education of the public, the better. And with that, I will move tentative approval of your budget. He's like, thank goodness. I have all this stuff. Did you say a second? I would agree with what we heard. I think even if it was not so much an actual project which could have problems turning it into a big conversation for an applicant, but it could be a hypothetical three-story building. And then I know that that meeting that Commissioner Hurd is talking about is, I know, officially not meant to have senior-level members of the organization at it. But it is, of course, your prerogative. I was going to attend the last one, and then as I was opening the door, I saw our Commissioner Hurd there, which then, of course, means that she and I shouldn't be sitting in the same meeting. Even though you're not participating, you're just observing, correct? Yes. So I could potentially do that, but I'm trying to cut you. You saw me in the window at the meeting last week? Yes. Yes, sir, I did. Oh, my God. Here's another one. Yes. I have, like, a pre-planning, you know, just to talk about the projects that are in the pipeline. Some people also don't comprehend the fact that we don't hear about every single thing. Some of them, things that are handled at a staff level or might elevate to an administrative level don't come to the commissioners. Yes, sir. May I just point out one thing for the record? I'd like to. That internal development review staff meeting is internal staff. It's not open to the general public, as the joint workshops are, of course, with the applicant. Those are on Thursday mornings, agenda items. And those, public participation, although infrequent, does happen from time to time, but it's not a public. Yeah, yours is an internal workshop meeting. Yes, sir. Your staff. Yes, sir. We have a motion by Commissioner Hetherington to accept growth management's, to tentatively approve growth management's budget. It was seconded by Commissioner Smith. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. All those opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Thank you. Thank you. The information technology and technology investment plan. It will be presented by Mr. Michael Merker. Yes, sir. This will be the last one before lunch. And also by Ms. Erica Sinclair. Welcome. The two of you are recognized. Good morning. Good morning, commissioners. Don, Sarah, Jennifer, Stephanie. Hi. Before we get started, I wanted to take a moment to show you something different this year. And you'll notice Brian Kincaid is not with me. Brian's retiring any second probably in the next two weeks. And Erica is our Assistant Chief Information Officer. She's been given a seat to help me lead the organization. And she's here today to meet all of you as well as support me because she was a large part in preparing this budget. So. Well, let me say just as a personal aside, you've made an excellent choice. I've known Erica for quite a long time. I'm happy that she was in the organization and I'm happy to see her continue to elevate. Congratulations. Thank you. What are we doing first? The operating budget. So our operating budget is up about 8.3%. About a percent and a half or so of that budget is a covers a 14 and a half year old truck that we use to service all of the radio towers that support all the first responders in the county. That truck just needs to be replaced. And that's that's part of what's driving that number. The rest of it is just there as items that that we don't have a whole lot of control over insurance and those types of things. We are still working toward driving down the unit cost to deliver our services. We know that that I.T. is one of those types of things where if it's if we're doing our job, you don't know we're there. Right. It's when we're not doing our job or not that not we're not doing our job. But when something breaks, you want to make sure we're there and where we're competent and able to to deal with the situation. But if everything's going well, you just don't know we're there. And we like to keep it that way. So that's that's how that budget was developed. And I'm happy to answer any questions that you might have. Questions for Mr. Merker. There are none. Moustache. Tentative approval. Second. Thank you. We have a motion by Commissioner Smith for tentative approval of the information technology budget. Seconded by Commissioner Hurd. All those in favor. Aye. Aye. All those opposed. That motion carries unanimously. The next one is. You get a twofer with me. So it's the technology investment plan. And just as a quick recap, the technology investment plan is a mechanism for trying to recognize efficiencies across the organization by combining all the technology purchases into a single budget so that we are make sure that we don't have duplication of services or duplication of costs anywhere. Also to put some level of governance in place to make sure that that all technology that is being acquired by the county meets whatever goals are set out by by this commission. You'll notice that there's a 24, almost 25% increase. A lot of that is being driven by three main factors. One is state mandated cybersecurity initiatives. The second is contracts that we have that we develop on a three-year basis rolling and coming due. And this year, for whatever reason, some of the vendors decided that they were entitled to a hefty increase, Microsoft being one of them. And then the third is we have some aging infrastructure that is just sorely in need of replacement, infrastructure that does things like support the databases that run all of the systems that the county depends on. So those are the main drivers of that budget increase. Keeping all of that infrastructure running and keeping all those licenses in place enable all of the departments in this county to get their work done and to deliver services to the citizens and the businesses of Martin County. So it's important that we keep that infrastructure current and running. And with that, I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you very much. Commissioner Hetherington. I understand totally that much of what this increase includes is the state mandated changes. But my question is how obviously the more robust your system, you know, the more how did the state kind of levy this equally across the counties? Because there's obviously some very small counties that probably either do they are they held to the same standard? Does it depend on what kind of system you have? Because there's a lot of small counties in Florida that I'm wondering how they're getting through this in their budget process, these mandates, because they are very small rural, rural counties. So how does that I guess how do you apply that as every county different and is dependent on your system that you have in place? So so the state was pretty egalitarian about the way that they went about it. They gave nobody any any support really for the most part. And yes, there's every every county is held to a the same standard. It's it's a it's a law. The law is the law. There is no differentiation in that law for any size of county or any types of systems that the particular county might be using to to support the the operations. The only the only differentiation that I saw was in the cybersecurity law that requires us to report incidents where where we might have been attacked. Smaller counties get an extra year to come into compliance. Counties that have seventy five thousand or less residents have have an extra year to come to compliance. Counties over seventy five thousand residents have to be in place by July. I'm sorry, January first. Other than that, there's really no differentiation. So just to follow up then. So let's just say and I know this is not the number, but let's just use a number. Two point five million. And, you know, that's how much we're the mandated requirements were for Martin County. So that's the same for Okeechobee County. Or is it dependent on how large and robust your your system is? Is it going to be is it that across the board? How did they levy that on the counties? I can't imagine that they're charged. Every county is paying the same to bring their system up to whatever the state mandated it. Does that does that make sense? My question. Yeah, I agree with you. I think. But I'm trying to think of a good analogy for that. What you're saying makes sense and is correct. I would I would suggest that if you were to look at a place like and I'm just going to pick a place at random because I like the name Treasure Island. OK, and then that is a real place in Florida. They have three I.T. staff in a very, very small population. They're certainly not going to be spending two million dollars to bring their systems up because they don't have the same breadth of systems for every for every computer that we have on the desk. We and we have that we're responsible for. It's roughly I think it's eighteen hundred desktop computers. We have to have antivirus and we have to have security and all these other protections. They have ten. So so there's a so there's a there's a scale. Yeah, absolutely. How robust your system is. Correct. The more, you know, people and gadgets, the more really you're going to have to invest. Yes, ma'am. Commissioner Smith. I don't know this, but it also wouldn't surprise me that the fiscally constrained counties didn't get some sort of assistance from the state in order to achieve some of the standards. I mean, that's a typical on a requirement. This law could be that large. But I don't know. Well, there there was a program put forth by the state to provide a certain level of assistance. But there was geared toward the smaller counties. So so, for example, the requirements were were outrageous in terms to me, at least. And that's that's an opinion in terms of the types of reporting that had to be done. And the the legal agreements, I was confident that that our legal department would would have a very, very difficult time with the legal agreements that were that were there. And I would also tell you that I went to the Florida Local Government Information Systems Association conference last week. And many of my peers who had applied for that grant that those grants that were awarded walked away from them because of the reporting requirements, because of the legal requirements and the constraints that were in there. So there was there was money made available to some of those smaller counties. Some of them took advantage of it and some didn't. Mr. Merker, beyond just servicing our employees within the county, what constitutionals do you work for as well? All of them in varying degrees. So, for example, the tax collector where their Internet service provider in their phone system. If you look at the clerk of courts, their finance department, we are we are their I.T. department. So it goes there's there's a range. So all of them. Yes. I think that bears people understand that it's not just within the organization of the county government that you also branch out. Anybody else? Nineteenth Judicial Circuit. And then we do provide some services for some of the municipalities. But they also they also pay for some of those services as well. Mm hmm. But your your scope and breadth is to City of Stewart, some Sewell's Point. How about Indiantown? Yeah. No, we don't provide services to Indiantown. OK. Sewell's Point, City of Stewart. Island. Jupiter Island. Ocean Breeze. Yes. Fantastic. So it's a it's a big footprint. Commissioner Hetherington. One final question. Do you see any that you're aware of future legislative mandates that we haven't addressed? Talks coming down the pipeline that we should be aware of and or maybe put in our legislative priorities to monitor? Nothing that I've noticed. I am I'm famous among my peers for keeping an eye on this type of thing. And I'm usually the first one to raise an issue amongst my peers when this type of legislation is even proposed. And I haven't seen anything as of yet. I think they're probably taking a breath and trying to that at the legis at the state level, trying to to to figure out how they're going to actually implement a lot of the a lot of the laws that they put in there, because I think they're they're finding that they asked for a lot of information and a lot of participation and they weren't prepared for the volume of work that they have to do on their side. Thank you. Thank you. Let's entertain motions. Tentative. Second. Thank you. We have a motion by Commissioner Hetherington for tentative approval of the technology investment plan. Seconded by Commissioner Smith. All those in favor. Aye. All those opposed. The motion carries unanimously. At this point, what we're going to do is stop for the lunch break. It's a couple of minutes after 12 o'clock. Let's come back at one thirty and we'll pick it up from there to one. Excuse me. Let's make that two o'clock, please. Two o'clock break. It is July 17th, 2023. We are continuing with the Board of County Commissioners budget workshop meeting. We have been working our way through alphabetically through the county's departments. And we are currently up to library. Don't you? The alphabetically thing? Yeah. I was going to actually randomize it, but I figured that might be too much trouble. But it keeps people on their toes. Library budget will be presented by Ms. Jennifer Salas. Jennifer Salas. Good afternoon, Commissioners. Jen Salas, Library Director. We are requesting a few increases this year for a four point six six percent change over this previous fiscal year. One of the reasons for that is to increase our contractual services, which is our frontline part time staff to get them up to the new minimum wage requirements that will be implemented next year. A few laptop computers for our lead library specialists, as they don't have dedicated workstations at this time. And then also just the typical vendor increase for our collection vendors for print books and other library materials. I'm happy to answer any questions you might have. Commissioner Hurd. Yeah, Ms. Salas. Mr. Donaldson mentioned this morning that there's a staffing shortage due to. So we are struggling to recruit our part time frontline staff due to the minimum wage requirement. Like we haven't met that for the $15 an hour yet. So unfortunately, we are kind of in line with paying those staff with fast food restaurants and other things that don't expect as much training and effort. So yes, we are struggling to recruit. Why are we not meeting the minimum wage requirement? It's a future thing. So it doesn't get implemented until I think 2025. So we're just getting ourselves up to that point. So that's why the request is in this. Well, if we're having to close down libraries early because of a requirement that we don't have to meet for another year and a half, it's probably wise to consider beating that requirement. So what's in our current budget request for FY24 will get us there. Okay, good. Move approval. Thank you. Second. It'll just put you on par back with the fast food restaurants. Not ahead. Pretty much. Thank you. Not when McDonald's is $20 an hour. How much? We have a motion to tentatively approve the library budget by Commissioner Hurd, seconded by Commissioner Jenkins. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? The motion carries unanimously. Thank you very much. Thank you. The next department is Parks and Recreation. It'll be presented by Mr. Kevin Abate. Mr. Abate, good afternoon and welcome. Good afternoon. Kevin Abate, Parks and Recreation Director. This year's budget focuses on three areas. The first area is the new park, Palm City Place, funding for Palm City Place. The second area is just doing the cost of business in parks, FP&L increases, general maintenance increases. And the third area, which is the largest increase, are the increases in our anticipated revenues for the Parks Department. And I can explain that in a little bit. We do have our four goals listed on the slide presentation, actually our master plan goals. We still abide by them since 2014, which our focus is now is to maintain our existing facilities and amenities, improve our financial opportunities, and continue to improve our program service delivery, and, of course, organizational efficiencies. That's pretty much what we do in parks. What we've been able to do this year, as Mr. Donaldson alluded to earlier in the day, is that we're able to reduce some of our impact on using tax dollars and getting, like, the golf course off its subsidy. And, for example, I ran the numbers for the golf course this morning, and the golf course current net revenue is $375,000. We look at all the revenue-producing assets right now for the Parks Department. We are currently at a net $1.436 million. We collect with all of our park fees through the department. We're just a niche below $6.9 million in total revenue collections. It helps offset a lot of things and allows us to do some good things in the Parks Department, like improving our services. So, overall, the Parks Department is doing well in a financial position, and we expect that to continue. And we open up more assets, like the mooring field in Port Salerno, get our power pedestals for Phipps Park. We'll do a little bit better. So I have any questions that you may have I can answer for you. I'm happy to. Were you going to show us that screen, or was there another screen you were going to show us, or are you just going to explain it to us? Well, I was just mentioning to you some of the assets that we have revenue-wise that are doing well, which is every single one of our assets, meaning the water park, the golf course, the campground, the two cafes, all those right now as of this morning are trending well. They're all positive revenue in the tune of $1.43 million. That was kind of the nexus of the conversation. That's why we're able to kind of keep our budget flat. We need the increase in revenue because we're spending more money, but it allows us to have a budget reservation. For example, if the campground nets $500,000, which it will do this year, that has to be shown in a zero balance budget. It has to be shown as an expense, but it's actually as a reservation in the line item. Correct? Correct. It's clear. Commissioner Smith. Commissioner Smith. Just a general comment. Every time I think about this, and from when I first started doing this to where we are today, our Parks Department is a dramatically different Parks Department, and that's a great thing. It's not a bad thing. It's a great thing, and it's remarkable that you can come and tell us what you just told us because sometimes we are critiqued as to how we spend and what we spend, and our projects, your projects, are doing really, really well, and they continue to produce. And I appreciate the comment. One of the things that you see on the slide, you see music at the mansion, monthly series, free to the public, senior services, after-school programs. We have so many other things that we do aside from these facilities that generate revenue that are all impacting the community. And the Parks Department, you know, my entire team has done such an amazing job in my 13 years here as the director. And I just tell you, we just continue to get better and better each year, and it's amazing. We do. That's 13 years. I can't believe it. I move tenet of approval. Commissioner Hetherington. Based on the example that you had given on Phipps Park, the revenue generated in Phipps Park, does it stay in with Phipps Park, or does it, at the end of the year, new budget year, go into a general parks fund? It stays in an account for tagged for Phipps Park as an activity code. So, you know, if we need to plug a budget hole in the future year, we need to spend money on something beyond the budget, we can dip into that budget reservation if we need to for that specific site. So Phipps has its own budget reservation, so does Seaside and the water park. And so we've been accumulating dollars for those projects year after year in case we need to plug some budget holes down the road. And so far we've been pretty fortunate not to have to dip into those. So there are certain funds, like you just described, Seaside Cafe, Phipps, then the golf course hitting bays. There's that. The mooring fields. The mooring fields that are, what did you call them the other day, enterprise? They're special revenue funds. Special revenue funds. So, but for instance, Phipps, you can reinvest it, but you could take that if we needed it in general parks, right? It's not restricted. No, it's not. In a sense. I believe that the position that I'm trying to achieve over the last decade is to build these funds up as rainy day funds in case if something happens. If we have, for example, this year with the water park, we've had some horrible weather. We just broke even over the weekend as we move into the next 20 days of summer. You know, sunshine, the sun is our marketing plan. And sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. So like with any event, we're saving for the rainy day. But the special revenue funds would be restricted, right? Yes. Those would be actually restricted. Yes. Thank you. Don Donaldson. No, I think the question was answered. And the fact is that the board has the ability to move those funds if necessary. However, we, the practice has been is to leave them in the, in the parks department to generate enough revenue to cover any potential downfall. So we don't have to subsidize those areas. Very nice. We have a motion by Commissioner Smith. We have a motion by Commissioner Smith for tentative approval of the parks and recreation budget, seconded by Commissioner Jenkins. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? The motion carries unanimously. Thank you. Thank you. Our next department is public works and will be presented by Mr. Jim Gordon and Mr. George Zama. Gordon, good afternoon and welcome. Jim Gordon, public works director. So with this year's budget, we are requesting a change of 10.87%. And it involves largely cost for electricity and service contract changes. So the service contracts are starting to come back, you know, 30% higher than where they were in past years, especially for labor related type things. And then we have two FTEs. So two new FTE requests. One is a chief project manager for vertical construction. And the reason we want to do that, currently we're contracting that out. But we have a number of large vertical projects coming up in the next couple of years. So we've got the public safety training facility that we're working on now. We've got the burn building coming behind that, the clinic, and then, of course, the operations facility. So we'd like to maintain continuity through that program by having an FTE for vertical construction. And then the other one is for an engineering compliance coordinator for our development review engineering services program. So we did an analysis of the number of employees that we have reviewing applications versus what growth management has. And clearly there's a void there where we could have more staff. And then we wouldn't be the delay, because at times we've fallen behind growth management in our review time. And this thought is that we could be more in line with what they're doing and get things reviewed in the same timeline. So with that, do you have any questions about the budget? Yes, we do. Commissioner Hetherington. Two questions on the FTEs. So the first one, the chief vertical construction management in concept, I agree that we need someone to be a project manager on those. Now, if we are to explore the construction management at risk, wouldn't that in itself, you know, you know, there's some management potential in exploring that idea? Here it comes. George Zama, Public Works Deputy Director. So we would still need oversight from the county's perspective. Just documentation-wise and protecting our contract, we're still going to have, we would need a separate contract with the construction manager at risk. So there is oversight still needed. We also met with other counties that facilitate that type of delivery method, and they still have project managers that oversee all their vertical contracts. So who's overseeing the vertical contracts now, a mix of, you're it? No, fortunately, we have a contract employee that's working with us, has 40-plus years of vertical construction background. That's been a huge, huge assistance to us, to me and our staff and the county as a whole. And, you know, bringing, you know, the contract workers, you know, we're usually paid for out of the project. But for ownership of the projects and, as Jim mentioned, continuity from project to project and meeting our requirements, this is why we recommend bringing in FTE. And for construction management at risk, there's still daily interaction that the county's going to have to have with the contractor, just everyday decisions that you have to make while you're building a building. We have certainly some vertical, quite a few vertical projects. We have public works. We have the burn. Now, I don't know what after those projects are done is on the horizon. I'm sure there'll be something. But what do you intend to do with this vertical project manager once we have completed, you know, some of the bulk of these projects? Well, right now, we're public works constructs most of parks facilities. So the bulk of their CIP public works is designing and constructing, including all the boat ramps right now. Right now, the boat ramp at Sandsprit, the reference staff contract project manager, he's also overseeing that project. So we already have that contracted employee stretched pretty thin. So for the foreseeable future, you know, we're going to continue to help parks, you know, building their facility, designing and constructing their facilities. You know, we've been recently working with fire rescue, and we'll assist general services as needed, depending on their level of service. So vertical is the specialty, but we can use this person in any project management role. And then I forgot the question on the compliance coordinator. So come back to me because I forgot what it was. Commissioner Hurd. Yeah, I was out and about the other day and noticed a new vehicle that I bet is in your department. It's a little fogger. It's orange. It's fogger. Yeah, so that's a, I believe you're talking about a mosquito control fogger to treat small areas. Yeah, so that we have the ability to put that in the back of a kind of a side by side type vehicle, or we can put it in the back of a pickup truck, depending on what we need to treat. That's a terrific idea. I live in Rocky Point. It's extremely wooded, and there are lots of places, and it's very mosquito-y because it's across from the northern end of Jupiter Island, which is a breeding ground. So it's perfect. Yeah, we try to put the right size equipment in the right place. And in Rocky Point, it's kind of tough to get a big vehicle through there, so it's a right delivery method there. And in Rocky Point, we've had a lot of mosquitoes this year, so we're putting a lot of effort into treating them there and throughout the county. You're doing a good job. Good job. So that's where it's all going. Got it. That was a compliment. Yep. That's true today. Commissioner Hetherington has remembered her second question. I remember the second question. So I definitely agree the compliance coordinator, because I've had some feedback from applicants that their development applications are not moving and they're getting stymied in a department. So what it seems that other counties are doing, though, are using contractors to do that. So I'm curious why we didn't consider that because, as we know, development applications are not consistent all year long. So are you finding that you have a backlog all year long? So we have had dialogues with several of the local engineering firms in town to see if they'd be interested in performing that service, and the answer is they're too busy right now. They don't have an interest, the three that I've talked to. The other problem that presents itself for those consulting firms is if they're the reviewer, they can't also be the company that submits. So it's almost better for them to do that role out of town in an area where they aren't working. So that would lead us more to more of a regional firm, somebody out of Orlando or Miami or something like that. But because we have a unique comp plan, it really lends itself to doing it in-house. But that is something we have explored and that is something we'll continue to explore. Okay. Move approval. Thank you. We have a motion by Commissioner Hurd for tentative approval of the public works budget, seconded by Commissioner Smith. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? The motion carries four to one with Commissioner Hetherington dissenting. Can I, before they go, I have a quick question. What Commissioner Hurd was talking about with this little thing, right? The little fogger. The little fogger? That sounds like a movie. Meet the foggers. Meet the foggers. Is there any discussion in the industry about drones or about just having something that's pre-programmed that goes down the street and doesn't even require staff to drive it? And so we're already delivering mosquito control with drones now. So that's a part of our contract. We use it mostly in the uninhabited areas. The salt marsh mosquitoes in Jensen is one area where we use it. And we also do, we used to only use planes. Now we also use helicopters as well to treat areas. So, but as far as the fogging for the ULV type fogging, like the truck that you see driving down the road, we haven't yet implemented it for that because the drone technology isn't there yet to recognize when you need to turn it on and off. But it is, you know, it's in the industry and it is expanding right now, drone technology, for sure. Thanks. Thank you very much. You're done. One more thing. Oh, really? That's so clever. He has a dry sense of humor from New England. Okay. Our next department up is Utilities and Solid Waste. It will be presented by Mr. Sam Amerson, who is number one in the number two business. Thank you, sir. I appreciate the comment. It's our bread and butter, so don't take offense to that. For the record, Sam Amerson, Utilities and Solid Waste Department Director. We've got some changes, of course, to the budget. We've got an increase of 9% for utilities and solid waste combined. One of the requests here for consideration is five FTEs. We need some additional support in customer service and meter reading. Currently, of these five, these are transitional positions to FTE. They're currently either resource workers or contracted staff, and so we wanted to move to full-time employees there. In customer service, we've got additional workload with the septic-to-sewer program. We process contracts for each individual connection, whether it's a grinder install or a vacuum system lateral connection. We have contracts that we process for each of those, and so that's created additional work and additional phone calls. And utilizing resource labor, we've had difficulty retaining those employees. They're typically more entry-level positions, and there's a lot of rotation and a lot of vacancies when that happens. So we think we'd be able to improve our level of service in those areas. And then we're requesting one FTE. This is a completely new FTE to support additional fleet and heavy equipment repair and maintenance for the landfill and some of our utility fleet. We have about 180 pieces of rolling stock and heavy equipment that we maintain. And as far as our goals going forward in 2024, we do want to continue seeking grants and low-interest loans to support the septic-to-sewer program. It's been quite robust, particularly with Golden Gate has created about a three-month backlog for us. So we're no longer taking customers' money opening accounts there unless they want to hire a plumber, and then they can have that done on their own. So if I've got a three-month backlog, and we're working on that. We made some changes with our vendors and our inspection routines. But in order to reduce that, we wanted to give the customers opportunity to do that on their own with their own plumber, contractor. And with that... Grinders? Yes. Grinders? No, not grinders. We're doing the grinders. It would be the vacuum system laterals. So you can get a vacuum system before you can get a doctor's appointment. Yes, true. But regardless, we did speak with FDEP, and we're going to confirm that in writing, but we were given a list of deliverables that they need. You know, we have 319H grant that provides a $1,000 discount to each customer that connects to the sewer system in the first year. And so even though a private contractor will do that install, we get the contractor's invoice, we get a clear check, and then we provide that to FDEP along with the address, location, we will get reimbursed the $1,000. So we can still provide that discount. So that was, I think, a win going forward. And then we want a complete design and permitting for the proposed recycle transfer station and the public convenience center, which is a property you purchased recently from waste management, the nine and a half acres adjacent to the transfer station facility. And I did want to mention, along with some of the other departments, we've seen significant increases in fuel, chemicals, also in electricity. And then the lion's share of our increases are for construction and demolition debris, disposal, the transportation and disposal. All of our service contracts have CPI rate adjustments, and they all maxed out at 4%. The collection contract had a provision for a ceiling of 5%, but the other vendors were at a 4% CPI. So that was an increase of about 900,000. Transfer station disposal costs, that's for transportation and disposal of our regular garbage, the MSW, at the Okeechobee landfill. And then I mentioned other contractual services, the actual processing of our construction and demolition debris to get as much recycling from that as we can. And also transportation of our side of the CND, which is bulk trash. And then also the vegetation processing contract included CPI rate adjustments as well. So those were the line items that had the biggest increase. But we are looking at 9% increase overall. And with that, I'll entertain any questions you may have. Thank you very much, Mr. Emerson. Questions? I don't see any questions. Second. Second. We have a motion for a tentative approval of the utilities and solid waste budget by Commissioner Smith, seconded by Commissioner Hurd. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? The motion carries unanimously. Thank you. Thank you very much, sir. Okay. We have a non-departmental portion of this agenda. And it will be presented by Ms. Jennifer Manning and Stephanie Murley. That was a close one. That was a close one. Yeah, I was thinking of your... So, Jennifer Manning, OMB Director. All right. That's done by design. One moment. We're having technical difficulties. Here we go. I think we got it. Can you hear me? Yeah. Operator error. Hi. All right. Non-departmental is for all expenditures that are not related specifically to any department. And I know earlier we mentioned moving the medical to the non-department, and we'll do that before the end of the budget. Non-departmental includes just the programs themselves, as well as risk management, the economic development, the grant and aid section, the debt service, budgeted transfers, and reserves. The total non-departmental is $222 million. Of that, 14% is just for non-departmental items. 16% represents risk management. Economic development is $450,000. Grants and aid represent $6.1 million. The budgeted transfer is 16%, or $35 million. And reserves is $94 million. The non-departmental budget is $30 million, and it is comprised of the FP&L contract. It's a grant contract. We have the indirect costs, which is $1.6 million. We have parks, maintenance, and other charges, $1.9 million, roughly. The wellness clinic represents $1.9 million. The property insurance, $7.4 million, or 25%. The audit and contracted services is $569,000. The professional services is $816,000. The rental and leases are $237,000. The miscellaneous, such as bank fees, child support fees, printing, and training is $413,000, or 1% of this budget. The CRA payments represent $11,053 million, and the PTO payout is $1.1 million. So the risk management is for all the expenses for risk-adverse management of the county's self-insured program for property and health insurance. Then we have economic development, which is monies that have been allocated to the Business Development Board based on approved contracts. The grants and aids, we have a contracted portion of the grants and aids, and that includes services like Humane Society, House of Refuge, and so forth. And then you have the grants of government agencies, and there is a list that will come up. And grants to private organizations and other grants and aids. So the contracted services, of course, includes Humane Society. Based on their contract, there is a $70,000 increase, and it goes up every year by a small amount. The Treasure Coats Wildlife, we did not increase their budget. Historical Society, this is based on the contract after we approved the budget last year, so I had to increase it for this year. And then you have the Life Builders of Treasure Coats, which is $10,000. What is that? Oh, sorry. Question. I can't remember what that is. The Life Builders, it was Diamond Liddy from the, yes, that acts for those funds. And then we moved to the aid to government agencies, which includes health insurance, which that is an unfunded mandate that we are required to fund. And that's the movement. Not health insurance, health department. Health department, sorry. Health insurance. My brain. Okay. All right. So then the health department, and we're required to fund that. Then we have the health department immunization program, which we agreed to fund as well. Medicaid hospital, then you have county indigent hospital, and health care responsibility act, indigent medicine, New Horizon, and children's home society. The only one that really went up, and this is based on what the state sent us to this budget, and it's the Medicaid hospital, which went up $108,834. Now, some of those, ma'am, have asterisks, and at the bottom it might be difficult for people to see at home, unfunded mandate and state statutes. Right. So those are, we have no choice but to pay those. Right. And then there's also the local ordinances and dedicated ad valorem funding that we have to put in. So the aid to private organizations include 211. Before I go on, we did not increase any of the requests for these funds. We maintained the same level as 23. So that includes the Alzheimer's Community Care, ARC, Boys and Girls Club, Council on Aging, Early Learning Coalition, Helping People Succeed, Treasure Coast Food Bank, which, and I'm going to the next slide. Then, Treasure Coast Homeless Services, Veterans Council, Volunteer in Medicine. The only added item was Special Olympics because there was some discussion with the board to communicate about funding. So we placed it in a budget for the board's consideration, and that's the only increase for those. And then there's other aid to organization, which is Dory Sloshberg and Port Salona Fishing Dock. And when I get the contract, I will increase the amount based on the FY24. One second. Commissioner Hurd. Yeah. Explain to me the Special Olympics aid position. Okay. So, Commissioners, we had an agenda item a few months ago in which the board directed staff to receive the application and enter into a contract with the Special Olympics for consideration for this budget cycle. So explain the position. The county taxpayers are funding a private position for Special Olympics? Yeah, I believe the item basically expressed that the Special Olympics person was going to help coordinate all the events and activities within our park system that goes above and beyond what we're currently doing. I'd have to pull the agenda item to give you the specifics, but that was brought before the board. The board voted in favor of it, so it was included in the budget. Well, I thought we voted in favor of bringing it back for consideration during budgeting time. I am unfamiliar with the practice of using taxpayer funds to fund a position in the private sector. So we won't supervise this person. We won't create a job description. We won't do the scope of services. We won't do any oversight. We just, tell me how this works. My understanding is we're contracting with them like any type of contractor with a not-for-profit, and they're ensuring that the individuals that would use those services are being coordinated. I think that the trade-off was we weren't getting involved in the transportation business because that's where the bigger dollar is, and that this person is going to coordinate and make sure that these individuals all go to the specific fields where there's those specific activities. Now, if you give me a couple minutes, I'll be more than happy to grab Mr. Abate, and we can go a little bit deeper into the specifics, but I need a moment. I'm going to need to know a lot more about this position before I agree to fund it. We'll take some more questions in the meantime. Commissioner Hetherington. I recall the conversation when we had this item, although it was very well presented, certainly a very worthwhile organization. I thought there was going to be an item that was coming back to us that we would hear because there was a lot of conversation on the transportation or not the transportation and how it will be implemented. So I left that day with the expectation that it would come back to the board so we would hear more prior to the actually being submitted in the budget. So that's how I recall that conversation. I have the motion that was from the meeting if you'd like, huh? Go for it, thanks. Not that I really want to jump in on this. As a motion was made and seconded, directing the Special Olympics to apply for the grants and aid program, which will be discussed in July, and direct staff to begin the process of shaping a memorandum of understanding with the Special Olympics. So, meaning discussed in July would be presented here for consideration, and we went ahead and began directly in that memorandum of understanding, but it is predicated on the fact that it would be for consideration today. Thank you. Commissioner Smith. That was my understanding because the option, it was honestly the direction I wished we had gone in that that person would have been our person and it would have been our staff, but the will of the board that day was to go and do it under grants and aids and give a grant to Special Olympics to have them provide the individual and the oversight of that program. I see it similarly. I do prefer that it would be their person than our person, our FTE, and I think potentially we're getting hung up on the concept of the money being used for an employee. To me, I'm thinking of it as money being used in grants and aids for Special Olympics. If you scroll through like the money for volunteers in medicine just as an example that is there, we don't know if they're using that money to hire an employee. It's a lump sum that went to the organization. If you can scroll back to the other slide here, you know, Council on Aging, that might be an employee. Boys and Girls Club could potentially be an employee. If you go back to the other slide, you know, these areas here or even the Humane Society or the Treasure Coast Wildlife Hospital, those could be employees, but we gave the money to an organization that we believe in that offers a public benefit to our residents. So I'm not specifically hung up on the fact that the $85,000 would be specifically meant for employment. I do like the fact that we would lump sum a dollar amount to a worthwhile organization versus having it be an additional employee inside Parks and Rec because that comes with all of the other things we've heard from every single department today. Health insurance, retirement, all the extras, this is a number that we control. If it was an official employee within Parks and Rec, then every time anything changed to increase that person's expense to the county, that would happen for that person. So that's where I believe, in my mind, I'd prefer a lump sum to the Special Olympics organization and let them handle it. I do remember, and I appreciate, Mr. Donaldson, you giving us a little refresher on how that item went. Commissioner Hetherington just said it. It was a compelling argument that day, the agenda item to discuss it. We all know what the Special Olympics means and what the organization is, but I was impressed that day and newly informed on what a large impact it has for Martin County residents. So that's, I think that that $85,000 works in my mind because the impact that we're having across Martin County residents, you know, year-round on all the different things that they could benefit from that organization, I'm okay personally with it. Staff. Mr. Chair, just, I apologize, I stepped out of the room, but I did have two notes there also. So when our staff did look at bringing it in as an FTE, the cost was considerably more. I think someone of that caliber was going to require a pay around $120,000 to $125,000. And also, it jogged my memory, I believe the $85,000 is a cost share for that type of person, where part of that cost of the $125,000 to $150,000, if you include fringe, is being borne by the Special Olympics. It's a percentage breakdown. And I also remember that it was a conversation versus an employee more so than what they originally were looking for. Commissioner Smith was looking for was transportation, which would have been way more expensive. So this was us participating in a worthwhile organization at sort of the C-tier level versus the B- or the A-tier level. Ms. Woods. I just wanted to add that under the motion that Mr. Donaldson made, we would craft a memorandum of our grant and aid agreement that would come back to you all, which is what the motion was. And that would have a scope of work. And normally under this finance, this part of the budget, the Special Olympics would be required to file reports. And so we would know. It wouldn't simply be giving them $85,000 to hire somebody. We'd have a scope of work of what services to the chair's explanation for some of these other organizations. We have a scope of work, and we require a reporting under the template that we use. So the organization, at least in my opinion, should have some reporting requirements so that you know what services are being provided and there's a check and balance. Understood. What? I just thought that was coming first. For our review. Well, I guess if there is no money, then there's no reason to have that conversation. Yeah. But some of the conversation, some of that conversation has already been had. Mr. Donaldson, you said you have or some of our team has been having these conversations with the Special Olympics. Yes. We just don't have it for you today. And it would be subject to, again, if you're going to consider spending the funds, we would bring you back that agreement. Understood. So I guess as a way out is that if it was layered into the budget today and prior to us finalizing this budget, that agenda item comes forward and there isn't majority board support for that, then it would die that day. But if it doesn't get into the budget today, then the rest of the conversation is moot. Commissioner Hetherington. I feel like that's backwards than what we originally discussed. But what is our current process? Because over the years it seems to have changed on grants and aid. Everybody came in with a flat request. Do they make a new application every year? How is that done? I think this is actually the best example of it. There is no formal, really, process over the years. You've had the list that's been on the grant and the times when each individual grant or aid has requested an increase. I think it was about five or more years ago there was discussion on how to more formalize the process. We went through about a year of examination on how to do it differently or better, and no change was made. So, unfortunately, as your administrator, one of the tough things you have to deal with is how do you discern one community service versus another one in terms of ranking. So it's not because you're looking at completely different types of services. So we largely rely upon the five of you to help discern what that is. And so, unfortunately, this is probably one of the more clunky processes we have, if you will. And some communities have certainly gotten out of the grants and aids in business entirely because of the complications that arise out of it. So that's, I think, we did not find, if Mr. Stokas was heavily involved in that, any example of a review process that helped that public or, you know, these services. So, unfortunately, just to be blunt, the fact that a commissioner asked for it or it got presented, five of you all voted affirmatively under that motion. So staff took it as a, which is to be considered. And that's why we're talking about it today. Thank you, sir. Commissioner Smith. Yeah, I think the latest that we added was Diamond's request a few years back. Quite a while. I'm sorry? Quite a while back, yes. Two, three years? Has it been five, really, already? I feel like it. Could be. I think Don did a really perfectly great job of explaining it. It's at the will of the board if you want to add something to the program. And, you know, I like Commissioner Campy. This has been a conversation that's been had now for a couple of years. And transportation was, is a issue that has to be dealt with at some point in time for a whole host of different programs, not just Special Olympics. But that's for a conversation for another day. So this serves a part of our population that otherwise doesn't have the opportunity to participate. And it's a significant piece of our population. And I would have a really hard time explaining to anybody that we were leaving a piece of our population out when others are getting a lot of funded programs because they can participate in a more traditional fashion than others. So I hope it passes. I do not disagree. The process is odd and is one of the frustrations I have had as a commissioner. Because in the early days when I first showed up for my first couple of years on the board, it was during the 2008, 9, 10 recession. And we weren't giving money. We were slashing budgets. And I remember the frustration of slashing budgets to our not-for-profits just when they would need the money the most and just when their services were much more required. So we waded through that. And then in the old days, Commissioner Smith and Commissioner Hurd were here back then. The room would be filled on grants and aids day with everybody. If you were doing pets, everyone came with cats and dogs. If you were doing, you know, youth sports, you had all the little leagues and everybody wearing uniforms. And then if you had special needs individuals on any portion of the spectrum, they were all here. And they would have to come up and, you know, with their hat in their hand. And I just didn't think that that was an ideal process. You know, I know there's always concern about picking winners and losers. But that's exactly what we are responsible for doing. But those days, it felt like we were picking winners and losers right to their faces. I still, and then the process shifted away from that, even though I do feel that it's the elected officials' responsibilities to do that. We know these organizations. Either all five of us do or a majority of us do understand the different value that these not-for-profits bring to our community. I also believe that if you help a not-for-profit take care of a service, the return on investment for taxpayer dollars is that maybe a young person, a young woman, is not becoming pregnant. Maybe a young person is not becoming addicted to drugs. Or a veteran can get mental health services before something catastrophic happens. Or residents can go to volunteers in medicine and handle an issue before they're going to the emergency room, because we pay for them to go to the emergency room as well. So when people say, hey, we shouldn't be using taxpayer dollars to support these organizations, these organizations are acutely, professionally aware and trained to specifically offer a level of service that if they didn't, we would either have to do it or we would suffer the consequences of that person not getting those services. So then the process flipped to a board. The commissioners at some point relinquished their authority to do that and made it and pushed it onto a group of employees to do, which I thought was very unfair because they then had to go around and be experts on all of these different charities and then would come forward with their list of suggestions, either adding money or subtracting money. And then the commissioners would completely redo the whole decisions anyway. So it was very frustrating for staff to do that. So I did not like that. The final thing I would say is that we've sort of created, as to Mr. Donaldson's point, there is no process. I don't know how someone gets on. It basically felt that if you were on the list, you could stay on the list. And if you weren't on the list, you couldn't get on. And there have been several examples over the course of the last decade where not-for-profits have either formulated or came to Martin County to address an obvious need. We don't address human trafficking. We don't address bullying. We don't address equine rescue. So, and these are things that, you know, some of those things fall in, and then we pay them in the sheriff's budget after it's a human tragedy of human trafficking or, you know, mental health issues versus if we had put some of this funding into some of these other organizations. I still believe a huge correlation between bullying and school violence. We're spending a fortune on SROs for the after effect of kids that are bullied in school that decide to either violently act out or, worse, come to school with a gun. So, I still, I mentioned it at the last meeting or two meetings ago. I think, you know, if the process is a commissioner, and I give Commissioner Smith credit. He was the one championing Special Olympics. I know the organization, did not blip on my radar screen, and I also had no idea how impactful it was in Martin County. So, that's kudos to Commissioner Smith for that. I have Equine Rescue and EREF in my district. All of you have been out there to visit. That organization is getting very close to coming to an end, and I would like to see some. I use district funds there, which is what was requested of me, but I don't see how that's not on this list. We're a rural equestrian community, but everything that happens with horses that people don't want to talk about, we just leave to a group of very generous with their time and their money to just handle it because we don't want to discuss it. So, I will be supporting the Special Olympics portion of this. I wouldn't be opposed to having another conversation on exactly how this process should work, and let the organizations come in and present what they do, and what the return on investment is for Martin County taxpayers. We're a very, very generous community where people donate tremendous amounts of money to these organizations, but that's very hit or miss. One big donor drops in or drops out of an organization, it can torpedo the whole group. So, I'm glad that Special Olympics is going to get an opportunity today to get into a little more of a formalized structure. I would also like to see that happen with EREF, if not today, then at least in the future. Thank you. I yield the remainder of my time back. What do you want to do? Here we are. Commissioner Hetherington. I think everyone on that list is a super valuable part of our community. Every single one of them. They bring value. They bring merit. I like to add a few myself. I think youth drug use is rampant, and, you know, we had a vaping ordinance that we all would like to take care of all of these problems, address it, and fund them. But at the end of the day, this is where I struggle on approving something like this. We started the morning conversation off talking about a 4.6% roughly tax increase to all residents of Martin County, where Mr. Donaldson said you are going to need a unanimous vote in order to pass the budget that you have sitting here, which we know it's going to be difficult to have a unanimous vote. So that, in my head, you know, as I sit here throughout the day thinking, well, some things are going to have to be given up. Of course, nobody wants to give up anything. I don't want to give up. I didn't want to not have public works have two full-time, you know, employees that I think are probably warranted. I just think we can't afford it right now. And that's where, like, it's kind of now the rubber meets the road is what can we do? What can we defer? It's not that anything is not valuable. It's just that how do I look at a resident and say, okay, well, we're voting to increase your taxes by 4.7%. When insurance has tripled or 50% to 100% more for all of our residents, all of them, you know, so they're struggling to pay their insurance. They're people on fixed incomes that probably will start losing their homes because they can't afford between insurance. Okay, yes, it means a few hundred dollars here and there if you did a 4.7%, which I don't think will happen. But those that can't afford it will start losing their homes. All over the state of Florida, we're talking about affordable housing right now. Well, this is the antithesis, you know, of affordable housing when you're raising taxes on people because those that can't, that are a fixed income, they can't afford it. They're going to lose their houses. You know, we're taxing businesses. We're taxing residents. And landlords are then going to raise their rents because their property taxes have increased. That's going to get passed along to the person that's living in the house. It's a whole, so sorry to go on a tirade, is that everything in here is valuable. And I just don't, it's hard to pick and choose, you know, and I hate the winners and losers. I want public works to have their people. It just might not be the right time to add this this year when residents are super concerned about the expenses they're incurring. And we can only generate so much money. So I feel just very passionately that we have to look at the whole picture. I don't disagree. I bet if we handed out the budgets and the line item veto, you give me the budget in a red pen. I'll deliver a zero increase budget, but my choices might be different than your choices. That's what this process is. Most people know, but for those that are listening that don't, we are not allowed to speak to each other outside of this meeting. We can work with our staff individually. They're also not allowed to tell us, well, this commissioner is going to go this way and that way. So all of us come to this budget process with a different mindset. I could very easily deliver a zero increase budget. I'm sure all of you could. We don't disagree on what we cut and where we would put it. You know, we sort of just dabble around the edges. We had a conversation this morning with the sheriff, you know, fire rescue and the sheriff, which to me public safety is our number one responsibility, but they're also the largest portion of the increases. All of them could fall right there. I wouldn't cut from there, but there are other things. But I know that environmental issues and flooding and those things are important. So I think when we get a little further in the conversation today, it's not going to be a 4.7% increase. We'll shave it down like we've done in the past and we'll get it to where it needs to be. I hear what you're saying, Commissioner Hetherington, about people, you know, holding on to their homes for dear life, but it's just a matter of where are individual commissioner priorities all valid. Commissioner Smith. Chairman, how do you want me to do a suggested vote? You want me to take Special Olympics out and have it as a separate vote? I think you'd have to do that because otherwise the whole thing fails, so potentially. So I would move staff's recommendation on the... I just have to go over the rest of the... Oh, there's a couple more. Okay, so I'll just skip debt service and talk about budget transfers, which is this movement of dollars among the internal service funds. And we saw this slide earlier, which is all the reserves, dollars, and the various funds, and then... I'd leave it up for a second just to let people at home or whatever just get a glance at it. Thank you. Mm-hmm. I'll tell you when to take it away. There's a lot to digest here. Ms. Manning, can you explain to the folks at home what the categories across the top are? We know what general fund is. We know what special revenue, debt services, self-explanatory capital, enterprise funds. Can you tell us what that is and what they are? Okay, enterprise funds are utilities and solid waste as well as golf course. And those funds are... They have fees for services, and so they're not ad form funded. So you have solid waste as well in there. And the building department. And the building department. Yeah, the building department is not an enterprise fund, but it's treated like an enterprise fund. The airport as well. Yes, and the airport. So for people following at home, these are departments of the government that basically generate enough revenue to be self-sufficient. Self-sufficient, yes. Okay. Internal service? So those are the health insurance funds and the property insurance fund and OPAP. So we set those monies aside to pay our self-insurance. And trust and agency? That's just on like the Dory Sloshberg or... So trust funds that come to us that we then have the ability to distribute. Right. Is that the only one? And CRAs. CRAs. Yeah, because we have a reserve for salary and CRAs, that's also a trust fund. Thank you. Mm-hmm. You can progress the slides. Okay. Everybody... I can just leave it up and then we can talk. No, I mean, is that the last slide? Yes, it is. And you can go to your question mark thing. Okay. Commissioner Smith. Chairman, I would move the grants and aids category less the Special Olympics and I'll make a separate motion for that if this one passes. It's non-departmental. What? Second. Hmm? It's for the non-departmental or are you just discussing... Non-departmental. Well, you said it's just grants and aids. Non-departmental. Thank you. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Let me pause that. Commissioner Hurd. Yeah. If this passes, then before the budget hearings in September, we're going to have a memorandum of understanding. We're also going to have a scope. We're going to have an understanding of what our expectations are with this partnership. So we're going to have compliance with the contract or with the memorandum of understandings. We're going to have a clear path to compliance. The reason I'm asking is because I read one of these contracts over the last month and looked at what staff was calling our compliance measures, and they weren't compliance measures. I think we do a lousy job of compliance with our contracts. I don't think we ever know what the performance measures are. I don't know that we ever require compliance. I think that we let an awful lot of these agencies, these organizations, write on cocktail napkins that this is compliance, and we say, okay, well, you've fulfilled your obligation. If I'm going to agree to fund this, then there are going to be compliance measures that are terrific. Okay. Commissioner Smith. It's more of a general comment, I think. I have the utmost confidence in our staff, our legal department, our various departments that deal with contracts, that they do their very best to give us what the expectation of those deliverables are. I can think in many instances where those have been challenged in the past, and I know that the organizations give us sometimes more than we actually ask for. And I think the public gets, from what we give them, the expectation and then some, and I'm okay with that. Commissioner Hetherington. With those comments in mind, I would rather see an agenda item, not singling out Special Olympics, but come back to discuss all of the grants and aids and talk about what the compliance is. And so I would rather discuss it as an entire grants and aids than feel like there's one item that comes back to us. The problem with that, Commissioner, is that we can only decrease our budget at the next budget hearing. We can't increase it. Understood. Two points. One, to my colleague. I know she was just using that as an example. I also believe that, look, reviewing multiple grants and aid contracts and the deliverables and all the different categories that they fall into is a moving target. But I do have the faith that our staff, both legal staff and others that are tasked with supervising and overseeing them, do a good job. Perfect job? Of course not, because there's no way for it to be perfect. But I feel that our tax dollars and the dollars that we've invested in these organizations, one, they're worthwhile organizations, and two, our staff is on them to look and see that it handles exactly, as well as the fact that we also have our clerk of the court and comptroller, Carolyn Timmon, and her staff that also do some oversight and review with where district funds go and things like that. So I do want to keep it separate because this specific dollar amount for the budget is specific to Special Olympics. I do plan on coming, like I said, forward in the future to see where we could do that, not necessarily to affect our budget, but there are reserves in places and things like that where money can be maneuvered if it came to that. But nothing I'd want to discuss about grants and aids in the next three to four months would alter the budget, in my opinion. We have a motion by Commissioner Smith specific to this Special Olympics line item of this. This is a tentative approval of Commissioner Smith's motion is a tentative approval of the Special Olympics line item of the non-departmental budget seconded by Commissioner Jenkins. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed. The motion carries four to one with Commissioner Hetherington dissenting. Okay. Ms. Manning, anything more on non-departmental? That is it for non-departmental, and I wanted to go in. The reason why we didn't list the Commissioner's districts, because we wanted to discuss that separately, all the district commissioners, the districts were left at the same level, and I know you have a desire to. And you, do you have a screen you can put them up? Yes, I'm going to. Didn't you have a screen this morning, Jennifer, that showed that? That was the value of the districts. The district. I looked for it. I didn't see it. I know, I didn't see it in this, but I thought you had it in your presentation this morning, on the screen. Oh, just the increases from the. Oh, John had it on the doc cam. Yeah. Oh, it was your sheet. Yes. But can you pull up my. Because I thought we saw it. I just want to see what the amounts are that they can increase without. That screen that you have there works for me. Yeah. It's just that, I mean, if the other commissioners would like to remain at the same amount. Back it up. Didn't mean to do that. This is a senior version. Thank you. A little bigger than that. I'm having a. A big print version. Difficult time right now. If we swing any wider than that. There we go. Okay. Okay. So when you're looking at district one, for example, if he doesn't absorb the increase, his millage just goes down by 9.66%. So I think it's roughly about, was it $37,000? I can't remember. Do you have your paper? Approximately 10%. 10%. Yes. So if you were to keep the millage flat, you would add another roughly $30,000. And the same thing with the other districts. For example, district two, your millage went down because your values went up. And so you are showing a negative 10.88. Millage reduction. Millage reduction. And district three is showing a 12.07 millage reduction. District four, district four is showing a 9.63 millage reduction. And district five is showing a 10.65 millage reduction. Okay. Now for the folks that are not familiar with what this is, can you, do you want me to, or do you want to explain what these non-countywide revenue commission district MSTUs are? Okay. So the district commissioners can request a millage or request funding for their specific district that they can only use for their constituents. And in the past, we have sunset the district funding, and then we reinstated the district funding for the various districts, as we see here. And so we started out, I think, with 300,000 with district one or 200,000, and we've increased it over the last couple years. So like I said, those funds can only be used in the district. And typically those funds have been used in collaboration with other county projects to either enhance or augment them or to provide, in some cases, assistance to solve a problem where there was not funding in any other budget. So I think sometimes you've added them to work in neighborhood improvements or acquisition of property to better the neighborhood, to go into a community center. So those are the type of areas that I've seen those funds be used for. Thank you. I think that was an excellent explanation. These district funds have also been called discretionary based on commissioner's discretion. The five of us, obviously, unique personalities, use the funds differently. When I first came on board, it was a percentage. It wasn't really a fixed dollar amount. It was a percentage, which allowed them through the course of the years to grow quite large. There was also no requirement in terms of use it or lose it. So there was the ability to stockpile up millions of dollars for larger projects, which, again, goes back to the concept of discretion for the individual commissioners. Historically, the commissioners have allowed each other to work that through. These numbers and all requests also go through our staff, our legal staff, and then go through the clerk of the court, Carolyn Timmons, for her review as well, correct, to make sure that it sort of falls within the letter of the law. I think, you know, when I hear from my colleagues on what they have done, purchased property from Maggie's Hammock, purchased the ham property, done all sorts of improvements, I use quite often some of the district funds to augment not-for-profits after my speech I just made. However, I'd like to increase mine because I'm in the process of working on something within the district, which I will be bringing forward for consideration of my colleagues shortly. A very important issue for us in District 5, and I would like to increase my district funds from $270,000 to $370,000. Now, if when I come forward with what that will prime the pump for, if it's not an acceptable conversation with my colleagues, I do have the ability. I can't raise it after today, but I could lower it. So prior to the final budget in September, we will have a conversation on what the potential plan is in District 5 with that increase. So that's how I'd like to do it. Anyone else looking to make any changes to their district funds at this time? Seeing none. Do you need a motion for all these? Are we done with the whole concept here? Yes. I would move tentative approval of the total millage countywide and MSTU. No, that's not right. Where's Hutchinson Island? It's right below it. Oh, Hutch Island, I see. I would move tentative approval of the non-countywide revenue commission district MSTUs. And special district. And special districts. Second. Ooh, photo finish. We have a motion by Commissioner Smith for tentative approval of, excuse me, non-countywide revenue commission district MSTUs and special district A61 Hutchinson Island. MSTUs seconded by Commissioner Hetherington. All those in favor? All those opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Okay, so the other thing I wanted to mention is the capital projects, because they said it was not on the list, but I mentioned it in my presentation that it was tentatively approved, and I listed all the areas that were increasing or decreasing. And I didn't know if you still wanted to make a motion on that again today, or you can bring the slide back up. I think you should. Okay, we will do that. So now we're going to get into the rolling up of the sleeves. Not that one. Oh, yeah, that one. I got that. Well, Mr. Donaldson, didn't you have some? Yeah, so, Jennifer, if you could just summarize where we are in the, if we look at the aggregate total countywide millage increase the way it is currently presented. Yes, it's at 4.586, 5.82. And so, as I mentioned earlier, each one of these, you've now tentatively approved all of the department budgets and the revenues that go along with them. From what was submitted, did you take out the sheriff reduced his budget in his request? Yes, we haven't taken out anything yet. Okay, so I think that, so if you could. So this, as we have done in the past, we use this as sort of our worksheet, computerized, real-time worksheet. So I'd like this to sort of either split-screen it or be able to pop it back and forth based on the conversation we're about to have. So the sheriff came, he's the first one, right, with how much, seven? 769,000. So you're going to deduct that right now? Yes. What was that for? He was just for an additional. Don Donaldson went, paid him a visit. When we had our discussions on the budget, the sheriff recognized the position we were in. And so his, from what was submitted in the document that you have and at the podium, and what he presented today was three-quarters of a million dollars, roughly less than what was presented. And so he, the sheriff has, you know, already offered that and has already, and that's what you tentatively approved. And so I just wanted to make sure that that number in the sheet was reflected properly as exactly where we are at this moment. Was that in his operations or his CIP? It was in his operations. Yes, he said he deferred instead of hiring. So the CIP is a separate discussion, and those are actual fall under the board themselves. We provide the, you know, those funds and the capital improvement plan that fall under public safety. And the sheriff actually go through our general services or would be constructed by public works, depending on what it is. But these are all, I believe, general services are constructing those. So any reductions that are made there would be affected, and those that you have full control over those. Ms. Manning, Ms. Murley, it started at what, 4.52? 4.583. And this correlates to page 51 in your budget book. I just want to do a running total. So with the sheriff's $769,000, it drops it down to 4.325. Correct. Now, what we have done in the past is, obviously, to start looking at, you know, $5,000 and $10,000 at a time is not going to really have any consequential changes. I think all five of us had had an opportunity to meet with Mr. Donaldson and administrative staff to come up with some other things that could work on this. So let's discuss them. Does Mr. Abate need to be here for this? They do not unless you request them. They're fully aware of all that's been contemplated prior to today. In fact, as the budget was prepared, each department was prepared to reduce their CIP by, to start with, one half of the new projects that were on there. And so what initially in my conversations with you all, we were, all departments are fully aware of those cuts. And supportive. Thank you. So I have a list here that has, let's just run through them. Some of them we'll explain to the general public as they're following along. The next one was Parks FARB. Can you explain what a FARB is, Ms. Manning? It's a fixed asset replacement. Budget. Budget. Budget. And they're, you know, for all the parks that we have existing. So we will try to maintain them to the level of service that they need to be. And I remember we had constituents talking about the parks and the services that's being provided. So this is where the funding comes from. Correct. So the first thing, now this, this deduction of $250,000 from the parks FARB, that's not leaving the fund empty. No. It's just obviously the goal of all of our department heads that require FARBs is to constantly keep them at a healthy level for potential. But, you know, rainy day funds, if it's, here he is, if it's raining sometimes, then we need to tap in. So taking the $250,000. Yeah, he had requested $750,000, and we're moving $250,000. Okay. So where are you going to take that out? Oh, so you're just rolling that same number down? Yes. Oh, you're going to do it like that. Very nice. So now we're at 4.2. And then also Timer Powers Park, I can explain that. There's been conversation for quite a while of there are a couple of permanent sets of bleachers at the Timer Powers Park rodeo rink, the covered rodeo rink. And whenever there are events there, they have to bring in either some of our mobile parks and rec bleacher systems, or they rent them for big events like the rodeo and others. We talked about filling that in with official permanent bleachers because there are a lot of other events that could be taking place out there if we had this. That price tag for those permanent bleachers was $1 million, which I think all five of us would agree. It's not earth-shattering that they're there or not. They've been making do in the past. All the organizations that utilize that facility hadn't been making do without them. So that is a big number to shave. And we would postpone the million-dollar purchase of Timer Powers Park bleachers. Too bad we didn't have five or six other sets of bleachers elsewhere in the county. Okay, so did you deduct that now? Yes. So now we're down to $3.9. The next is the CIP General Services, the countywide building envelope FARB. We're familiar with what a FARB is. They're willing to reduce that number for this year's budget by $100,000. The countywide HVAC FARB additionally by another $100,000. And then the sheriff's FARB. And what people must remember is that the sheriff is also responsible for our jail, correct? Is this sheriff's FARB would include his facilities as well as the jail? Keep in mind that our staff, your staff, are the ones that actually maintain those facilities. So it's maintaining the buildings that it's our FARB. Yes, so it's our jail, and the building that the sheriff sits in is our, they're all county assets, but it's our responsibility to maintain them. Understood. So we get the day in, the day out. So with that, we're looking to shave $620,000 from that FARB. That being said, the next one is CIPs for Martin County Sheriff's Office Logistics and Operations Center. Mr. Donaldson, do you want to? Yes, and so that's a, we're constructing part of that facility this year. This does not eliminate the funding for the logistics centers, but it does obviously significantly reduce it, and we just delay it perhaps a year unless we can get some grants to help us out. So that's, it's a project that will need to be done. We're just deferring up to a year for that project. Okay, and that is $781,000, correct. Okay, so the next item is, remember this morning I mentioned about the revenues that are outpacing their budgets, and one of them was ad valorem, but the other two is revenue sharing as well as halfs and sales tax. So we're anticipating that there will be, it will exceed the budget, but so we're wanting to replace those, you know, take out the ad valorem and replace it with anticipated fund balance. And we would not do the projects unless we actually have those money. So by February we should know, okay, we have enough fund balance to, you know, to do the rest of the projects that we didn't take out. And that added up to $2,180,000, correct? Yeah. Okay. And so that is the suggestions that came from our administration and our financial team. Do any of my colleagues have issue with any of those? I wouldn't assume. Seeing none. And that brings us from where we started. Sorry. Yes. Could you just please go back and re-explain that, replacing that with fund balance? Okay, so if... Jennifer, let me give a shot of it. So essentially, if you looked at Jennifer's presentation earlier, one of the areas you could see that you have an anticipated revenue in, whether it's taxes, you know, where we can't budget 100% of the taxes, and then, but we actually got 100% or a little bit more. So there are some revenues like that that we normally don't budget that much for, and you have to wait until the year to see how they come in. So the issue is that, let's say, you go into a recession and people aren't paying their taxes. You're not going to collect as much. Therefore, you're not going to be able to do the project. So what we're saying is that we're kind of squeezing the last bit of juice out of the orange, but we have to monitor this very closely, that if there was a downturn that happens this winter, there are some projects that we would either not be able to do or defer until the following year. So I think that's, you're leaving them on the books that you want to do the projects. We're going to do these projects unless there's a revenue downturn. And if there's a revenue downturn, then we know there's $2.1 million worth of projects we're going to have to defer. That's what we're saying. Is that based on the capital improvement plan on how you? Yes, it would be best. So we will be monitoring. And there are some projects in your CIP that wouldn't be constructed until the end of next year during your budget process, or there's a few projects that we would look at that are accumulating funds for the following year. So those are the projects we would be looking for as the year two projects to defer is what we're putting on there. But it just simply means that if there's a downturn, the project that you thought you were going to do next summer may not happen next summer, or the project you thought you were going to do in 2025 may have to go to 2026. But that's just the reality of, so you wouldn't be as secure in some of those projects. And I would advise you exactly which ones we would target should we get into that economic situation. February is typically the time that we kind of true up, at least for that first half of the year. Where are you are? How much money did we actually collect at the end of this year? And that's your opportunity to make those adjustments. Thank you, Mr. Donaldson. Commissioner Smith. In addition, in some years there are projects that for whatever reason just don't happen. Yes. I mean, as much as we may approve a whole litany of things that are going to happen, they just don't. And they go into fund balance, or the portion of that budget goes into fund balance, and then we reallocate that at what time of year? Usually in February, because that's the time that the clerk is finished with their auditing of the numbers. Yeah, the books are closed. Then the books are closed. Because that's usually in the millions. Yeah. Thank you. I also think that sometimes the percentages do come in higher. I want to let our residents at home be assured that we, as a board policy, maintain a 10% reserve. Can you show the reserves slide? It's over 20 minutes. So it's not like we're, you know, biting our nose to spite our face here. And during the presentation earlier today, when commissioners talk about, look, you know, this employer, that employer doing this, our departments came in, for the folks that might not have been following along all day, relatively flat. Although there were increases, they were for the same things that everyone's, departments that utilize equipment that needs gasoline, state-mandated, unfunded requirements for increases of insurance and retirement and other insurance issues for property that we're insuring. You know, if your homeowner's insurance went up, we insure things. Equipment is more expensive. The contracts are more expensive. So that's where these increases came from. The items that we just sliced off here to bring it down from 4.5 to 2.6 so far is nothing that is going to catastrophically affect our personnel or our operations. Mr. Donaldson? Yeah, just two things. I know the slide that Jennifer had up there, one of the complications of county budget for you all in the reserves is a good illustration of it, is those funds cannot easily be moved from one category to another. So in your business account, you may have, be able to spend the money on personnel as you do on equipment, but a utilities dollar can't be spent anywhere other than a utilities or gas tax fund. And so this summary does not include all of the different legal requirements on how those dollars can be spent. So where we are right at this point is any other further cuts are likely to require either a significant project that's been a priority or a program or a facility that needs to be done. So I just want to, we can certainly go further, but it's not going to be easy. Not that what has been reduced is certainly significant already. And those farbs are basic how we deal with maintenance, you know, replacing an air conditioner or a piece of playground equipment that's rusted that needs to be replaced. You know, instead of replacing it, it will be, you know, ground and painted, you know, and, you know, saved for another year. So that's just, you know, just want to remind you that that's where we are at this point. True. However, it's not that we eliminated the farbs in the categories. We shaved them. So if there's a rusty playground, there's still money to necessarily replace it. This would be things that might be towards the, those are like rainy day funds for repairs that you could potentially have to make. Agreed. So I guess the question to my colleagues is this. You've seen what we've shaved here. You've had an opportunity to review your binders. You've had an opportunity to meet with staff. What level of comfort do you feel with what you've heard today, what you're seeing here on this screen, the total millage countywide and MSTU, excluding commissioner district MSTUs and the special district, would this has a 2.648% increase. If you are looking for more than that, this is the time you would say it so that we can start to either look for those decreases and reductions or, but I was just going to say what we could do is we need to take a mid or a late afternoon break for closed captioning. We can take a little 10-minute break and let you think on that, or would you like to go right now? But this then brings us back to where we were in 2021, correct? Yeah, no, I think that's a good, thank you for reminding you, commissioner. So the millage that this would set would be slightly lower than the fiscal year 21 millage, which is also lower than the fiscal year 22 millage. So this would take you back. Had you kept your tax rate level the same in 2021, this would be the equivalent budget today. So that's the, my comment earlier is that, you know, this board has always funded what you need, and when you, instead of carrying on and holding on to money, you could have held on to all of that last year, but you did not. You did a tax reduction to give the taxpayers back some money, which you did a great job, and unfortunately the inflation caught up to us this year, and you're having to do a slight millage increase, but it still is the same, like I said, as you said, commissioner, of what it was in 2021. And actually that's found on page 52 of your book, if you want to look at how that comes out. It has the millage rates, the total countywide millage rate of 6.7618, and I think this puts it at 6.7615, correct? Yeah. Oh. It's a tax on the last time. Rounding, yeah. There's a rounding, yeah. Yes. Thank you. So that's just the table that shows how our millage has been, and so if you, this reduction takes it back to that FY21 millage rate. Ms. Merle and Ms. Manning, if we had, if we were looking to bring it down to a 0% increase, how much, what's the dollar amount to do that? I think $24.5 million, get you there. $22. $22 now, right? To get, to take $2.64? Yeah. You just spent. Because you already took, you already take, you've taken out. Well, what's, like $20 million. Because we would have to. You took out $5 million. Okay, so $10 million. We were, I was thinking of getting it to the rollback rate, sorry. No. If you were to go to a constant to eliminate the shave off the 2.6. Then you'd have to take out another. Let me just finish. Let's get another 5.8. Let me see. If you took 5.8 out to go from 4.58 to 2.6, how many more millions would you have to take out to go from 2.64 to zero? Looks like another 6 million. Keep moving that thing around. Oh, I did 12. Is it 12 million? That's number one to zero. Well, that's too much. Is it 12? Do 10. Thank God for that spreadsheet, huh? Yeah. In the old days, we used to do it by hand. Yeah. On Green Bar. It'd be like 5 million. That's 6 million. Yeah, there we go. 7. 7. 7 is not enough. 7.5. What the hell? Yeah, so it's going to be like 7, 8 or 7, 9. Between 7 and 8, 7 and a half and 8 million. Yeah. Keep the knowledge. And it's something to be considered. Let's take a break and we'll come back at 4 o'clock. Final afternoon closed captioning break. It's July 17, 2023. We are at the closing portion of our Board of County Commissioners budget workshop meeting. And where we left off was we had taken some deductions off of the tentative budget that would bring us to a 2.649% millage increase. Today, this would only be a matter of what our function here today is to set a millage. We will then come back to two budget hearings in September. Just one? Two. Two. Yeah, and that's when we would actually adopt the official budget. Today, we're setting a millage that we can lower in the future, but we cannot raise prior to the two budget hearings in September. So, to my colleagues, I would say, as the question I had asked as we were before the break, what do you think about 2.649% of a millage increase? If that number doesn't work for you, do you have suggestions on what we can do to continue to cut and shave? If that's using a knife to do that, or we can also make some changes through the process into September. But how do you want to move forward now? Commissioner Smith. Just a more practical matter. Can you both or one share with us what that equates to? What does a – so we'd have to reduce it by 2.6, right? Yes. What does that equate to in dollars? This isn't – it would be an additional 7.95, 7,950. No, less than that. No. Yes, 7.95. No. No. Can you restate your question? I'm sorry? Can you restate your question for me? I think I'm – Can you restate the question? It's like a game show. To get it to zero, are you saying? To get it to zero, the dollar equivalent is how much? 7.95. No. Didn't I just say that? Okay, thank you, ma'am. 7.95 million. 5 million. Yeah. Thank you. I just – Yes. That's what I was saying, an additional 7.95. That's how much it would be reduced by to get to zero. Mm-hmm. Sorry. Is this just in? Yeah. That's W5 or 4. 4-1, yes. Mm-hmm. That never happened. And to recap, that two point – that the millage that we are looking tentatively at this year is on par or less than it was in 2021 and 2022. Correct. That's correct. And in order to get to a 3-2 vote, we'd have to eliminate how much more out of the budget? It'll be a total of – it will be a total of 24.5 million. We only reduced it by 5.8 million, so we would have to do another 17 – 18.7 million. 18.7 million. Yeah. Or a 3-2. It's going to add up to what we just did. Yeah, that would be – A big number. Catastrophic in the administrators. That's what we would have to be. With the percentages that we just did, the percentages don't add up to me for that 24 million. So you would still – the net result would be is that there would still be growth in your tax base between – in terms of the voting. So, in other words, if you looked at the amount of growth that you had, which is 12 percent, what the legislature is saying is that if you had somewhere around 8 percent growth, you would be – and kept the millage flat, then you would have been able to do a 3-2 vote. Because of the 12 percent growth and that not being new construction, you actually – it's the percent over a rollback rate. The rollback is as if you kept the actual revenues at the exact same as last year. And so the legislature is allowing you to take some growth, but only a certain percent, and that percentage is less than 12. And so, therefore, in order for you to have more than that percentage, it requires a 4-1 vote, and then you go over another amount, it goes to a 5-0 vote. So just – I think in your original budget at 31 million, right, minus 25? Okay, so – So then you – that gives you the idea is that the legislature is saying that you can only use $6 million of your – of your growth, not the – The whole – Because you didn't – Not the whole – 22. Because we did not have population. By – by their formula. By their formula, yes. That's an interesting incentive. You know, it's – I think most communities would never see or even understood that this was buried within the formula, except you would have to be a slow-growth community to actually experience it. Well, I guess when we hear about 1,100 people a day moving to Florida and that Tallahassee and the administration in Tallahassee is trying to even out the population increases so that they're not all in Jacksonville, Tampa, Fort Lauderdale, Miami, the villages, that they can sort of stick and carrot you with – you're either going to participate in the plan, or if you don't, then they create situations like this. You're almost being penalized by the drastic increase in property values. Well, you're being – Well – Unilized because you didn't grow. Yes. They've increased – Commissioner Hurd. Well, let's begin an exercise on eliminating $20 million additional dollars from our budget. Let's see how palatable that is. Start giving me some examples. Where are you going to hit first? Well, I mean, as your administrator, I would, you know, completely eviscerate your CIP. You would? That's the – I think if you look at all the other services, there's nothing to take from libraries unless you want to start closing libraries down. You heard from your Parks and Rec Department, who actually was the only one that's able to go with a zero change in budget, then you're eliminating programs. What portion of your budget in public works is – as ad valorem would be mosquito control. So if you want to eliminate – Coastal. Coastal, yeah. Or your coastal budget. And so I don't know of any programs that you have under your purview that are – have any options to remove that aren't already level of service and necessary for your public. The capital program are things that you could defer, you know, building a park. Wojcac Park is an item that is new for next year and all the others. But even eliminating all of the new money you put in the CIP isn't enough. As we looked at your constitutional officers and all those, if the $22 million in new ad valorem wasn't enough to – even going just to that, you have to go less than that, then to fully fund the constitutional officers, you have to actually go into your existing budget beyond taking – in other words, you're taking negative growth. You will have to shrink. You'll have to admit that any cost of increases to insurance and everything else will have to be absorbed by removing services. Okay. And even if we took a large chunk away from the sheriff's budget, he could then appeal that budget to the – to the governor or to the legislature? The cabinet. The cabinet. And I'm pretty sure, if I remember correctly, historically the cabinet leans primarily in favor of the budget request of the professionals in law enforcement versus the elected civilians of the BOCC. And Jennifer, if you could put on your original slide that showed the – where the ad valorem was – the growth, the tax base growth was going. That was it. Yeah, those two slides. You had the two tables. One – no, not the percentage. It just had the actual values. You had the CIP. Next slide. The next one. Yeah, so if we go back to that one. So if you look at – go back to the CIP. So this represents the new money. So – and not all of this is general fund, but the ones that have the general fund is parks at $3.5 million, of which we've already taken $1 million to, right? Public buildings was at $4.5 million, in which you've already taken over $1 million there, and law enforcement. So if you – I think of the – so that there's another roughly, what, $8 million left in that, I think, something like that. So you have $8 million in funds into your CIP. Now, we would look at those, and you'll see in the CIP that those projects are largely projects that have been in planning for some time. And a lot of those funds went to make up the cost increases to do those. But if you were looking for funds, that only gets you eight. You'd have to do it two more times. Mm-hmm. Or almost. Yeah. Yeah. So then – and then the only other place to do that is to actually go into your operation budgets or reduce the CIP all the way, to go into projects that you've already been funding with reoccurring funds to eliminate your CIP. And what if – you know, that – it's not like you could get halfway there. You'd have to get all the way there. So there's no second place. It's all or nothing. So even if we looked to take some money out of reserves to pay down a one-time thing of lowering their responsibility, it wouldn't work because you'd have to take $20 million of it. It's not getting to $14 million. It's zero or $20, correct? Yes. So you're either not climbing the mountain or you're getting all the way to the peak. So my recommendation would be to stop now and adopt a village to think about it. You always have the ability to reduce it. But if you want to go further, we can. You know, we're here to – That has an old number on it. There it is. Okay. Commissioner Hurd, I appreciate that talking exercise. People need to hear that, that it's not like we're sitting up here just so. Motion? Do you want something? Yeah. I would move the tentative total millage – you want the bottom line, right? Sure. Total millage countywide and MSTU, excluding commission districts and special districts. You don't want that to exclude that. You want that – We already did a motion for that one. Okay. Try one more time. I would move total millage countywide, MSTU, excluding commission districts and special districts, 2.649 percent. Right? Yes. Second. Okay. We have a motion by Commissioner Smith, as he had stated, seconded by Commissioner Jenkins. All those in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed? Opposed. That motion carries three – that motion fails, 3-2, with commissioners Hetherington and Hurd dissenting. The reason that it failed is it has to be a 4-1, correct? Yeah. At the very least. For at least September, we need 4-1. Yeah, so technically – We want to get it now so we don't have to go through that exercise. Understood. I'm just stating it so everyone else knows. Can you repeat that? You said you don't need it today. You need it by December? Yeah, but if we don't get it today, then it's not going to work because it's not going to change. Right. Yeah, so unless – you know, so the statement is correct. You could set your tentative budget as it is today with your 3-2 vote, but in September, when you vote for the individual general fund category, you will need a 4-1 vote based upon the budget as it is this second. Commissioner Smith? I think I understood that. So you technically today don't need a 4-1 vote. That's correct. So we just had a 3-2. Well, that's not how I heard it going into this. I had not heard it that way. I had heard it the other way. It's important to know, and the councilor can step in if she needs to correct me, is that this is a tentative hearing. I mean, you're setting a tentative budget, and simple majorities will actually work for everything. But we all know that come September, that when you do the actual adoption of the budget, the vote will require a 4-1. And that will require 7-point-something million? 18.7 extra million for a simple majority. You've got to say that louder so everyone at home can hear you. So in order to get a simple majority vote, we would need to cut an additional $18.7 million out of the budget. Okay. Well, there you have it. And Mr. Donaldson is suggesting that that needs to come all out of the CIP. Yes. Why not operations? Since that's my objection to the budget in the first place, is the operational budget is bloated in two departments. And you'll have separate votes on different ones. It's simply because the operation budget has been approved, and it's mostly staff-intensive, and you'll be doing a reduction in the level of service. So this is the capital budget is the least impactful to your existing level of service as presented by your departments. Commissioner Smith. So in September when we do the 27 or 32 votes that we do in our final budget adoption, every one of those categories gets broke up. And at what point in there do you need a supermajority versus a simple majority on those votes? Okay. So if we go by what we have right now, we would need four votes for the countywide, at least four votes for the countywide. For the millage of 6.7615. Fire rescue, MSTU, at 2.7002 would need a 3-2. Parks and recreation at 0.1642 would need a 3-2. And then stormwater and roads combined would need a 4-1. So if what I think I heard Commissioner Hurd just say, and Commissioner Hurd, correct me if I'm wrong, your concern is the value or the cost of staffing in our, what fund is it? Well, it's public safety. Public safety. 18% increases. Okay, so in that number, it can still be a 3-2 vote in fire rescue, correct? Correct. And those that don't want to vote for fire or rescue don't have to? Correct. You could even take today's vote if you'd like and separate it out by countywide and then the separate MSTUs if you'd like for clarity. Because the countywide doesn't have that in there. Correct. Your general fund is essentially all your county departments, like administration, general services, the sheriff. Capital improvements is the CIP, and then coastal and health care are what comprise the countywide. So come September, there are options. It's not a simple 4-1 or 5-0 vote come September. No. There are at least five, as you just described it, or six different categories of choices that will either be a 4-1 or a 3-2. Correct. And there's not a roll-up at the end. It's all separate votes. It's all separate. Separate. So today, at least as I understand it, tell me if I'm wrong, the tentative millage rate can be set with a 3-2 vote. Come September, you can separate. Well, we will separate those votes anyway because we separate 26 different motions. And those that don't like those department increases can vote against those department increases. But I thought at the end, when you go through all those sheets, we then always did do a... We don't. We don't? Still got to have a 4-1. Nope. No matter what, at the end of the day, it's still 4-1. No, we don't have... It's still by the countywide. It's still per taxing authority. So you'll adopt the millage, and then you'll adopt the budget associated with that millage. Simple, yeah. Right, but you just said... But no total. Here's $643 million. Yeah, we're not... Right, so but each one of those categories gets a separate vote. Correct. And some of those categories can be a 3-2 vote. Correct. But a couple of... Most of them will be that way. So your utilities budget, all of the innumerable funds that are out there, it's these categories here using ad form tax base. And in particular, the two is the general fund, which is 78% of your... No, the general fund doesn't have in there one of the votes that you know won't get. I say you know. We know won't get. Yeah, so that's kind of the big one in the room is the general fund. And that's... It has all of those services aggregated together that you can't pull apart. As you mentioned earlier, it would be nice if you could pull out whether the sheriffs or the constitutionals and have a separate, but you're unable to do that. Right, but someone... I'm trying to be as generic as possible. Someone could vote for that, knowing that they also, and have in the past, voted against the category that they don't care for. So you could still have a four-to-one vote with this general fund voting against a department or a category that you don't want. You're making an assumption there. I'm going on history, case history. I wouldn't use that. Okay. I'm just saying, I mean, I appreciate what you're doing, but we're kicking the can down the road to a potential real situation where you won't get there in September either, because we're not going to start the whole budget processing over. You don't have any tricks that you're keeping from us for September, correct, Mr. Donaldson? No. Ed, I'm talking purely voting. I understand. Three to two versus four to one. I don't know if you get four to one. But you don't need four to one for the whole thing. But the ones you do need it for, you might not get. Well, but it won't have fire rescue in it. It's not only a matter of that for some, I would guess. I think we're confusing the general public. Well, we're having, you know, some of this is meant for the general public to get every concept. The rest of it is for us to get an opportunity to speak to each other. Look, I can't speak for Commissioner Jenkins or Commissioner Smith for making the motion and seconding the motion. None of us are in favor or looking forward to increasing the tax for our residents or ourselves. You know, we started this process a couple of months ago, several, listening to our staff and department heads and Mr. Donaldson and our members of the budget and went item by item, asked the questions, found where we could. I'm sure most of us asked the same questions. What else can you cut? Where can you find these things? Do we really need to do this? Is this something we need to do now? Well, we've had an opportunity to negotiate firefighter contracts. We voted for them. You know, I was, I've said it a couple of times, I was very surprised by the initial numbers that were asked. They were much higher than have ever been asked for in the past. But when it was explained to me, and I've had the opportunity to work with the chief, with members of the public that, at least in my district, invite the chief to come and speak to the public and explain it to me, I, as a representative of my constituents, understand that those dollar amounts, although high, have to happen or you launch into a whole nother problem with retention and recruitment. And that is a real problem. The sheriff came this morning, I thought laid it out pretty clear, shaved where he could. You know, it's just, it is what it is. We were elected to represent our public. And, you know, all we can do is hear information from the people that offer it and decide, do we agree with these numbers and they're valid or not. Leadership, in my mind, is making a motion and a second and then voting for something that is uncomfortable for us. But the public sent us here to do all of their homework for them. We lay it out very clearly for the people that are interested. But a 2.64 percent increase, which I don't like personally either, I feel is a reasonable increase. I think the, each department explained, hey, I need to add this person or that. Now, I agree with what Commissioner Hetherington said. A couple of those FTEs, we probably could have pushed down the road. But the clear point here is, is that even if every FTE that we debated today, up or down, the $85,000 for Special Olympics, up or down, means nothing. We're talking about finding an additional $20 million or doing a 2.64 percent increase and getting to the votes. The reason, which is weird, for the first time ever we needed to have four, is because Tallahassee has worked some angles that if you don't continue to grow your communities to a level that they feel comfortable with, they're going to make you get four or even 5-0 votes. And so, yeah, I don't want to vote for an increase today. But I can, with a straight face, speak to my constituents, either in groups or individually, and say this is the best that we could come up with under the set of circumstances that are here. No one wants to give up any services. I get that. For me, the ones that I want that are non-negotiable is public safety. And then after public safety, it would be flooding. And then after flooding, it's probably environmental. And then you can work it down from there. If, you know, if we were in a recession like we were in 2008 and 9 and 10, when we were closing parks and we were closing libraries and we were furloughing people and not hiring and shaving people's benefits, you know, the percentages that people had to pay for insurance and all the rest of it, changing out the PTO, that's because we were in like a really dire set of circumstances. Times are tough, but we're not in the depression or great recession that we were in then. Revenues are up. If our coffers are appropriately, you know, filled so that if some kind of major catastrophe came our way, we could deal with it. I mean, I don't want to be up here over-talking this, but, I mean, this is what we're here for, to make these difficult decisions to represent the public. So if you either agree with our staff that they brought forward the best potential budget that they could for us to agree to, or you don't. You know, there's politics involved, I get it, but, you know, if anything, the three, one, three, and five, if we're going to talk politics, whether it's the three of us or someone else, those are the seats that if this is a politically detrimental decision to make, I could potentially be seeking re-election, and I don't care because we still need to do the budget, and I value the budget that was presented by our staff. And then the big nut is fire rescue and sheriffs. We've known that for months. I don't have a second, I'm not, have any second thoughts on what we've done for that. Our public will, would be comfortable with those decisions because if we shave them down, and God forbid something catastrophic happens, whether it was the result of a budget change or not, our public would look at us and say, how did you let that happen? How did a deputy, God forbid, get killed? How did fire rescue personnel get killed, you know, or some catastrophe? Now, hopefully it'll never, ever happen, but we need to organize our community in case it ever did. So, if you want to, gentlemen, go with a 3-2 and hold our breath until September. I don't know if we're sending the proper message to the public, but I don't, if you, the decision can't be made today, then it's not going to be, I don't assume any different in September. And the other problem, and my final word, Commissioner Jenkins, is I don't understand how three of us have to prop up two others, that there's almost a mindset, not so much two, there's a mindset that someone gets a pass. The budget gets approved, everybody gets what they want, everything goes smooth, but someone just historically gets a pass. That's not ideally fair. Commissioner Jenkins. I was trying not to be like this, but we know Commissioner Hurd is not going to vote for fire rescue nor the Sheriff's Department, so we know where she stands. So, Commissioner Hetherington, to get your support on this budget, to make it a 4-1, what's it going to take? What are you looking for? Where do you want to cut? This is your deal. Commissioner, thank you. As I started at the beginning of the day, and I've had these conversations with staff, you know, we sat in a room and I certainly wasn't comfortable with a 4.7, and as I started at the beginning of the day, these are numbers that affect real people. I mean, the insurance is a major problem, which we can't control, right? We have zero control over that. Legislature has control over it. So, or maybe even that, not the private sector. But I have to think about holistically, what do our residents, what can they bear? And what I've talked to people is they certainly can't bear 4.7. And 2.6 is a lot in a year where we've got a solid waste increase. You know, we had to do the public safety because in the long run, if we didn't do the retention, it was going to cost us more. So, I have no second thoughts about what we have done with public safety. I think we're going to have to somehow get this under 2%. And what's your suggestion on how to get it? And we did this last year. I think it's a terrible strategy. I don't want to eviscerate the, you know, we might have to defer things, though. I certainly don't think that it is a complete CIP hack. But I think staff needs to go, and if it goes 3-2 today, they need to come back and present any other options they have on the table, if they have any, and if they're small. And hopefully we can get below 2%. But I'd like to see an effort to try to get us there because this is not going to be acceptable to the public. And I'm telling you, all in the name of affordable housing we've been talking about all year, this is going to put people out of their homes. Fixed-income seniors, they can't bear all of the increases. And that's not all up to us. I'm just saying it's going to happen. They cannot bear the increases. So, we're going to start to have foreclosures. They're going to be out of their house. And bring that to a completely different conversation on affordable housing. So, where's 0.7 bring us? Another $2 million. $2 million. Where do you want to go? Mr. Donaldson, do you have any suggestions on $2 million? So, we'd go in the CIP and look at the, I think the first thing to look at would be the CIP and especially the projects where we've added. Bring it up on the screen if you could. Yeah. How did I do this? So, dark. Can you make it? Yeah, yeah. Okay. So, before we get started, I'll just show that the areas, this table lists the department, the particular project. Make it straight if you could. Yes. And then the far right column is the actual increase. So, some of these already had an existing revenue. So, the first place is what we already looked at before. So, the million dollars for any, or for timer powers is listed there. So, that's no longer an item to be considered. And so, all these numbers on the right represent potentials to eliminate projects that we added during the CIP process. And I'm just going to pull it up real quick. As you can see, like, library has a very small amount. Things that fall under, like fire rescue, would not affect the general fund. So, that $505,000, while you could eliminate it, would not affect the issue that we just talked about. Can you put a dot or a cross out the ones that we've already done? Yes, I will do that. And then public buildings is the other significant area. And Sean is still in the room. As we get into some of those, we can talk about that. But that's, so, Stephanie is going to go through and just cross out the ones that are already gone. It takes a village. Sheriff Farb was $620. Countywide HVAC was $100. Countywide building envelope was $100. You probably have to. No. No, they can't see what you're doing because. No, because this is the license. Yes, we'll have to go back in, so. We have the sheet? We have the sheet in our book? No. I'm sorry? We could, if you want to take a quick break, I could make copies of this so you could each, you want to. No. Good. Another break? Yeah, we can, I don't, I don't think we need a break. Yeah, I don't think we need a break either. Just cross them out. Yeah, just eliminate them. And so those are the three principal areas where we added new ad valorem, and so out of that. And then we replace 2.1, remember? So that's the difference. Jennifer, keep moving the page down so that we can see what's on the second, the bottom half of the sheet. Okay, the bottom half, it doesn't, those aren't. Oh, those aren't, those aren't general funds? Non-general funds. Okay. All right, so zoom it in again, if you could, please, and go back to the top so we can see what's gone. So you have the. But you've got to move them over so we can see what they are. Yeah, I'll try to control the mouse here. So under, so items that have remained available would be park, boat ramp renovations, Indian Riverside Park, Wojcac Park at 850. We're looking for a total of 2 million out of this, correct? Two million. And then the FARB, which we've already remained, is 250, so there's only a half a million left there. And so if, and then Phipps Park FARB is at 150. Equipment, countywide golf subsidies is only at 42. So. No two million there. The best you could squeeze out is a couple hundred thousand. And then scroll down again. And then we'll move it up to public buildings. And so the countywide building envelope FARB and the countywide HVAC FARB are both new identified by General Services. They're now at 400,000 each. And so I would suggest that we want to keep at least half of those at 250 each, the generator FARB. All right. So can you start a tally some, or we will then? So now I, again, this is not ideal, but this is what we're working on. So the first one is an HVAC FARB. You said an additional 250? No, I'd say the, so it would be additional 150 each. So. Oh, you mean, oh, yeah, yeah, I see what you're saying. So, so that's the HVAC FARB and the countywide. Countywide building envelope FARB. Okay. The envelope and the HVAC. So an additional 300K. Right. 1.7 left. Commissioner Hurd. Yeah. I'm not interested in decimating the county budget any longer. So we can, we can stop this nonsense, but I'm really tired of people racking up a bill and then refusing to pay for it. What else do we have? What other CIPs that are not public buildings or parks? We can stop. I'm yelling uncle. Thank you, commissioner. So you will support the budget as submitted or where we are. Thank you. Thank you. If we can have a new fresh motion. You put that back up for me, the one that has the language in it, Stephanie, or Don, whichever, that one. So I would move the total millage countywide MSTU including, I'm sorry, total millage countywide and MSTU excluding commission district MSTUs and special districts of 2.649%. Second. Thank you. Can I ask a question, Ms. Manning? Have you reviewed incremental fund balance dollars? And normally we get a rebate or a big check from the tax collector. I don't remember her coming forward this year. Did we get that money already? No, we usually don't get that until the end of September. Okay. But I mean, the incremental fund balance and money from the tax collector, wouldn't that sort of put us in the neighborhood of some of these numbers that we would need? No, because I already estimated what she would probably return to us. So that's part of your numbers then? Yes, yes. And the incremental fund balance? Right, yes. Okay. So those are not two rocks that had not been on? Right, yes. I didn't estimate any more than I had budgeted because I already increased it over what she That was the orange that we squeezed earlier. Okay, I just wanted to ask the question so that we make sure that we're reviewing everything that we can be reviewing. Just for clarity, that was included in the five-point, the original reduction earlier. Yes. That was at 2.180, yes. Thank you. Okay. So to clarify, we have a motion by Commissioner Smith for the acceptance of a total millage countywide in MSTU, excluding commission district MSTUs and special districts, and the increase is 2.649%. It was seconded by Commissioner Jenkins. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Opposed. The motion carries four to one with Commissioner Hetherington dissenting. What else do you need us to do now? Is that it? That is it for now. Thank you very much, Commissioners, and I'd like to also thank my staff. They work very diligently at this document. I would like to echo your comments for all staff, all Martin County staff. Our residents can be proud and reassured that our staff is delivering the level of services that we require and expect at the most reasonable price possible. Our next budget hearing is Tuesday, September 12th at 5.05, and then again Tuesday, September 26th at 5.05. Our next commission meeting is August 8th, which we will also be hearing from representatives of the Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council, which will give us an update and sort of an explanation of how the Senate Bill 102 or Live Local law will affect us as a community. And I would now take 5.05 public comment if anyone from the public is looking to address us. Now would be the time, seeing none. If any of the commissioners have any comments, we won't be meeting again until August 8th, seeing none. That is the end of our meeting. Thank you very much.