Board of County Commissioners on 2026-07-13 9:00 AM - FY26/27 Budget Workshop - Jul 13, 2026

13, 2026 Board of County Commission meeting. This is our budget hearing, our first budget hearing. Please join us for a moment of silence followed by the Pledge of Allegiance. Thank you. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. There are two presets today. Public comment will be taken at 9.05 and public comment will be taken at the end of the agenda. There are no additional items. Is there a motion to approve the agenda? I'll move approval of the agenda. There's a motion and a second. Any objections? That motion passes unanimously. Would anyone from the public like to address this? I do not have any request to speak for them. Then we will start on our fiscal year 2026-27 budget workshop. We'll start off with the constitutional officers. We'll start with the sheriff. Commissioner, I was just going to introduce real quick as we start this process. Ms. Merle and I put together a budget that essentially keeps our millages flat. Our focus is on service. You'll hear that theme throughout the day. In terms of what we do, it's important to know from our taxpayers and certainly the constitutional amendment on all the different things that we do. And you'll see that throughout today's presentations. And look forward to working with you on this workshop on any amendments that you may desire to pursue. Thank you. Thank you. Ms. Merle, want to do an overview first? Yes, I'll do the overview first. Good morning, Chair and Commissioner. Stephanie Merle, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, here to present to you the fiscal year 2027 budget. This budget represents months of collaboration between county departments, our constitutional officers, the Office of Management and Budget, and county administration. It is a balanced financial plan that provides funding for the services and responsibilities of county government while maintaining the county's established financial policies and long-term planning practices. The proposed budget outlines the financial resources needed to carry out the services and responsibilities of Martin County government during the upcoming fiscal year. Funding is allocated to support departmental operations, public infrastructure, statutory responsibilities, and other programs authorized by the board. Today's presentation will provide an overview of the proposed budget and the services and functions it supports. So today's workshop begins with an overview of the budget development process before reviewing the county's financial picture, tax base, revenues, expenditures, and major budget drivers. We'll then move into each constitutional officer and county department budget, highlighting the services provided to our community and discussing any significant operational or capital changes before asking the board to establish the tentative millage rates. This workshop is required by Florida Statute 125.74, which requires the county administrator to prepare and submit a balanced operating and capital budget to the board for consideration. The document before you today is a working budget. The purpose of today's workshop is to review that proposal, receive board direction, answer questions, and make any necessary revisions before establishing tentative millage rates. If necessary, the workshop can continue tomorrow, July 14th. So a little bit about the Martin County budget timeline. The county's budget process is a year-round effort. Development begins months in advance with updates to the capital improvement program, followed by departmental budget requests, revenue forecasting, and review of operational needs. Once the property appraiser certifies the taxable values on July 1st, staff finalizes the proposed budget and calculates the millage options available to the board. Today's workshop is just another step in that process before the public hearings are scheduled in September. The development of the county's annual budget follows a structured process guided by Florida statutes, including the requirements established through the truth in millage or trim process. These requirements provide a framework for transparency, public participation, and accountability throughout the budget cycle. Florida law requires that budgets be balanced, meaning that anticipated revenues must equal planned expenditures. Deficit budgeting is not permitted with local county governments. The budget must account for all expected revenues, expenditures, reserves, and available fund balances to provide a complete picture of the county's financial position. Finally, the budget must provide the resources necessary to deliver county services while maintaining responsible financial management, accountability, and transparency for residents. So the FY27 budget at a glance, this slide provides an overview of the major themes reflected in the fiscal year 27 budget. The proposed millage rate remains unchanged from the prior year, while the budget continues to focus on maintaining the current level of services provided to residents. The majority of investments included in the proposed budget are focused on core community priorities, including public safety, infrastructure needs, and continued maintenance and protection of county assets. The budget also includes two new board positions, each designed to support operational needs, improve efficiency, and strengthen cybersecurity and public records capabilities. And additionally, the FY27 budget continues the county's longstanding approach of maintaining strong financial reserves and conservative debt levels. These practices provide financial stability and help position the county to respond to future emergencies, economic uncertainty, and long-term needs. So a question many residents ask is, what exactly does county government do? Florida law assigns counties significant responsibilities that protect public health, safety, and welfare. Many of these responsibilities are mandatory, including funding the constitutional officers, the court facilities, emergency management, inmate medical care, Medicaid contributions, veteran services, public health partnerships, planning and zoning, and enforcing the building code. And in addition to those legal responsibilities, the county operates 16 specialized departments that maintain roads, parks, libraries, environmental programs, public buildings, technology systems, utilities, and emergency services. And this budget is just the financial plan or the mathematical summation that allows those services to be delivered every day. FY27 budget development. The FY27 budget reflects the board's direction to maintain current service levels. This budget fully funds constitutional officers' requests and mandatory state obligations, while limiting increases to contractual commitments, unavoidable inflationary pressures, and essential operating needs. In this budget, county departments were directed to maintain current budget levels, with the exception of those items that could not be absorbed within their current operating budgets. Many departments maximize current line item budgets by reallocating within their respective departments, based on the most current needs and trends of each division. So, FY27 budget highlights what changed and what didn't. The FY27 tentative budget reflects the changing cost of delivering the same level of service to residents, with no changes to existing service requirements. Many of the budget increases are associated with inflationary impacts on goods and services, contractual obligations, employee benefits, Florida retirement system, contribution rates, and other required operating costs. The proposed budget continues to maintain current service levels, while keeping the county millage rate unchanged. The budget includes two additional board positions that support cybersecurity and public record services, and continues the county's practice of maintaining financial reserves for emergencies, economic and legislative uncertainty, and long-term financial stability. So, how do we budget? Our budget utilizes a line item incremental budgeting approach, which takes the previous year's adopted budget and uses it as a base for the new budget. Non-recurring budget requests, such as a one-time piece of equipment, are deducted from the base budget. OMB and departments carefully monitor the revenues and expenses of the base budget, and make line item adjustments or reallocations as necessary to maintain the current level of service as well as identify efficiency opportunities. These adjustments include contractual and or mandated obligations of current county programs and services. And what line item incremental budgeting does is provide stability and predictability of county services and prevents drastic fluctuations in service level and budgetary needs. So, here's a little snapshot of our current year revenue collections through June 30th, which represents 75% of the fiscal year. Current revenue collections continue to perform or outperform as expected. Property tax collections are in line with budget expectations. Investment earnings remain strong, and enterprise operations continue generating revenues consistent with their projections. Monitoring these revenue trends throughout the fiscal year allows staff to make informed financial decisions while maintaining responsible reserve levels. So, a little bit about Martin County's economic landscape. While inflation has slowed for consumers, local governments continue facing significantly higher costs for many of the goods and services necessary to provide public services and maintain public infrastructure. While the general CPI or the Consumer Price Index since 2020 has shown an increase of around 23% nationally, South Florida and local government items such as construction materials, chemicals, utilities, fuel, maintenance contracts, and equipment have increased well above general consumer inflation, ranging between 35% and 65% increases and even more for specialized equipment and materials, which departments will elaborate on in their presentations. These cost pressures directly affect the cost of providing public services. But despite significant inflationary increases since 2020, the proposed FY27 budget maintains the current FY26 millage rate, which still remains 3.5% lower than the 2020 millage rate. Through continued operational efficiencies in award-winning financial policies. This chart shows the 2026 taxable values as provided by the property appraiser on July 1st. The county's tax base is the total taxable value of property throughout Martin County. This includes TPP, residential, industrial, commercial. This year, the preliminary taxable value is approximately $41.8 billion, which is an increase of 6.38% over last year. According to our Martin County property appraiser, most of this growth comes from new construction and continued increases in taxable values as Florida's assessment limitations catch up with previous years of market appreciation, or also known as the recapture rule. So, a little bit about our FY27 sources of revenue. The county's budget is funded through a combination of revenue sources. Approximately 45% is derived from ad valorem, also known as property taxes, while the remaining 55% is generated through user fees, utility charges, grants, state-shared revenues, sales taxes, franchise fees, and other dedicated and restricted revenue sources. Many of these revenues are restricted by law and may only be used for specific purposes. The Fiscal Year 27 budget reflects an overall increase of 5.4% over Fiscal Year 2026. The FY27 budget provides funding for the wide range of services and responsibilities Martin County delivers every day. These include public safety, transportation, parks, libraries, environmental stewardship, public infrastructure, and the operational support necessary to provide those services. Every dollar in the budget is allocated to a specific program, service, or public asset. As required by law, the proposed budget is balanced with total revenues equaling total expenditures. So, a little bit about the Fiscal Year 27 ad valorem or property tax impact budget drivers. The increase in ad valorem revenue primarily supports maintaining current service levels for residents while meeting the county's statutory, contractual, and operational responsibilities. The largest portion funds constitutional officers in required state and judicial agencies, such as the Medical Examiner, Public Defender's Office, Court Administration, and the State Attorney's Office, and Guardian Ad Linum. Additional funding addresses increases in retirement contributions established by the state, employee health insurance, contractual services, capital infrastructure, community redevelopment agency obligations, and financial reserves. This budget also includes the two positions that I mentioned for cybersecurity and public records. So, where do the property tax dollars go? This graphic illustrates how the county's property tax revenues support a range of services and responsibilities provided to residents. The largest share supports public safety services, including the Martin County Sheriff's Office, fire, rescue, and ambulance services, emergency management, E-9-1-1, and communications, ocean rescue, nuclear planning, fire prevention, and the county jail. Another significant portion supports the general government operations, including county administration, all of the rest of the constitutional officers, the 19th Judicial Circuit and state agencies, as well as the maintenance of public facilities, information technology, and other support services necessary for county operations. The remaining portion supports transportation and infrastructure maintenance, environmental stewardships, parks, and libraries. Several of these functions, including public safety, emergency management, court-related responsibilities, and support for constitutional officers, are responsibilities assigned to counties under Florida law. Together, these funding allocations support the ongoing delivery of services throughout Martin County. This is a Martin County debt snapshot. Martin County continues maintaining conservative debt levels. Debt is strategically used for major long-term capital investments. Financing long-term capital projects allows the cost of these assets to be distributed over their useful life, aligning the investment with the residents who benefit from the infrastructure over time, while continuing to reduce outstanding obligations through scheduled principal payments. The county routinely evaluates its outstanding debt for opportunities to refinance or retire debt early when it's financially beneficial, helping reduce borrowing costs and maximize available resources. Maintaining low debt strengthens the county's financial position and helps preserve our favorable credit ratings, which have been most recently rated AA-plus and AA in our recent credit rating reviews. As mentioned previously, the FY27 budget includes a limited number of new positions to support operational needs and maintain current service levels. For the Board of County Commissioners, two positions are recommended network administration, network administrator to strengthen cybersecurity and technology infrastructure, and a public records assistant, which is currently a contractual staff conversion to support the timely processing of public records requests. The Sheriff's Office budget includes additional sworn and corrections positions to address operational public safety needs. Overall, staffing changes included in the proposed budget are intended to support continued service delivery while addressing identified operational requirements. So with that, my presentation is done, and I'm happy to answer questions before we move on to the Constitutionals. Questions. That's a lot. Mr. Camps. I lost the page number, but the page that has to do with inflation, like out of all the things you just talked about, to me the thing that jumped out the most was that page describing inflationary pressures. And just wondered if you could just hit that again. I think it's worth repeating. So the departments have a lot of specific examples that they're going to be presenting throughout their operational budgets, but based on a lot of the materials that we're experiencing that wouldn't be part of the regular what a consumer will go to the grocery store for, we're seeing especially janitorial supplies and even things like toilet paper. I think Sean Donahue might have that information. Toilet paper has gone up about 75%. Our own property insurance since 2020 has seen a 62% increase, and it hasn't come down. So that's the biggest thing. While inflation is slowing, we aren't seeing these prices go down, and so they remain at elevated levels of cost. So the departments will be elaborating on that, and they will have specific examples to talk to during the departmental presentations. Thank you. You're welcome. And also, is the timeline on the left seven years also? It's the same exact time. From 2020? Yes. 2020, so that's our millage rate and the cost drivers in that same 2020 to 2027 time frame. Any further questions? Thank you. No problem. We will move on to individual presentations. The first, we'll start with the constitutional officers, and we will start with the sheriff. Well, good morning, Madam Chair, and good morning, Commissioners. Thank you for indulging me with a little bit of time. As mentioned earlier, this budget presentation today is just a really small snapshot of all the work that's gone into this. In fact, the Martin County Sheriff's Office, we started in February trying to compile a budget, what we need versus what we really, really need. And these captains and majors and our CFO that's with me today have worked diligently to try to make this happen, along with a lot of our employees at the Martin County Sheriff's Office. So, again, while this may be a short presentation, there's a lot of work that's gone into this, and we've been extremely thoughtful on this. And we do appreciate working with your employees here at the county to try to make this happen. It's been a collective effort. Our CFO is going to help me navigate this today, and I think I have just a few slides, but we'll go through them, and then we can dig more into them if you wish. But our total budget request this year is $128,462,075, a percentage adjustment of 7.6%. So what are the drivers of this? 7.6% sounds like a lot, but when you get into what's actually pushing this, it's going to kind of mirror what you just heard, and that's prices that have been passed to us that are non-negotiable for us. Our first one is our previously bargained call-in wage progression that our deputies and employers are on, which is huge to us. If you remember last year, we came in, and I told you about losing a significant portion of the Martin County Sheriff's Office, the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office. And I know our fire chief was dealing with the same thing, and you as commissioners came along behind us and helped get our colas where they needed to be, and we've done extremely well in that regard. In fact, this year we've been able to hire 85 new employees, so about 12% of the Martin County Sheriff's Office has been upstaffed or replenished because of your support. But that's super crucial to us to stay inside of Palm Beach County and competitive on the Treasure Coast in order to keep our employees from jumping ship after we spend thousands of dollars to get them in the door and train them to be here and stay here. We had a surprise increase in the Florida retirement system this year. We were planning on coming in flat. The projections were flat. But then at the very end, the legislation passed a bill that gives a certain class within the FRS a 1.5% retirement benefit, COLA, for the rest of their life after they retire. Well, that cost got passed on to the taxpayers through us, and that cost us another $1.3 million that's going to have to come out of our budget. And then new positions. We are in desperate need of new positions. We had more than 20 positions initially in the budget, but when we sat down with your staff and started figuring out exactly how much money was coming into the county this year, we realized that we were not going to be able to grow the sheriff's office where we needed to be. So these positions are crucial for us. A public records position, if you look at what we've done in the past few years at the sheriff's office, we've come online with body cameras. Everything we do is a public record. Those public records coordinators, the people that sit in those back offices, have to watch every single piece of evidence and video minute by minute, and they're inundated every day with public records requests, as I know you guys are also. But that's a crucial position for us. A pretrial coordinator, for those that are in the audience that don't know what that is, pretrial release actually takes some of the pressure off of our jail, takes some of the people that couldn't bond out that are not violent offenders, that are not likely to reoffend in the community, but it takes pressure off the jail by putting them in a program where they're based on a probationary status pre the disposition of their case. So it saves us a lot of money. It saves us the daily cost of them being in jail. It's cheaper to have them out of jail, providing that they have the right structure in place. So that pretrial coordinator position, or the pretrial position, is actually a cost savings at the end. And then four new correctional deputies. We've been running at baseline in the jail for quite a period of time. Our average daily population there is 585 people, which that's a lot of people to keep hotel, wash, staff, medical, all the things that go on in the jail. And if somebody calls out sick, an employee calls out sick in the jail right now, it's automatic overtime. So you're paying for the person to be out sick plus time and a half for somebody to backfill them. So we're paying for it two and a half times. So those four positions, hopefully at the end, while on the front side, cost more money, should be a cost savings in the end. And then other things that our drivers, again, mentioned earlier by your staff, increased health insurance costs, rising costs of technology and hardware, software and equipment. I'll give you one example. Fuel. Martin County Sheriff's Office uses 1,000 gallons of fuel a day. And you know the fuel prices have now doubled. So our budget last year was blown out of the water, and we pay a significant amount of money just for fuel. And that's one small example, really, of the things that we're trying to pay for this year. Our CFO put in a budget comparison, really trying to show you that we have been fiscally thoughtful in this budget presentation. FY14, we came in wanting 41, needing really 41.5 percent of the avalorium taxes that came in. This year we came in asking for 35 percent of that. So we have been, again, careful to ask for what we need. We have good employees. If we didn't have such good employees, I'd be asking for a whole lot more money to try to offset that. But this is really, again, a short presentation based on all the work that's been done. So I will kick it to you guys, our commissioners, for questions, if you wish. Questions for the sheriff. Who sets the Florida retirement system rates? That came through the state legislation. So it's law. And it's something that we didn't get a chance to weigh in on. Again, they were projecting flat, which we were really encouraged by. And then at the last hour, they're talking about property tax reform. But then they turn around and really, they really stung us with a $1.3 million bill. And that's a recurring bill. That's going to keep going indefinitely forever. Yeah. And no property tax reform either, even though our property taxes have increased by 62 percent in the last seven years. Yes. Commissioner Campy. Thank you, Madam Chair. Sheriff, thank you for coming out and bringing your team with us, with you, to explain. Can, I appreciate the number side. Can you give us sort of like some of the daily numbers of people on the road, arrests, you know, give us like a little crime stats. I think what happens is when you do a real good job, people start to, not necessarily everyone, but some people take it for granted. Sure. We don't have crime here. I don't understand why we would have to pay as much as we are, is some of the comments that I hear. Why is the Sheriff or Fire Rescue's budget so large? We're a small county. Can you share some of what happens on a day-to-day basis with your department? I will give you a brief snapshot. So in the last year, we've answered 175,603 calls for service, 175,000 calls for service in Martin County. We worked $16 million worth of fraud. That's just one tiny department within the Martin County Sheriff's Office. But Martin County lost $16 million in fraud. We Baker Act, for those that don't know what that means, those are people that are mentally ill, that are not going to jail, but they kind of fall in the category of needing help, where we can force them to go get help. We Baker Acted 584 people. We worked 29 suicides, so these are people that actually took their own lives here in Martin County. That's one, by the way, at least every two weeks. To date this year, we've had 29 traffic fatalities. Traffic is a huge deal in Martin County. We've had a lot of issues, especially on 710, and I do appreciate you working with us to push on the state to make that road better. We've had four out there on that road alone this year. Crashes that did not result in fatalities. We worked 3,338 crashes. We made 5,188 arrests. Of those, 100 were traveling criminals coming to Martin County to take advantage of us, stealing GPS devices out of boats, doing high-end fraud, doing high-end car thefts, doing all the things that you would imagine that we deal with every day. And we average in our jail, like I already mentioned, 585 inmates a day in our jail. And that's just a very brief snapshot of a lot of work that goes on each and every day. Thank you. Commissioner Hetherington. Yes. Thank you, Sheriff, for being here and all of your staff. You said 12%. We replenish 12% of our staff. I assume that's through retirement and or vacancies. How are we doing recruiting and retaining, and how's our competitiveness with counties to our north and south? So, Commissioner, you asked me, like, three questions, so if I don't get them quite right, we'll revisit it. But last year, I came in here and did a presentation and said we're going to focus on hiring the positions that we already have budgeted but are not filled. We were desperately low. We filled 85 of those positions. That's 12% that we've hired in the last year. Most of those were not from retirement. We were having this constant turnover. People, because we were pulling from all over the country, they were coming from out of the state, they'd come to Martin County, and then they'd look over the fence, oh, Palm Beach County is just right down the road. Even though they have no idea of the dynamics and the difference that's down there, they would go down there for a few more dollars. So we raised their salaries. We got them competitive with Palm Beach County, not quite what they're making, but enough to where it wasn't as beneficial for them to drive an hour down there, work a 12-hour shift, and drive an hour home. But we were able to almost get our road patrol complement to full capacity, which we have not been at in about 10 years. So we're good in that department. And we have only had, in the last short period of time, one person leave Martin County to go down to Palm Beach County. So we're doing really good on that part. As far as competitiveness, Palm Beach County is still higher than us. They probably always will be higher than us, if not the highest-paid sheriff's office in the state of Florida. So we've got to keep them in sight. Port St. Lucie is neck and neck with us. They're a little ahead of us in some things. We're a little behind in other things. So we've got to keep them in sight. But this contract that we negotiated last year with the PBA keeps us in line. If I could pay our deputies, and I know if you could, if I could pay them a whole lot more, I would, because they do work short, and they do work really hard, and they do an awesome job for the citizens of Martin County. Did I answer all three of your questions? I think you did. Okay. Thank you, Commissioner. And is this year three of the contract? Year two, Commissioner. Okay. Yes. Any further questions? I don't know you want to. Do you want to do tentative approval of each one of the Constitutionals, or you want to wrap them up? I'd make a motion to accept the tentative, to tentatively approve the sheriff's proposed budget. Second. There's a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? That motion passes unanimously. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioners. Next up, we have the property appraiser, who is here to do a brief presentation. Let's get the sheriff's employees back on the job. Good morning. Good morning, Chairman, Commissioners. Thank you so much for having me here today. I am going to briefly give you a little bit of background on my budget, and then I would like to talk just briefly on the property tax amendment. So, with that, I am Jenny Fields. I'm the Martin County property appraiser. I am one of five of Martin County's constitutional officers. My primary role as the property appraiser is to value all the real and tangible personal property located in our county for ad valorem purposes. The property appraisers maintain their own budget. This is to prevent conflicts of interest and to ensure unbiased property valuations. This keeps us independent from the county commissions that set the tax rates and spend public funds. Each year, we carefully review every expenditure to ensure requested funding is reasonable, necessary, and supports our core responsibilities and mission. Throughout the year, our team of dedicated professionals worked hard to identify operational efficiencies and cost savings wherever possible. This proposed budget reflects our continued commitment to fiscal responsibility while ensuring we meet our constitutional and statutory responsibilities to the citizens of Martin County. As part of the budget packets distributed to you, the Board, on June 1st, we provided detailed exhibits and schedules outlining the proposed budget, the primary drivers, and the significant changes from the current fiscal year. Rather than reiterate that entire information this morning, I will briefly highlight on the key points. Our total proposed budget for fiscal year 2027 is just over $5.8 million. This reflects a modest overall increase of just under 3%. While our budget is approved by the Florida Department of Revenue, it is funded by you, the Board of County Commissioners. That funding portion is 96.2%. The majority of our increase this year of just under 3% reflects, as the sheriff stated, personnel-related costs that are largely outside of our control, including, including, as he said, health insurance, retirement contributions, and contractual salary adjustments. The remaining increase of our budget is attributed to information technology, software licensing, and cybersecurity investments necessary to maintain reliable operations and protect taxpayer data. As additional information, the Department of Revenue has notified our office that they have completed their review of our budget submittal, and they have tentatively adopted it with no recommended changes. Our goal is to provide Martin County residents with exceptional service while responsibly managing public funds. We appreciate the Board's continued partnership, and we welcome you to visit or contact our office anytime you have questions or concerns. As many of my fellow Florida property appraisers are doing during their budget workshops this year, I'd like to just, as I mentioned, take a few minutes to talk about the proposed constitutional amendment, if I may. Let me first begin by saying that the Martin County Property Appraisers Office does not advocate for or against any ballot measure ever. My purpose this morning is to provide accurate, objective information so that residents can make informed decisions for themselves. So as you are aware, the Florida legislature has approved a proposed constitutional amendment titled Save Our Homes from Excessive Property Taxes for the November general election. It will need 60% voter approval statewide to become law, and parts of it would become effective as early as January 1, 2027. The amendment makes two significant changes to taxable value. The first is it increases the homestead exemption over three years, the first being up to $150,000 in 2027, up to $250,000 in 2028, and then starting in 2029, it would be subject to inflation. The second major significant changes to taxable value is it reduces the annual assessment cap for non-homesteaded properties from a 10% limit to down to a 5% limit. So you can imagine why our office has already received many, many phone calls, as I'm sure yours has as well. The number one question people ask our office is, so how much money am I going to save if this amendment passes? And the honest answer is, we don't know. In fact, no one knows today because property taxes are made up of several moving parts. That's why it's important to understand how a property tax bill is actually calculated, which is what I'm hoping to explain. Your property tax bill, if you can imagine, you get that in November, and it's made up of two parts, the top portion and the bottom portion. The first part, which is listed at the top, is the ad valorem part. That simply is Latin for according to value. These taxes are calculated by two components. Your property's taxable value multiplied by the millage tax rate. The property appraiser's office determines the taxable value, and the taxing authorities determine the millage tax rates. Martin County currently has 10 taxing authorities. The second part of that bill, at the bottom, is non-ad valorem assessment fees. These are flat fees used to pay for specific services and infrastructure, and they will remain on the bill regardless of changes to your taxable value. They are established by local governing boards and taxing authorities, such as city councils, county commissions, and independent special districts. This proposed constitutional amendment affects only the first part, ad valorem taxes. It does not eliminate existing non-ad valorem assessments, nor does it prevent new assessments from being added in the future. It only changes one part of the calculation. Your final tax bill will depend on the millage tax rates adopted by the taxing authorities and the non-ad valorem assessments that will appear on your tax bill. And perhaps this is the most important point. A larger homestead exemption does not automatically mean a smaller tax bill. If this amendment passes, the property appraiser's office will be able to estimate what your taxable value is going to do. But there is no online calculator that you're going to find that will accurately tell you how much you'll save because taxable value is only one part of the equation. Until taxing authorities adopt next year's millage tax rates and determine next year's non-ad valorem assessments, the actual impact on an individual's tax bill simply cannot be calculated. And that is the key point. Voters will make their decision this November, but the actual impact on the property tax bills won't be known until next year's budget process is complete. Only after taxing authorities adopt their budgets, set their millage rates, and finalize assessments will anyone know what the amendment means for an individual tax bill. So when people ask me, how much money am I going to save if this amendment passes? My answer today is the same. We simply do not know yet. That's why I encourage everyone to read the amendment, ask questions, and understand that if approved, the amendment would change how the taxable value is calculated, but it would not by itself determine your final tax bill. The actual financial impact will depend on the budget decisions made by the various taxing authorities during next year's budget cycle. I would just like to say, as a homeowner, as a taxpayer myself, I appreciate that many of the taxing authorities, including yourself, are already evaluating these different scenarios, preparing for potential fiscal impacts, and making that information publicly available will help residents better understand how the amendment could affect local government services and their future tax bills. For anyone, anyone, interested in learning more about this tax amendment, our office has published an article, a page under our news and announcements, and there you're going to find a summary of the amendment. We have a single-page educational handout that outlines everything you need to know about the amendment, and then we also conducted an estimated revenue impact, which we provided to all the taxing authorities about a week ago. That's on there, and then soon we will be publishing a FAQ, a frequently asked questions, which is being prepared in coordination with the Florida Association of Property Praisers, so it will also be on that same page. Thank you so much for your time, and I'd be happy to answer any questions you have. Commissioner Camps. Point of curiosity, how do you know when people are homesteaded and when they're not? And is there a big problem with people claiming a homestead when they're actually not homesteaded? Because that's going to be a big factor with the tax referendum. That's correct. Yes, we have actually a compliance department. As you can imagine, everyone likes to tell on their neighbors. So we have a lot of resources. We do a lot of investigations, and we do that because the laws are very strict when it comes to homestead exemption. The law tells us, if for any reason we find out that you have a homestead exemption when you're not entitled to it, we are required to lien you back 10 years, including penalties and interest. So you can imagine we are very proactive when it comes to making sure the people that have homestead exemption actually have the homestead exemption. But we ask for all your identification. We ask for your voter's card, your Social Security. We run your vehicle registration. We make sure all the official documents have the CITES address on them. And then every, you know, we will, you know, look at it if somebody asks. But we are anticipating the language of the bill has not been given to us yet. But part of that amendment, it does say there will be stricter guidelines as to what constitutes a Florida resident. Because you can imagine if you don't declare your Florida residency by December 31st of this year and you want to come get homestead, you're going to have to wait five years until your waiting period is over. Then you'll get to have this benefit of this increased. So determining whether you're a Florida resident is probably going to be more than just give me your driver's license. So, and we haven't gotten that yet, but there will be stricter guidelines. Thank you, thank you. Yes. Any further questions? I would just ask, this ballot measure is so important in Martin County, I'd ask that you come back and visit us again and make a more detailed explanation of the impacts to Martin County. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you so much. Thank you. I'll move tentative approval of the property appraisers budget. Second. Commissioner Vargas. I thought we were listening to everybody's presentation rather than making moves and voting on this today. Well, we just voted on the sheriff's budget. Yeah, I understand, but I mean, that was, I thought we were supposed to be listening to everybody's presentation. We still have to tentatively approve. Overall. Overall. We could do it all in one big motion at the end of the day, or we can do them as we go, but we still have to take votes somewhere in this meeting today, right? Correct. That's correct. So by looking at each department, the idea is it gives you an opportunity to question or review specific items, and then we can have that discussion then. You can always bring things up again later on in the day, but it's just been the practice that we would tentatively approve, whether it's formal or informal, and at the end, the most important motion is just the final tentative millage rates that we can publish that will then ultimately be mailed to all the residents. And then you will have your most important vote will happen in September when we have the hearings to public hearings that decide the actual final budget. So these are tentative approvals, and until your final vote in September, the budget is technically not final until the last vote is heard, which is, I think, some of you have described the laborious task of about 50 different motions that you have to go through of every line item, particular budget and fund. But what's most important today is to ask questions or identify anything that you have concerns of or support of in regard to each department's budget. Thank you. Commissioner Capps. I would be good with one motion at the end of the day if everyone else would, unless everybody wants to take 40 different votes throughout the day. I'd be fine with that at the end of the day. Commissioner Campy. Historically, since there's so many moving parts and there's so many departments in the Constitutional, sometimes by having them as we've been just started to do today, if there is concern by members, commissioners, of a specific department, we can sort of set that one aside versus if everyone is okay with the property appraiser's budget, we said, okay, that's one. But if there are some that are more complicated or controversial or don't have universal support, we can set those aside. But the ones that five of us say, okay, we sort of understand, like if any of the five of us have an issue, just using as an example, libraries, then we won't take the vote on that. But if there are some where the five of us say, okay, I understand that that is what it is, then let's push those aside. If you wait until the end of the day to make a universal motion of a tentative approval and there were little issues or concerns within the departments, now you're going backwards to look at, well, what were they? Unless you're keeping a little tally sheet along the way, this is, it works. I mean, either way could work. I'm just thinking, from my experience, at the end of the day, you'd have to go back and say, okay, well, you know, that department I had some questions on and I thought that department could have had a tighter budget or there were certain things about that one that I don't agree with, then let's just vote on the ones that we tentatively approve. And if there are some that you don't tentatively approve, let's put those until the end of the day when you've seen the big picture, then we can discuss those as a suggestion. Commissioner Vargas. Okay. I've understood what you said, Commissioner Campy. However, I would like more opportunity to review this. I mean, these are numbers that are real. And if I would like to visit the property appraiser's office and sit and talk further, I would like to do that. We don't have to make a final decision until September. This is a huge year for us. So I don't understand why we have to say yes or no or put aside at this moment. I mean, this is a thinking process. So what's most important today is that you do have to establish a tentative millage that does get noticed to all the public and they will get a trim notice that has the tentative millage right set. So that has to happen statutorily. We only have a short amount of time to do that. And so that is what we're doing through this workshop. You can continue to look at the budgets and then have additional discussions at the final public hearings. But so today's meeting is important in establishing what is the tentative rate that we are going to publish to the public and each property owner will receive in their trim notice. So that also establishes the maximum the county can charge in each millage and it can only go down. So today's is both a workshop on looking at each individual department or constitutional officer's budget and question it and to establish that rate that's going to be published. There can be ongoing discussions about how those budgets are made or asked for or how it's put together. But from this point till the hearing at the next hearing the budget can never increase based upon after today. It could only go down. I think it's very important to tentatively approve each department. I don't want to get to the end of this day and have taken no votes and then there might be a commissioner who votes against the budget and we don't know why because we haven't taken tentative votes along the way. I think that in an effort to appear as transparent as possible that we should make clear how we feel about each department's budget. That's why they're presented department by department. instead of just giving a budget and that's why we're going to spend all day today and perhaps tomorrow reviewing this. I think it's a careful transparent strategy for showing the entire content of our budget. Commissioner Vargas. Okay. So again, this is the way that I look at this. There is a lot of information here. So if four of you say yes, I may say no. Can the millage rate be reduced further beyond today? As I stated, this would be the maximum the millage could be charged and yes, at the hearing, the commissioners, a majority of the board can lower the millage rate, could not raise it. Today would be the maximum millage rate that could be assigned is what we're asking for through this process. Okay, so today we could ask for a lower millage rate or is that later on then? The next hearing. So the way we put together, the way we establish the millage rate is based upon the budget for each department that was prepared for. So you could ask for a lower millage rate. However, I would be asking for what services that we would be looking to change. So this is an opportunity to talk about the individual line items within the department budgets and or the services they provide and in that sense we can have a discussion on how the budget is put together and the result of that is ultimately both the revenue necessary to provide that which in the case of advorum is reflected in the millage. So we build a budget simply based upon the expenditure and the revenues needed to match that expenditure is the millage. Obviously we have other departments too that don't rely on advorum like utilities and those we set through hearings on fees or utility bills. So anyway, so yes, today is a workshop. These are tentative budgets but in the end the wrap-up budget which is very important is to establish the individual millage rates for each fund including MSTUs and general fund so that we can notify the tax collector and property appraiser that the notices that go out to the public is the highest tentative rates. Mr. Capps. I'll move and we go with the chair's preference. Well, there's already a motion in a second. Oh, okay. You made a motion. You seconded. Okay. And remind me what that was. Property appraisers tentative budget. Oh, okay. And we're going to well, my thing had to do with you stated a preference to approve each and every budget as we go throughout the day. Do we need a separate motion on that? No. We're all good with that? It's the way we've always done it. Okay. Commissioner Vargas. Okay, so the way you've always done it, is this mandatory to do it this way is my question. No, it's just a more transparent way. Well, yes, we're here discussing everything. The evidence has been laid out. However, in my mind, there may be more questions in the future before we have to make a final decision. Okay, ask your questions about, and we're now talking about the property appraiser's budget. What further questions do you have? Well, this deals with the total millage rate, too, at the end. Well, that's not what we're discussing. I understand that. I understand that. However, well, then, I just, you know, have to vote no because I feel as if you all want to go forward quickly, and that's fine. That's your prerogative, and I'll leave it at that. Well, then, we'll allow you the opportunity to explain why you're objecting to the property appraiser's budget. I'm not objecting to her budget. I'm not objecting to her budget, necessarily, but there may be other budgets that come up that I can't approve, and that's pretty much about it. Are you saying that you don't want to cast any votes today at all, even at the end? I thought this was a budget workshop to hear the presentation for every division, for every department, for every constitutional. Without taking any votes all day? Without taking a vote. All day long, even at the end. We have to take a vote at the end, at least. That's required of us by law, right? Is that true? It's by law? It's by law to set the tentative millage rate today, so yes, we have to take a vote on the tentative millage rate. All these individual budgets go into the tentative millage rate, so it's important to establish each one so you can vote at the end of the day. That's why the presentations are. What you vote for today is not binding. The board can amend the budget in September as long as you're making it lower, the millage rate, but you still have opportunity to question budgets and make reductions in September, but yes, the vote for the millage rate is necessary today. Okay, so the millage rate can be reduced, correct? Yes, I think that's the direction it needs to go in. Commissioner Campy? Thank you. Just for clarity for the folks watching, the budget process started several months ago. Today is not the first day. Today, in the months, weeks, and days leading up to this, the commissioners have met with the sheriff and constitutionals, department heads, to discuss the back and forth with our administrative staff. We've been working on this, hearing the information, doing our homework and research. Today is the day that the five of us together for the first time get to hear each other's opinions because most people know the commissioners are not allowed to speak to each other outside of these meetings, so I have no idea what my colleagues are thinking until today. So today is not the first day of the process. It's been a process of research and investigation for months leading up to this. I think all of us have an opportunity, have had the opportunity to meet with the constitutionals, to meet with the sheriff. I was there to discuss, so a lot of what we're hearing today from Ms. Fields, Ms. Davis, Ruthsky, and Carolyn Timmon, and the sheriff, I've heard. I knew that what the budget requests from the constitutionals. The department heads, I've had an opportunity to meet. You saw that there were 16 different groups. I've had the opportunity to meet with many of them, but I've also had the opportunity to meet with not only Ms. Merle and her staff, but with Mr. Donaldson, to hear what was going to happen today. The books were given to us a long time ago, and then when you review them, there were questions. There are concerns. The looming dark cloud or bright cloud is what will happen in November, and as you heard Ms. Fields say, we've already, at least I have, I'm assuming my colleagues have as well, have already asked our staff to have those strategies in place. If it passes, what will the budget look like? If it doesn't pass, what will the budget look like? Now, if it doesn't pass, it doesn't mean that it's, you know, Shangri-La, we're still always looking for budgets to be as tight as possible. I think even if it doesn't pass, the virtue that it was even considered should remind us that the residents and taxpayers want the leanest budget that they can, that we can do. Part of today, by having the different departments explain, this is what my budget has been, and this is why I'm looking for an increase, even though I know most of them were told not to have any increases. There are certain things beyond the control of individual department heads. That's where we come in. But to clarify, we'll set a millage tentative, and then, yes, Commissioner Vargas, it can go down. It can never go above the number that we set today, or if need be, tomorrow. There is a motion to tentatively accept the property appraiser's budget. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? That motion passes unanimously. Who's next? Next up, we have our supervisor of elections, Vicki Davis. Good morning, Ms. Davis. Good morning, Commissioners. Good morning. First of all, I'd like to thank Stephanie, Tracy, Shelby, budgeting staff, and finance. They're always very helpful, so thank you for what you do. And all of your staff, Don. I appreciate everything that each department does to help us in the elections and keep the process running smoothly, so thank you. Thank you for the opportunity to be here. And you have before you an annual report from the elections office. I just wanted to go back and review a little bit with you and then tell you where we currently are, and if you have any questions, about our budget, please don't hesitate to ask. Before you, you do have in the annual report a number of statistics. If you look at pages four and five, you'll see our current registered voters, the number, how they break out. I thought it would be helpful, interesting for you all to see some of the numbers that we deal with on a daily basis, how voters are registered to vote, how many voter registrations we process. In 2025, there were 13,631, and so far this year, as of June 30th, 10,419. You can see by gender how they break out as well. And then on pages 8 and 9, there are some really good district voter registration information that would be good for you as commissioners. That's on page 8. And then on page 9, we have asked, every time Kerry and I and staff are out in the community and making presentations about removal of voters from our database. How often does that take place? It's called list maintenance. And we are involved in list maintenance on a daily basis. And you can see a listing, the reason for removal. Last year in 2025, we removed 1,847 who deceased, 3,876 who moved out of the county, out of the state, 135 felony convictions, 138, a request from voter, 78, just to be removed, those who were adjudicated mentally incompetent, we removed six, and five for not being a U.S. citizen. So far this year, we've removed 945 who deceased. We received that information on a daily basis from the state of Florida. Those who moved out of the county, 2,520 so far this year. Those who moved out of state, 66 felony convictions, 70 requests from voters, 44 mentally incompetent, five. And the state has run our entire database through the SAVE federal database. So we've removed 21 non-U.S. citizens. The other important information right underneath that are the number of petitions that we have verified. Local candidate petitions, 8,093. Statewide candidate petitions, 1,885. And then the citizen initiative petitions, 13,160 of those we verified. But I can tell you, we touched them more than the 13,000 times. They were touched many, many times this past year. And then below that is just a circle that lays out the competencies, what we do on a daily basis, plus what we do throughout the election cycle for election preparation, for election night reporting. And as you know, we go by state law. On page 11, I wanted to point out our canvassing board. Thank you, Commissioner Campy and Commissioner Vargas. Commissioner Vargas is our alternate commissioner this year. I've been sharing with the community that it's not really up to me and my staff to oversee this election. It's up to a state-set, mandated canvassing board, which is made up of three individuals, a county judge. My judge has been Kathleen Roberts. She's been my judge for 22 years now. Myself as supervisor of elections and a county commissioner. And then we're required to have alternates. So the alternate county judge is Darren Steele, Judge Steele. So thank you for helping us with this election cycle. And I'm sorry the sheriff left already, but on page 12, we really have a strong partnership with our law enforcement. We really appreciate the sheriff and his staff. He always assigns either a lieutenant or a captain to me. I have Lieutenant McCarthy for this election cycle. We've already met as a team. In fact, we've had a Zoom meeting with the FBI out of Miami. And we've also participated in an FBI training session, swatting session via Zoom. So that has been very helpful and provides really good information for my staff and also for the sheriff's staff because it's focused on elections. Same thing with Chief Z. He's been in on those same meetings and Zoom meetings as well. And then on page 13, just some community highlights. We've had 234 students register to vote this past year, 22 office tours. We like to open up the office so that voters can see the behind the scenes. Kiri calls it beyond the lobby. Many of us, many residents and voters have been to the office but not beyond the lobby. So we like to take them into the warehouse and show them all of the safeguards that we have in place. 61 community events. We have attended four student art contests, 15 nursing homes and assisted living facilities we've visited. And we go in and offer supervised voting in those facilities as well. Three of our staff have attended Martin Cares program. Thank you for that opportunity. They always enjoy it. And six community and school back to school food drives. So just some additional information for you. We mailed out almost 12,000 vote by mail ballots last week. They're starting to come in already. They've been receiving them starting on Saturday. Voters have. And our sample ballot is out on our website martinvotes.gov. Martin Votes does have a lot of good pertinent information for this upcoming election. And looking at our budget for what you're looking at today, our increase is a 6.3% increase and that's due to benefits for my personnel. And also we have, this is for the general election that's coming up. So any questions I can answer? Any questions? I have a question. Sure. Did I read that Judge Roberts is retiring? She is. Yes. So is this going to be her last year to canvas? It will be her last official year, yes. Boy, are we going to miss her. Yes. She may still be able to come back as a paid employee. So she can be a retired county judge and she can serve? Yes. Terrific. She's wonderful. Yes, she is. She knows the process very, very well. Can you fix those machines? Yes. Those ballots, for sure. We call her the ballot whisperer. Yes, she is. She's awesome. Any questions? No, but just a comment. This is very nice, very nicely done and I will move tentative approval. Thank you, Stacey. Second. Thank you. Very impressive document here. Enjoy it. There's a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? That motion passes unanimously. Thank you. Thank you all. Thank you. Next is? So next up, I'm taking the reins for everybody else. Okay. So unfortunately, the clerk of the circuit court is serving on a very important clerk-related board at the state. So she's unable to attend today's workshop, but I'm going to go ahead and briefly present a statement from the clerk. The clerk's proposed FY27 budget is $3.62 million. It represents an increase of approximately $237,000 or 7% over FY26. This is a request that reflects the cost of maintaining countywide services, fulfilling the clerk's statutory and constitutional responsibilities, and continuing to serve the public effectively. This budget supports the clerk's mission to ensure transparency, fiscal accountability, and due process by maintaining board records, managing county investments and financial accounts, auditing county operations, which includes the annual independent audit, administering payroll and Florida retirement system compliance and providing residents with a formal process to challenge property valuations. The primary cost drivers included the proposed cost of living adjustments and increased health benefit costs consistent with the board's proposal for county employees and the addition of a halftime position to support specialty local court operations. There's also a $75,000 increase for internal audit services to address the county's audit plan and identified risk priorities. So that's what I have for the clerk. If there's any questions, I'll try to answer them. If not, I can pass them on to the clerk for any questions. Commissioner Capps. Move approval. Second. Any further questions? There's a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? That motion passes unanimously. Also contained for the remainder of the constitutional officers, you have sheriff non-departmental and this budget is it shows a large increase due to the there's an E-911 one-time upgrade. If you recall on my OMB items, there's been quite a few grants that have come through for an E-911 upgrade. This is going to be the local matches that are helping fund those projects. We also have the state judicial and state agencies of the 19th Judicial Court. Martin County represents approximately 22% of the four counties and there is a reduction this year due to mostly our percentage of this is going to sound morbid dead bodies from the medical examiner's office as well as reductions in guardian ad litem that is showing that decrease. And last but not least is the tax collector is showing an increase which also includes the money that we have to pay in estimated fees to the tax collector. So she is showing a 6.70% increase which is mostly fee offset. So with that I'll try to answer any questions for you for those constitutionals. Just to be consistent let's keep these separate. Take sheriff non-departmental state judicial state judicial and state agencies separate and tax collectors separate. I'll make a motion for sheriff's non-departmental tentative approval. There's a motion and a second. All those in favor. Aye. Opposed. That motion passes unanimously. There is a move approval of state judicial state agencies. Second. There's a motion and a second. All those in favor. Aye. Opposed. That motion passes unanimously. And the tax collector. Move approval of the tax collector. Second. There's a motion and a second. All those in favor. Aye. Aye. Opposed. That motion passes unanimously. Okay. We've kind of reached a proper stopping point so let's take a ten minute break and we will resume with the county departments. Hell yeah. For you guys absolutely. We are back in order. We are taking up the remainder of our budget hearing. Where are we starting here? Administration department and Mr. George Stokas will be presenting the administration. Please proceed. All right. Thank you, Madam Chair. For the record, George Stokas assistant county administrator. I'm here today to represent the administration department which provides a broad spectrum and award-winning suite of services that support the county operations and the community. In addition to administrative oversight and organizational support, this department manages programs that assist veterans and residents, promotes tourism and economic activity, pursues legislative funding opportunities, and helps ensure that county services are delivered effectively. On the first slide here, I'd like to point out that the administration department provides the support services that allow every county department to operate efficiently and effectively in order to serve the public. The fiscal year 27 budget maintains current service levels while addressing personnel and operating cost increases. The only staffing change is converting an existing contractual public records position to a county employee, improving the responsiveness and consistency of that division within the administration department. Let's go to the next slide. Administration provides the planning, financial oversight, and operational support behind county services that serve the public. Taxpayer dollars support responsible budgeting, competitive purchasing, grant management, communications, public records, and legislative advocacy. The department also assists veterans in obtaining earned federal benefits and administers housing and human services programs that leverage outside funding. These services help departments operate efficiently while keeping government transparent and accountable. Next slide, please. Last year, the administration department processed more than 1,400 public records requests, completed nearly all board agendas on time, and maintained a nationally recognized budgeting practices. Purchasing generated more than 316,000 in rebate revenue while processing over 8,400 purchase orders. Veteran services is projected to secure more than $8 million in federal benefits for local veterans, returning over $22 for every county dollar invested. Next slide, please. Community impact. Administration also brings outside resources into Martin County that reduce reliance on local tax dollars through our state, federal, and private philanthropic organizations. Tourism marketing continues, generating economic activity and the tourist development tax revenues that support visitor-related programs. Health and Human Services administers more than $5 million in state and federal grant funding that expands services to residents. Legislative efforts secured approximately $2 million in state appropriations while housing programs continue to assist local families. Together, these programs maximize outside funding to help deliver additional services without increasing the burden on local tax payers. So, in closing, administration exists to support every county service delivered to our residents. Administration supports every county department through financial stewardship, operational support, and transparent government. The fiscal year 27 budget continues to providing these essential services while focusing on efficiency, accountability, and the value for Martin County taxpayers, residents, and visitors. And behind me are probably most of the administration department. If not, they're probably in the hall waiting to see if they need to be asked any questions. And I'm more than happy to address any questions, comments, or concerns. Questions for Mr. Stokas? Mr. Vargas. There are a lot of silos here. Okay. This has gone up to almost 7%. I cannot agree with this. There are areas that can be trimmed. Mr. Stokas, this is for, in general, life and health insurance throughout the county. There are increases in every case. But in some cases, they're double what they were last year. Why the wide swing in life and health insurance? I can answer that, Commissioner. So, life and health insurance, we did experience an 11% increase in health insurance rates this year for both the employee and the employer side. But we budget based on what the actual elections are per employee. So, if somebody went from a single coverage to a family coverage, that would be reflected in those budget amounts. So, it's really indicative of the person who's in the position right now versus what they were last year. Okay. Further questions for Mr. Stokas? I see, Annie. I don't think, how much control do we have over the increases? So, the health insurance, it is what our benefits consultants have projected for the next fiscal year. For many years, the county has been able to essentially outperform national averages on county health insurance. We had been able to maintain about, over the last, I think, 15 years, only about a 3.8% increase. But, unfortunately, the costs are rising in health insurance. It just, this year, was a whammy based on everyone's elections and the claims that are coming in. And what percentage of health insurance does Martin County pay for? With the split for county versus employee, I think, at this moment, is about 72% county, and then the remainder is on the employee. And the 72% is discretionary? That is what the county puts into the total premium cost. Question on the full-time employee. It's one of the only ones for the whole county, except the sheriff had a couple. That's correct, Commissioner. Here's my question. We had the head of the department down here recently. I remember it used to just be the aides handled the rare request for public record. And then we picked a person to be sort of responsible for it. And then it was Sangeeta. And then she turned into a department. And then we added employees. Can, Mr. Stokas, can you just give us a brief recap when people say, well, why are you hiring people? The sheriff talked about public records, his or body cams, where people are asking for the body cams so they can post them on social media. I don't think that's the same. But what I have seen and I think all of the commissioners had, we're starting to get public records requests from AI bots that are asking for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pages of information going back years. Can you explain that department a little bit and how that, like a couple years ago, didn't exist and now it's a big deal? Yeah, I believe it really didn't start to exist until about 2011, Commissioner. What this county has seen is an incremental increase in public records requests both from legal purposes. Also, we generate quite a bit of media. I know the sheriff was talking about body cameras. We have other cameras that have to go and be looked at. I think the biggest issue for public records from my recollection is now that before we can hand those simple records out, we have to go through them with a fine-toothed comb and make sure we're not giving out information that's not supposed to be publicly released. Certain employees in certain positions, there are things that have to be erased such as addresses or social security numbers, financial information and so forth. So the public records division under administration has grown, but that whole sector of work has grown even more in a larger and alarming rate and we are responsible to produce it in a reasonable amount of time. And if not, you do face legal consequences. So I don't remember off the top of my head if we've been challenged legally yet, I'm sure a county attorney could tell us that, but we do have to provide a transparent government and provide those records when requested and there's lots of requests. I think I said about 1,400 and my experience is when I've gone to conferences is that we have a very top-ranking, I'm not sure if they're award-winning, but public records department. We definitely are leading the way. Thank you. Mr. Capps. This is a general comment that applies to all things in the budget that I think is good to keep in mind. When looking at the growth of budgets in governments, you need to remember two things. One is inflation, and then the other one that we often forget about is the growth of the community that requires additional levels of service and additional manpower to service a growing community. Martin County has done a very good job at not growing too fast. It's usually about 2% a year, but it is growing, and that is a factor when looking at budgets as well, so let's all keep that in mind in addition to the inflation. Commissioner Vargas. So what has been the growth in the county, Mr. Donaldson? I think I asked you that question about a week ago. The growth in the county, it's about 2% or 3%, as Commissioner Capps stated. In terms of population, the administration budget, which most affected today was what we talked about, is public records, where we actually are using the contracted services, and we've been losing people as we train them, so converting that to an FTE is going to help us keep up with that better. But in terms of administration, that's principally our, you know, it's a multitude of divisions, our number of purchase orders. Every area we're seeing increases in uses within administration. Our veteran services group has seen more veterans and helping more folks out, so everybody has seen increases that in some areas is disproportionate to our population group as our veteran services has been recognized that providing good services, we're getting more people coming in to see them to get the benefits that they deserve because they're providing that type of service. So each division, certainly our procurement division, has seen significant amount of procurement for as we keep bidding out things to try to save money and outsource their various activities. So we do see in many areas growth that exceeds the population growth. And if I may, commissioners, also in captured within the administration budget, because it is a pretty broad spectrum, it's notable to mention the tourism office that is contained within here. About half of the total increase to administration is just based on budgeted revenues that we are expecting for the tourist development tax that are contained within that budget. So we have to budget for those revenues if we're expecting them. So that is part of the increase, half the increase for the whole administration department, about $400,000. Just a comment on something that Mr. Donaldson said. Maybe a year or two ago, we had several public comment speakers who were veterans who were concerned about getting into veteran services. And when we reorganized that department, we've heard a lot of good feedback from our veterans in our community about them receiving services. So I think that was a very smart, invaluable allocation or reallocation of the way that department is set up. So kudos to that. Thank you. Commissioner Capps. Speaking of the veterans services, I was interested or intrigued to learn that that is a statutory requirement that each county have a veteran's office. That's not an optional thing. Right. It's a state mandated preemption or state mandated. I move tentative approval of the administration. Second. Any further discussion? There is a motion and a second to tentatively approve administration. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Opposed. That motion passes 4-1 with Commissioner Vargas dissenting. Thank you, ma'am, Chair. Thank you. Thanks. Next up is airport. Next up, we have airport Andrew McBean, the airport director, here to present. Good morning, Madam Chair. Good morning, Commissioners. Andrew McBean, airport director, Wythamfield-Martin County Airport. This morning, last year, the fiscal budget for the airport was $2.3 million. We're looking for $2,465,128 in the fiscal year 2017 budget. This reflects a 6.7% change in the budget. Commissioners, it's important to note that the airport is an enterprise fund, which means that the airport is a county department that functions very similar to a business. It generates revenues to cover its own capital and maintenance costs. It is not funded by the ad valorem tax and it's not paid for by the Martin County taxpayers. That being said, Commissioners, some budget consideration this year's is the increased cost of doing business, many of which are inflationary, such as janitorial, landscaping, and security, as well as the ongoing maintenance of Rhythm Field in a safe and serviceable condition as required by both state and federal law. The airport divisions include administration, which is myself, the business operations manager, and the airport operations supervisor, the airport operations division, which is a combination of both the airport operations coordinators and airfield maintenance technicians, and then the Customs and Border Protection Office there, which provides significant revenue for the airport and serves as a public service for both pleasure and business travelers. The airport also has support from other county departments, such as administration, IT, public works, and general services, just to name a few. Some of the services that the airport provide in fiscal year 27 or in previous, if not the most important service that the airport provide would be its economic impact on Martin County, and this has been the case since 1928, March of 1928, when the airport was established during an economic downturn in the community. Today, the airport provides $599 million of added value from business activities. Those are businesses that are on the airport or in the community as a result of the airport. For example, if someone flies into the airport, they'll need a hotel room, somewhere to stay. They'll need to go to a restaurant, they'll need to rent a car, and they'd like to enjoy the amenities that Martin County has to provide. The airport supports 6,858 jobs either directly on the airport or as a result of jobs being produced in the community from those business activities. The airport also supports $662 million in payroll, which is extremely important because a lot of those dollars are being turned over back in the community and spent by the individuals who live here and work here for a total economic outpoint of $1.3 billion on Martin County community. In addition to this, the airport services are to ensure a safe and fully operational airport environment in compliance with both state and federal regulations to deliver exceptional service for the international travelers through the Customs and Border Protection Facility. We have surveyed 95% customer satisfaction rate there and to maintain and operate the REACH Center for Aviation Workforce Development, Fostering Education, Training and Sustaining, Building a Sustaining Talent Pipeline. The image you see here in the middle is our Taxi Lane Rehabilitation Project, which the airport works very closely with the state and the FAA Deposits Project, which reduce significant impacts to businesses on the airport and in the community. In addition to that, airport staff administers state and federally funded projects and we manage the airport noise program by educating pilots and airport users of the voluntary curfew and the compliance. And we also engage communities to increase public awareness of the airport's economic, social and employment benefits. Services are the numbers, commissioners. So, based aircraft, 425. What this number represents is there are 425 Martin County citizens that are based at the Martin County Airport. They depend heavily on my staff to ensure that the lights are working, the pavement is in good repair, the AWOS, the weather system, is working, and that they have a safe and serviceable airport to fly into and out of. International aircraft operations. We see 2,000 aircraft cleared through the Customs and Border Protection Facility. Survey shows that 50% of these travelers are Martin County residents traveling for pleasure purposes, and the other 50% are Martin County business owners traveling for business purposes. And again, we have a 95% customer satisfaction rate with that facility. Regulated garbage, 275 bags. Those are the individual bags that my staff has to dispose of as trained by the United States Department of Agriculture to protect the local agriculture industry, such as the state of Florida and the United States agricultural industry. Noise curfew letters. 542 individual letters mailed out to noise curfew operators to remind them that the airport is situated in a densely populated area and to use noise abatement procedures where necessary or to avoid flying if possible. Security corrective actions. These are 25 individual times that my staff was either preventatively addressing a security issue on the airport or proactively addressing security issues on the airport. And the security connections, 525. These are the number of citizens that we've met with individually and educated them as to the historical, social, and economic impact of the airport. In the corner here, you see one of those citizen connections, which was bring your kids to work day in 2026. That aircraft is a base tenant, Dr. Velar, that's a stearman, which is a training biplane, fabric wings, and a wooden propeller. The FBOs also brought out fuel trucks and tugs to show the different career opportunities that's available at the airport. Precision Jet Center brought out an aircraft that they do maintenance on. And Rhythm Air Club opened their hangars to allow the children to go and see other more interesting aircraft there. And with that, commissioners, again, just to remind, the airport is an enterprise fund. It is a county department that operates with its own revenues and not by the taxpayers' dollars. Let me have to answer any questions. Questions? Commissioner Capps. Could you recap about the garbage thing? I didn't quite get that. I was going to ask the same thing. So part of having the Customs and Border Protection facility there is that we need to be able to dispose of or sterilize any foreign fruits or meats or unprocessed items coming into the country. So we have to destroy that so that... Via barbecue? Yes, an incinerator. So that any pest that could be contained within those items do not destroy the Florida agricultural industry or the United States agricultural industry. And I have one more. On the revenue side, you know, the Customs facility has revenue from two different sources. One is aviation and one is marine. It looks like there's not a lot of revenue there on the marine side. Is that when, like, somebody takes a boat ride to the Bahamas and they come back and, like, how does that work? Like, somebody, do they do that ahead of time or do they take their boat out of the water at Sanchpur and then come over and see you after that? Correct. So when the facility opened initially, the boaters were required to come in and report to the officer. The officer could inspect their vessel if necessary and then clear them into the country. However, Customs and Border Protection has since launched an app where they can do this via their mobile device and some vessel are still required to come in upon request if they don't do it successfully in the app. Thank you. Commissioner Vargas. Yes, Andrew. I have a question here. Airport administration, how many employees do you have under that heading? That's three. Regular salaries. Three employees. Three employees for regular salaries? Yes, Commissioner. Okay. And then you have another page here that talks about airport regular salaries. How many employees do you have? That's 645, 511? That's the operations. That is three in airport operations and four in airport maintenance. Four in what? Airport maintenance. Maintenance. Seven people. Further questions? Move approval. Second. There is a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? That motion passes unanimously. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. We'll now take up the building department. Good morning. Good morning, Commissioners. Jeff Dirty, director of the building department. Today, I have with me assistant building official Josh Nay behind me. Today, we're presenting our building department budget to you and an overview of what we do. The building department has functions of enforcing statute 553 building construction standards. We also do some local items such as code enforcement and derelict vessel. 553, statute 553 requires every jurisdiction to follow certain rules. The main things we do is enforce the accessibility code of Florida. It's more restrictive than the federal, such as our parking spaces are different and private clubs are not exempt from the accessibility code as the federals do. We do the Florida energy code, which is a little more restrictive than the federal energy code, but we have to enforce that. And then most important function on a daily basis is the Florida building code. That's administered by the Florida building commission, which has established membership by the governor, 17-member board that we answer to. Every jurisdiction must have a building official in Florida by that statute. It must be licensed through the International Code Council and then also licensed by additional testing in Florida. With that, we have plan reviewers and inspectors that also must be licensed through the International Code Council as well as Florida's licensing. And we also work through the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulations to achieve those goals. Over and above that, we do other things that aren't necessarily written in the job description. We do milestone inspection monitoring, which is a direct result of the surfside collapse down in the south. And we monitor the protocol associated with all the inspections of the condominiums in the county. We also do hurricane prep. We look at when a hurricane's coming what we can do to keep all the construction sites aware and safe as possible. We do emergency management training and staffing. We just recently had to create some protocol associated with Senate Bill 180 to address that and recovery. We do post-damage assessment. As soon as the winds get down to 40 miles an hour, we immediately come in and work with the property president to do damage assessment so that it can be all turned into the state emergency management to make sure we're FEMA eligible and our residents are able to get help from FEMA if they are deemed the county is eligible. We are evaluated by the Community Rating Service, which was established by FEMA through ISO. ISO comes in, does a full analysis of what we do, how we do it, number of inspections, number of plan reviews, staff we have and qualifications of each. We recently had our audit. The results have not been turned to us yet, but we're expecting them very soon. We do community outreach. We're required to do that as part of our community rating service and training in ISO. Other things we do is unsafe structures. We have two types. We have emergency unsafe structures and more of the permanent nature. I typically get about 15 calls a year for emergency, which means someone ran into a building with a car. There's a high concentration of those on nights and weekends. Probably 10% really happened during the day and a lot of them are on weekends. I got a call an hour before the Super Bowl that someone was coming home to set up their party and went right through the garage door, through the garage, over bicycle and into the laundry room. So they come all times. People run into trailers and knock them off. They run into houses. We were called out earlier this year on one that was actually attempted murder with a vehicle into a house. So it can be anything, and we provide that service. We also do the permanent ones where someone has not maintained their home and is in danger of collapse or maybe there was a fire and they haven't done anything. We've had them as – the goal is always compliance. We've had people comply. We've had some that have gone 20 years where they're tied up in trust and probate, and we have to work with the county attorney's office, the sheriff, and even go to court to get access into them because that's a very tricky thing sometimes. Other things we do – recently we now have to do waivers for certain permits that may be exempt under the new law that went into effect July 1, so we've had to set up a whole protocol and software to monitor that. We need to keep that separate and distinct from other permits for our community service rating. Other things we do optional that are not mandated at the local level is licensing. That's under Chapter 489. We have elected – the board has elected – to have a local licensing board that can license contractors at the local level. It goes back many years. The success of that is that someone can come in on the local level, appear before your board, the board that has been appointed by the commission, and be able to qualify to take tests. Back in the day, 25-some years ago, everyone had to go take a test in Orlando. It was mainly run by the state. It was all paper. Today, it's electronic. Many local jurisdictions have opted to not have local licensing because of technology, but we currently do that at the local level. If we did not do it, it would be all through the state licensing system in Tallahassee. We also monitored unlicensed contractors. We have people go look for that because many times you have individuals who want to take advantage of the public, and we try to make sure that everyone is licensed. On the local level, we have code enforcement that takes care of the local rules, such as high grass, someone living in an RV on the property, trash, chickens in the backyard. We get a little bit of call of everything. We go out and investigate that. In our funding, too, we cover the magistrate who acts as a judge to hear any cases that are brought before them, and counsel that represents us before the magistrate. We also do lien searches when people want to do a real estate transaction or refinance or that type of thing. We do about 4,000 of those a year. They look for any outstanding code enforcement liens or any open permits, that type of things of that nature. The others is derelict vessels. Derelict vessels are actually a law enforcement determination. Once a vessel has been termed derelict, they give us a letter and say they've adjudicated, they've run their process, have determined it's derelict. The majority of those come from the sheriff. Sometimes we get them from the City of Stewart Police or Fish and Wildlife can give those, too. Once that is determined, we are responsible for removal. Our removal generally takes 15 to 20 days. If we opted not to do that and let FWC do it, you're 15 to 20 months. So we are the leading group in terms of turning them over, how we fund that. We aggressively pursue grants through the Florida Inline Navigation District every year. We are able to obtain one so far, and we anticipate doing that again this year. We have one person who runs that as well as the support staff that goes with it. Other items we do is some training and community outreach, as I mentioned. Many people want to know, can I do this? Can I do that? How do I do that? So we reach out and supply that support. We have been requested by various community organizations and whatnot to follow through. We also have a team we call Blue Team. Blue would be an acronym for billed licensing, unpermitted, unpermitted, and expired. We generally get about 30 expired permits a week where we have to go out and tell people to close it. Many times the contractor will go out and just do something simple, change a hot water heater, and never get an inspection. So we don't want to leave that open because when that person goes to finance or sell the house or what have you, then it's a bigger issue. So we try to preempt that up front. And then probably the most important thing we've taken over since the retirement of Sarah Woods, we provide the brownies for these meetings every day. And with that, I'd be glad to answer any questions you may have. Mr. Katz. So tell us about hurricanes and how that affects your budgeting and whether additional resources are ever needed and where you get them. Well, there's a couple different items into that preparation as we go out and look to see what we can do to preemptively make the community as safe as possible. We monitor it. We actually staff the Emergency Operations Center during the hurricane. And then immediately when we are allowed to travel again, which is 40 miles an hour, our staff immediately comes in to go out and do the evaluation for FEMA. In terms of, I previously mentioned Senate Bill 180, we have to set up a backup facility where we could operate if our building was destroyed. And we set that up. We put it on our website. And I didn't mention earlier, in terms of operating, we also act as the building official for the village of Indiantown. and we are the backup for the City of Stewart and for the Town of Seals Point. We have previously done the same for Ocean Breeze and the Town of Jupiter at different times. So we try to make sure that everything we possibly can do to avoid ahead of time is there. We have backup facilities so that if people come in and want services and we don't have a facility, we have a backup in Indiantown and there with us because if a storm hits, most likely it's diminished by the time it gets out to Indiantown. We can use another facility in the county to the south if we need to do that. In terms of additional resources, a recent past legislation asked us to go ahead and go into interlocal agreements or some kind of agreement with other counties or outside agencies. And that has been put in place through the state association of the building officials and inspectors association. So we have pulled that so that you can actually go to that resource and get other counties. One of the challenges you have is that if Tampa and Martin County did it, well, they may have ten times the needs we do so we couldn't begin to drain our whole staff to go over. So you try to somehow match them up size-wise. Secondly, we try to look for someone else who uses our software such as Acela so that if they come to help us or we go to help them, our staff immediately knows the software they're using. So we look at those two jointly. Additionally, the new legislation, House Bill 803, required the state of Florida to develop contracts with outside agencies, private providers to help, but they also put in a provision that building officials, building inspectors, and plan reviewers that are licensed to the International Code Council in other states but not in Florida would be empowered to come help us in an emergency declared by the governor. So those are all the measures that have been put in place. The state is currently developing those contracts. The group of the Association of Florida Building Official Inspectors of Florida already has in place the mutual aid. One more. When municipalities call upon your services, you mentioned that you were a backup for all the other towns and our city governments in our county, I believe most of them anyway. Do they pay a fee to you when you do an inspection? I'm sorry. Yes, we have an hourly rate, a fee. It's an interlocal agreement that's been through this board, signed by both, and it's in place. And we bill them at the end of the month by the hour. Further questions for Mr. Doherty? Commissioner Vargas. Yes, Mr. Doherty, do you receive any taxpayer funds? The building department does not receive any. The building department enforcement of statute 553 does not receive any money. And actually, we contribute back to the county approximately $2 million a year for overset support for our services. So actually, we're a revenue source for the rest of the county. Budgeting, HR, legal, IT, what have you. Okay. So the, but we do receive, I think, taxpayer, there may be some taxpayer money for local code enforcement. So what percentage is that out of your budget? Do you have an idea or dollar amount? I think... Of the $8 million budget, code enforcement is $1.2 million, which is offset by review fees as well as some state revenue sharing. But Jeff's budget is primarily through building permitting inspection fees. Okay. So you said $1.2 million, but it's offset. So what is the net? I'll have to go research that number for you. Okay, if you wouldn't mind. Thank you. Okay, and you said you give back $2 million? Approximately $2 million. That is... Those are what are called indirect costs. So Jeff doesn't get me for free. He has to pay for my service. So through the indirect cost study that we do every two years, Jeff's department, the building pays back the general fund for all the overhead support such as county administration, county attorney, budget, HR, purchasing, all of those general countywide functions. General services taking care of our building or whatever that would be. Would you be kind enough to get back with me about that, please, Ms. Merling? Thank you. Any further questions? Motion to tentatively... Motion to accept the tentative budget of the building department. Second. Commissioner Capps. I'm good. There's a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? That motion passes unanimously. Thank you. Take up the capital improvement plan. Good morning. Morning. Shelby Del Pietro, budget and CIP coordinator. Commissioners, as you recall, the FY27 capital improvement plan was presented and tentatively approved at the CIP workshop on April 21st, 2026 and is now being presented as part of the fiscal year 2027 budget. As we know, the CIP includes various departments and is supported and is supported by multiple funding sources, including our enterprise fee-based departments such as airport, solid waste, and utilities. The overall decrease is due to reductions in roads, solid waste, and utilities, driven by grant opportunities and several large projects being fully funded in fiscal year 26. What services does the CIP provide? It is the county's multi-year, long-term planning tool for major capital investments. While the operating budget funds daily operations, the CIP focuses on proactively maintaining, replacing, and hardening the infrastructure and equipment that allow departments to deliver services to the public. The CIP helps identify and plan for future infrastructure needs, supports the county's strategic goals, and provides transparency in planning and funding capital projects. It also strengthens our ability to pursue grant funding by demonstrating that projects have been identified as a critical infrastructure investment. The CIP also includes fixed asset replacement budgets and equipment replacements that are essential to maintaining to reliable services, systems, and assets for our residents for years to come. That's all I have for you. Questions for Ms. Del Pietro. Anybody want to add or subtract anything to the CIP? Commissioner Hetherington. Question. The FARPs have always been included in, the maintenance FARPs have always been in the CIP. Yes, ma'am. And then on your first slide, you had something about the restroom. On page, let's see, 188, it says on line 6,300, it says the sea turtle restroom is $1.69,700,000. So there are other funding sources to that project such as commission MS-TU, District 1 funds, along with park fees are included in that total that you see in the budget page. So we're constructing a restroom for $1.69 million or more? That would be the fiscal year 27 allocation. That's only a portion of the CIP sheet for this year. Correct. Could you please tell me what page you were on the moment you were referring to? Page 188. Page 188. So that's this year's allocation for the cafe restroom. Right. That seems like quite an expensive restroom. Well, it's also on the ocean, too, and we have to go through DEP, so. So it seems like quite an expensive restroom. Well. So I think if we make adjustments, then that's something that we're probably going to have to look at. That, to me, sends up a red flag when you're putting... So what's the total amount? This is just this year. What's the total cost of that restroom? 5.2. 5.2 million. Correct. And there's been expenditures year-to-date so far. Based when we did the CIP sheet, there's been roughly 226 to-date expenses. Obviously, this project is still ongoing currently, and there is open... Is it fully designed? Kevin Abate. I think he was getting close to design completion. I believe it's about 80%. 80% design, and it's at 5.9 million? That's for a 5.9 million dollar project, yes. Yeah, we're going out to bid towards the end of this year. Will we be out to bid before September? No. No, Commissioner. Mr. Abate is here, too, so he can answer questions. So this is... The project or the restroom is 5.9 million? The entire project. And how much is unfunded? This year's budget currently makes it fully funded. Correct. This is the last allocation. And what are the funding sources? We have ad warm bed tax, insurance proceeds, and beach impact fees. No district fees? There is commission funds. Those are even allocated towards this project. Yeah, I have... Mr. Hetherington. What were the insurance proceeds for that? $255,000. So $255,000 to replace the structure? Yes, that's what we received for that. And now we're replacing it with a $5.9 million structure? Good morning, Kevin Abate, Parks Director. Well, the entire CIP sheet includes the new Dune crossover that's being designed, the entire almost 9,000-square-foot deck that includes the beachside restroom, the cafe, and the tiki. So the entire project, it does have a... It's an elevated project, meaning it's about 14 or 15 feet in elevation, does have a basement, if you will, for beach chair storage and concession storage at the bottom. So the funding that's being referred to in the CIP sheet is the funding, the additional funding that was needed based on the cost estimates by the engineering company to finalize the project. And I believe we've been collecting funding sources for several years, including park fees, beach impact fees, some bed tax fees to replace the maintenance of the crossover that we ripped out during after the fire, district MSTU fees from district one. So it was a combination of several different funding sources for this project. This was the final year. And to answer the question on design, we are approaching 80% design. We fully expect to be fully designed by the end of this fiscal year with the goal of going out to bid after we get our full funding, putting out the bid after October. So what percentage is ad valorem funding for this project? Of the total 5.9 million, the total ad valorem is approximately, or sorry, 5.2 million. Ad valorem is 2.9 of it. Yeah, with the talk of property tax reform this year, I'd be very cautious having highlighted a $5.9 million beach restroom. It seems like it raises a red flag for the CFO and Doge to come to Martin County. So I would say we need to take another look at wants versus needs. Okay, but we also talked about approving a $74 million no bid. You did. So we're talking about something that brings in revenue. Our beaches are biggest source of revenue here in Martin County. This was a catastrophe. It has to be replaced. A car had run into it. It was on wooden supports, is my understanding. We have to pillar in deeply, and Mr. Donaldson can speak to that more eloquently as an engineer, what has to be done. So, you know, we could talk about being cautious, but let's keep things in perspective. We have until September to reduce the scope because we can always decrease the budget. we just can't increase it. We are going out to bid, as was said, at the end of this year. Okay. So we will get the best, best bid for this county. Again, by September, we can always decrease the scope. We just won't increase it. Well, there are other places also in September. So I urge you to take a look at everything. I will. Is this structure hardened? Yes. It's built with auger piles, concrete piles, as the foundation, but it's a steel cross beam, but it's a hurricane-proof building code. So it's going through the DEP permitting now for all the structural part of it on the dune, and then it will go through the building department review this summer, or now, very soon, which is happening with our consultant. Yes, it's a hardened facility. So that's part of the design scope is that all aspects of it need to be hardened? It would, Commissioner, need to meet the minimum building code requirements. So that's not hardening? Yeah. So it's not, it's nothing more additional than beating the building code, and the only additional building code, because it's on the beach, would be due to potential wave action. So that's why it's a pile-supported structure. So that adds, that would be the additional piece. But there's nothing, since it's not a, it's not designed as a living place or as a, for sheltering, it's not going to be hardened in that sense, Commissioner, but it will be at least resistant to hurricane damage. And there's already water and sewer there, right? Yes. I mean, I'm just thinking about this versus the operations facility, which is hardened and also has water and sewer and tons of other requirements. And this is a restaurant and a rest, a restaurant and a restroom. Any further questions? I guess. Yeah. I would move tentative approval of the CIP budget item. Second. There's a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? That motion passes unanimously. Commission MS2. The Commission MS2s are discretionary funds for each of the five districts. Per state statute, these funds must be used on a public purpose within that district's boundaries. Historically, these funds have been used to help fund CIP projects that have been identified in the capital improvement plan. For fiscal year 27 budget, districts 1, 2, and 5 are proposing to constant funding levels. Districts 3 and 4 are proposing to keep constant millage levels. If members of the board would like to adjust their millage rate or dollars, we can make adjustments at the wrap-up. I would like to adjust mine down to rollback, please. Okay. We'll make those changes at the end. Okay. I would do the same for District 2. Any further questions? At the rollback? I don't think it's at the rollback, is it? Yours is technically rollback right now, Commissioner. Any further questions, comments? Is there a motion to approve the commission MSTU? Move approval. Second. There's a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? That motion passes unanimously. Thank you. Community development is next. Good morning, Ms. Correz. Good morning, Madam Chair, Commissioners. Susan Correz, Community Development Director. The Office of Community Development is responsible for three main activities. The operation and management of the Martin County Community Redevelopment Agency and its six CRA areas. The Martin County Art in Public Places Program and the Martin County Historic Preservation Board. And our goals, as listed here on slide number one, reflect the missions, mission statements for each. In short, I'll give you a little brief mission statement. CRA projects deliver vital, positive economic impacts. Art in Public Places increases the residents' quality of life through aesthetic enrichment. and the Historic Preservation Program educates the community while it preserves and protects current and future county assets. This tentative fiscal year 2027 budget presented to you today allows us to maintain our current level of service and operational efficiency and effectiveness. The increase of 2.99% is due to pre-approved bargaining agreements for all county employees. We have also adjusted, you might have noticed, some line items within to reflect actual expenditures in the operational needs for FY27, although there is no increase in these lines. Slide number two talks a little bit about our services. And if you notice, I identified CRA services in a few different categories. There may be more. Streetscapes, neighborhood improvements, environmental resources, community revitalization. We continue to focus on the advancement of infrastructure-related projects throughout all six CRA areas that set the stage for redevelopment. These projects, past, present, and future, are those that have had and will have a huge economic impact through increased private sector investment, job creation, small business growth, and quality of life through cultural enrichment. All of the projects that we do fit into multiple categories and therefore bring multiple benefits. For example, although listed under one category, most, if not all, of the projects listed here could be listed under any other category. The award-winning Ripple project in Palm City is a perfect example. This unrivaled environmental amenity enhances stormwater retention, improves drainage, increases water quality, educates the public, incorporates eco-art, celebrates our history, and beautifies our community. The county's public art inventory since 2017 has increased 115%, and each of our artworks has a rigorous maintenance program. And through participation in the community with our external partners and active sponsorship of our community, our program has become widely known and appreciated. Historic Preservation Month events have increased by 88%, and we are a part of the new History and Culture Expo, working with 16 other nonprofits in the area to promote our history and heritage. You might notice that there are asterisks next to some, many of the projects listed, and I have emphasized those because I think partnerships are very important. and I think it's important to show that county departments work together. This is external and internal partnerships. We support one another, we rely on each other's expertise, and most importantly, leverage our collective resources to efficiently and effectively provide high-quality services to our residents. This slide drills down a little bit further on the services that we provide and offers a snapshot of what that might look like. I'm just going to focus on a few. Public meetings. My office coordinates and manages 62 public meetings per year, and that does not include many of the other community-facing presentations and meetings that staff participates in, like CARES, district events, ribbon cuttings, town hall meetings, community presentations, et cetera. The increase in community engagement is particularly telling. It clearly illustrates that our residents are extremely responsive when we bring them meaningful projects in a community setting where they can have a voice. We've generated double the amount of revenue in our CRA tax increment financing. Our grant awards, we've brought in close to $4 million in grants. Internal project coordination, I'm going to talk about that one for a minute because, again, important, I think, to what we're trying to do for our residents. This is when CRA dollars are used to supplement and complement projects done by other departments in a CRA. So in the last slide, I emphasized how we work together with our internal and external partners. This statistic more clearly demonstrates interdepartmental efficiency and how county departments work together to achieve the exceptional level of service that we continually offer to the community. At the end of the day, commissioners, it's really all about value and what the taxpayer receives. So I've mentioned economic development and private investment a few times in this presentation, and I know that you all understand that tax increment financing is a tool that the county employs to increase private investment that benefits all. The county builds the stage and private sector provides the sets, the players, the costumes, and runs the show. And it works. Let's take a look. Bridge Road, we're going to go all the way down. Bridge Road and the multi-award winning map road and Palm City Place. You can see the county investment to build those amenities, those projects. And then you can see the private investment that has followed. And this, commissioners, only includes what's on those corridors, what's on exactly the project parameters of Bridge Road and Map Road. It does not include Dixie Highway going north and south. It doesn't include Martin Highway. It doesn't include Martin Downs. Building strong, vibrant communities that include a healthy return on investment for the taxpayer is smart, effective, and fiscally responsible. We look forward to your unanimous approval of our tentative FY2027 budget so that we may continue to successfully provide vital services to our residents. And I'd be happy to answer any questions. Questions? I'm just curious. Two projects that were in the CRAs that were really supported by the neighbors are the Waterfront Restaurant in Palm City and also Rio Marine Village. How is progress on those two projects? So Rio Marine Village is moving along. They've had some demolition work going on of all of the private properties that they purchased. So they've done the marina on the south and now they're demolishing those properties in order to continue to build the south portion. And has work started on the restaurant in Palm City? The Waterfront Restaurant? Not in the CRA so I can't speak on that. I can. The Meridian Marina on Map Road north of Martin Downs Boulevard, they just actually opened their large hardened internal storage, like out-of-water storage building. It's beautiful. It's obviously a tremendously large building but they did a lot of architectural details to make it sort of a little more attractive than just a big steel building and landscaping. And they have all of the designs for the building that exists there so they're not building something brand new on the water. They're going to completely rehab a derelict building. The plans are the last I saw them they were I guess done and the fun part was they were looking for restaurant partners. They're not going to run the food service and the restaurant portion themselves so they were looking at like all of the most successful popular restaurants in Martin County to partner with them. And so I think they're probably six months out but it'll be a great opportunity. It's a very pretty spot as Commissioner Hurd said it's the only spot in Palm City where you can dine on the water like that. I'm sorry it's not a redevelopment project. It's a great project. We look forward to its completion. And that's all private. Yeah. And then of course to your 17 million on Map Road. I think that's conservative. Yeah and that's just the beginning. It is conservative because it doesn't account for all of those other things. Those are just a few quick numbers that we did that look at property sales and the permits for the redevelopment that's happened right on the street. Commissioner Capps. When talking about community redevelopment it's always good to refresh our memories about how the TIF funding works. And is it a 65-35 split now or is it 70-30? I can't remember. 65% of the TIF is funding the capital program and the Office of Community Developments. 65. 65% And basically you take a baseline somewhere around the year 2000 they vary a little bit from one to the other and the increase in property values inside the CRA boundary we take that often and that's the amount of money that stays in that community for redevelopment purposes. And it's important I think Commissioner to point out that it's not an extra tax. It's just the same amount of property taxes going into a different bucket. for a particular activity. And this way we make sure that all of them get their fair share of tax money. But it doesn't all go to one of the districts or something. Any further questions? Is there a motion to motion to accept tentative budget for the CRA? Second. Community Office of Community Development OCD. OCD. We live with it. There's a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? That motion passes unanimously. Thank you. Thank you Madam Chair. County Attorneys tentative budget. Good morning Chair Hurd and Commissioners. Thank you for the opportunity to present the fiscal year 2027 budget for the County Attorney's Office. I am very pleased to present to you a budget which is a reduction by 5.58%. Even with the increase in salary and benefits we were able to reduce our budget this year. This reduction was achieved by a conscious restructuring of our office allowing us to maintain the same level of legal service while operating efficiently and reducing costs. Our office is comprised of 5 full-time attorneys 1 part-time attorney and an office administrator. We are a very small office but we run very efficiently unlike most law firms or county attorneys offices we do not have legal assistance we don't have support staff we don't have secretaries our attorneys handle all their day-to-day matters we have one office administrator that runs the office and helps us day-to-day and I'm happy to say that since 2018 our office has reduced staff by 30% so many think that our office might review a contract here or there or represent the county in a lawsuit here or there but that is an understatement for what our office undertakes we are ingrained in the day-to-day operations of the entire county we represent and work with every department division constitutional offices every advisory board the MPO and the canvassing board in our day-to-day operations every attorney is assigned to one of those divisions boards and those staff members or advisory board members can call our office at any time to get legal advice on day-to-day matters so overall we're a full full service law firm basically for the county we provide legal counsel on local government law land use environmental real property procurement construction the list goes on and on and we do this on a daily basis and this is important to the county because we're ingrained with staff and we can provide very efficient legal advice and reduce the risk to the county so the last slide why don't you run through those that slide is important no the next slide two slides back okay sorry yeah so these are just a list of some of the things that we do every day for the county we advise the board and all on all legal matters we review and draft ordinances resolutions and all county policies we review every single contract before the county signs it we represent the county in many of its litigation including administration matters and appeals we support acquisitions in real estate transactions we negotiate interlocals we review grants the list goes on and on one thing I think is significant this year we work very closely I know I did with John Mayle and Sarah Powers and we're able to give them advice on the different laws that are going through the legislative process to inform them how it's going to impact the county and they're able to go to our delegation and provide sound legal advice about how different laws as they travel through the legislature will affect the county and I think that's really important for our office so next slide please so like I said we were trying to quantify some of the services we provided in 2025 it's really hard because our office does a lot but overall we represent 54 division departments and offices we represent 35 boards and committees we have reviewed hundreds and hundreds of contracts every year I know personally I review one two to three a week times six attorneys that's significant we reviewed or drafted 30 ordinances reviewed drafted 325 resolutions we participated in 91 real property projects we represent the county in many lawsuits and last year we had eight favorable outcomes in lawsuits and zero negative outcomes we also review every single agenda item that goes to this board so which is significant all this legal advice we provide because we are able to reduce the risk that is that the county has so we provide this legal advice day to day we know the county and we have very few lawsuits as a result which actually saves money overall so this is just an example of some of the the counties departments divisions constitutional offices that we represent so I thought it was important to show that each one has its own distinct area of law so we are giving a wide variety of legal advice through the county and I think that like I said that's invaluable to assisting staff with operating day-to-day and reducing county risk so overall our budget budget demonstrates our commitment to fiscal responsibility while maintaining the comprehensive legal services we provide to the county every single day so I'm happy to present that budget and if you have any questions I'm happy to answer those as well just a quick question don't you review trico cases as well we do so trico we do reduce put them on your list we do represent the county for trico as well Commissioner Vargas yes how much do you pay outside council so we pay each some departments have their own outside council so I don't have those figures like the building department has someone for code enforcement but the county attorney's office only provides outside council for major litigation matters and right now we just have two and one of those was in they're related and they were in place prior to me taking effect it's a litigation matter we assist them so we're it depends on where the stage of the litigation is so it could go anywhere from five to ten thousand dollars a month right now but we believe that case is going to wrap up other than that we handle all the cases ourselves and except for trico matters the PI cases okay so you said five to ten thousand per month so how many months so that lawsuit was filed in november so we might have and that's just an estimate so if we've spent I don't have the figure I can let you know what it was you might know we're still in the current fiscal year so those actuals are not reflected on that but if we're using fiscal year 25 which is an audited number at the moment last year on professional services outside council both litigation and non-litigation amounted to approximately 17 grand total for the whole fiscal year okay that's last year last year this year so we don't have that number yet but I'm asking I guess it'll probably be about the same we don't have anything more significant we have minimal lawsuits and we're hopeful ones about to resolve okay because you have other contractual services here 30,000 so that's in case we have litigation and we need to hire an expert witness or something like that or so that is for potential legal cases that we are handling we need to hire outside consultants and experts move approval second any further discussion there's a motion in a second all those in favor I opposed nice job that motion passes unanimously thank you we will take up fire rescue good morning for the record my name is Chad Chancholi fire chief Martin County fire rescue so today we're here to present to you our FY 27 tentative budget but I'm going to do things a little bit different this time just because of what's happening right now with the kind of doge state that we're in I just want to go in a little bit detail for the public to understand the budget of fire rescue and how our budget has gotten us to where we are today and I'm going to go into some of those actual details and explain so first let's start with our FY 26 adopted budget was 73.9 million our FY 27 tentative budget is 77.5 million and that's a change of 4.92% so here's the thing that I want everyone to pay attention to when we look at fire rescue in Martin County we call ourselves a full service department when you compare fire like agencies always make sure you compare apples to apples under the umbrella of fire rescue in Martin County we have many different disciplines when you go to other agencies that are fire rescue their budget would be just fire and EMS not all but most so some of our disciplines that we have under fire rescue emergency management nuclear planning communications which is our dispatchers ocean rescue which is our lifeguards fire prevention administration operations fleet services and logistics air medical operations which is our trauma helicopter lifestar and then training and operational management so moving on to our department goals pretty simple maintain rapid response coverage countywide sustained a staffing to match that call demand which we've been doing and I'm going to explain replace our aging apparatus and bunker gear this is a high cost item this is something that mr. rush has been doing for many many years he has a very fiscal responsible approach to how we budget for these items he saves every year throughout the year so it's not just one big major impact he does a phenomenal job with that and we'll talk a little more about that the other is to protect our iso rating our iso rating and not to get too far off the rails but this is a very important rating for the community iso stands for insurance service office this is when you as a homeowner may be reevaluating your bills looking for better homeowners insurance and you start calling different companies or you may be a new homeowner and you have to get homeowners insurance for your home when you call these insurance companies what they're going to do is look at your iso rating and see what classification you are depending on the area that you live in the classes go from class one which is the best to class 10 which is the worst if you're in a class 10 area your premiums are going to reflect that and they're going to be very high class 10 areas are typical outside the urban service district and what dictates that class essentially is how quick we can assemble firefighters on a residential structure fire in a timely manner and how quick we can get water there as well that's why the western part you'll see in a class 10 inside the urban service district what I'm happy to report over the last couple of years we actually took a class rating from a class three reduced it to a class two which is better for the taxpayers when they actually go for their homeowners insurance or they renew their homeowners insurance the goal is to strive for a class one now let me just explain a class one a class one to achieve that if if we were in a city limit and we had seven to nine square land miles to cover it's easier to achieve your travel times are quicker you have a hydrant around every corner and it's something that is a lot more achievable to get that class one but when you look at martin county fire rescue we cover 520 square land miles and to achieve a class one would be a huge accomplishment but even with that said I believe that we can be a class one if we have your support within the next couple of years so that's one of our big goals that we have so let's talk about the budget drivers apparatus and equipment cost increases and we're definitely going to hit on this our frs unfunded mandates we are definitely going to talk about that and then what I want the public to actually understand the lion's share of our budget 93% is people so let's move on to the next slide so right now like I said we're in a bit of a doge state so we have in 2020 you have a state implied inflationary formula this is a state fiscal oversight methodology and they apply this back to a 2020 baseline to where we are current what they essentially do is they go across the state to different municipalities they apply this formula specific to that miss a municipality and then they come up with a total sum number and we're going to break this down but whatever that total sum number they come up with in the eyes of the state anything above and beyond that number could be viewed as reckless irresponsible spending of tax dollars so let's bring this to Martin County so if we look at the CPI inflation 25.5% if we look at the population growth for Martin County all this goes back to 2020 it's 5.1% and then you look at the 5% buffer they add in their formula your total number is 35.6% so anything outside of this number may be deemed as irresponsible spending so that's how they apply this methodology so if I take that 35.6% and I walk into a grocery store if I get a gallon of milk or I get a carton of eggs that math may actually work but here's what you can't do you cannot compare the specialized services of fire rescue to a grocery basket it doesn't work and I'm going to explain why so moving on to the next slide so in 2020 if I was going to purchase a fire truck when we did that truck would have cost me five hundred and thirty nine thousand dollars that same truck same specs no changes in fact the same vendor that same truck cost me one million dollars that's an 85.4% increase now if I do that with a ladder truck same thing 2020 that truck cost me seven hundred and fifty two thousand dollars same truck same specs no changes that now cost me one point three million dollars that's a seventy three percent increase and for the general public what I want them to understand when we purchase these vehicles we keep them for 15 years ten years frontline five-year backup how we do that is because of our individuals that work in our fleet maintenance shop they do an amazing job of keeping these trucks on the road if it wasn't for their specialized skill set there is no way we could keep these trucks for 15 years but that is just one just illustration of how the type of quality people that you have in this department and the skill set they have to keep these trucks running and let's face it most people don't even keep their personal vehicles for 15 years but we're putting these trucks on the road for 15 years because of them but let me move on diesel diesel has gone up almost 90 percent our practically our entire fleet runs on diesel all day every day and we burn a lot of it our bunker gear this is an important one this is the safety gear our firefighters wear this is their firefighter ensemble this is what they put on to go in what we would call an IDLH atmosphere immediate danger to life and health meaning if they go into a residential structure fire and they have to do a victim rescue this gear protects them it lets them to get closer to the fire it lets them push the limits to have these effective victim rescues it also listen to aggressive fire operations interior but aside from that it also lets them approach these fiery car accidents that you've been seeing out there in this county which I'm telling you this county something unique about Martin County is next level with the type of traumatic vehicle accidents that we have this gear is designed to protect them to be able to have offensive operations to get in close to be able to extinguish this fire and get these victims out of harm's way that gear right there if I purchased in 2020 it would have cost me roughly twenty five hundred dollars I purchased that same set today it's four thousand dollars we have three hundred and fifty firefighters boots on the ground they have to have two sets of gear why because when they do go into these structure fires or on these vehicle fires they are just soaked in carcinogens they have to take that gear off immediately put it out of service and launcher that gear they now move into that backup set of gear and then that cycle completes right so 350 firefighters two sets of gear that seven hundred sets of gear at four thousand dollars all right a rescue unit most people call it an ambulance if I bought that truck 2020 two hundred forty six thousand dollars same truck same specs no change four hundred thousand dollars today that's a sixty two percent increase and then here's the big one the FRS pension mandate unfunded this is what the state gives to us that has gone up fifty four percent the number to fire rescue alone is four point four point eight million dollars right so let's talk about the demand that actually drove the budget if I take you back from 2009 to 2018 we hired no additional firefighters we maintained the minimum staffing that we had but didn't hire any extra but from that time frame to where we are now our call load has increased by sixty three percent so what we were doing was leaning the system out continue to lean it to keep up with the demand well in 2019 the administration at the time came to the board and they requested a safer grant for twenty four additional firefighter paramedics this was a FEMA funded safer grant safer stands for staffing adequate for fire and emergency response the reason they requested this grant this is what the federal government would give you to allow you to offset the cost of those employees for about three to five years I think at that time it was greater than three years and you slowly absorb the full cost of those employees it allows municipalities to onboard newer employees it gives them a little bit of time to catch up with it anyway they came to the board to request that they granted it they were awarded the twenty four positions extra firefighter paramedics but this is what they did with them this had nothing to do with that sixty three percent that I'm telling you that the call load increased this had to do with placing them on engines and on ladder trucks to actually make them advance life support capable this increase the level of service to the community now why is it important to put a fire medic on a rescue excuse me on a ladder or an engine what this happens in every zone doesn't matter what part of the county we're in if we have a firehouse a typical fire truck and then you have a rescue and there's a medical call that goes out that rescue goes to that medical call and they provide that a land that advanced life support care they treat the patient and then they take them in route to their destination hospital while they're in route to the hospital then another medical call drops in that zone now we're able to send either the fire truck or ladder truck whichever and go ahead and go in route because they're the closest to that patient because that is their zone and they're able to provide advanced life support care because the essential items that are on that rescue for medical treatment are also on those engine and ladder trucks so that makes a very consistent level of service across the community and that really elevated the level of service as far as how Martin County was receiving it at the time that's what the 24 did now in 2024 this is where things were really broken that 63% it caught up to us and we had to actually put five additional rescues on the road to keep up with the demand of the public because the calls were coming in so fast and so rapid we had to maintain a level of service the problem is we didn't have the people to put on those five additional trucks so what did we do we funded those trucks 100% with overtime and in the beginning people were working the overtime but here's the problem when you work 48 hours straight it is a mental and physical grind on an employee it's gonna last so long and eventually what are they gonna do they're gonna stop taking the overtime so now what happened we went into something that we called mandatory overtime if you won't know any firefighter any firefighter family firefighters work for 24 hours their family dynamic is built around that 24-hour schedule their entire life is built around that 24-hour schedule anything anniversaries birthdays vacations I don't care what you're doing do not upset that schedule because it doesn't change it stays the same however because that employee worked 24 hours supposed to go home and nobody's taking the overtime I had to call that employee and tell them you're staying another day you're gonna work 48 hours straight you don't have a choice in the matter because I can't shut the truck off I have to make them stay now pick up the phone and call your family and let them know whatever you had going on all that's going to change now because that's a huge impact so we came to the board and we requested an additional 40 full-time employees to complement those five additional rescues we had out there on the road you allowed us to apply for the grant unfortunately the FEMA grant is a highly highly competitive grant across the nation we did not receive the grant that year and we had to come back to the board because we still had a problem and we've requested an additional 20 to bring some immediate per of reprieve to our people you allowed us to hire those 20 we went back out for another FEMA safer grant and we got a remaining amount of 18 and that brought us up to where we are today that's a lot of information let me just recap here right so from from 2009 to current call loads gone up 63 percent our personnel that we have added along the way 62 people our budget has increased by 62 percent and remember the lion's share of our budget 93 percent it's the people so let me talk about recruitment or retention this one I'm just going to give you a heads up this one's going to be a little bit disturbing but we have to share this because we got to make sure we make some good decisions in the near future right now we have 40 qualified firefighters that are in the pipeline to get hired in a department down south 40 of them if we lose 40 that is catastrophic to this organization heck if I lose half that that is detrimental to this organization but here's how firefighters are built we are built on always always plan worst case scenario always have contingencies in mind because you never know what's going to happen the way they're thinking is this they know what's happening in the state they know what's on the ballot in November and the homestead exemption if that if that actually happens they know that the direct impacts to us is going to be significant and they understand 93 percent of our budget is people so we have 40 of them in the pipeline right now but let's talk about replacing just one firefighter paramedic what is the dollars and cents what's the cost if I lose a firefighter paramedic I'm going to open up applications to anybody out there and then my applications are going to come in and I'm going to end up hiring a firefighter EMT why not the firefighter paramedic I'll tell you why because the market down south now the salaries are being so competitive that if you already have that advanced training to be a firefighter paramedic you're driving right through Martin County and you're headed down south because they will pick you up in a heartbeat so I'm gonna end up with a firefighter EMT which I'm okay with and here's why I can take that firefighter EMT I can build them from scratch I can get them to the Martin County way I can raise them to the standard that we have here in Martin County Fire Rescue and I'm telling you our standard is unmatched by any department especially down south we have a very high standard but I can do that I can invest in them I can train them and I can get them there to actually be a huge asset to the organization the problem is I have to be able to keep them and if I train them and then they leave I'm just back in the cycle and I cannot be in a training cycle because the math doesn't work for us so let's talk about this firefighter EMT it's gonna take me three years to get them to the beginning level of a firefighter paramedic up to three years except they're gonna be at the beginning level of a firefighter paramedic not the experienced firefighter paramedic what's the difference I'll tell you what the difference is if I take an experienced firefighter the firefighter paramedic and I put them on a high acuity call complex call they're gonna go to that call they're gonna go through that rolodex in their mind they've been there they've done that they know what methodology they know what works and what doesn't work and they're gonna immediately give the care that that individual needs in a snap that's how quick it'll be one that doesn't have that experience that knowledge those reps who sets they don't have any of that they just have the school yes they will get through that call but when they get on the call they're gonna look at the call I've never been here I've never done that I didn't read this in the books and they're gonna process this and it's gonna take them time to meet that level of making that decision that does impact the level of service because when we talk about seconds make a difference it's not a catchphrase it's real they will get the job done but not in the same manner anyway that three years that I'm trained in that firefighter EMT to be a medic I have to pay for their salary and friend fringes benefits right it's gonna cost me three hundred eighteen thousand dollars in that three-year time frame then I have to get them bunker gear and uniforms that's another fifteen thousand dollars you may ask well if that fire medic left why can't you take their bunker gear and just throw it on the new one well good question problem is the bunker gear is tailored fitted for our firefighters it has to be like that it's the only way we keep them safe it is not a batch fit it is a tailor fit to each individual firefighter so we have to get them new gear then I'm gonna send them the paramedic school I'm gonna spend nine thousand dollars just to send them to school that's gonna cost that's gonna take time of twelve to fifteen months to get them through solely one hundred percent paramedic training just medical that's all it is and it is a very very intensive program then here's why the importance of a paramedic if you think about what ER doctors do in the ER room and what some of the trauma surgeons do in a trauma room these medics are trained at the level to do some of those same skill sets on the side of the road in the back of the truck in the middle of the night with limited lighting that's the caliber of the people that you have working here and that's how long it takes to get them to that level anyway so what cost us nine thousand dollars to do that right here's the catch that firefighter paramedic that left I had to fill that seat with another firefighter paramedic I just told you I hired an EMT so how do I do that I'll tell you how I do it do with overtime I have to staff that seat to keep that advanced life support to keep that level of service or community with another paramedic and it's going to cost overtime it's going to be a hundred shifts per year of overtime it's going to cost one thousand six hundred and sixty-seven dollars per shift of overtime for three years that in itself is five hundred thousand dollars now let me add all that up it cost us eight hundred and forty-two thousand dollars when we're in a state of being mandatory overtime to replace one firefighter paramedic I got 40 in the pipeline right now it's something that we have got to pay attention to all right so this one you say 40 in the in the pipeline I don't think people understood that that's 40 current Martin County firefighter paramedics that have put applications in correct to go to Palm Beach they're in an active testing process right now correct so let me talk about the last slide here this is something that the union has done and I couldn't be more proud of what they have took it upon themselves to do you know I come before you all the time I talk about our high standard I talk about our professionalism I talk about how great our people are right and from your position looking at me you're like right Chad you're the fire chief you're biased you're always going to say that and I get that but this is the best part I don't have to say anything because they just did it they performed the most selfless act right now right now the union should be before this board and they should have negotiated with us a new firefighter union contract and in that contract they should be negotiating their wages their benefits their terms and conditions of employment they should be benefiting for the fact that what the market is bearing they need to be able to be within the market of those salaries down south we all know we're not going to pay what they pay down south and the sheriff had mentioned this earlier but you have got to be in the market of what they're doing down south they have every right to do that they also know if the homestead exemption tax passes the first year to fire rescue alone it's going to be a 9.5 million dollar reduction just to fire rescue and then the second year it's going to be an additional 7 million dollars in two years that 16.5 million dollars of a reduction to our budget they know all of that and yet collectively they voted to keep that contract closed because they understand the position you're going to be in to make tough decisions they understand the uneasiness of the state right now they understand the county employees of how they feel the anxiety right now and they made sure that they put the community before their own needs and they kept this thing shut i couldn't be more proud of their professionalism and their selfless service i'm very very proud of them so with that i'm going to conclude the presentation mainly what this is about to share with you what's happening with the state approved inflationary formula how it does not apply to specialized services like fire rescue and with that that concludes the budget and i'll be more than happy to take any questions for starters chief um there are a lot of people who believe that public safety is has a carve out uh with the referendum you do not so i would appreciate it if you would come back at a later date and explain to us exactly what the referendum would do to your department in the as you say in the first year it's nine and a half million in the second year it's sixteen and a half million in the third year it's far worse i appreciate the same presentation from the uh sheriff and also from the property appraiser commissioner caps i'd like to make a comment first uh i'd just like to say how much i appreciate uh the union not pushing for their new contract at this critical juncture when we're trying to see whether the tax referendum is going to pass uh that's very commendable and then i had one question about the frsa pension mandate and the sheriff mentioned this too that uh in both uh police and fire it seems that there was a surprise like why why is it such a surprise that these large increases and the pension contributions happen like why is that unpredictable so when the state's going through their session um they usually propose a few bills in both the senate and the house and the the original proposals from both the senate and the house were showing essentially a flat um rate increase in frs for the special risk categories and it was in that last session the special session that was made that they decided to add the one and a half percent cola adjustment to the special risk category which on top of the current um the rate increases as as they've gone added to be millions of dollars for both fire and um sheriff's office it was about two million dollars for the fire rescue department so this is like the state mandating to the counties that you shall pay this additional extra yes and it was about cost of living adjustment to first responders or public safety anyone who's considered in the special risk category per florida retirement system it's like a birthday card from your grandparents but your parents put the money in yes it was like last week of may very last minute analogy thank you mr hetherington thank you for that detailed presentation we have a lot of new residents that move here and they um they become they they just come to expect the level of service and that did not come over the years without a lot of effort and hard work by the department so thank you for outlining how we got to where we are today and i also want to express my appreciation we've had a heck of a year with um terrible traffic accidents fatalities and that takes a toll on your men and women we see it on the ground and we see all the tragedies that you respond to on to on the road and so i want to send my you know just my thanks to all of you that work on the street every day to keep us safe because i can't even imagine what kind of um what you have to live with when you come up on some of those accidents and some of those horrific tragedies so thank you and gladly motion to tentatively approve the budget second can you just give us i asked the sheriff also can you give a recap of approximately how many calls you have there's also talk i'm sure you've heard where people say well you know we only have a four story height limit and we don't can you share with us the medical emergency calls as commissioner hetherington mensch versus fire uh calls even though we've been reading in the paper about a lot of brush fires and things like that uh and then how many stations there are and how much you cover good morning for the record rocker napoli deputy fire chief and to answer your question directly commissioner i have a quick one sheet of snapshot here of some of the information you just requested it's because we are in this fiscal year like someone previously stated my numbers i have are from 2019 from 2025 i wanted to piggyback off the fire chief's presentation so right now excuse me we are up 8.4 percent meaning from 2025 this this is the last year of those numbers so from 19 to 25 we're up 8.4 percent this last year we ran 46 215 total unit responses that's every time our trucks have been on the road responding to an emergency that's on average 127 responses a day now if you fast forward to now we're in this fiscal from january to june i ran these numbers from this year compared to last year from january to june we're climbing at a pace of 7.3 percent that's 134 responses a day and it's not slowing down anytime soon if i go further down on my sheet mvcs we call motor vehicle collisions like you stated we run those quite often we run about five a day some days it may be a little more some days it may be a little less it could be your normal little fender mender that you see someone pull off to the side of the road or it can be a multi-unit response a high level call so we're running almost five a day outside fires from 2019 we're up 10 percent that's our brush fires again could be a smaller scale brush fire but also could be a big multi-unit response every year since 2021 we've gone from anywhere from eight to twenty eight percent spike in calls it's a it's five straight years of a trend it's not a one-year spike so this is the type of rising demand that we have for the emergency services thank you commissioners if i could just state that this is sort of the example of um well martin county is a slow growth we're surrounded by large growth areas palm beach county has been adding over ten thousand units a year port st lucie was averaging similar around ten thousand and the amount of traffic going in from to and from south florida um we're surrounded by it and we're being impacted by by that growth even though individually we're not seeing the growth internally it affects their operation tremendously years ago when you first started this we talked about the alfs uh and that had a spike but this trend that we're seeing now is just simply from the compounded growth and we also have some growth in our businesses whether or not adding people we are adding jobs so those combination of things is where we're really seeing the impact to fire rescue and our sheriff's department to finish answering the question we have 11 fire stations we also have a lifestar station in addition to that then we have a specialized contract on jupiter island which has another substation but the 11 are full-fledged where they have at least one fire truck at a minimum and then one or two rescues depending on the actual station how busy it is can you mention about special teams like what other areas of expertise you guys work in sure and that's going to tie into our next presentation that madam chairs uh requested us to do our specialty response when we say full service and i didn't want to make this too long-winded but we have hazmat teams we have dive teams we have technical rescue rescue teams now hazmat self-explanatory we have a lot of transit through here i think you all understand that between the rail the marine industry the 95 the turnpike us-1 it's non-stop hazmat is a routine thing not only do we have a hazmat team but they're a nationally recognized hazmat team again the caliber of the people that we have in this organization that we can't afford to lose but the technical rescue team when you hear that it sounds a little generalized but you think about these complex motor vehicle collisions this is one thing that is is their bread and butter we have what we call it's a heavy rescue truck it's a big huge truck we just call it a big toolbox it has all this specialized equipment with the crew that has specialized training to perform these complex extrications these aren't defender banners these are one that it can take up to 45 minutes to an hour to cut a person out of a vehicle vehicles are safer yes think about that when you have an impact they're safer which means it's more difficult for us to cut into them to get you out of them so it's a bit of a trade-off but that's another example lifestar we've already talked about a thousand times we don't have a trauma center here that's a specialized team the people that are on lifestar they are a very specialized unit of people this is all trauma they're not flying people that just had fallen and just stubbed a toe they're flying people that are absolutely critical and near death they're trying to meet that window of 60 minutes that's the golden hour and they are treating these patients while they're flying in the air to get them to the appropriate trauma center with the appropriate trauma team but there's many other teams that we have but those are the highlights just the high level ones can you discuss ocean rescue and what you cover ocean rescue 22 pretty much uh coastal miles of beach is what they pretty much cover um they those people that we have out in their ocean rescue and we call them the fins in the sand they do a remarkable job they are medically trained and they're ocean rescue lifeguards the standard those lifeguards have this isn't sitting on the side of a pool waiting for somebody to jump in these individuals when you have what we call a codex codex is where you have a missing swimmer they hit the water and it's all hands on deck they shut the beaches down and they are some of the most aggressive swimmers out there and this isn't the flat water this is the rough water that most people will be sitting on the beach not going into but yet they're out there doing aggressive searches because they understand the lives that are at stake but man they are committed to the job any further questions please express this board's uh sincere gratitude for your union members pausing their contract uh our people need to understand that they voluntarily uh decided to forego raises we will thank you we have we have a motion oh there's a motion and a second all those in favor aye opposed that motion passes unanimously thank you thank you yeah commissioners let's take a lunch break and come back at 130 145 145 see you then taking up general services good afternoon good afternoon sean donahue general services director in this budget we are proposing a slight cost of doing business increase to maintain our current levels of service by providing operational or building operations and maintenance services for all the county departments and constitutional offices every dollar that we're proposing in this budget supports the services provided to the taxpayers by martin county departments our divisions in the general services department include hvac technicians the trades the plumbers the electricians the low voltage techs the carpenters the painters the mechanics and the accounting technicians who work hard to maintain the county assets effectively efficiently and strategically the department goals include investigating all energy and operational savings we're constantly doing that performing proactive building components and systems inspections to reduce failures reduce reactive maintenance and requests by completing more preventive maintenance requests and standardizing all building related components and equipment the general the services department maintains well over 230 million dollars in county building assets that's probably a higher number by that by now these valuations were done about two or three years ago these assets include critical facilities like the sheriff's office facilities including the jail all fire departments the cheney courthouse the courthouse office complex or building the supervisor of election elections office the property appraiser's office tax collector's office the health department buildings historic buildings and other buildings like the administration building and all the libraries we maintain over 800 county vehicles including the enterprise lease fleet program for light vehicles this program is replacing older county vehicles with light fleet vehicles with more efficient more efficiencies and cost effective and fiscally stable lease program within the first year this program alone this year we've already seen a cost avoidance of over fifty thousand dollars by not having to replace older damaged inoperable vehicles uh we can we can go ahead and start the leasing program with those vehicles so there's already a savings there we also manage the county energy and operational savings program which i'll discuss in the next couple slides some of the gsd stats things that we do we manage over eight over 1100 air conditioning systems across the county we manage almost 600 000 or 600 000 gallons of fuel at 15 locations we process almost 12 000 work orders a year we process about 9 000 service invoices and 2500 requests for maintenance we we provide a work order we do preventive work orders i'm sorry for about 6 400 workers a year we do reactive work orders about 2 900 work orders a year we maintain over 1700 security cameras we store over 3 000 terabytes terabytes of security data we print over 4 000 badges access management badges for all the all the different departments staff and vendors we maintain over 8 000 life safety devices we've completed about 16 major projects this year including the house of refuge library pavilions and like we've we're working on about 17 projects currently and we are working on the energy savings program for 2025 and that program is is currently produced about 67 000 worth of savings the cost of doing business increases over over time have hit our department uh since the pandemic and they're not coming down as stephanie mentioned earlier uh the paper products uh increases alone for the last five years have been about 45 percent in this current budget we're we're looking at about a 19 percent increase in just paper alone so that we're seeing these increases all over time and we can't we can't do anything about them they just hit us and we have to absorb them as best we can we did try to taper our increases with some reductions across the across the budget where we can we also monitor the the producer price index that's similar to the consumer pricing index this is specifically for products and and the the fuel costs alone have increased about 45 over the last five years as well as uh you know all the service and maintenance costs so it's constantly going up on us we operate proactively proactively when maintaining our values of valuable county assets we try to avoid the fix-on-fail methodology so the essential services provided by the departments we do serve do not impact the taxpayers who rely on these services our proactive approach to the buildings and vehicle assessments and maintenance services reduce or eliminate deferred maintenance which according to the appa is can quadruple these costs if you don't do them now so the general services department has maintained several energy and operational savings programs that have provided savings in excess of 30 million dollars to date the current project is looking at a total savings of about 10 million dollars and then the overall total savings for all their energy maintenance projects is over 60 million dollars behind every county building is a team of dedicated folks in the general services department working to save taxpayer dollars you don't know if we're there if we're doing our job right all the lights will be on the temperature will be good in the buildings but if we're not doing our job right you'll know we weren't you'll be uncomfortable so we try to avoid the fix-on-fail approach we try to be proactive in our maintenance and provide the essential services that our community depends on so any questions questions for mr donahue mr donahue are you proceeding with the improvements to supervisor of elections are you going to wait until after the general election is over the supervisor has asked us to pause a little bit we're still designing and we can get our costs we get lined up but she doesn't want to do construction makes perfect sense it would be very disruptive at this point wouldn't it it would it would we'll work around that any further questions is there a tentative motion to approve i'll move tentative approval for the general services second there's a motion and a second all those in favor aye opposed that motion passes unanimously thank you growth management is up next mr schilling good afternoon commissioners thank you madam chair paul schilling growth management director for the record i'm pleased to be here this morning presenting the proposed 2027 tentative budget uh i do have a couple slides prepared but i would start out by just uh explaining some of the general t's of the department and what we do on a day-to-day basis i have some numbers for you on the next few slides but uh the department is is comprised of four divisions growth management is responsible for planning and development services to the public through effective customer service education and community awareness and our mission is to ensure regulatory compliance so that our residents can continue enjoying the martin county difference the growth management department and those laws and ordinances are mandated by state statute they're also mandated by the comprehensive growth management plan the land development regulations and other ordinances so this 2027 tentative budget allows us to maintain our current level of exceptional service while addressing increases in operating costs and continuing to operate efficiently some considerations and divisions i'd point out the state mandates that's a subject that's that's not only currently a current topic but also on the horizon increased public records requests archives management we do have a digital uh department-wide a project that is taking old paper files and digitizing them that provides for more transparency easier uh retrieval and also the easier disposition of those eventually our code enforcement activities our goals are to maintain compliance with state statutes and adapt to the current changes in statutes so kind of twofold there uh and update the comprehensive plan and the growth land development regulations should those be necessary which they will be uh improve customer service measures and increase review efficiency so next slide so i touched on a few of these um just generally and holistically the planning and development services for unincorporated martin county our customer service component updating these documents and so forth protecting and preserving the natural resources and code enforcement to regulate that and our services also or these are a little bit uh bifurcated but coordinate we coordinate and lead the development review process as you know we have three project coordinators that shepherd those applications whether they be a pre-application all the way up to a planned unit development through the development review process there's 12 to 15 people involved in that process building permit reviews and i'll get to some numbers in a moment the archive management we have had an increase of public records we had approximately 178 uh public records requests last year and i have some numbers on that uh preserve area management processing uh camp compliance and then the environmental permit processing so next slide so these are some general these are october 1 to june 30 uh customer service inquiries as you know right across the hall here we have an exceptional environment for customer service we take walk-in traffic from uh nine to four every day except thursday throughout the year uh with a couple exceptions so we have uh up until this point approximately 3 300 we're on schedule to meet we probably have five to six thousand of those a year we review thousands of permits a year uh 90 different zoning districts uh six community redevelopment areas uh a mixed-use village a variety of zoning and circumstances with those and we're on target to hit probably 10 to 12 000 of those those can be re-reviews they can also be one-offs environmental inspections 818 those may involve a complaint as well but generally we have a couple inspectors that are doing those inspections throughout the day development review projects are a whole different matter they are averaged between 60 and 90 at any given time this just happens to be the number throughout that time we average about 60 to 90 and those can be anything from a small service station to a planned unit development with several hundred units uh across the spectrum industrial hundreds of thousands of square feet so forth uh public records request i mentioned that that 328 hours is reflective of 178 i believe and then the code enforcement cases um mr doherty was here earlier talking about um some of those code enforcement cases these are more for lack of a better term high level cases these involve potentially monitoring replanting uh recreating wetlands recreating upland habitat bonding of the uh proposed uh plantings and then a successful uh inspection within the two-year window so these are complex cases sometimes they do require a magistrate approval so we have those as well and then uh we have the next slide please so we have a group this is kind of near and dear to my heart is the public the uh the customer service component i started in this capacity as a zoning compliance reviewer almost 20 years ago uh so i dealt with customers day in and day out for several years with all kinds of scenarios under the sun and it was a very helpful environment it was uh challenging uh most days but um we pride ourselves on on giving the residents the factual information in a timely manner and uh the best for best way forward as far as applications 459 some odd business tax receipts those are when you're opening in a business in the county we have a zoning reviewer that's looking at that property to make sure that it's a permitted use has the appropriate parking the appropriate site plan and so forth and then environmental permits those can be shoreline hardening those can be a dock with a with the access through the shoreline protection zone uh preserve area management plans and uh several waivers at times reasonable accommodations this is the process of coming to a magistrate uh when you're requesting um whether it be um i'll just use some exam a couple examples that come to mind maybe there is uh over five residents unrelated living in a house and with a uh component of um substance abuse counseling or housing uh we have some of those uh we had i believe seven or eight of these requests there could also be someone that wants emotional support chickens or emotional support pigs or whatever some type of other animals i'm making i'm not making light of it but those are the things that can take quite a bit of quite a bit of time we have 244 hours here but um that's probably a uh not even close uh next slide please i think that might be that's it okay uh commissioners i i appreciate your attention and i appreciate your support uh you know what my team and i do day in and day out i couldn't do it without them um so our department remains committed to providing high quality service operating efficiently and being responsible stewards of the taxpayers resources while maintaining the level of service our community expects i would like to also acknowledge uh gmd staff of course our whole team rebecca dima for preparing a lot of these documents and uh omb with uh stephanie nisha and uh shelby at times concludes my presentation i can answer any questions questions for mr shilling mr campy i think the growth management department especially in martin county is one of our most important departments uh i think all of the commissioners would agree a majority of the questions and concerns and comments we get from constituents a lot of it has to do with development or lack thereof or too much too little questions they're complicated they're not easy and every time i've ever needed to work with not just mr shilling but anybody in this department they've really been they operate at a very high level of customer service constituent services but have all the information they're a wealth of knowledge and i happily make a motion to accept tentatively his budget mr camps yes um have there been any recent statutes or recent legislation that is um changing the way you do things that's a complicated question there's a couple one answer would be yes there are some legislative changes we're going to bring a uh a board item in the near future that we'll discuss those in detail we have that prepared uh and are working on some fine tuning of it there are um as you can imagine the state is from a holistic approach saying you need to do everything faster you need to do things more administrative you need to have approvals done quickly or they will be approved so we have some changes potentially that are going to come along with the agricultural enclave legislation we have changes with the fact of the matter that now uh the zone the state has preempted local zoning laws with respect to mobile homes you can now place a mobile home in any zoning district for uh generally speaking so those some ldrs and code changes will need to happen with that from a perspective of standards for specific uses and those development standards um there are there is legislation now with a pre-application product product process with qualified contractors that will provide a process in which someone pays to have a plan conceptually uh approved for lack of a better term but then that's submitted and then there's a 60 i think a 60 day or a 90 day review of that with the understanding that that should be the approved plan based on the qualified contractor or or uh applicant and those are just a couple of them everything is done quicker and uh there so that's that's the states i think um can you elaborate on coulter ag enclave has an application come in how many homes how long do you have to review it how much is administrative how much is our decision making yes i i can uh i'll i'll touch on a little bit of that so uh we have in fact received a request for from the kale coulter requesting agricultural enclave we are currently analyzing that we have i believe 60 days to analyze that application and then uh ultimately i believe in the attorney uh miss elder will correct me if i'm wrong but i think something would need to be done within 90 days or it would just be adopted or approved i can tell you that that the legislation is very vague it um it does not appear to be kind of fitting fitting into the the holes that are set up for it as far as the local uh local criteria and the what's on the ground out there but um we're currently analyzing it we've only had it a few days how many homes uh i'm not sure if it was a thousand or a little over i think it's about 1200 yes but i think the maximum could be much more commissioner hetherington yeah commissioner caps i think asked and you answered mine was more in reference to the third party review yes and it sounds like you're going to um have some adaptive measures and bring those back yes thank you yeah the issue is we have to allow third party review so we'll have to um as i recall the we i have the opportunity to select who we believe would be qualified as a third party review and if we don't select them then they where man the state will basically they can use who they want correct but that doesn't come into play until january we have some time january of 2027 well they'll probably glitch bill that out right yes uh-huh that's right any further did you make a motion i'll second it i gave a beautiful you know soliloquy thank you about how much i love for is that a second second there's a motion in the second all those in favor aye opposed that motion passes unanimously thank you thank you very much information technology services good afternoon we didn't want to enter the room until it was your turn i guess you're allowed to turn you don't see them those windows are glass we can see good afternoon madam chair and members of the board uh for the record my name is erica sinclair and i'm the chief information officer before we go into the numbers i want to give you a sense of what information technology services delivers across martin county technology is no longer just computers and software it is the foundation that enables county government to operate every day we support more than 2200 employees and public safety personnel across county departments constitutional offices state entities and municipal partners by providing the technology cyber security communications and infrastructure that power nearly every county service today's request includes two investments that work together it is the from the its operating budget which funds the people and who support county technology and then the technology investment plan which funds the technology itself i will be walking through um who we serve the services we provide how those services are delivered and why these investments are important to maintaining the level of service our residents expect to begin with who do we serve many people think its is simply the county's it department but we are really the shared technology provider for martin county you will notice at the center of this diagram is the information technology services and the technology investment plan from there you can see the organizations we support every day we provide the technology cyber security communications and infrastructure for 13 county departments five constitutional offices and eight municipal and regional partners in total that's 26 organizations supported through a shared services model although much of our work happens behind the scenes the impact is seen every day from emergency communications to online services residents use every day for example when you make a call to 911 technology connects that call and keeps fire rescue law enforcement and dispatch our heroes communicating when every second matters during hurricanes and other emergencies our public safety radio system keeps first responders connected even if traditional communications are disrupted this helps ensure the continuity of operations and the safety of our residents whether it is county staff serving residents the sheriff's office fire rescue the clerk municipalities or our regional partners they all rely on the same technology foundation now that you've seen who we serve let's look at the scope of services we provide those services extend well beyond public safety every day technology allows residents to apply for permits pay for their utility bills online reserve park facilities purchase a water park pass for the visiting grandchildren check out a library book or access many services county departments provide technology is the foundation that keeps government operating this approach allows us to leverage technology investments across multiple agencies instead of each organization building and maintaining its own technology environment that reduces costs improves consistency strengthens cyber security and enhances regional collaboration particularly for public safety and emergency communications these numbers illustrate the scale of technology and in the environment we manage every day we support more than 1400 computers over 4300 phones and hundreds of servers network switches and wireless access points across the county cyber security is also a critical part of what we do during the past year we've blocked more than 2.5 million malicious emails remediated over 1500 vulnerabilities monitored more than 2700 security events and protected over 5400 endpoints to help keep county systems and data secure beyond the day-to-day support we also managed the county's enterprise technology environment supporting nearly 600 business applications 150 active technology projects and more than 330 technology contracts and vendor relationships behind each of these numbers are the people systems and technology that keep government operating and protecting the taxpayers investment up to this point i've shown you who we serve and the scope of services we provide this slide explains how we deliver those services our mission is to be a trusted business partner by delivering secure reliable and cost-effective technology services while being responsible stewards of taxpayer dollars we accomplish this through two complementary investments that work together on the left of this slide is the ITS operating budget it funds the people who keep county technology running every day supporting public safety communications cyber security customer support business applications network operations and the technology our employees rely on to serve our residents on the right is the technology investment plan this funds the technology itself our infrastructure networks cyber security communications business applications cloud services and the lifecycle replacement of aging equipment one doesn't work without the other as we close i'd like to bring it back to our taxpayers value throughout today's presentation you've seen that technology is the foundation that enables virtually every county service to operate securely reliably and efficiently the return on that investment is reliable county operations protected data modern services for residents and replacing critical technology before it fails not after simply put the ITS operating budget provides the people and the technology investment plan provides the tools that power county government the two requests before you today are targeted investments that sustain not expand our services the technology investment plan continues investing in the systems that support public safety protect county data and enable every department to serve our residents the additional network network administrator strengthens the backbone of the county's technology infrastructure providing the expertise needed to implement maintain monitor and secure the network that connects nearly every county service together these requests help us maintain service levels reduce operational risk and protect the taxpayers investment in county technology thank you and i'd be happy to answer any questions questions for miss Sinclair questions for miss Sinclair is that actually her or is that ai no that's really me that's really me she did great well done mr camps sorry so what what you're presenting now is this operating side of things and then later we'll have and then later we'll have a I think it's p on the agenda is technology investment plan which is like the the equipment itself we're could we have combined these because it is kind of a two-prong budget for Erica's department so she says the people are the operating and they they carry out the technology improvement plan on here okay so if you look at this motion will be about the K and P correct and what the slide we have up now shows that exact budget request budget request or both okay do you have anything to add about the tip she did both yeah okay good yeah mr campi no heather and then wasn't it much of the tip that was on unfunded mandate by the state a couple years ago yes can you just briefly yeah the cyber security so a few years ago I did come to you for a cyber security manager position but prior to that we haven't had an increase in in 20 years I think it's been and that was to support our cyber security structure strengthen our firewalls which is what secures our data behind everything that you use every day as you work as a county across the county but that was mandated by the state yes yes it was a bill 2020 and since that we've also as you saw on one of the services pages we're doing a lot more monitoring protecting and education because that is part of that mandate so our cyber team does do that with staff as needed commissioner campi thank you thank you for your presentation how many people in your department with this new position it will be a total of 41 okay and then how many I saw it on your slide there but I don't remember if you said it how many calls for service well we have 10,000 for help desk or over 10,000 help desk calls the technology is changing obviously very rapidly and the level of knowledge and expertise that your employees in your department need to have are you also suffering head hunting where people are trying to pill for your people always and is it similar to fire rescue and sheriff where they're heading south absolutely but in our area they don't have to travel anywhere in the world of technology our people we have an amazing staff some that have been with us a very long time and that's a benefit to the county because they know where everything is how everything works they know the history to support any issues we're very fortunate emergency radios that falls into your world yes correct can you give us a little update I was at an event recently and somebody was questioning the value of emergency radios what they the value in terms of how much they cost to have and and not just the value of their what they do but right it was questioned on the on the expense of them can you share that or do you have an expert that would like to share that I do have an expert yes he's trying to hide his name is Russell I would be yeah like to phone a friend it would be in the benefit Russell has been out you know I don't know how many times that he's been out at 3 in the morning fixing broken lines and making things happen so be nice to Russell yeah be very nice today we will he woke up to actually it you'll see on their 306 after after hours calls and change management so when that when our county facilities and we all go home in the office his team is still working and he is over radios he's over the fiber he is over network connectivity Wi-Fi all the phones if you saw 4300 phones so he has a humongous job and is worth the same staff he's had for a long time network team wise so radios you go the cost so still you hold yeah she did I don't know what to say now so radio specifically you know what is it that you're how many do we have who has them and you know why are they so expensive for for public safety I think is really so we have about 2500 radios across the fleet that includes fire rescue Martin County Sheriff's we also support Stewart PD town of Jupiter Island Sewell's point as well plus all the departmental um county departments like public works parks department has some general services the reason why this equipment is so expensive is it's specialized right it's very niche there's not a lot of vendors you know that throughout the country or in the world that you know provide radio equipment for first responders um so you know we're looking at technology that has to be reliable and dependable of every second that an officer or deputy or a firefighter is using that technology it cannot fail right and that's what you're paying for is that when they when they go to hit that button to make a call back to dispatch that it gets through every single time that when somebody calls them on the radio that it's legible that they're able to hear it and that they're able to receive it every time mm-hmm I appreciate that you know all humor aside one of the biggest challenges of September 11th in New York City was the complete failure of their communication system because it was not designed to work at that level and I think that obviously to a much smaller scale what you were saying about being able to hear a call coming through could be giving a deputy or someone in law enforcement or a firefighter really important information like be careful there was three of them not one and so I think it sounds like a small category and it falls into a laundry list of the things that you're responsible for but it does indeed show how each of the categories are so important the other thing that I always think about when we think of IT services is people take it for granted and when you're doing your job correctly and it's working no one thinks about it they only think about it when it doesn't work and you know all of us have other opportunities where we're involved in technology and things like that and it shuts companies down it shuts departments down so you say well you know you're spending a lot of money to make these things preventative but what's the cost if it fails you know beyond the actual cost and then my final point would be that we're not even experts you are the technology is changing so rapidly you could be investing on the TIP side on something that is state of the art and then less than 12 months later it's not state of the art anymore so do we stick in a fiscally responsible way just keep what we have or are we constantly trying to be you know towards the leading edge of it so I think what you know you made the presentation it's another one of our departments where people are like you're not really thinking much about it until you really need to think much about it so I appreciate it I appreciate it cyber security could cost us so much money I remember even locally several years ago the city of Stewart was whatever the word is hijacked or Hacked Riviera Beach so then we'd all be looking at each other like well why did that happen so I think this is one of those areas it's just as much the day to day necessity of the products and the services and the people as it is almost like a an insurance policy you have to invest in that hoping not to have to use it but if you don't have it then you know most of us hear the word firewall and like oh I sort of understand what that is but don't and the what do they say you have a bad person a bad actor has to be right once you have to be right every single time so I appreciate what you're doing I would make a motion to tentatively approve both I'll make you want separate motions you make them together right this particular case we bundled together the both sides of this the information technology services and the technical investment plan tentative budget correct technology technology technology there's a motion in the second all those in favor I opposed that motion passes unanimously thank you very much get some rest Roger and library good afternoon good afternoon commissioners Jen Salas library director I have with me Richard Riley deputy library director across Florida public libraries are heavily used investments in our library system the demand is clear high visits strong program attendance and extensive digital lending show that residents rely on our library every day our libraries are visited more frequently per capita than all other libraries in Florida except Broward County also we have more event attendees per capita than St. Lucie Indian River and Miami Dade counties combined Wow yeah say that again we have more event attendees per capita than St. Lucie Indian River and Miami Dade counties combined and you could replace Palm Palm Beach County with Miami Dade and the same statement is true libraries are among the most efficient public investments a county can make they provide free access to information technology and learning in spaces residents already has heavily use that means more service per dollar and not more spending for its own sake that level of demand is why this budget continues to focus on preserving service reducing waste and making sure existing dollars produce the greatest public possible return for taxpayers this budget does not add any new initiatives it maintains existing service levels under tight fiscal control we reviewed operating costs carefully and limited growth to unavoidable costs we look for efficiencies wherever possible and have saved hundreds of thousands of dollars for those services that we have implemented so some examples of this are our volunteers whose time contributes six hundred and seven thousand dollars annually in savings radio frequency identification automation which saves seventy thousand dollars per branch library over ten years an interlibrary loan which saves more than twenty six thousand dollars annually in material costs together these efficiencies help us preserve service levels while directing staff time and funding toward patrons facing work the library remains a low-cost county service with high public usage and broad access this slide shows the variety of services we provide to the community for all ages including early literacy teen and tween services adult and aging population events access to emerging technology and literacy instruction i'd like to provide a few examples of the faces behind these services a staff member in jensen beach helped a resident complete completed a step-up scholarship application to help with school funding for their granddaughter and submitted it successfully the same day in south stewart staff restored a patron's zoom access before an important meeting solving a problem that could have cost her an opportunity in palm city staff coordinated sewing programs help two children contribute costumes for professional productions at the kravis center in indiantown staff quickly compiled local meal distribution sites after students asked for help connecting families to needed resources these are just a few of the stories that our library staff play a part in every day this next slide gives some statistics of annual usage of our services such as the number of books checked out both print and downloadable our events attendance internet usage use of our various spaces one-on-one appointments and everyday reference and technology questions this represents a small portion of what we provide to our residents every dollar in our budget supports a real service courier delivery for homebound patrons outreach to children and after-school programs sensory friendly spaces collection development and responsive public service these are the functions that turn funding into daily public access we calculated the value to our residents based on money saved by using library services and the savings range from over six hundred dollars a month for a single retiree and over seven hundred dollars a month for a family with a preschooler and tween with a typical household paying less than three dollars a month for library services residents receive substantial value for a very modest local investment and while we seek as many funds as possible through our friends groups our library foundation and other grants 87 percent of our services are funded through property taxes state aid to libraries also increases as local dollars increase so county support helps leverage additional grant funding for us taken together this budget pretty protects a high public use service controls costs and delivers measurable return to taxpayers and i'm happy to answer any questions questions i use the library every single day 365 days of the year i use the library and i don't even have to go to the library thank you nor do i writing another language any questions comments is is is this a a net i see your revenue and then i see your expenditures am i correct about this in which part in the i was looking back here total budget yes that is indicative of all revenues and expenditures that's not that's not net it's their total budget with all revenue sources funding it nice job i thought the statistics that we have more event attendees of all those larger counties are very impressive thank you i'll move tentative approval of the library budget second there's a motion and a second all those in favor i opposed that most motion passes unanimously thank you you want to do we're going to do parks first or non-departmental parks okay i'll end with non-departmental don't don't forget it because i will i won't forget good afternoon my name is kevin abate i'm parks recreation director and behind me is jessica ballas my deputy director in case you have any complicated questions that i can't answer um so this budget um that you're being presented today for the parks department what it does it maintains our current level of service for all of our programs as you can see we have many divisions across our department from our park our park operations which are which is our most complicated which includes our mooring field operations our recreation programs our grants our golf course and hitting bays our water park pool our campground operations Indian riverside park and then extension services right now we currently maintain 75 parks and beaches with over 1700 acres of um active parkland um some of our goals are to improve our special facilities and reduce our subsidies that's a big focus that we've had expand programs that improve quality of life support free e-sports throughout quality fields and facilities and then serve 50 000 residents through the free community programs and provide some lessons which have trended over 400 on annual each year as you can see in the slide here um under our complexes for our facilities for parks and maintenance we have 49 athletic fields 20 boat ramps 24 playgrounds 34 pickleball courts and restrooms and at 48 parks and beaches recreation community programs free after school summer camp senior programs swim lessons and education programs are all offered free to the community some through grants to the children services councils and thumb some through our programs through tax funded services our sports and aquatic services tournaments senior games swim meets uh lap swim memberships and youth sports um youth and adult golf instruction and our public access and community support with special events affordable rentals splash pad operations and emergency response support um right now um as i said earlier we have our 75 parks and beaches beach parks um we have 12 buildings 170 courts and fields 160 pavilions and 20 boat ramps um each year on online through our request for service program we get over 3 400 inbound requests for service and that is anything from can you please trim the tree that's hanging over in our backyard to there's graffiti on on a playground um we encourage these requests come in and we have a great response time uh that we respond within 10 days at a 97 success rate that within 10 days that those requests are actually resolved um we did uh this is this past year over 7 200 work orders 7 300 asset inspections like your playgrounds that we have we empty daily 526 trash cans that is now outsourced service that we have and we actually have over 30 000 adult and senior participants our mourn field um programs had over uh 900 reservations with 1700 participants and our campground reservations over 6 300. free senior programs over 4 373 participants free after school summer camp programs 254 participants pavilion reservations over 979 community center reservations over 1600 athletic field court rink reservations 20 over 2800 you can see the participants on the screen um free special events organized we did about 13 of them with almost 9 500 participants and we permitted throughout this the county over 99 special event permits through my office um then i'm i'm wrapping up here with our beach cafe services over 78 000 meals and 2300 beach chair um rentals we did permit um 12 tournaments this year for over 7 400 participants one of the things i don't talk about too much is the economic impact of sports as it relates to martin county and what we do through the whole county as for sports tourism um if you recall in the many years ago we held those the florida state swimming and diving finals for swimming we held that for over 10 years we were doing on average just for that swim meet over 4 000 room nights we had some of the biggest swim meets um in in the state or in the nation in the county we also do that through so many other sports um throughout my 16 years as a parks director with the different sports between soccer baseball lacrosse football and the various tournaments that we support here in the county um we do have over 20 000 youth sports participants um we have um nine um golf course instructional programs we have almost 2 000 participants this year beach fire permits is something that we implemented many many years ago we're hovered over 448 permits just last year super popular program some lessons this last year was over 257 some lessons and then we of course have swim meets dive meets synchrony meets hosted at the water park 22 of those um last year we did over 15 500 hitting bay rentals and then 50 000 at the water park so a very voluminous um parks department program um this year with the budget when i did pull some numbers i thought were interesting to see some of just to keep up with this level of service over since the pandemic the things that we either have absorbed or try to cut i go through um our parks budget i've been doing it's my 16th year i go through every single line on them to make sure that that we're what we spent last year is what we're going to spend this year and we make the necessary adjustments for those it's just what i just that's my nature um but i was surprised in just some of the numbers that we pulled out just recently for example the water park when we we provide insurance for the water park um on top of the county's trico insurance as a layer of protection um so since then our insurance for the for uh the water park is one of 148 percent so we absorb that through fees um you know and mostly in most really good years um but the list kind of goes on and on and just if you indulge me for just a minute on just some of the some of the areas pool chemicals the national average for pool chemicals is about 41 but we were 72 janitorial supplies we were up 50 percent landscaping services up 75 this is from 2020 till now equipment tools 75 percent capital equipment um 70 percent sports equipment 123 percent irrigation supplies 58 and the list just goes on and on and it's interesting so we in this year's budget are you know we are going to absorb um if you look at the first slide we're going to absorb the communal trail in our budget this year as a part of the cra's great program that they're building right now and that will be a part of our operating maintenance plan for next year our expenses that that are in this program aside from you know the fica medicare you know the pensions and the salaries which is the majority for most departments including parks department is related to those janitorial contracts those restroom contracts all those services maintenance landscape service contracts they all increase to kind of make up the difference so and they well as we try to absorb those and continue our level service our budgets flat as it relates to those services to continue to do what we're doing today last fact i'll end with you i thought was interesting so i ran a little report just for myself and i talked about with stephanie last week when we were talking all things budget so in our current budget year our parks system operates this year on a 19.6 million dollar budget 10.3 million of that comes from mstu property taxes and general fund and then when you divide up you divide that number across all trim notices it costs the average tax paying household seven dollars and 99 cents per household per month to run the parks department but and the remaining balance of of the of of that is a nine million dollars funded infuser fees programs rentals throughout the various facilities so we have a you know we say almost half almost just about almost half of our entire 19 almost 20 million dollar program is covered by user fees to provide all of these services through the county and our team you know it's not a big team we when we benchmark ourselves against like counties across the state of florida on the maintenance side we're really really low which means we're really under funded we're really efficient but on the revenue generating side we're at top of our game throughout the state actually throughout the country so um i i just want to say after being in this county for over over 16 years this is my 16th budget that the the hard-working team of the parks department especially with our park operations team and all the services they provide through all these 75 parks and beaches our recreation team our water park team our golf course team all the programs that we provide they do such an amazing job we get we're so prevalent on on what we do you know one of the i always go back to like i always try to tell folks just remember during the pandemic when when we we closed and how upset people were so i was like take i don't want to go back on memory lane but it is so important for me as you know this is my career i'm in my 44th year in parks and i'm really proud of what we do this is an amazing county i work for some big counties down south and i will tell you they're they're big and they're bureaucratic this county is solid it is solid as they come in terms of what we do for our residents and how much they love our parks and i just want to kind of end on that and thank the board for all the support you've given me and my team through the through my career here and um we look forward to many great more good years to come thank you i'll bet that just like the library department has more attendees attend people attending events i bet our parks in martin county have more attendees than all the counties to our south combined also because people really do uh use our parks i use them just like the library i use the parks every day too and lots of other folks do too um is uh the el camino trail going to open fully this year i expect it according to the budget yes we'll be fully funded to help operate it but yes so when do you think this year fall we're working through um some project management and yes by the fall and what's the martin grade park that is something that sean donahue and i talked about that was under his um inventory that we agreed to put under parks because it made more sense commissioner caps and i have been talking about um just some improvements in there out west of martin county for some future improvements so we're moving the park under our inventory and then in our next budget year and capital we're looking at doing some improvements for that area down the road it was an old fire station how much acreage is it used to be in my district until it was stolen away from me by district three we're coming from here yeah how much acreage is there three thousand no it's like 10 acres or something that's not big we can yeah yeah it had a fire station that we've been waiting a long time to figure out if we were going to have to utilize it again before you know to give it up it would have cost nothing but to build another one it would cost 50 million and i always wondered that if they needed a fire station out there you know 40 years ago would we not need one now and then even the folks out there just said it's time uh the only thing i didn't see on your list mr abate was our uh exciting new dog park that will be coming to palm city very shortly funded by district five funds to kick it off and the nice part is is the parking lot the restroom we're putting it into justin wilson park so it won't need any of those services they're already there so they'll build adjacent to the restroom facility it'll be next to the parking lot uh there's no houses anywhere within barking sound so uh and we're very excited to be opening that up in the fall and then i'd like to also thank them for charlie layton park the boat ramps and the redo of that park is coming out very beautifully and that'll be opening up in september so thank you you're welcome i would make a motion on that good news to tentatively accept parks and wrecks 2027 fiscal year budget second any further comments there's a motion and a second all those in favor aye opposed that motion passes unanimously thank you what do you want to take up now public works okay yeah i just didn't know if she wanted to go to non-departmental no it's the boring last okay let's just don't forget it we'll make everyone suffer through that okay public works mr gordon good afternoon board jim gorton public works director with me i have mark avaney our deputy public works director you got way more than that as well as our uh division managers should any uh technical questions come up regarding their their operating budgets public works provides essential services to the community including traffic flood and mosquito control right-of-way maintenance management of and public access to environmentally sensitive lands transportation for our public disadvantaged ada and veteran riders long-range traffic planning development technical review and restoration and retrofit of the stormwater and roadway networks throughout the county a real property survey and environmental divisions work directly with their county attorney's office to pursue land acquisitions pursuant to the martin forever land acquisition sales tax that the public approved last year this fiscal year 27 budget maintains our level of service while absorbing fuel labor and contracted services increases our largest adjustment relates to enhanced landscaping which saw a significant contractual increase as well as four and a half miles of enhanced landscaping along canter highway that will be transferred to county maintenance this year pursuant to our agreement with florida department of transportation we were able to reduce our overall capital budget by uh one million dollars this year while adjusting project timelines to account for increases in unit rate ranging from 40 to 88 percent since 2020 for our commonly used commodities such as asphalt base rock and concrete elements this slide shows uh a bridge project that we recently completed in east fort creek on dixie highway and above that is our surveyors that are working um collecting uh topographic information for a grant project that we have and i'm going to bring up mark avaney to go over some of the details with our um data good afternoon chair heard county commissioners mark avaney deputy director of public works um it is my unique pleasure to present some of the very important items that public works provides to the community um let's start with uh something obviously this commission is very familiar with the management of environmentally sensitive lands 37 000 acres have been preserved from development forever by various ways outright purchase donations and of course all those lands need to be managed by our by our staff for aquatic but for vegetation that might be invasive for public access and so obviously there's a cost for doing that uh the first picture there which shows our beaches um is pretty unique and we we have 22 miles of beaches in this particular project which was the um the renourishment of the beach there on Hutchinson island shows uh some some bulldozers there in tandem uh doing really an incredible amount of work moving 400 000 cubic yards of sand um and actually the project itself won an award and our coastal program uh from the american shore and beach preservation association for the best restored beach this year and our our coastal manager jessica garland will be going uh to receive that award later this year interestingly enough that picture also won an award because it is quite incredible to go out there and see those bulldozers literally in the surf moving that sand and i know commissioner vargas and commissioner caps joined us out there to see some of that it is quite incredible um to look at so we know that water quality is important certainly to this commission and to the community and we have a responsibility a federal mandate through the clean water act that we uh protect our our water in in uh in martin county and i'm proud to say that we have a hundred percent compliance with our national pollutant discharge elimination system also known as our ms4 so all the water that drains into the saint lucie the loxahachie all that is 100 compliant with our federal clean water standards again pretty significant pretty important thing to also cost us money to do but very proud to be a part of that um let's talk about uh stormwater our inlets our treatment areas our outfall structures as you all know we have literally thousands of those uh in martin county and you can see the picture down there on the right some of our stormwater crews uh replacing pipes um very important to prevent flooding to keep our roadways clear to keep water off of people's property so again we're very proud that we have that uh that that process here and then obviously our right-of-ways and our arterial mowing and pruning along our roadways very important for site visibility to make martin county look nice when people are driving up and down our roads um and we're maintaining a lot of uh different roadway acres and interestingly enough i know stephanie spoke about inflation and increases our arterial mowing contract since fy20 has gone up 47 percent 47 percent since uh fy20 and our landscaping has gone up uh 30 percent since the same year so obviously a lot of costs that we just have to absorb um to keep this basic level of service for our constituents the next picture shows some of the other things that we do here uh transit very very proud of the fact that um we're providing 122 000 annual rides this is keeping uh cars off the road reducing our greenhouse gas emissions this is giving people rides to doctor's appointments to shopping to visit a friend for mental health and you can see the amount of veterans that we've helped as well as 28 000 transportation disadvantaged riders those are individuals that by uh federal uh requirements are either low income or disabled or have some issue that prevents them from getting around so again very proud that we've got a system that provides those people um a way to get around martin county uh traffic engineering the top mark can i interrupt you yes sorry commissioner campi has a question thank you just while that photograph is uh the one above the bus can you explain to us to the folks that might not know what that is yes sir that is our traffic uh center that is where we're watching the 130 traffic signals in martin county and those individuals right there are uh watching to adjust traffic signals i know it doesn't always seem that way but they're doing that to speed things up or slow things down based on traffic based on an accident and those individuals are managing that along with our um our sign panels and our street lights as well question yes sir sorry um that's maintained how often seven days a week five days a week yeah it's it's manned uh uh five days a week but they have um via their cell phones access to the system 24 7 so they're frequently making adjustments and getting alerts to their phones when uh after hours something happens with one of those this is currently at the airport correct yeah it's at the uh it's a hardened facility it's a hardened facility it's probably a very advanced technological space it is it has its own server and it doesn't run on ai yet but it runs on advanced technology to uh it analyzes uh the the traffic going through each phase of the intersection and it adjusts it as it goes has emergency standby gen power generation it does will this facility be located in our new operation center this facility is one of the ones that's going to be transferred over to our operation center thank you and now as a note i know in meeting with steve braun and staff a couple of months ago and it was noted that our traffic operations was clearly the best in district 4 for all of our our both in our approach and our use of technology and keeping our traffic uh flowing the best can you do that for 200 bucks a square foot let me know proceed please thank you uh and then last but not least on this slide are engineering services as you know uh we've got to review plans we've got to review permits we have code compliance environmental protection health and safety and our engineering services does a great job reviewing all those plans and you can see some of the volume that they dealt with just in the last year and then the last slide i'd like to say as the sun sets but actually this is as the sun rises on east fork creek sta project this is a great example of how public works has been able to capitalize on grants to extend local tax funding this particular project which just finished this year got a 1.1 million dollar department of environmental protection grant and that was matched by about six hundred thousand dollars of local funds so that we were able to complete this project uh at far less impact on our ad valorem taxes than had we not gotten the grant and public works is just um they're pros at doing this and it it uh it extends the ad valorem a lot the interesting thing about this project is not only does it look good but it reduces nitrogen in our water systems it reduces phosphorus it prevents flooding um and it's a wonderful place to go out and walk this is right near the the mariner sands uh community if you're aware of that so actually again just a perfect example of how um we're doing things and work that matters in the community i would be remiss if i don't mention mosquito control because i know especially this time of year people are starting to become concerned about that i want to point out the larvicide acres the 2200 larvicide acres so larvae are not adults they don't fly they don't sting that's when we want to get them um and mosquito control has been working very hard to increase our live larvicide acres so we don't need to do as much aerial spraying and that's what you're seeing there in the larvicide acres to reduce the um the adults um all in all um work that matters for the community every day um it's my absolute pleasure to work with this group many of them are here um who every day you know keep our citizens safe uh keep our visitors safe keep our businesses safe um and just do great things for the environment thank you i'm ready to answer any questions thank you questions i guess everybody's satisfied second there's a motion and a second all those in favor aye opposed that motion passes unanimously thank you public works utilities and solid waste is next mr amerson welcome good afternoon commissioners madam chair and commissioners and county administrator our county attorney it's good to be with you once again and discuss budgets and all things utilities and solid waste for the record i'm sam amerson i'm your department director for utilities and solid waste with me today is jeremy kobe he's your deputy director and we also have britney bassett our assistant director get these nippers on so it's my pleasure to present the uh 2027 budget for our department every day our team delivers services that most residents never have to think about but they do depend on them every single day whether it's providing safe drinking water protecting our waterways through wastewater management and treatment collecting and disposing of solid waste or maintaining the infrastructure that supports our growing community our mission is to provide these essential services safely reliably and efficiently our proposed budget is centered on maintaining these essential services operating efficiently and continuing to be responsible stewards of the public's investment slide one has some some factual data on here if you'll note our request this year for 27 is 74 million dollars represents about 6.2 percent increase most of those increases are from services operating services that we contractual services and also chemicals and sludge hauling and disposal the budget allows us to maintain our current level of service while addressing these increases in operating costs and continuing to operate efficiently like many utilities across florida we continue to experience rising costs associated with chemicals sludge hauling solid waste collection and disposal contractual obligations and maintaining our critical infrastructure our department includes many different operations working collectively and these divisions support one of the county's most essential public services our focus this year is straightforward we're working to deliver safe and reliable drinking water wastewater reclaimed water and solid waste services while preparing our infrastructure to meet future growth we're continuing to modernize our customer service systems expand preventive maintenance throughout our renewal and replacement program maintain the county's excellent aa plus credit rating through responsible financial financial management provide dependable solid waste collection and disposal services and expand recycling opportunities for all of our residents these goals all support one common objective that's providing reliable service today while preparing for tomorrow and on this slide i want to identify two notable strategic investments the first one is called advanced metering infrastructure or ami this is advanced metering and this program will allow us to evaluate some newer technologies that improves our customer service will enhance leak detection at meters and provides more timely information to our customers regarding their usage and potential leaks the second is artificial intelligence optimization for the north treatment plant the wastewater plant is where we dewater our treated wastewater and produce the biosolids this centrifuge system is going to utilize technology to improve the dewatering efficiency reduce our polymer usage consumption and also lower operating cost over time and with that i'll let jeremy walk us through the remaining slides good afternoon jeremy covey deputy director for the record as you can see we're one department with two separate services provided on the left we have utility services which is our water and wastewater side and on the right we have our solid waste services under utility services roughly 15 percent of the department's budget is devoted to maintenance of water and wastewater infrastructure this includes water mains fire hydrants service and meters on the wastewater side lift stations and associated force mains and gravity systems and also we maintain two water treatment plants and two wastewater treatment plants another 18 percent of the budget is devoted to treatments of both water and wastewater mostly to staff electricity and chemicals utility also provides other services such as development review septic sewer administration capital program management and customer service on the solid waste side the department manages collection and disposal of solid waste including household hazardous household waste yard debris recyclables and construction debris in addition we have the households hazardous waste program which provides an avenue for residents to dispose of hazardous waste such as motor oil electronics paint pool pool chemicals and other items another valuable service provided by the department is the pump out boat program which provides about 5 000 pump outs per year with two full-time operating boats the next two slides provide some interesting facts about the department uh the first fact here is we have 40 000 uh water customers and 30 000 sewer customers which serves a population on the water side of 108 000 um our average daily production of potable water between our two plants is 11.1 million gallons a day which uh to put in perspective is right around 17 uh olympic sized swimming pools of water per day um average daily wastewater 5.9 million gallons per day our customer service team interacts with roughly 5 000 000 customers per month um lift station and vacuum stations 422 with uh 1200 individual grinder stations on the solid waste side um the scale house transact uh transactions are about 158 000 annually which is roughly 530 per day or put in perspective 65 vehicles an hour um invisible solid waste tons 122 000 which is about 80 000 average size cars yard waste tons 98 000 which is about 18 000 elephants you know kind of just put the perspective there so um household hazardous waste tons 170 uh and then uh construction debris 130 000 and single stream recycling tons um right around 62 tons daily which is equivalent to i don't have that one for you i stopped at the elephant how many wild boars is that hey it made everyone laugh didn't it so it worked so and uh in closing the fiscal year 2027 tentative budget reflects our commitment to provide safe reliable and efficient utility and solid waste services uh while managing public resources i'd like to thank our utility and solid waste staff for their dedication and professionalism their commitment is what makes these uh services possible every day thank you and we'd be happy to answer any questions questions mr vargas yes um mr omerson thank you so much and thank you so much mr kobe um are you an enterprise yes department yes ma'am that's correct all right so everybody hearing uh that is not here uh that are not present so how much ad valorem do you use uh zero dollars zero dollars okay you know so i wanted people to hear all right so you're self-supporting yes it's run as a business uh i like that idea in that respect yes ma'am okay all right you know everybody i i had some people contact me they just got their their notice about the increase you know that's coming up i know pizzas and all that but 483 dollars per unit that's per year correct yeah that's reasonable i'm looking at revenues and there are zero grants but presumably if uh new monrovia proceeds this year which it will presumably if palm city proceeds this year and it will they're both recipients of of dep grants are they not yes ma'am that's correct so why aren't they included you don't do i don't know how these work do we get that we apply for the grant we do we receive the grant or we receive the grant when we begin the project so when we um you'll see it come through on one of my omb items to amend the budget because since we don't have it in hand we don't feel it's appropriate to budget that until we have it in hand so once we have an executed contract we come in through omb to amend the budget okay they also show up on the cip sheet as opposed to the operational budget too is where you would see those were uh where you'll see it i just knew that those were two substantial grants and didn't see them on the on the revenue side yes they show up in the cip so there's 13 million for uh port salano currently right so yes madam just as an aside for the hazardous waste drop-off facility they also take flat screen tvs computer monitors computers and lithium batteries correct yes they do you don't want those thrown away car batteries and things like that so i think that's a service and i mention this every time it comes up um that's a remarkable service that a lot of communities don't necessarily have you can also call and have the mobile uh waste van come to your neighborhood to pick stuff up if you're doing it through an hoa or something right you guys go out and do events if they can't come directly to the landfill we occasionally do events yeah yeah i think a lot of times people just figure they can get clever and put you know lacquer thinner and paints and batteries in a black garbage bag and just toss it into the garbage when we do have a system that's free for all of those things i'm driving down streets and i see people put flat screen tvs to the curb and i know that we take those and they're they're dangerous to to the employees that have to handle these items and they're they're the worst things to put into the landfill if they happen to get past the system so just another public service message to anything that seems like it shouldn't go either call up and ask or bring it by for free further questions is let's see just one comment i just want for this is one of the areas too with our uh aggressive septic to sewer program that um where we're adding a lot more customers that is uh greater than what our population growth is so their utilities is expanding by much faster than our ut uh and yet you'll see that their actual percentage growth on their budget um it is is been very low uh so they've been able to absorb a lot of that but um we are adding again the goal was to add in 10 000 new customers within 10 years so a thousand a year which is significantly more growth in our population so they're they've been doing a great job keeping things uh really efficient and how many have we added in 10 years or since we since we started i do not have the number i didn't bring it i didn't bring that okay how many elephants quite a few about 6 000 i believe we're we're we're not quite on track to get a 10 000 but we're pretty close yeah you know yeah we'll be making that up soon i think we've met with each of you individually to talk about um a needed change in our strategy for providing sewer service yeah yeah yeah we'll be able to i'm i'm confident we won't go there this morning yeah today i mean in palm city you're gonna add in that's a thousand right a little over a thousand you're welcome um motion to accept the tentative fiscal year 27 budget for solid utilities second there's a motion and a second all those in favor aye opposed that motion passes unanimously thank you very much very much thank you and now we will take up non-departmental all that's left is non-departmental and wrap up so just so stephanie murley here to present the non-departmental budget um the non-departmental budget includes revenues and expenditures that are countywide in nature and or are not assigned to a specific department um these are costs that support the overall operation of county government such as insurance legislative support annual financial audits actuarial studies investment services grant writing and contributions to the economic development so the fy27 tentative non-departmental budget totals approximately 270.3 million the largest components are reserves risk management budgeted transfers um debt service and grants and aids and this chart shows how those are expenditures are distributed within the department so there's a few divisions within non-departmental and we have one program called non-departmental um this slide provides a breakdown of the non-departmental program um the largest expenditures include the community redevelopment agency payments for both the county and the city CRAs um the insurance for both property and health um utility related payments employee leave payout costs indirect costs and county-wide professional services a few more programs within um non-departmental include um economic development um that remains unchanged from the prior year that's based on uh the business development board contract that's been approved um our debt service is actually decreasing based on scheduled principal and interest payments based on the payoffs we did last year and with the additional of our most recent bond um risk management increases as i mentioned early earlier were primarily due to unavoidable projected health insurance costs for the employees um for both the board and the constitutional officers and the budgeted transfers um which just vary each year based on funding needs between county funds that are reflected in other departmental budgets so the this slide is our grants and aids program um the fy 27 tentative budget for grants and aids is approximately um six and a half million but it contains a variety of um items between that this program includes contracted services grants to governmental agencies grants to private organizations and other aid programs which i'll explain so for the contracted services portion there was a slight increase for the humane society in historical um society um these were based on contractual funding adjustments um such as the flea and tick medications need for the humane society and the annual um increase for historical society that's been approved by the board but no changes to the treasure coast wildlife or life builders contracts um the grants to governmental agencies these are a lot of these are established through local ordinance or unfended mandate and state statutes um the category includes funding uh for governmental agencies and programs and um ones that are required by florida statute or local ordinance include the county indigent hospitalization i mentioned these at the beginning of our presentation on medicaid hospital we're responsible for our portion of the martin county health department vaccination program and also we have to maintain their facility um the health care responsibility act children's home society um and then new horizons which is mandated by the state for grants and aids the grants to private organizations um this slide lists the non-profit organizations that received grant funding in fy 26 and funding levels are unchanged from the previous year for other age organizations um you're seeing a small increase of five thousand dollars to the dory slasberg driver education um that is based on estimated collections on um from florida state statutes 318 um it is totally based on the fees collected at the clerk's office that provides driver education programs um this slide summarized the county's budgeted reserves um which are maintained in accordance with the county's financial policies um and are reported within each appropriate funding structure our general fund restricted reserve requirement for fy 27 is 25.4 million um additional funds have been allocated to reserves to plan for future capital expenditures in utilities and solid waste roads parks and technology investment plan opeb which is other post-employment benefits and actuarial needs as well as salary adjustments um per previously approved bargaining agreements and that concludes non-departmental questions for ms murley i was very pleased to see debt service is the same as it was last year even though we've taken on considerable new debt it's not going to be paid for with ad valorem because ms murley retired debt last year and we've been saving up some years in order to do that without a penalty thank you commissioner vargas yeah um miss murley on the um a couple slides here excuse me on 668 can you get on your microphone please 668 page 668 um you have several organizations there um are these all required to be funded or is this just a contract that was drawn up you know it's not state mandated these correct um these ones are not state mandated but i do think that the humane society is state mandated um humane society is um but these are um budgets that are based on board approved um contractual obligations okay and then let's go on to i see the next slide a 669 now i see uh small notes next to that these ones are all required these are all required this is from the state state local ordinance um or unfunded mandate that's been brought down by the state okay let's go on to the next page 670 are these all mandated these are just what the board has previously approved not state mandated okay commissioner caps yes i noticed that reserves are going way up from 112 last year 112 million last year to 128 128 million this year um and you mentioned that was because of the financial policies of the county um you want to can you elaborate on that a little bit more as to why it's that much i'm glad we're saving but so the board has um we annually adopt fiscal policies that i bring to you usually around october of each year um that requires us to establish reserve policies um per best accounting principles um our general fund has a minimum reserve requirement of 10 percent of the total operating cost and we try to apply that through every funding source um in order to be able to be ready and respond in any kind of emergency or economic uncertainty in the um future so while you're seeing increases in reserves a lot of it is set aside for future needs um that we might be seeing down the way so just for example last week and this is going to get really boring um but we received our actuarial report for other post-employment um benefits and um health insurance and we have something called an incurred but not realized um expense that we should plan for even though it may not come to fruition so a lot of these are set asides just in case at the last minute something collapses we would have to respond and be ready for um you'll see the enterprise is very large that's a huge portion is for your utilities and solid waste and that's their renewal and replacement funds in order to set aside for their capital outlay which is required to maintain their utility system and solid waste services um you'll also see we have um our internal service funds that's going to be our set aside that we've accumulated through our um fleet fleet replacement fund we've transitioned enterprise so we put about 1.5 million still that was collected over the past few years um and we're still working through that transitioning process with enterprise fleet maintenance um so it's just a variety of um set asides to just kind of not only rainy day but also to plan and weather any kind of future economic or legislative uncertainty that may be coming towards us say we had a bad hurricane where would you pull money from out of the reserve accounts for hurricane cleanup and any other type though expenses that so uh you know i it my current estimate for a hurricane recovery on something of the magnitude of what the west coast saw or even of francis and jean um is probably on the order of uh 80 million dollars so on something of that magnitude you really take it from everywhere you have your general restricted reserves um utilities as they're doing their repairs would be taking it out of their reserves you would stop doing any capital projects and you would so public works would be using any of the gas tax that they would have towards a project and so it um uh even though that shows a you can see the biggest part of that is in your utilities operation which they need obviously anything that breaks at a water plant is there's just nothing cheap about a utility so they're expensive op plant operations so if you really look at it the amount of reserves you have just like in restricted general fund at 30 million does not cover um uh your debris cost uh or cleanup from a major event and and of course what you see after a major event is um you have a large expense of public safety of of hourly and overtime going on and then you have the actual removal of the debris which is also expensive operation then you have your repair your buildings and those sort of things and so what we're seeing is that you would you would bleed through your um all of these expenses in the first you know six months and then if if things progressed like they are currently doing you would likely have to um borrow some money to keep paying for your cleanup uh waiting for the state and feds to to catch up and that takes like five years to get paid right now about two years is what it is it's about you know i mean we're our staff have been very aggressive in what they call the f f rock program that's supposed to get you payment in theory within a year but nobody's actually i've i've read that they've actually gotten that so you get partial funding so anyway that it was probably more than you wanted to know but it is an important part of um in our budget and uh it was a lot of questions from the standards and poor's asked us about this recently when we were looking at it um and they because they understood that reserves and and um disaster management are a critical component to being financially resilient and that's probably our reserve uh amounts are probably key to our credit rating as well which is very good double double a right double it and where our conservation tax funding where is that is that non-departmental it that is contained within the capital improvement plan the um um what is that it's in ecosystems management it's budgeted in that sheet and that's about 21 million dollars so that's why the cip was as big as it is correct it had the increase last year as it came in yeah any further questions very minor compared to that question but i didn't have a chance to to meet with you 3400 line item it just seems like a kind of catch-all that five what is the marine infrastructure flea tick heartworm treatment lake okejobe release schedule are we still doing anything with lores do we need it so these were we we kept baseline so this is unfortunately why non-departmental is called non-departmental it's kind of a catch-all for all of the random stuff that we're doing so um i'm just curious i did what what flea flea and heartworm for lores okay so that's necessary lores for sure and that flea and tick heartworm treatment that's what i kind of mentioned a little bit um before there was a slight increase in that um for the humane society that's kind of separate from the the regular contract so we're required to provide flea and tick medication for those animals okay so if it didn't fit it kind of gets put into 3400 yes yes any further questions is there a motion to approve non-departmental second there's a motion and a second all those in favor aye opposed opposed that motion passes four to one with commissioner vargas dissenting those some of those items that fall into non-departmental can be negotiated and discussed as we continue our budgetary process they are not all locked in as of today these were tentatives absolutely um so if if i may um this concludes um our fy 27 tentative budget presentation and so the next item for board consideration is the tentative millage rates and so i'm going to go through a couple slides and then we can talk about it at the end um so this table summarize summarizes the proposed fy 27 millage rates for the what's considered the what's considered the countywide um the total millage countywide and mstu which is excluding the districts which i'll bring at a worksheet up in a moment so while several individual countywide millage components were adjusted to reflect on the expenditures within each of those funds the total countywide millage rate remains unchanged from fy 26 and then the combined unincorporated mstu rate also remains unchanged and so as we have gone through this workshop today and listening to um what has been requested all of the millage rates that are contained within your budget document that was given to you all on july 1st um are reflected here with the slight change to the district for mstu um which reduces the millage rate um from what was initially proposed to 0.0450 which is essentially the rollback rate um so at this time if the board would like to um either you could approve countywide and then each mstu would be most helpful for whatever will be published on those trim notices that we mentioned before got that countywide and then the individual mstus i'm going to try to make this big so these are the number the numbers i'll put the little box there if you want to see what do you need ms murley the proposed millage and the proposed ad valorem um just the proposed millage rate at this time um which is the most important um part of the trim statutes that we are required to do because it could always fluctuate based on um post vab in the future so um our total countywide current millage rate is unchanged um at 6.5614 so you need a motion for the proposed the general fund rate 6.5614 yes so that's my motion mr vargas okay so my question miss murley today we're going to make a decision whether or not to continue with this particular millage rate from the previous year or we can make another proposal to reduce it when so you you may approve your millage rate now and you also have two more times that we're going to be coming back to the board um i should pull up this last slide so whatever millage rate you set here today is going to be transmitted to the property appraisers office per florida trim laws those millage rates are going to be published on the truth and millage or the trim notices and mailed to each property owner that's usually around the first to second week of august we'll be coming back here to have a another public hearing on those millage rates which gives you another opportunity to reduce the millage rate if so desired and then we'll come back again um and september 29th the second public hearing to finalize and that's the last time the last shot so so up to this date we've we've done months of budgeting we had our capital improvement plan went through all of those things we're here at the budget workshop today and this is the mathematical culmination of all of those good services um projects that were all talked about and approved and then we can come back again in two more meetings in september mr caps move approval of the countywide is that the right term countywide there's already a second second second there's a motion and a second all those in favor aye opposed that motion passes unanimously and now fire rescue followed by parks so our fire rescue mstu again uh no change from uh the previous fiscal year at two point six three seven six move approval second there's a motion and a second all those in favor aye opposed that motion passes unanimously our parks and recreation mstu which is no change from fy26 at 0.1474 move approval second there's a motion and a second all those in favor aye opposed that motion passes unanimously um next is the motion passes unanimously um next is the same taxing authority the same taxing authority so what we'll do is the same taxing authority so what we'll do is go ahead and do a motion for stormwater and road mstu which is the total is unchanged even though there's slight variations within the funds at 0.5722 move approval second there's a motion and a second all those in favor all those in favor aye opposed that motion passes unanimously um next is district one mstu that has a 4.40 percent reduction in the millage rate from 0.0666 to 0.0637 i make a motion to approve second there's a motion and a second all those in favor aye opposed that motion passes unanimously um district three mstu from a 0.0742 to a 0.0709 move approval second there's a motion and a second all those in favor aye opposed that motion passes unanimously district three mstu has a zero percent change um so it will maintain at 0.0404 move approval second there's a motion and a second all those in favor aye opposed that motion passes unanimously district four mstu which is showing a reduction of 5.85 percent from 0.0478 to 0.0450 since she's not able to make motions without passing the gavel i'll make a motion for district four there's a motion and a second all those in favor aye opposed that motion passes unanimously and district five mstu which is showing a 5.41 percent reduction in the millage rate from 0.0671 to 0.0635 so moved second there's a motion and a second all those in favor aye opposed that motion passes unanimously and the last one is special district a61 which is the hudgeson island mstu which funds the capital program um for beach is showing a no percent change um so it will remain at 0.1799 i bet i make a motion for approval second there's a motion and a second all those in favor aye opposed that motion passes unanimously and we have come to the end of the budget workshop today excellent we have two request to speak forms if anyone else would like to address us please fill out a request to speak form handed to the bailiff the first request is from john dial followed by gary erler well mr dials on his way up just as uh since we didn't read this this morning since we are in election season politicking is prohibited which is defined as the advocating the election or defeat of a candidate for public office either partisan or non-partisan this includes the use of words dates signs props and are wearing apparel that convey a message of support for a person or group of persons and you'll have a buzzer which will indicate you have 15 seconds left thank you thank you to the board for your hard work and what you've done in the commission as the employees for the county this is an eye-opening experience for my first time i'm sitting through an entire day of budget meetings and i'm assuming that we're taking into account if the legislation and the voters approve the homestead exemption in all of our numbers that we're presenting today but i gotta just tell you that i am very impressed with the explanations and all of the accounting and the budgetary requests for all the heads and i think the best part about this is we have plenty of time to look at it and go over it and see what's going on and dig down into any questions i took 10 pages of notes today so there's probably a few things we'll come up with i just want to say thank you thank you gary earler is next followed by richard geisinger i would say good morning commissioners but i'll say good afternoon thank you for allowing me the opportunity to speak my name is gary earler i'm a resident of port salerno um 2019 my tax bill not my tax bill my previous owner whenever i bought my home was fourteen hundred and forty dollars this year for actually 2025 tax bills the one that's on record is uh forty eight hundred and fifteen dollars that's a thirty three hundred and seventy five dollar increase in mine alone along with i'm not a realtor i couldn't tell you how many homes have been sold martin county um it's a lot of money we've increased our taxes are taken by over 41 million dollars this year um and a couple things that have been brought up in past meetings and i think now's the time or at least to get it in the thoughts of of all the commissioners um mr caps brought up the fact that we're taking in green space and county acts county properties and no way to maintain them whether it's pepper trees overgrown into county right of ways all that i know there's a big area around the salerno creek and uh storm retention area that has that it's pushing over onto homeowners properties we've made calls we've been to nacs we've been to cra's um is it parks and rec is it public works we don't know who does it either way the pepper trees are still growing we need to take into consideration for that um commissioner heard either at one of the forums i believe said it costs 275 000 to pave one mile of road we're still we're still bidding and allocating at 175 000 that's an extra 100 000 in increase none of that's been taken into consideration uh fuel costs every department uses fuel you can buy fuel in advance you can buy futures on fuel just like you buy futures on pork or beef or anything else so we could save money doing that um the 501c charities that this county and everyone else supports i don't want to be the bad guy but if we're providing them a building i know commissioner campy brought up the fact that they used the pba or yeah i believe it was the the pal league used the box right next to his office um they moved into a building in golden gate i know they're going to take care of that building it's on them if they can't i'm sorry they got to go i mean if they can't if they can't provide for their own whether it's public private however it is the county's putting up the building um they can at least take care of it uh i guess in the it department supports data centers which is the biggest topic in the county right now your time is up thank you sir thank you richard geisinger is up madam chair and commissioners um this is probably premature but i just wanted you to think about something uh between now and the time that you all meet again to talk about the budget i just ran population numbers for martin county from 2020 to 2025 and i went to three different sources in 2020 we had 158 431 and in 2025 we had 166 300. that's not two percent a year that's one percent a year in fact it's a little bit less than one percent a year so we grew five percent in five years our budget on those same five years went from 442 million to 652 million that's a 210 million dollar increase a 47 increase same time period now if i did the numbers right and i could be wrong i don't know 2025 we had 652 million dollar budget and for 2026 you're proposing 804 629 is that right 804 that's 151 million dollar increase 23 people can't afford this so i would ask you all just to think about this during this time period to try and relax this a little bit try and look for ways to try and save money and congratulations to the county attorney and her whole area over there that was fantastic i wanted to hear more of that i believe in the martin county difference i love this county been here my whole adult life i thank you for what you do thank you would anyone else like to address us in that case we are just a point about from my friend gary pal is building their own building we just made a deal for some surplus property but they'll have to fundraise and there's no building yet they're going to have to fundraise and build their own building there that's just an example of that just so that i'm sure the pal people are getting panicked they're still my next door neighbors in palm city but their goal is to build a facility and steward on some property that they've purchased and then there's some in golden gate correct so and i would just like to ask uh express my sincere appreciation to our budget department yeah you are great wonderful great job if i may brag uh everyone had their numbers but i didn't get to put my numbers out but we um actively monitor evaluate adjust and analyze over 23 000 unique individual line items in this budget um it's a year-round effort and i am very thankful of my small but mighty team to manage those funds and identify efficiencies for all martin county taxpayers which we are yeah so responsive so professional so smart yeah thank you mr vargas yeah i i definitely want to say that um i appreciate our our budget department um it's it's always very clear when she speaks with me and if it's not and i asked three times she is very patient she and i mean the whole crew um so i do appreciate that i'm a numbers person i guess you know uh but anyway are we going on to thank you so much thank you all of you and everybody who is not here in absentia all the other departments that came and made presentations today are we ready for commissioner commons oh sure we okay we finished thank you sure okay um for the naco national association of counties they want to again designate me uh commissioner vargas as the voting representative at their 90th annual conference so i wanted to give you that notice where is it cool where is it being held new orleans congratulations on that thank you so much really appreciate it anybody can come with me what's the purpose of the of the conference this is the uh voting uh for uh all the delegates and also of course they have many breakout sessions yeah um um different things but i'll go ahead and provide the association of counties this was done last year so if we could just get the commissioners to head on or acknowledge that um miss vargas will be voting on behalf of the county for business i just don't know what the organization does well the organization they advocate for the collective voice on national policies um in addition to that they have the ideas and they build new leadership skills uh they pursue transformational cost-effective solutions uh they enrich the public's understanding of county governments how they operate and they exercise exemplary leadership in public service so martin county has a seat at the table which is vital for us and how much how many of these meetings do you plan to attend each year this is the national yeah i thought that there was one in pennsylvania a couple months ago no no that was last year yeah well it's it's they have more than one meeting a year this is their their annual meeting how much does it cost i don't i don't recall what the uh what the cost of the um uh we can provide that to you with the with the uh travel and expenses are continuing with my predecessor who attended every meeting both florida and national so this is not out of the ordinary commissioner smith was the president of the florida association of counties and he came to us just a handful of years before uh and he departed asking if he could be part of naco and we assumed i did at the time since he was the president of the florida association of counties it made sense for him to represent florida at naco but my question was simple which you as a fiscal hawk would ask any of us how much does it cost that's all i'm not opposed to to put a value on something that is invaluable but i'll be very happy to provide you with that or mr donaldson be more than happy to do that i'm not opposing you going i'm just asking what it would cost i watched casey ingram's uh podcast so i'm familiar with the values of naco and in fact there you have it yeah so that's i'm just one to ask i just give an abbreviated description right now i didn't watch i'm good thank you me too mr campy fine i'm all set mr donaldson no i just was reiterating the fact that if she's going to vote on behalf of the county you all need to um acknowledge or authorize it thank you when is it when is it the conference is uh within a couple of weeks is it not no actually it's this week this week i'm sorry she has my nod thank you as long as as long as she votes along with our national legislative priorities well this is what we're doing because i have the florida delegation that is there why would i vote differently no i'm saying that you need to vote with martin county's national legislative priorities absolutely absolutely this are you attending by yourself or is any staff attending i don't know okay if it's this week it's decisions already made right i assume the travel arrangements are made yes the travel arrangements the attendance is going to happen it's just the authority to vote is that's all we're needing this is the formality you need a motion on that or i was just looking for feeling you would feel better with emotion i just need at least three head nods which has been a practice in the past or an official motion and right now my interpretation is i have one or two the requester and one commissioner i'll give my head down as well me too but i i would like i i'd like to thank you your report back about what was discussed and the votes that were taken we can do that anything else no thank you thank you once again we are adjourned