I guess the first of six budget sessions for this week and two next week right in the middle of that we'll have a commission meeting and so we're going to be kind of busy over the next couple of weeks today and the coming coming a few sessions we'll hear from our departments things that they've kind of accomplished this past year and kind of where they see themselves going in the coming year it'll be good to hear from them this is their opportunity to to talk to us we'll also hear from our constitutional officers much the same way all obviously within the context of oh that thing that happened a couple weeks ago as far as the budget issues go from Tallahassee and the direction that they're giving and the opportunity for our residents to study and then weigh in this election year so there's an awful lot going on and I think for us to be productive we need that conversation with our departments but also the context within which we're working and I know Barry will come later probably July but more likely August to give us kind of thoughts final thoughts and recommendations for the budget it needs a little bit more time than normal normally we'd be getting that probably in July so um hopefully we have a really constructive and productive uh uh six weeks six weeks that too but six days ahead of us so Barry with that I'll turn it over to you and get started and good morning commissioners um today's like we say up here day one day one and it's Mike I appreciate them that was Deputy McSweeney and Atkinson thank you for being here today thank you sorry Barry if I didn't do it now I forget the rest of the day thank you understand um but I do want to put this in context these are budget information sessions these are not our budget public hearings you'll have those here in September today's day one uh and it's June 9th we have to have a budget by October 1 so we have time we have time and we set these days aside to where you can dig in and listen and ask questions uh regarding the the issues that our departments our constitutional officers and our appointing authorities are facing day to day as they try to bring you a balanced budget try to minimize and make choices regarding requests for funding and that way you understand those as you ultimately make the final decision regarding how we're going to allocate the funds that we have in a final budget here in September so we appreciate this time all these days and the hours that we spend um because it it's important for you to hear directly from them regarding all of those issues and it'll help you make a better informed decision um when come you know August and September when you're having those hearings and making a final determination on your budget so today I'm just going to provide a brief overview of kind of where we're at we are not balanced we will be we have a lot of work to do between now and in August um but but this this gives you a highlight it'll also help you with framing the questions you want to ask as we bring all of the different entities before you um and you can then hear directly from them regarding that so Pete will pull up the presentation and get going so as you can see on this first slide you know um our our funds uh our property tax it grows it's 4.2 percent we'll have that on a future slide all revenues though as you see are going down by eight percent and again we'll dig into what all of those specific things um mean as you can also see uh the county administrative departments we've held the line on spending and we're actually three percent uh down on our budget request you take like the sheriff's office and he's going to go through that it's all people based um and and his is up by five five percent now his does include a three percent uh budget request for salary increases he's included that within his budget we have not included that within the county administrators at this time we always add that on at the end so there's some differences between what you're looking at and what the budget is if we had built that same thing in ours wouldn't be down by three percent could we get uh pete to put this up on all four screens i can't read that one or that one and you didn't provide this in our stuff correct was this was this in this no it wasn't in the slide we don't we don't have this and i can't see it okay pete can you pull that up on all four yeah yeah i'm looking over he'll he'll send out right now thank you okay um while he's pulling that up maybe he's pulling it up now so what this but what this really says so the the sheriff included three percent in we always add that later um for all the other departments so it's not baked in it is something we're going to address as part of the final budget and then the tax collector included that and also because they have to submit theirs to the department of revenue uh for approval what this says is that at this point under these scenarios we still have a deficit of a little over 18 million uh coming into the budget and that again it doesn't include the raises that we would include for all the non-sheriff and tax collector employees so this is you've seen this slide before approximately 45 of our general fund budget goes to the sheriff uh in the breakdown is is typical what i also will point out on this slide is our reserve levels are at 14 that's below not only our policy um we will get reimbursement someday from the federal government from the storms so that will improve but until the check clears um it's at 14 right now as you've also seen you've reduced the property tax rate for the last five years um our rate is lower than it was in fy 1990 um and and the reductions that you've made uh through our property through the rate means that our budget's a hundred million dollars lower than it would have been had we maintained the millage rate from back in 2021. as we kind of highlighted there our county-wide property tax uh growth rate now that includes not that includes both new growth okay and also um a um ad valorem value increases historically you can see it was 3.7 26 9.2 and 25 11.7 24 and 13.1 again that's a combination that's not how much your property tax go up your homestead it's capped at three percent this is the total valuation including new growth so there's a lot of figures that go into that um so the county-wide ad valorem increase is approximately 23 million dollars the mstu for the unincorporated areas approximately 1.8 million dollars but you can also see that there's a lot of other things that are impacting the budget for instance our sales tax is down approximately 6.6 million and that is directly a result of or at least in large part due to the um repeal of this uh sales tax and commercial rentals and we've talked about that before what whether it's the right thing to do or not it doesn't matter this is the fiscal impact of that right um and then you know while we're trying to balance our budgets and and deal with all of these various things um the state decided to put a cost of living adjustment onto the public safety um uh retirement systems that one and a half percent cost of living that they added assuming that the governor signs it will increase the sheriff's budget by 4.6 million dollars we also were only supposed to pay a portion of the school board's uh costs that go to the tax collector again another bill passed at the last second chain will change that adding an additional 2.2 million dollars uh and costs that we have to pay for the fees that go to the tax collector for the collection of their ad valorem values as we look at the things that are not in the budget that i just mentioned one for each one percent of salary increase if it goes to the base is worth 1.3 million dollars in the general fund i mentioned the uh cola for the sheriff employees um and that will also impact our firefighters at the airport uh too but that's not built into this we'll put that on the obviously the airport side um but we have several other things that we're trying to deal with we're looking at electric electricity and fuel cost and whether or not we have sufficient funding uh in the budget to cover cost increases associated with those janitorial service is a big deal we have a lot of issues with our current janitorial service and we're looking at options that'll be finalized as part of the final budget but that could increase our budget by a couple million dollars um and then decision packages there's a number of decision packages uh those are choices that you have to make but we've kind of outlined those and and then those again we'll we'll make recommendations on the bare minimum of what we think we need to operate but those again are outlined within your packet one by one and it explains each one in greater detail so the way we got here is the departments were required um to submit flat budgets and and you're going to see where what that meant and what that meant is for you to submit a flat budget you you had to go back in and say okay i'm going to reduce positions by this amount in order to to achieve that flat budget target and so we do that and we've done that for a number of years that's how you've got to that hundred million dollar savings by challenging the departments to find different ways of doing business to reduce their costs now since we've said you're going to have inflationary increases salary increases health care increases contractual increases and we're fun we want you to find ways of being more efficient to absorb those increases to the maximum extent possible we've outlined those within your budget packets and you'll see the decisions that departments had to make to achieve those targets and you can also see where they submitted a decision package to say we we can do that but here's what i have to do and here's the reduction in level of service in order to achieve that the appointing authorities were also asked to submit flat budgets and so you'll see it outlined there we have a number of preparation type studies that are underway we've talked about several of those for instance the study that you asked us to complete regarding our health department funding and the way it's structured and and we have others we're looking at fleet and the way we the way we manage fleet operations those are ongoing those will be completed as part of this budget process but they're not currently ready we haven't had a chance to to review the outcome or any possible changes as a result of those we have efficiency and cost saving measures built within your bis documents so we i always use the example because it's an easy one but you know if if you choose to have a different level of service if you want to cut the grass 10 times a year rather than 12 times a year here's how much you save and i don't think that's an efficiency measure kelly put in but my point being is we try to outline options for you that if you choose to reduce costs here's the associated impact on service levels other possible funding sources we're trying to look at other ways that we can move things off of the general fund into other funding sources where where feasible we're also looking at looking at all the fees you've asked us to increase fees for service at as we go along rather than wait and get behind and have a large increase so we again are looking at those and those are outlined within your packet at this stage we've met with all the departments the constitutional officers and judicial officers and other entities funded you know by this budget the dedicated millages at this point have been kept the same only the highest priority decision package will be recommended and but we're also really looking to make sure we look at a multi-year sustainable budget we don't want to use one-time money or an ongoing cost because then that just creates a future deficit that's even bigger at this point we'll continue to work with all of our departments and other entities to close the financial gap to where in august we present to you a balanced budget now big you know change that just came our way so property tax reform referendum and i know mike's got slides on this also would do the following if passed by the voters it would increase the home ted exemption to 150 000 for the fy 28 budget not the fy 27 budget so it'd be next year's budget when we're talking about this that that's that's not that's the level that we increased too that's not how much it's increasing by that's correct it's about a hundred grand it's increasing by because there's a hundred it's uh it's 25 right now right currently it's currently at 50 that's 100 yeah it's increasing by 100. okay just yeah that's what you said there but i just want to make sure yeah and then and then it would go to 250 in in fy 29. it also establishes a pathway towards you know there's a number of things that it does within here it also restricts what you can spend money on to core services that's very very broad at this point there would be an implementing bill that would probably further define that one if it's passed by the voters it also reduces non-holmestead assessment caps reduced from 10 percent currently to five percent and it also establishes new rules on how um property tax rates you know may be raised there's a number of things that that would limit future growth in our revenues as a as a result of this so we're going to be looking at that and we'll be talking about that when we when we present our budget come august any further definition on uh core government it we have them um it's i'm we're going to get more determinations and definitions to that i think right now it's an interpretation it's pretty broad um they also have limited things that you've done in the past and whether you have debt for that and so there's a lot of broad definitions at this point we haven't gone through to try to determine what exactly would fall under that and what things we would have to eliminate um we've had this you know as you know just less than a week so we haven't even we've been really trying to focus on uh today and getting ready for this year's budget we'll turn our attention towards this as we get further along um you know as you also know that so the bis documents these were prepared before the state passed their budget so there's some changes that'll have to be incorporated into our final budget based upon the final um budget passed by the state but what we do know is that the proposal as submitted to the voters will impact every city every jurisdiction that's supported by property taxes for the impact of the general fund um that's a county-wide plus the unincorporated mstu will be a reduction of approximately 124 million in 2028 and we're gonna and we're gonna pass this out to you so he's got a sheet on that but and then 184 million uh in 2029 um but but it doesn't just impact the general fund and i've heard a lot about you know well you're gonna have to you know trim services and things like that it goes it goes far beyond that um and and i'll i'll show you that you know in in future slides but it's big like the ems fund the ems fund supports basically sunstar and the seats out on the fire trucks it is a self-supporting fund so it will have and by fyi 29 28 million dollars less to distribute out to those entities it is a self-supporting fund as you as we look down very real quick on that number could you give us a little perspective on that on that ems fund do you have the total i mean reducing 19 reducing 28 what that yeah so okay thank you over here um so we go down to um the second to the bottom so currently it's 102 million okay this is the 26 budget not 27 um but it's at 102 million that's going to go down by approximately 28 you know so it's 27 reduction and so we'll simply have to divide out the funds based upon the number of seats that we have out we're going to have to come up with a methodology we haven't talked about that i don't want to you know presuppose what that would be um but that fund that supports firefighters is going to have 28 million dollars less and so and that's a fact you can see there but you know but there's a lot of entities that are going to see significant reductions as you look at the dependent special districts that includes palm harbor community services east lake library it's like recreation seminal um special recreation district you just formed now remember you know those are they that's what they they get is through property taxes um the the and it really depends upon where you're at if the heavier um concentration of homesteaded properties the higher that reduction will be if you're an area that has a lot of commercial you know and non-homesteaded properties it's going to have a smaller percentage than an area that doesn't have a lot of commercial and non-homesteaded properties so you'll see some pretty significant differences amongst different entities but this is the impact on the dependent special districts this is the impact on the unincorporated unincorporated fire districts and as you can see down in seminal that's a 48 reduction in that unincorporated um fire district uh revenue their water you can see all of them and we're going to again pass this out to you um as you look over to um the independent special districts east lake fire i mean that's a they live off of their property tax that's a 44 reduction palm harbor fire it's 41 reduction but you go down to pinella sun coast for instance and that's a 20 reduction because again of more non-homesteaded properties and businesses so you can kind of see kind of a flavor of how this impacts the different areas municipalities this is a list of the area municipalities and the impact on their property tax and even um swfma was wasn't exempted and so uh swfma then you can see the associated reduction so you know if we take just the property tax and we and we look at this and we say all right well we're just going to fund the constitutional officers and the state mandated responsibilities so if we take the 27 request we look at a historical um average increase in what we've seen out of the different offices and we apply that to 28 if we just align that with the property tax proposal we're 50 million dollars in the hole just and we haven't and we haven't funded things like um a 12 million dollar subsidy that we that we provide to 911 services we haven't funded anything for animal services we haven't funded the 24 million dollars we spend for parks we haven't and we have to maintain our buildings that includes the courts the sheriff um all those different things we spend 33 million dollars on maintenance within just to keep the lights on and to fund our facility maintenance operations so we're 50 million dollars in the hole before we even talk about these other things that i just listed that increases to 121 million dollars and a 29 budget just if we fund our constitutional officers and the mandated services such as a medical examiner we have to provide the state their medicaid match which is 14 million dollars um and all the other unfunded mandates that we continue to receive you know from tallahassee are there cost of living increases in any of that those numbers it is and you can see like in the sheriff's we've built in historical averages obviously those could be debated about whether those budgets would go up by that amount for salary increases and things like that but we're just kind of showing you a historical average and we've overlaid that with the property tax of what what it looks like in the future now and and in full you know um disclosure we do have non-advalorem revenues and you can see those listed at the bottom but that's what we're going to be facing when we when we have to make these you know that's for the rest of all the county government making up the hole and trying to fund all the other services that you provide and that's before we get into you know anything else so not to be doom and gloom but we wanted to you know we've had this a whole whole week and so we've kind of outlined this um we will go through this in greater detail we'll talk both about what it takes to balance the budget for this year but also we'll come up with options about how do we how do we look at this in preparation for uh the actions of our voters if they choose to pass that here in november again today through the 14th is our budget information sessions um we then have the maximum millage that you're required to set um on in on july 21st what i've asked and i mentioned this at our last meeting is based upon all of these changes that you normally i'll present a balanced budget to you july 21st we're going to ask that we postpone that to august 11th to give us a little more time uh to deal with these things and also work with our constitutional and departments on options for you uh kind of in preparation for the budget so we present our budget on august the 11th we would then have um you know we'll have workshops on the 20th all of september and um obviously passage um at september 24th in preparation for the october 1 start date of the budget we certainly can change or add to this but these are what we have outlined at this point very the idea really is that 28 and 29 budgets where they'll be affected we have to decide what we want to do to assuming that it passes what we want to start to do to bridge that thing and then if it doesn't pass what we can i'm just talking out loud so then we would make it make a strategy based on trying to make sure we can get to a certain point in in two years that's right um we we need to start thinking about it now and that's the reason i've also asked for a little bit more time to bring back options for you um we don't you know so let us work with our departments on that let us set some strategies up for you and then at the august 11th we can really dig in and and and look at what that means and then you know take your feedback and modify based upon you know all of that discussion and options that we present and that concludes my presentation um mr scott uh thank you mr chair uh barry on the uh level of service millage rates that we have to pave local roads i think at our one of our last meetings you said we started out with 1200 lane miles that were failing and now we're down to 200 i think that's what you said so like do we need both level service millages going forward or can we wind one of those down do you think well we're doing really well on on roads we're not doing as well on bridges because we started four years ago it takes four years to design a bridge right and so we still have more work to do and i think you'll see more work over the next few years on bridges and culverts um we do we probably i mean if this passes then i think that has to be an option on the table um and you know what and that that's something we could shift back to fund basic services i would hate to unwind it all right but that i think is part of the discussion we can have right right now though we still need those funds in order to kind of finish the job and get caught up for the deferred maintenance that had occurred for decades again we're in that cycle of continuing to invest in infrastructure that some of it's not due yet so the monies that we would take away might not be there to help the next set of lane miles that are coming up on the schedule those are going to be the tough choices we have to make you know how much i mean we went for decades without putting a lot of money into local roads you didn't see big potholes on belcher because the money that we got out of the money we spent on a belcher right where we didn't have money is for local roads drainage bridges so we had a number of bridges that are weight limited um and they're inspection they're safe and everything like that but they were in need of either major repairs or replacement and we're trying to get caught up on that so the question is at what point do we reach that threshold to where we can back some of that down and i've asked that question kelly knows that she's working on that and but we're not quite there yet um but it's a fair question we need a better answer for if if this passes this will this needs to be on the table for a set of priorities for you to to decide right you know where we want to put our the funding we have available just one other quick thing and i you know i understand that you're doing this without programming any any raises in for um you know for county staff which you know i i hate that but it is it is it is what it is um for the for the time being hopefully we won't have to make that tough decision but i did notice doing some agenda review for next week that there's social action funding for 1.7 million dollars for next year i i just i know we're gonna do agenda review later in the week but that one there just kind of just stuck in me that i don't think we should be giving money to other people if we can't take care of our own people first well these are the types of decisions as we as we set for the 28 budget that are you know even the 27 budget i mean the question is do you want to do you want to line something down before the voters make a decision right or do you want to wait and deal with it for the 28 budget so it's a fair question um and you know even on raises i we it's not that we haven't budgeted raises this year we always but we always do it this way so we put the raises on at the end so it's just a definite it's not that we have said we're not providing raises but you know it's part of the discussion we have that we've had a week to talk about that we're going to have to consider when we get here to august thank you mr chairman uh to commissioner scott's point i think i i would definitely be supportive of preparing people for you know what's going to happen next year um you know i i think this uh amendment will definitely get a majority whether it gets 60 percent uh you know will remain to be seen and so i think we need to prepare that you know it's the the voters will approve it um and so to that point um are there funds that we have in our budget that because we're going to be in a situation of needs over once and we're going to have to prioritize our needs and not necessarily things that that we want are there um a budget um or places in our budget and like the bed tax for instance is obvious one that the definition of how that money can be spent can be changed by either us or the legislature and where we would have more flexibility on how to spend that money the for that one that would have to be a change in state law we we hear that all the time especially from you know communities that you know want us to help fund um you know their operations or whatever um we would need a change in state law and so they those funds are restricted most and and i actually had a point up there about us looking hard at anything we can shift cost out of the general fund onto other funding sources we've taken a hard look at that in the past we're going to take a harder look at that now that we're facing this question um but to your point um you know we we do need to look and and be for what what could happen here in november as we prepare this budget and we haven't had a time to do that i will tell you though if we if we eliminate all the wants uh we still have a deficit okay i mean we still have a deficit you can you can talk about social action funding and things like that but for instance the 2.5 million dollars to the health department what are you are you going to eliminate school nurses okay i mean those are the types of choices that we're going to have to make because it's going to have to come out of that fund somewhere so it's either going to come over out over in the health department services that they provide which means more people end up in the er over at at other places so those are those are things that are going to take time to put together recommendations and we do have time i don't want to scare anybody and that's the reason i've kind of tried to stay away from that let us let us go through and evaluate all of those different services but those are the types of the things that we're going to have to deal with we have time after november all the way until next october but it's going to go beyond once how much it remains to be seen but you do think there are items other than just the bed tax that could be changed by the legislature i don't know i can't answer that i mean it'd be it'd be a big help if we just got rid of unfunded mandates that we continue to get okay you know um but but that doesn't seem to be working you know and i'm sure i'll hear about that for saying it but you know it's it's a reality the fact that we're getting ready to eliminate or reduce property tax revenue and then they add 4.6 million dollars for an additional benefit that recurs by the very by the that comes from the very fund that we're trying to use to provide public safety it absolutely makes no sense but that is exactly what happened in the bed tax that you were talking about you know that story is we have a million residents here but when when you add on all of our visitors for a period of time there's an average it's much higher than that yeah so the impact on infrastructure is real it's not make believe and that's the argument for getting some of that money for infrastructure whether they buy it or not it's true right it's a fact so those are the kinds of things we're going to have to be looking at to address in the upcoming session and even if you did that for infrastructure it'd be different than operations because that that would go understand infrastructure you know and you know i mentioned you know because we'd always talk about and i put up the constitutionals and those kind of mandated what everybody thinks about in terms of mandated services but you know we subsidize our 911 by 12 million dollars animal services we want to i mean come on you know what what would be the community impact you know for reductions there um built just maintaining our buildings but that doesn't even go to emergency management look look how much we spend on emergency management and being prepared and the response that we that we were able to provide as a result of that preparation there's so many different pieces that are basic levels of service that are um needs not wants and so mr peter so i'm sorry can i do uh real quick um to that point um jewel are we allowed to adjust what the penny does and add things like could we add some of the needs to the penny list when it goes before the voters since that is something that's been popular the penny is a restricted revenue just like the tdt and others um but within the restricted uses you certainly could um one of the i would say probably one of the major drawbacks if there to the extent there is one with the penny revenue is that it doesn't provide a maintenance for all the you know lands you might buy or or streets or or roads or bridges you know that you may build um so you can certainly um rebalance the types of priorities that you might um have with the penny it would have to be confined by the uses prescribed by the statute again with the major drawback being lack of use of those funds generally speaking for maintenance so i want to go back to what commissioner scott brought up um so what i what i would not want to do is just eliminate one of those funds because the roads and sidewalks um and we did that specifically to reduce the number of lawsuits correct so the more than 1200 miles of roads and sidewalks we've done we've seen the lawsuits cut in half so there's you know there's other ways that you're saving money um so it's really an investment so the only thing i would worry about cutting that is then we you know you save the money there but then you spend more in lawsuits right so so we have to find a balance on everything that we look at cutting on what the unintended consequences are and so we very specifically put that money in transportation on roads and sidewalks for the very purpose of reducing trip and fall lawsuits and we in fact did cut that i got the data just recently and we cut it by more than half so um so we we've just been really good stewards and and we're just going to have to find ways but we have to be we have to use more of a scalpel than a machete and and make sure that we aren't uh or at least we're very thoughtful in what the repercussions can be and what the unintended consequences could be because i you know we don't flag it we don't fly or flag on all the great things that we do sometimes and that's a big deal the money we saved in lawsuits is a really big deal that was a great investment that we've done with a great return and so i just don't want to lose sight of stuff like that as we go through with this scalpel yeah you know and and to that point fixing a normally planned road improvement is x dollars but if you're behind and those those roads become a lot more expensive it's not just paving you're now talking about infrastructure rebuild and i'm not i'm this is real this is part of the reason we did that extra millage was to try to get caught up on some of those really bad roads that were just eating us up on the lane mile cost was so much higher to your point on on on lawsuits which it's a big deal on the sidewalks we having we were getting hammered on that too so we were caught up on sidewalks it is seven to eight times more expensive to reconstruct a road than it is to repave it at the right time but once the base is compromised through water infiltration okay then it's compromised so maintaining that is very important i agree these are the tough choices that we're going to face mr flowers thank you mr chair i just wanted to share with my colleagues that in the senate committee hearing regarding the utilization of bed tax dollars that question was asked by senator um uh whiting from south florida um and several others and um sadly it was an immediate um no because the question was especially for rural communities could they utilize these funds to make up for some of the shortfalls in other areas for necessary funding um and immediately um senator avala who was doing the presentation of the property tax thing said no i think it's still worth us explore and you know um maybe making that as one of our priorities because i'm sure we probably won't be the only ones should this pass i'm sure we won't be the only ones looking for other um financial resources so i think it's good commissioner lavala that you brought that up um but i wanted to share that was you know as could we divert that and um i apologize for being a few minutes late um but bear i'm not sure if you also covered the component piece that um the state was initially talking about having this grant fund set up where people would apply to the state that also has gone away so now you don't even have that opportunity to make application should you know you find a shortfall in a certain area and desire to make that application um and just as an fyi if anyone has not seen it um we've invited florida association accountants has invited state individuals to come um and there will be a panel discussion on thursday in orlando only about property tax so instead of having the speaker that we would have had for the lunch hour that we normally do it's going to be about property tax so if you are going i think it'll be worth you know coming in there and hopefully being able to maybe get some if we got the largest we got the largest room that they have um but i think it'll be worth coming in there um and i don't know if there will be more answers or not but it'll certainly be worth being in the room for the discussion thank you mr chair appreciate it anybody else okay next up we have the property appraiser welcome mr twitty good to have you here and a lot of his slides are going to be um a little bit more in depth of mine but um kind of hitting on some of the same topics morning mr chair mr vice chair and commissioners very chris thank you for uh your help through the budget this year too so i have no i can't drive right can i drive i need the wheel all right so yeah there may be a little bit of repetition in here but i'm going to dig into the constitutional amendment a little bit more and pull back pull back the the shades on a little bit more and because there's some things that people may not realize um but we're going to start off with how we always do with our our value trend um this goes back to 2007 so that was before we went into the great recession you can see that with the blue bars there that's just market value county-wide is determined by our office the gold bars our taxable value the delta between the two is your exemptions and your assessment caps create that that difference there and you can see that that gap is still pretty big between the the blue and the gold all the way out there in 2026. you can also from this one you can see that um well barry mentioned taxable value did go up 4.2 percent um over 2025 that was predominantly because of recapture which we'll go over that slide here in a minute but that's basically those assessment caps riding riding up to three percent you know to cpi or three percent whichever is lower for a homesteader and then up to is market or ten percent whichever is lower for a um or a um non-homestead property owner so new construction you can see that that red line there big dip following the hurricanes big spike afterwards because that includes the repair costs as well it's the way department of revenue requires us to report it so we had to do all the demo had to be factored in for last year and then this year we had a lot of restoration we had a lot of removal of excess depreciation on parcels as people repaired and that restored a lot of that value back to the role but if you look at those blue bars carefully you'll know that over the last two years you see it going down slightly so it went down um one percent in 2025 and it's gone down two percent for this year so that's an aggregate that's largely due to condominiums single family has has dipped some commercial has been flat or down but condos because of the milestone inspection rules um you know the increased reserve and maintenance fees that we've all seen happening throughout condo communities that that has had an impact and they've they've suffered the biggest blow on the market value side this breaks down the taxable value of that new construction which is that 3.15 billion so you can see there over on the predominantly in the residential realm is where most of those dollars are coming from in pinellas that includes your your your high-rise condos down to your single-family homes and your and your uh townhomes and things like that commercial not a whole lot of pure commercial most of the commercial new construction has been in multi-family rental and then this year was different when we sent out the letter that i know went to the chair and probably get distributed to you all we we broke down between existing and new builds so you could see kind of the repairs as they came back on this is a recapture a lot of people don't understand quite how i know this is chris's favorite slide so try to follow along here so the again the blue bar is just market value rising and falling over time the goal bar is assessed value which is a capped value so let's just assume homestead in this scenario so in in this scenario here the goal bar can only rise at three percent or cpi whichever is less so you can see in a in a large upswing in the market that gap can grow pretty sizable that is also that amount that people can take forward to another homestead for port that's their portability amount or their save our homes benefit but then if the market turns and your just just value starts to drop your assessed value can continue to rise this is where a lot of property owners get confused hey my market value is going down how did how did my tax bill possibly go up and that's because assessed value is still kind of creeping up until it closes that gap so until those two meet so assessed value can never exceed just market value but once they meet and if just is still falling then it will push that that capped value downward you can see in this example it pushes it back down and establishes a new base and then the market starts to increase again and you start to build that differential so but as that's happening to people's amount of portability benefit is getting squeezed so it can this happened during the great recession a lot a lot of people there any port amount was essentially wiped away but then it pushed them down to a new base which was lower than where they were before and then they started over again so mike and that that little gap area there that gray line also just follows along there too right i mean that's what we're saying that in that one area where you just had the gold line yes so that that's where where assessed is caught up to just market so that's them riding down together if you had a little gray line that kind of went alongside of that goal line it would be descriptive of where our market values are too yes no i mean be the same one in the same they're one in the same in that example yeah that's what i'm saying you could we could have made a blue and a gold line traveling together yeah yeah yes okay thanks so here's a little update on what's going on with the residential market our our sales pace is still slow we're still slower than um obviously pre-covid certainly during the coveted years and even slower than pre-covid in 2025 we had about 11 000 single family sales that's down a couple thousand sales from even back in 2016 so we're still a little little sluggish there on transactions and you can see overall single family as a whole went down 6.7 percent on a median price per square foot basis that's county-wide still when you get down to different locales different different neighborhoods you you might have seen a rise you might have seen static or you might have seen a decrease it varied and then for the first quarter of 26 so far we're relatively flat these are realtor numbers you can see the median sale price is a little bit higher than what we show in our numbers because we're showing it at the aggregate of an entire year's worth of sales as opposed to they're doing a one month capture here so their numbers a little bit higher median days to contract and close continued to to creep up the month supply there on single family i think is a little bit misleading because it only shows 3.7 months however which would normally still be indicate a seller's market but i think we all know that that's not really the the case anymore in most in most areas like i said there's some neighborhoods that have very low supply and other areas that have a lot of supply so that that's really the driving factor and you're going to see that that here so i've shown this slide before the dip there so green is your your active listings of all residential in pinellas county and blue is your demand so that's your sales activity so you can see over the years sales activity really hasn't fluctuated all that much compared to listing um active listings and you can see it's it's up there pretty good right now the gap there where it closed that was during covet so that's when we had all the everybody the bidding wars everybody paying above ask and that's why because demand was overshadowing supply so we've got some correction there a lot of that is part of the condo issue a lot of those condos are out there on the market a lot of people are still trying to ask covet covet type pricing so you know there's still a lot of recalibration that needs to happen with people's buying and selling expectations commissioner scott hey mike what are your what's your uh kind of longer term outlook on that condo market when do you see that starting to moderate or turn the corner the other way most of them are through their their their milestone their first initial milestone reporting now so i think over the next year or so you'll see at least some more certainty and knowing what what you got to pay going forward um but you know a lot of those maintenance fees have jumped dramatically a lot of those reserve requirements have spiked up and it's really association to association depending on how healthy they were to begin with going into it and and how how well they were reserved you know those were tough boards to sit on obviously because nobody wants to be the the one to and you guys get this i mean you you have to do it here at but at a county level but decide if people are going to pay more or not and and you know when they're your your friends and neighbors in the same condo building they often don't want to you know they've kind of shrugged off some of those reserve requirements and and now they need to uh put those back in place this is just trend wise on transactional activity so that's just number of transactions like we said so you can see 2021 that was during during covet that was the highest level and you've seen it's it's kind of gradually dropped down since then so we're still kind of in the in the pocket of where we've been the last couple years on single family pretty close condos have continued to drop and largely because of what we just talked about still too much uncertainty seeing a lot of people going to contract and then what's presented as the maintenance fees they find out are actually going to be higher than what they anticipated or there might be a special assessment or some other things and then they're they might be pushing away from the table our perspective here where we stand right now with our residential property owners 66 of our residential properties are homesteaded and 33 are not so that's in of course that's county-wide and once you get down to each jurisdiction that can that can vary just a reminder because we're going to get into the property tax talk here in a minute that we have had two years of you know we talked about the current homestead is broken into two bands of 25 000 one covers assessed value from zero to 25 hits all millages including schools the new property tax amendment is the same way schools are held harmless going forward but then the second band of 25 is 50 to 75 000 but it has been increasing at cpi for the last two years so it is now up to 26 411 so you're at 51 411 dollars is this year's homestead exemption so you're going to see that number again later so i just wanted to to point that out yes only the second band commissioner flowers thank you mr chair i'm not sure if you have um already looked at or calculated but based on the 33 of homesteaded properties um that would receive the additional exemption have you also calculated the number of properties that actually would not be paying any tax at all because the property value is far less than the 150 000 or right at the 150 or less than 150 000 yes so i have so the the percentage of homesteaders that have an assessed value because remember it's an it's an extra 100 or an extra 200 right in the two years because the 50 is already pretty much covered so the the percentage of homesteaders that already have an assessed value of 200 000 or less is 51 and a half percent and then if you look at the those under 150 000 it's 37.3 yeah so those would those would be completely those people in those buckets once they hit that year two they would all get swept up and they would have a zero tax bill assuming no other changes no um no new non-ads or you know things things of that nature um but yes and and that but of course schools are still the same so everybody's gonna still have a tax bill um wanted to touch on a couple of law changes that occurred in 2025 just this one's really important because of our our hurricane impacts and we have a lot of people still recovering and taking advantage of what we call the calamity provision in state law there was a change that was signed into law on june 26 of last year so it was after we met uh last year so i wanted to make you aware before the law change both homestead and non-homestead if if they were had a calamity event they were able to repair or rebuild their home and not be treated as new construction so they they aren't getting a cap reset they get to keep their save our homes cap or their 10 cap in place and repair and rebuild it was up to 1500 square feet or 110 percent of what they originally had in square footage whichever was greater the new law change impacts homesteaders and now allows them to go to 2000 square feet or 130 of their original square footage whichever is greater so that's helping especially the people that need to elevate and get up off the ground that that 130 is a is a big help and they have a so now now homesteaders have a five-year window to pull a permit to start that process to be able to be eligible for calamity they have to keep their their homestead in place on the property if they pull it off and or port it somewhere else to live in another house temporarily then they will not be able to take advantage of calamity on that parcel so they need to leave it intact doesn't matter if if they've demoed it and it's a vacant lot we can still hold the homestead there and um and ensure the cap stays there so they have a five-year window after the january one following the damage event a non-homesteader has a three-year window after the january one of the event make sense this slide is really more on the calamity the biggie is people uh to remind people not to pull their homestead off of property if they plan to rebuild or repair that they want to take advantage of calamity i was talking to a fellow um that i hadn't seen in right 10 or 15 years ran into him at the barber shop last night and we started talking and he he said oh we really got hit by milton it was wind-driven rain you know we faced north we got blasted we had water come in around all of our windows our rip came up under our soffits got all we had to redo our roof our windows he was worried about the tax implications i said no you're fine that's under calamity provision he's replacing his windows is fixing his roof all that type of thing so important for people to know that and another tool we've added you know we like building tools in the property appraiser's office and so we built a new calculator for calamity so our calamity calculator is to help people that are in that decision making process knowing what that potential increase in their tax bill might be if they're under that you know whether they're a non-homesteader or a homesteader so it does the 110 and the 130 percent calculation they just plug in their square footage the area of their porches there's a couple of things they have to provide the information for and then we show them if there's any increase or not in in many cases you know they stay under that percentage they're good to go and and they'll they'll show a zero and there won't be any increase but we know that that gets to be a uh a complicated calculation for some it does a lot of more complex things in the background so we tried to make it simple for them and a reminder of another constitutional amendment that is on the ballot that actually passed the legislature in 2025 just to make everybody aware is related to the 100 elimination of tangible personal property so anything with a tpp um exemption exemption related to ag equipment would would be um would be wiped off the roll here in pinellas we have the fewest amount of ag parcels in the entire state i think we're down to about 80. uh so our impact is is is nothing on on this amendment in fact they probably shouldn't even let voters in pinellas vote because of that but i mean we can't do that so uh so that will be statewide but just to give you a perspective when you get into some of our more rural counties they can have as much as 40 percent of their tax roll from tangible personal property wouldn't necessarily all be in ag equipment but a lot of it maybe all right moving on to 2026 so when the budget passed the week before the property the property tax special session there was the budget special and in the tax package there were several ad valorem items these are the ones that i just wanted to make you aware of there there's a few others that kind of get in the weeds but one would put a three percent assessed value cap on lot rental parks so mobile home communities that essentially are owned by a landlord but as long as they 75 of those lots are rented with annual leases it that that pass through the real estate taxes then that property owner would be eligible to apply to be treated with a three percent assessment cap as opposed to the current 10 cap which could potentially become a five percent cap down the line uh space florida we don't have any space florida exemption properties in our county right now but we know we do have a lot of aircraft manufacturing that goes on here and i have met with space florida on several projects in the past that they that they were kicking the tires on looking at coming into pinellas county their new exemption is going to broaden what what they can work on so it won't just be space related or will also pull in aviation so just wanted to put that on your radar um those are you know more of an economic development type thing it really applies to the tangible personal property related to the ad valorem taxes um there was a change related to homesteaded properties if they're rented by officers of the u.s government now if they are deployed they would be allowed to rent out their homestead and keep their homestead and save our homes cap in place there was a change to portability so no change in the time frame you know several years ago i championed getting portability moved from two to three years so that still is there and in place however now you get to pick the if you own multiple homesteads within a three-year window you essentially get to choose the highest amount of port of those three years and use use that going forward which a little bit of an administrative nightmare for us but we'll figure it out um and then lastly um the disclosure of estimated ad valorem taxes that's the one i've told you all about i think for the last four years and thankfully that finally passed so that is putting that that property tax transparency on the online listing platforms so it's been a little overshadowed by all the other uh constitutional amendment talk but i'm proud that you know our association supported that and we worked that really hard to finally get that across the goal line so um do want to give uh senator to sigley and and representative anderson credit for being sponsors on that and and get it helping get it across the goal line four years yeah thank you yeah that was a it was a challenge um i preached about it for a few years prior to that too i mean it was something that that i i was uh i knew was a big problem we needed to try and rectify it so it's going to add that transparency over for those new buyers when they're shopping online just to be able to get a realistic estimate of what they're going to be facing instead of looking at that capped value that that a seller might have been paying um i just talked to somebody two days ago and they're they're buying a property and he actually works in my office so he knew better um and it said that that that the taxes were a hundred dollars well he was buying from a hundred percent tmp vet total and permanently disabled veteran so the hundred dollars was his non-advalorum tax that he still has to pay for the vet he's completely exempt from advalorum so obviously he knew you know it's not going to be that in fact it's you know closer to ten thousand dollars you know in reality yeah a little difference all right you guys might recognize that guy i think i think he uh used to be a resident so how do we get here um the biggest thing we hear when we hear about people actually leaving the state of florida or leaving our community it's it's been about the property insurance issue as opposed to the taxes unless they're a brand new buyer and they just were so caught off guard that they just didn't realize it and then and in many cases they don't necessarily leave the state they might they might move change houses or change counties um but that that's been the biggest issue that we have seen from our perspective in our office the cap reset obviously is that big cold bucket of water on people when they don't know in advance and hopefully the legislation that just passed that i we just talked about will help that effort going forward so you won't have as many people that you know get misled at the at the um when they're signing the contract but um and then you know we have you've you saw that that graph i'll do it this way because that's the way it goes um and we've had you know 13 years of taxable value increases and and a lot of that time different taxing authorities haven't necessarily moved millage rates you know rolled back to to offset that so and the legislature the property tax exemption is something that's within their ability to to work on and an impact in an easier way than insurance legislation there's private companies involved there's things there that that make it a bit more challenging for them so so quick history on homestead so homestead started back in 1934 in florida at five thousand dollars of assessed value well at that time that was about the median value of a home now service levels were likely a little bit different more dirt roads your fire suppression might have been your well in a bucket um and and your your law enforcement you know might have been your shotgun in in many cases so a little little different um in the 60s it doubled and then in the 80s we got our first 25 we didn't get the second 25 that took us to 50 until 2008 that's also when portability kicked in because at that at that point in time the save our homes amendment had started in the mid 90s people were starting to build that differential and then realized they couldn't they were kind of trapped in their homes if they wanted to sell and move to another home they were going to reset and they were going to start over so so it was starting to there was there was pent-up um pent-up demand in selling people wanted to they wanted to move but they they couldn't get afford to really get out of their house so portability came along and helped with that effort and that's also when the 10 non-homestead cap came in and then just in 25 was the first year that we've had the adjustment on the second band of of uh for cpi all right so we're like barry said we're really only a week out right so there's been a lot of a quick digestion of all of this that's in hjr 1f which was the version that actually passed remember it did remove school so schools are currently now held harmless they only face exemptions related to the first 25 000 of assessed value we've already mean the first year it would the non-school taxes would be exempt up to 150 and then 250 in 2028 and then they could move at cpi in the future it does have language in there for the lead that the legislature shall shall prescribe a uniform procedure to increase the amount of assessed value exempt from taxation up to the remaining assessed valuation but it just stops there it doesn't you know the reference the governor dropped about 500 000 that's nowhere in the bill there's nothing else with any number so it really falls in the lap of the legislature um from here on out and i'm sure they didn't want to tie the hands of of future legislatures on what what they might be able to do so today we haven't talked yet about the five-year florida residency requirement so the way that's that's written in right now if you become if it passes if you become a florida resident by december 31st of 2026 and even if you're here for one day you are considered a florida resident by by the terms of this bill so you would be able to qualify for the 150 and the 250 as those rolled in if you move in on the first you are not so now you're now you have to um you have to wait five years essentially so it's going to be interesting uh doing the residency qualification and i'm sure uh we're going to get some interesting stories and uh so we're going to have to use a lot of different uh tools and and resources to try and make sure we can validate those as best we can so if you're under that if you're a you know a latecomer and you fall under that five-year residency requirement window starting in 2027 then you would be able to receive a 50 000 homestead exemption but it's not the same as the old 50 000 exemption this goes zero to 50. remember the other one was two bands zero to 25 and then 50 to 75 there's no donut hole anymore there's no donut hole between 25 and 50 000 so they get zero to 50 the first zero to 50 000 of assessed value would come off and for non-schools and then that can grow starting in year two at cpi and then the other item the non-homestead assessment cap barry did mention this can go down would adjust from 10 percent down to five percent that probably won't have as big of an impact as a lot of people are thinking for one commercial market has softened um so we're not necessarily hitting the cap on those recaptures and and then if it's a new new purchase it's generally not moving at 10 anyway but another thing is you have to remember that any of those assessed value caps they cap assessed value increases they do not cap tax increases so if millage rates change then that has that five or ten percent has no bearing on that it's you know it's a two very two variable equation assessed value times tax rate or millage rate equals taxes so if one of those you know if we're restricting this one but then this one cranks up then it's still gonna gonna raise the tax dollars we get that question all the time how you know it'll be a ten percent cap property and it especially when um the school millage just changed last year and a lot of those properties non-homestead properties went over ten percent in an increase and it was because it was the tax dollar those are your seven items that ad valorem is allowed to be used for per the joint resolution barry already covered that i do agree with you that number seven item is is pretty broad and i think that's being interpreted in a pretty broad fashion and then we move into 4f which was the concurrent policy bill so they did take a couple of items out of there which was dor was supposed to stand up a tax savings calculator website that then we were supposed to as property appraisers we were all supposed to include a separate insert in our trim notices that were going to go out to all taxpayers that would direct property owners excuse me to that calculator via a website url and a and a qr code that was stripped from the bill by the legislature what remained the main focus is really on the adoption of millage rates and how max millages is um is determined before a vote is required so basically the rollback rate in the new language becomes the new base instead of where you where you started the year it always starts the rollback um requires a two-thirds to go up to 110 percent and increases greater than the 110 would require a unanimous vote and since this is not in the constitutional amendment this actually take once signed by the governor would take effect for this tax year that's not a deferred thing so that that is 426 or the 27th fiscal year but um so another thing some people may not be thinking about there too is that so it says rollback but the rollback rate in the next year if you have a taxable value cut because of exemptions right so taxable value decreases the rollback rate is actually a roll up rate so the that roll forward rate is actually designed to balance to get you the same tax dollars that you were getting um when the taxable value was at a different level what was at the prior year's level so so that's a weird uh scenario there because rollback will actually mean roll up in in the next the next budget here 28 or 27 which one for the 20 fiscal year 28 and 27 well so so fiscal year 27 which is 26 and 27 right that that would be this will take effect for that but that'll be the rollback so that'll be a rollback year next the the next year fiscal year 28 would technically be a roll up roll forward so sinking in well because this year taxable value rose next year the next year the next year if the amendment passed this taxable value will be cut because of the exemptions so that point you would have to increase the millage to bring the tax dollars to the same level so it's technically a roll up rate so for this one year we're going to have the rollback rate will be our base yes and we can if that goes down five percent or whatever it is and we're allowed up to 10 percent over that rollback rate right that's just the ballot summary um and and i noticed this right away too and i talked with our general counsel about it because the last sentence where it says requires any person who establishes florida residency after january 1 so that kind of conflicts with what's in the statutory that says december 31st 2026 so that that could add to some of the i mean there's been discussion about some challenges to to this ballot summary so we'll have to see but that there's just a few inconsistencies and that's another one of them but they are they are deferring to the statutory language as that would be more informative and that's the one that we would need to stand by um this is just breaking it down this is assuming no other changes so this is assuming millage rates don't increase there aren't new non-ads there aren't new fees there aren't other ways of taxation so this is just purely on ad valorem taxes so you can see in year one that additional 98 589 so that's your your difference between the one the 150 000 and the 51 411 which people are currently getting now and there will actually be another year's growth on that second van but we don't know what that's going to be yet i took the the aggregate average millage rate that dor calculates that's essentially county wide i took the school millage out and then just ran it so it's that would be at the aggregate average for the county some some jurisdictions have a lower millage rate some have a higher one you know we have almost a 10 mil swing depending you can be in a beach town that might be almost closer to 13 or 14 mils and then you might be in and in a more urbanized area with a 22 or 23 mil um milled rate so about a 10 mil swing so that that's kind of in the sweet spot so that turns into about 12.2 mils so twelve hundred dollars roughly if if someone were to receive the full benefit in 27 and about twenty four hundred dollars in the second year if it when it goes to 250 and then you can see all those assumptions below so it's assuming a lot of things stay status quo so the way i look at this amendment whenever whenever you introduce exemptions you're you're starting to potentially shift burdens and create some inequities obviously save our homes cap help has helped tons of people many of them are sitting in this room through the years but at the same time we all admit it it created some inequities right it pushed it pushed a shift of burden over onto newer homebuyers and and non-homesteaders so i look at this the same way as far as it all depends on what shoes you're standing in and you may have a different perspective on on how you might look at the amendment you're a first-time homebuyer you're looking at a big cap reset it's it's it's a lot of money right that property tax bill i was just talking about somebody in my office looking at facing ten thousand dollar you know tax bill so it definitely would would help them on their affordability and on their buying power and their loan qualification you know it makes the numbers work better for them to get to get in a property but now if you're a long time homesteader um you know it's going to it may lower or eliminate their non-school taxes depending on where they are you know because their their taxable value may be down under that 200 mark or under 250 and and it may wipe that portion out but or they might be in a condo they've been in they might have a taxable value about fifty thousand dollars so they're not going to get as big a benefit somebody else but they still may have their non-school taxes eliminated so mike on on home buying like folks that are moving down here they're thinking about moving down here and the you know i'm just first-time homebuyers you know lower non-school taxes will help affordability and buying power i think on the loan qualification maybe but i'm wondering how this starts to make florida more attractive driving prices back up again significantly well that's that's one of those if if nothing else changes right right and that's one of the things that could change you could you could see you could see demand spike which could cause prices to rise which may offset some or many of the of the savings so yeah they have no no um well they have yeah there's no sales tax i mean income tax there's no property right property tax it becomes even more uh of a demand if you will right going to be created but if they're coming from out of state they would if if they're not if they don't establish residency before the the year end of this year they would be under that five year before before they could get the bigger the bigger exemption right um you know you've got another example so you have fully exempted individuals and entities so your religious and charitable entities they're not taxable now they won't get a benefit from the exemption obviously because they're already fully exempt but if new non-ads are created or things like that those can shift over to them same with 100 tmp disabled vets as an example and then you've got your non-homestead residential and commercial property owners they're obviously not going to get a benefit from that we already talked about just keep in mind that a reduction of the assessed value cap from 10 to 5 doesn't necessarily mean that that is a cap on taxes and it could have an if if it's a commercial property that's leased that is not currently passing through real estate taxes and maybe it's a longer term lease it it could start to have an impact on their noi which could start to have an impact on their on their commercial property values so it's all about how how you're looking at it from all these different perspectives mr scott thank you mr chairman how the realtors feeling about this so the realtors that i've seen online are are loving it because they see they see more home sales right you know so yeah i'm going back in my mind to that you know one of those earlier slides where it showed demand versus supply right there's that big gas and i'm wondering if you're going to see that you know people that have felt like they've been trapped in their homes this is going to unlock some of that right yeah i don't know that you're going to see more movement from homestead to another homestead as a result of it i think it's going to unlock some first-time home buyer and and then obviously you're going to get some influx from out of state just because of the national hoopla over it you may see a little spike in florida residents between november and december uh potentially if it if it were to pass so just a lot of things so i'm just i'm just a purveyor of information and provoking thought with this type of stuff our association is not taking a position on this we just want to try to bring the facts to the table that and present them to you all and and we'll have some faqs that we're developing through our association and we'll stand up and you'll probably see them on most of the property appraisers websites just to kind of point out a lot of the the general breakdown to to try and clear up any misunderstanding and and provide a bunch of different scenarios of what what it might mean for for different individuals it'd be interesting to see that effect you know on the on the demand versus you know your savings on the application side for a first time well you know we just hate that our first-time buyers are are hurt so badly within the current the current system i mean again whether this is the right move or not the current system needed a little tweaking and fixing to help those first-time buyers um but now i'm not you know there'll be a net effect i'm not you know not sure what it'll be uh a bigger demand will drive the mortgage value up or the uh loan value that you need to gap right you know to on the equity you have but then you'll have less property taxes and it'll be interesting to right so more room for the insurance to increase that was bad joke um so we'll continue to educate and and you know try and answer questions on this stuff we'll be doing a session in august on august 27th in our south county office and also online that'll be our our annual notice of proposed property tax session that we do and understanding the trim notice but obviously we're going to get a lot of questions about this topic at that time so we'll be addressing this then we may have another session even before this one in august this is just the one that we have on the books so far and then we're going to be um you know pushing out some stuff in our e-newsletters and and also through our social media so if anybody wants to follow along they can um check in with us there we'll be pushing out an article for this month that'll kind of just break down the facts of the amendment just so people truly understand what actually passed because a lot of a lot of what i'm seeing online is people still hanging on to things that were talked about over the last year and a half you know oh if my home's paid off or if i'm 65 plus or you know i don't have to pay school taxes anymore you know all those things are are fallacies so we'll have the the straight facts out there where people can come and look at that that's all i've got for slides for you guys today well i think we hit you with questions along you know throughout your presentation the best way and obviously as we absorb more of this um and we move towards our july august conversations we might ask you to be around sure some of those technical questions along with chris and you know your budget so and commissioners the information that we had upon our slides we we in a very quick period of time got that information from mike in his office and so we really do want to appreciate he's been very very helpful um and really helped us frame out the impacts of all of this in a really quick period of time so i just want to thank him publicly for his assistance we're going to be passing that information out to you that'll break we have the best property appraiser in the state we do we do thank you mike i appreciate it a lot of folks refer to him throughout the state they refer to the office they do i mean it's just true now i really do appreciate what you did uh getting that state law so so people will know what their tax bill is going to be before they move into their house because that shocker i have met so many people it's devastated oh yeah yeah yeah they can't pay wow i feel like if we could have got that in year one we might not be sitting here today talking about property tax reduction because there would have been that much more transparency well it's going to come in big time handy in 28 when people are moving to town thinking they could just buy a house that's right tax bill is going to be super low and you can tell them no and all our tax if it passes our tax estimators are going to change dramatically because you're going to have well what type of resident are you did you qualify you know were you here before the end of 26 or are you qualifying for the other exemption because it's going to be a drastic difference well it's going to save a lot of heartache so good job on that any rationale behind the five years that they picked i don't know why okay five years and it's technically not even five years because you get to qualify for it on on the fifth january one right so it's really more like four years but you had to have homestead first so you have to qualify for homestead then you have to wait five years but that weight is really four years so it's it's a little wonky yeah yeah yeah all right any other questions for mike thank you mike you're welcome appreciate it and and i know we're doing budget too so my my i don't know if it's in the same thank you though appreciate it so no uh is his staff's been great just truly great um so up on the screen here in just a minute you'll see the the bis presentation uh documents for the property appraisers budget they they are one of the ones that has built-in raises into their budget and so that's one we're going to keep an eye on whereas county administrative departments have not uh property appraisers one of the ones that has so we'll watch that as we go i'm just watching for it to get up on the screen you know just so i can caveat that i don't want anybody to read into that we're going to get to the budget when we get to august this is the normal way we have done that in past histories they have to submit their their budget to the department of revenue so they have to have those things built in okay yeah we have a june one deadline and have a consistent approach and everything like that but we'll do that in august so a couple of the budget drivers for the property appraiser our personnel services is going down eight thousand dollars less than right around a tenth of a percent just due to normal staff turnover their fte count full-time equivalent account has dropped by two over the last five fiscal years and this year from 26 to 27 remains flat at 127 positions uh operating increase has gone up it will be going up in 27 171 thousand dollars uh due to the implementation of their new software system and um you know you you can see the rest of it there but those are the big highlights for their budget drivers technical glitch it would appear so yes so we'll we'll get the pdf up as soon as we can uh i i guess i could tell you there's no decision packages uh that they have requested and uh and as well uh it's it's pretty flat budget frankly even without the implementation cost of the software if they didn't have that it would be a complete it would be a reduction yes yes sir yeah i mean it's close to anyone close enough anyway but that was my question yes when i saw the one percent for the 163 000 for your software right and we're having we're having to you know as technology is changing we're continuing to vet and test new tools to try and get more efficient and and um and also you know our biggest our biggest um piece of software in our office is our canvas system and that is a very robust complex database with a lot of tools in it well to replace that in today's dollars would be about three to four million dollars so we've really tried to work around around keeping the same system that we have not have not having to come to you all and saying you know this is a a one-time big number that we need uh so we've we've been really good at using other county resource tools we're heavy with heavy users of power bi which that's part of our microsoft subscription through the county with bts and we've we use it for all sorts of things that's really increase the efficiency in our office and and this new um tool is a is a modeling tool that we're testing out that could that could really help us in the future going forward so um those are things that are adding a little bit of cost but not the type of cost of replacing a canvas system so we're trying to essentially keep keep the legs on that and find ways to because it's it's a good solid database just the ui is a little out of date but we're building new uis and different with different tools that that help us work efficiently excuse me commissioner thank you mr chair mike how about um are you able to use um ai at all to to help like root out homestead fraud yeah so we're still we're kicking the tires on some ai tools out there and we'll probably develop some of our some of our own we're trying to move very slowly and cautiously just because of yes um you know we we want to keep ai in a cage at this point we don't want things running reckless on the you know with internet connectivity when it comes to ai but we know there's going to be some efficiency gains and and you know queries that we have to do now that you know we've already evolved a lot so just to kind of give you a little you know used to be if i wanted data out of my system i had to find somebody that knew how to write a pretty complex query to get that data back out which was very frustrating for me because i'm like i just want that information out so when we built our our latest website we put a lot of advanced search tools in where i'll use that a lot just to get data out of my system i can get it out of there quicker than i could having to find somebody and go three iterations on on developing a query so then we started putting power bi and that's essentially a query dashboard so we could build those and for pre-canned queries and and and do selections and export that data and so now ai is the next evolution of that to where you won't have to really build dashboards you're just going to be able to ask questions and it's going to give you exactly what you want and mike volunteered to be on our ai steering committee that we're forming with all the constitutionals and us i did okay i must have missed that meeting oh anything else mike pretty straightforward it's pretty straightforward um you know the bulk of our 90 of our budget is personnel so our operational side is is about as trim as it can be so any other questions for mike on the budget thank you mike appreciate you all now we'll bring up our smallest budget good good morning sheriff welcome somebody somebody's got the powerpoint up there if they can get that up there it is okay all right good morning uh just run through this um so starting places where are we from performance standpoint um we want people to be safe and feel safe and else county uh remains a safe place to live and for our residents just a second sheriff pete we need we need that on all four screens again if he would just get up all four screens again that'd be great thank you i think there we go anybody who's been around for a long time remembers the days when back especially back in the 80s when the state of florida and many places in florida didn't have a reputation for being safe and given that tourism is our number one economic driver in the state of florida it's important that people around the country know that they can come here and not face any peril and that they know what we're doing to keep crime down in our service area over a 10-year period we reduced the rate of serious crime by 62 and a half percent so serious crimes measured under uniform crime reporting those are the things that people care the most about that's the rapes robberies and murders the burglaries and those serious crimes that affect quality of life and so i can sit here and tell you about all the arrests we make and we do solve a lot of cases and make great arrests and our case closure rates and all those numbers are high but the problem with measuring your success by those numbers is it means that something bad has already happened there's already victims of crime something has already occurred so really the best metric is is that what are you doing to keep it from happening to begin with what are you doing to prevent it so if you look at the number of rapes and robberies and murders and burglaries and all those things that really matter to people that means that we've reduced the numbers where they didn't happen at all over the period of 2014 to 25 2025 by 62 and a half percent just between 2024 and 2025 alone we reduced the number by 13 and a half percent so again that's very impactful because it means that people were not victimized and pinellas county remains safe um we've also at the same time uh want to make sure that we are delivering services in the most economical way that we can and one way of measuring it is is how do we compare to others and the number of cops that we have on the street so in florida uh the number of average officers per 1 000 residents is 2.4 just using that flat number that we have uh we have 1.8 deputies per 1 000 residents but it's actually lower than that because the number that we use is the number we report to the state which is the number of sworn law enforcement officers and that includes those law enforcement officers that are in our judicial operations bureau and court security and really are performing a very important function but they're not out there on the street um answering calls and driving that crime rate down so if you look at it that way our number is probably more like about 1.5 or 1.6 per 1 000 residents compared to the average in florida which is 2.4 um as far as hiring goes uh we're in good shape um we have about 50 open deputy positions um and last year and right now we have about 47 it fluctuates on a weekly basis but uh we're in good shape and the reason why is is that because of the aggressive hiring we've done and being uh competitive we want to make sure that we can attract uh the best and retain the best people and in order to do that we have to be uh market competitive because there's a lot of competition out there uh for law enforcement officers it is not and we've talked about this many times in the past it's not the way it used to be there's not people just you know knocking at the door and and waiting to get in so we have to recruit and aggressively recruit and we have to be market competitive so we don't lose ground we know that when we lose ground it's very painful because then you come back in subsequent years and those numbers are very very high uh to recoup and you you just can't get uh where you get in the hole and you get way behind i'll talk more about that in a minute as far as where we are uh but to give you the fy 27 budget overview um our current year our adopted budget 476 million uh the budget for fy 27 is 507 million we generate non general fund revenue of 54.6 million so the net request for the general fund comes down to 452 uh 633 we've seen over many years a steady increase in that non-general fund revenue the bulk of that comes from our contract cities and from housing federal inmates to the jail and then a number of other sources but that's the overview of the non-general fund revenue over the last few years you'll see in here that again the 26 the current year non-general fund revenue is 54 million dollars uh but for uh fy 27 it's projected uh to not have a steep increase uh it the increase is only 139 000 um and i'll talk about that here in a second so our average uh revenue increase over five years is uh 13 million dollars the reason why we don't see a big increase this year is we had to negotiate our contract with us marshal service to house the federal inmates of the jail and um what you gain in one direction you lose another it was a very painful uh negotiation process because they were only paying us under the contract 118 a day per inmate um we had hoped and had all the indications that we were going to get uh between 155 and 160 dollars a day uh that didn't materialize after a year's worth of negotiation so this is the point where the negotiations were breaking down we really had to elevate it to some very high levels within the department of justice and we finally got them to agree to 140 a day so we went from 118 to 140 uh but when we went from 108 to 140 they decreased the number of inmates that they gave us in the jail okay so they it was a painful process but you know against the backdrop and uh the county administrator and i had a lot of discussions about this because we could have taken a hardcore approach with it but uh we generate about 18 million dollars in non-general fund revenue by housing these inmates and so if we eliminated the contract and just said we're not going to do that anymore the savings would be nowhere near the 18 million dollars because for the number of inmates that we house and right now we're only housing about 250 inmates so even if i could close one or two housing areas is that it would be a minuscule savings uh compared to the 17 plus 18 million dollars in non-general fund revenue so that's why we see the decrease if you will uh or the very slight increase is because right now um they've reduced the number of inmates that they're giving us and and i'm told it's because we increased the daily rate so that's what happened put that in context about two million dollars yeah it's about two million yeah yeah about two million dollars uh was was the impact of that but we're still uh generating a significant amount of non-general fund revenue and you know i say this rhetorically we don't want to have that discussion because you lose 17 million dollars on top of everything else you've heard here this morning that's not good you know you'd be in a bad place so um it's not in the overall scheme of things it's one of those where it is what it is we did the best we could as far as negotiating that and it was at a point where we either we either we took the 140 or we canceled the contract and that after a year of negotiation that's where that's where it was so um as far as the cities go as we know 24 cities in peniles county 13 of them don't have police departments they contract with us we also provide the policing services at the st p clearwater international airport for the housing authority properties and with you all for the environmental lands our budget increase this year is about six percent and we're increasing all those contracts commensurate with a budget increase so that that cost is passed on to those that contract with us so about a six percent increase for all the municipalities and they've been informed of that most of our increase like it always is is with salary and benefits we have to as i said we have to remain market competitive we have a contract with the pva a collective bargaining agreement for the union and those negotiations about pay for 2027 are ongoing we have to negotiate that every year what we propose and where we think we're going to land is and again it's asterisk because it's subject to collective bargaining with the union is a three percent increase uh again to stay market competitive our current starting pay is as it says up there 68 000 960 and with the three percent that'll go up to 71 0 29 uh the current top pay is 97 298 and with that three percent increase it would make the top pay 100 000 217 now compare us to st pete is right now so we're starting at 68 st pete is starting at 71 we go to uh 97 and st pete goes to 117 so we're always chasing it uh to be market competitive tampa's high hillsborough's high st pete other agencies it's not like it was a few years ago when i was here and i appreciate the help that you all gave us to fix this because we were in the hole and we were down at one point we were down 70 deputies of the jail we had a similar amount on the law enforcement side because we weren't and as i told you before and you know and when you had some small municipalities in pinellas county like largo and some others that were paying more than we were paying we just couldn't it's not sustainable so we had to fix it we have fixed it but this is why we have to remain uh market competitive um i've said this a thousand times and i'll say it for a thousand and one we do not and i have never taken the position that we need to be should be or that we will be the highest paid law enforcement agency in the county or the region we just have to be competitive and you know with this increase and where we are now we are not the highest paid but we're competitive and that's the important part is is that we have to take care of our people we have to make sure that they're fairly uh compensated and this is another reason why these pay increases uh which i really think a three percent pay increase is about the minimum you can do uh it's nominal i wholeheartedly agree with what commissioner scott said earlier is is that you got to take care of your people and you don't have this without the people and if you don't take care of the people you don't have that you don't have a 62 and a half percent reduction in crime without people who are working hard every day who are giving it their all and the combination for that is the people and using and leveraging technology that's not by accident that happens by design it happens by the strategies we have in place by the people doing what they need to do and getting the job done so you know we got to take care of them and and a three percent increase um again i think it's just the it's the bare bones it's it's what allows them to pay their bills and uh live life and do what they need to do and if we don't have that then we're gonna be we're gonna have a problem um for the same thing for the non-sworn uh the what's baked into this is three percent of midpoint uh the total wage increase with that three percent for the sworn and the non-sworn is uh 7.2 million uh it's 5.2 million for the sworn personnel and 2 million for the non-sworn personnel and getting into some of the drivers of the personal services our frs contribution uh will be for fy 27 will be 73.4 million dollars that's just the frs contribution remember you know unlike you all is is that the big part of ours is special risk and the contribution rate now uh for special risk is about 35 percent so it's a big number and that's why our um um contribution rate is so high our contribution amount is so high and that includes for fy 27 a 5.6 million dollar increase and as the administrator said a little bit ago when he was given his presentation 4.6 million of that is due to the reinstatement of the cost of living adjustment for the retirees in special risk that adjustment for the retirees and special risk is just for them that's not for everybody else so um that's what's in there and that's what's the law and that's what we gotta pay so um just give you a a breakdown uh so you can see what it looks like 83 of our budgets personal services personnel costs uh that's the breakdown uh 229 millions regular salaries that 10 million dollars in overtime doesn't cover it uh we're on track this year to and as we have for the last couple years to spend about 15 million dollars a year in overtime uh as we have the open positions it's you know pay out of the left hand or pay out of the right hand is is that we are as lean as we can be we've looked at this over and over up and down and scrubbed it there's no if there were positions to cut or there were posts to cut especially at the jail i would have cut them but you can't so you have to have the people in there to staff our average daily population the jail stays about 3 000 inmates and it's a big place a big operation and you got to have deputies on the street to respond to the calls uh there's days where we don't have uh float cars and squads we just have the individual zones that are filled uh we're not fat uh we're lean and as you can see by those stats in the previous slides the average is 2.4 per 1000 and we're realistically more like about 1.5 1.6 uh officers per 1000 so um you know when people aren't there uh because of open positions etc then you got to fill it with overtime and we're on track this year to spend about 15 million you know this budget does not um even pay for uh all the overtime we use lapse funds from those open positions etc to do that um so another big driver's holiday pay uh 5.6 million social security is almost 19 million uh health insurance is 80 million i already talked about the frs contribution so that gives us a personal services budget of the total of 426 i'm sorry 421.6 million so that's that six percent increase in personal services um some of the operating and capital cost increases um they're listed there um four hundred thousand dollars for jail medical body worn camera contract 650 000 fleet uh we have have uh have this come up uh every couple years uh the 12-year helicopter overhauls 600 000 uh we have a camera for the helicopter uh that is a 10-year replacement it's got to be replaced 600 000 and so uh technology costs those are the drivers uh the big ticket drivers uh there's a lot of smaller stuff that adds up those are the individual big ticket drivers in the operating and capital increases so the total budget uh increase is 30.7 million which is obviously a problem uh because what you all had as far as new money goes is somewhere probably if you included the three percent uh for your employees because you had 18 and you do the math on it it comes out to about 23 million bucks uh of you know or i'm sorry it was about 23 million in new money and a deficit this overall deficit comes up to about 23 million so anyway um you know 30.7 million dollar increase its personal services 26.2 operating is 2.6 and the equipment is 1.9 so uh you know this is over the new money that you'll have and that's the the overview and just a little bit more of not so good news is is that with that frs cola we had told you chris that we wouldn't need any money for the fourth quarter for frs contributions because we thought we were in good shape and didn't need it but when that happened two weeks ago so for the first quarter of the state's fiscal year which july 1st when that's due the fourth quarter of our year which we don't have any money in the budget for is 800 000 so we'll need 800 000 for paying the frs bill for the fourth quarter of our fiscal year so that's the good news well well thank you sheriff i'm gonna drink my coffee thank you mr chairman bob thanks for being here um i just want to say um if i got a couple questions but anytime i have interaction with your deputies they're they're awesome extremely professional well-trained and i just want to thank you for that thanks um and unfortunately i have to call them out periodically for the short-term rental down the street from me but they're always great and i yeah right yeah yeah of course so i remember last year the last year the year before probably both that the health insurance was really driving a lot of your costs and i see that this year it's it's a nine percent increase how did that compare with previous years and where do you kind of see that trend going well it's down considerably i mean last year it's it's we're in the 13 14 range last year so it's down considerably the drivers unfortunately are claims to a degree but it's uh prescription drug costs that that's one of the biggest drivers in it so thankfully we are down quite a bit um and it's moving in the right direction uh we do everything we can to contain those costs uh and to work with our consultants on this and look at plan design uh looking at all the various options so i think that right now with what they call trend uh is that we're in line we're not high uh so with the health insurance trend uh it's uh right there uh we're in line with the national trend uh in the local and regional trend on health insurance costs so we're in much better shape than we were last year in the year before so it's moving in the right direction okay cool yeah um and then just thinking ahead to a new county campus assuming that still happens if um if this amendment goes through or not um and you may or may not know the answer to this question but in the new county campus with that justice judicial area there would that reduce the need for the number of deputies do you know the answer that question or no no no it's not going to we're we're working through everything now but the the answer is no it's not going to it's because it's just moving it's really consolidating um and because of the county side and the judicial side and just all the needs and making that a secure facility so unfortunately the answer is no yes commissioner flowers i just want to say first of all um i completely agree i've had interactions with um officers on a variety of occasions um and um really appreciate the service that they provide um some of you may or may not know we had some concerns at the tampa bay regional planning council office and we decided to that we needed to have security there i reached out to the sheriff and it wasn't even a hesitation um we pay for it of course we you know tampa bay regional planning council pays for it but an officer is there with us um and so i want to publicly share that and let you know that each officer that's been there has been impeccable and i really appreciate that um i also want to publicly thank you for what has been occurring unfortunately with these team uh pop-ups that uh have just absolutely positively gotten out of control i want to thank you for partnering with the city of clearwater um and i think some other departments both in wesley chapel city center um they've just recently had their issues but they kind of followed the format as it relates to a heavy presence um which tampered down some of the um the temperature before it got out of hand and got out of control so thank you for your leadership on that so i'm gonna ask this question i'm not saying that i'm just gonna ask this question because again barry already said that it's not like raises are out for staff period um we just are going to see where we fall but if it should happen to come down to it would there be any consideration for like a two percent or it's got to be a three percent you know i i'm just asking you know yeah sure you know of course we have to have the discussion and and having robust discussion and dialogue and discourse and you know uh you know i don't see it i i think it's very detrimental to do that um and again because the amount i would look at you know uh some other things they you know again commissioner scott brought it up i mean you know with social action funding and some of these other things within our budget one of the things that uh you know i would look at before i did that is is that you know nobody's gonna like that what i'm gonna say on this uh or a lot of you aren't gonna like what i'm gonna say on this but you know safe harbor is an example we spend 2.8 million dollars a year in safe harbor why is that my job i've been saying that since we opened the place in uh 2011 but i do it and we run it and we staff it and we have people there but somebody said earlier well okay you're squeezing the balloon and other people may end up in the emergency room okay well if there's a choice between taking care of my people and we're going to give them the pay raise that they need and this isn't a big pay raise this is just so they can continue to pay their bills and and maintain the status quo i'll shut safe harbor down before i do that because and i and it's fair commissioner i'm not and i'm not pushing back and i'm just i don't these are all things that that may be you know some hard um decisions that we have to make and just the realities of it but you know again i i it is so important to me that we take care of our people and that uh we continue on this trend of reducing crime and because what we do affects so much more in the community and and you know the economic drivers etc so i'll work with you as i always have and work with the best i can but there are certain there's certain lines for me and making sure that we take care of the people is aligned for me yeah i don't take it as a pushback like you said i just take it as a conversation and i'm probably going to ask different questions of each department and i will say at the big c you shared even at the big c with the various cities there the increase in your cost for services that you were passing along to those municipalities so we're not absent of that so i'm you don't take it that way i'm oh no i'm not good i'm fine and we probably in this process and you know if this were to pass and you know you know my position position on it is is that you know you know we we have to be aware and can't put our head in the sand on it but we don't know whether this is going to pass or not and we're a long way off we'll have plenty of time and another big driver in this is going to be the implementing bill that the legislature passes and that could be very detrimental it could be very positive it could be in the we don't know and we'll have all the way until october of 2027 to get a plan on this and so my perspective is on it i'm not you know yeah of course i'm worried about it but i'm not overly concerned about it you know we we have a representative democracy the legislature spoke they did what they did and now the people are going to get to speak and and whatever they decide we'll figure this thing out i'm more worried about 26 27 and when we got you know a 30 million dollar increase that i have there and you all have about 23 million dollars in new money that that you know that's that that that's today first and foremost for me and then you know even though it's not for me to worry about it's for you and making sure that you guys have enough to take care of your people too and that you have enough for wage increases so you know i'm i'm really focused on 26 27 not what's going to happen with this property tax thing and that doesn't mean i'm not aware of it not aware not you know engaged in discussions about it but i'm not that concerned about it because we will figure it out we we will we will get this figured out and if we have to you know make some hard choices maybe like things like safe harbor or some of this other social action funding that's a 27 28 discussion that's for me that's you know down the road but um we'll get there and we'll probably have a lot of robust discussion over time so i i welcome that uh you know the the hard questions and the and the discussion about it and commissioner we're we're kind of starting round two um i'm meeting with all the constitutionals uh tomorrow night and so we're going to you know kick off these discussions we do need to be consistent um and we need to have a thoughtful approach as we get towards this year's budget and you know and that's that's part of those discussions yeah sure yeah i think um like commissioner peters mentioned about unintended consequences as we go through this whole process not just talking about the sheriff's budget but any of them when we start thinking about changes and what that really means we need to keep a list of that so that we're we're telling the story i mean these are tough decisions that are going to be made and uh along the way i'm not sure i agree or disagree with the sheriff on we're just going to worry about this coming year i'm we we can't determine the outcome of the vote obviously in november and i understand that perspective i i just don't know how we make that change if it does pass you know if we don't start looking at it but i you know i don't know i guess that's what we'll figure out in the next couple of months for sure i think i think my budget recommendation to you will have options okay and so we'll have that discussion we just need more time to be able to build what those options are sure thank you appreciate your time anybody oh commissioner shear yeah uh thank you chair uh sheriff thanks for coming in i appreciate you keeping us safe and making us feel safe my business and my livelihood is dependent on my customers being safe and feeling safe so thank you very much for that your deputies do a great job i just had a quick question for you i have a feeling you're going to become very popular with some cities that might want you to contract for them uh i didn't know if you see that coming uh and and how would you how would you how do you determine what the contract rate is for city just out of curiosity i so we use a formula um and the formula was developed um probably 20 25 years ago now the county there's a lot there's always been discussion about you know what we charge and how we charge it uh the county um at that time um commissioned a study through gsg government services group and looked at the totality and came up with a formula so we still use that formula because nothing's come forward that's been better than that over time so it's really taking the total costs um using some divisors and coming up with a contract rate per deputy plus we charge them for equipment and backroom services and a whole lot of uh allocated indirect costs so i guess the shorter answer is there's a formula we use and they get a per deputy cost plus they pay for equipment and other allocated indirect costs so that's how it works um and when we get the requests from the cities uh we do a staffing analysis as to what it would take for us to staff those cities and i can tell you hands down 100 of the time it's always cheaper and they're always going to get uh as good or better services than they have now but those are not always the drivers we've had you know over time i've had many of the small municipalities in pinellas county ask us for for quotes and the savings would be astronomical savings um but they make their decisions for other reasons of course that's up to that individual city uh council commission uh whatever that legislative body is for that municipality to make that uh choice for for for themselves so i give them the information they make the decision and are you happy with the formula that you're using is it something that we need to look at for you or yeah no i do think it's probably you know the best formula i i am happy with it i don't think there's anything better uh there's no perfect on it uh so i do think it works and i do think it's a good formula if i thought that there was a reason to change it i would have changed it um i don't have any better formula to use um and and it um it it it works um it does work yeah thank you um sure um not to get into a lot of the weeds but uh um technology drones and that kind of thing as it relates to some of this increasing harassment that's going on by kids on motor on bikes e-bikes etc with our seniors and parks and trails and all of that just a comment on on your observation um on how we are managing that how do we how could we do anything differently or better or are we using drones and are we how are we managing that process which just seems to be growing a little bit each each week or each month we're getting more and more reports about it so you talk about the the e-bike problem yeah so so there's no question there was a there's a huge problem uh and that the law has not kept pace with the technology uh you have the class one two three and then you have the electric motorcycles now i guess they're class four but they're not even covered by the law so there was a law passed uh this legislative session that created a statewide work group uh there were a couple of substantive law changes that do help a little bit one is is that uh when somebody is passing someone on an e-bike they have to uh slow down and they have to use an audible signal so there does give us some tools there but the problem is is that what was being proposed didn't work universally across the state uh you know miami-dade county miami-dade county is different than madison and broward is different than uh okeechobee so you have to have something that works and so they needed to slow it down uh the good news is is this work group a lot of times when the legislature and panels work groups or convenes a study is it takes a long time but we made sure that that wasn't the case they have to have a report in by january for the march legislative session and they got the right players on this so it's the department of highway safety motor vehicles the department of transportation industry representatives law enforcement police chief sheriffs etc to come up with so i think that in the meantime we're going to focus on what we have been and that is the individual conduct uh it gets very complicated uh the the e-bikes are bicycles under the law they're not motor vehicles uh but they come under the bicycles which are vehicles but not motor vehicles so they have to obey the traffic laws so we have details that are out there regularly uh on the trail and in various places throughout the county and so we are focusing on individual conduct and trying to take care of it that way until we do get some substantive law changes that will address the devices themselves so that's kind of where it is it is a complaint we get all the time we're well aware of it and doing the best we can to um deter the bad conduct yeah i mean it's one thing that what you're doing out out there with um with with those kids i've experienced it now twice yeah um it's it's it's nasty yeah um and it's bad and i'm just wondering if there's a a different approach to it whether it's with schools with you know um some more education more getting parents to the schools to understand what's going on because it again it doesn't take too many of those threats with our with our seniors out in the parks that it's just unacceptable and i don't i'm just not sure how we address and i don't think it's just your guys and gals out on the streets because that's a that's a whole different dynamic and difficulty you know chasing kids you're not going to chase kids on a on a bike unless they've committed a felony or something so um you know it's i don't know how how do we how do we well you know i'd say with a lot of it a lot of it is young people uh and a lot of the complaints uh emanate from the conduct of young people so just like you know commissioner flowers reference some of these other things we're dealing with on the beaches with these pop-up events is where the parents you know um yeah they give these kids these bikes and they're running all over the place and and and they are engaging in misconduct they are running people off the road they are scary to the people who are on foot and these pedestrians and then the kids are they're their conduct isn't right so again we have to we're just focusing on that and try and deal with it uh and you know write them tickets take them home deal with it um but you know the parents should probably not let them do it to begin with but they do so okay thank you anybody anybody else yeah commissioner peterson um is do you think that this is similar to when the kids were stealing cars that it's more about street creds than which one on the e-bikes or the pop-ups all of it well we always see you know this time of year and i think i said this when i was over at clearwater police department a week ago when we did a press conference on this is is that as soon as school gets out we see an uptick in property crime caused by juveniles we see an uptick on car break-ins we see an uptick on auto thefts we see because the the mischievous conduct begins because a lot of it unfortunately because they don't have anything to do so idle hands and that's what they engage in so um in you know the difference this year is is that the the the new thing is is to engage in these uh takeover events so it's a lot of it is the time of the year uh coupled with social media that's another big problem social media is a driver in this there's no question about it because as opposed to you know four or five kids deciding that they're going to go out and break into some cars now you've got 50 60 or hundreds of kids or you know whatever it may be that decide that they're going to meet someplace and just do what they shouldn't be doing you know and so you know we're going to have uh probably so some media stuff on it this week we're trying to push the message out and and just be clear with everybody is is that no you know it just and you know i can't say it more strongly than that it is that that weekend this happened was the first weekend of summer break and it is the last weekend that nonsense is happening and you know uh they say you know play stupid games win stupid prizes they're going to win stupid prizes because they're going to go to jail and you know and the parents need to realize you know just don't and a lot of these kids here here's the other problem that's frustrating with a lot of that is a lot of these kids that are doing that here in pinellas aren't pinellas kids this is that that whole thing on clearwater beach the 16 year old who shot the 17 year old i.e why 16 year old shouldn't have guns was from polk county so you know that's but when i called sheriff judd and said you know you think you could uh take your people and they had the shooter in custody by uh five o'clock that night though because they got on it they found a guy over there in haynes city so um it it it's a combination of things but it is young people driven is what we're seeing with it do we have drones that we are using in any of this stuff and uh come on even the stuff local on the e-bikes do we have any of that so we're we can't use it we can't use the drones for enforcement because they're vehicles and you can't use the drones for traffic enforcement uh we're limited by state law with what we can use the drones for i'm just thinking i'd love to follow them home and find out the connection with their parents that draw that connection because you you lose them i'm telling you the two that i ran into they just ran through red lights i know and flipping off people and threatening people and you know i i i stopped my car fast and i'm saying you know where's bob's guy when i need air guy now when i need it and then i started to move on and they followed me down the street on the side you know sidewalk um it just it it's dangerous stuff i mean they're they're the ones that are probably going to get hurt at some point it's not like you hope that by any means but it's a big deal and it's getting bigger so i don't you know we're doing the best we can with it and trying to deter it and send a message so we'll keep at it yeah thanks uh commissioner wiki thank you uh sheriff great presentation as always i'm on a lighter note could we maybe deputize our chair here and then he could enforce the e-bikes himself as a sorry we could deputize you oh uh and then you could enforce write some tickets well thank you sheriff yeah yeah no you're welcome commissioner's gott oh go ahead go ahead commissioner flowers i'm a member of the school safety transportation committee as a result of being appointed and we had the deputy come out and speak to us about the e-bikes and you know gave a full explanation of the different uh a b or c level and what's required he did share that um several offices have stopped the kids and called their parents and had their parents come to wherever they were as it relates to the infraction and had a conversation right there in front of them i do have pamphlets in my car that i got from him that i'm going to share with you guys so i'll step out real quickly when we take a break and get them but um it's the information pamphlet now that the uh sheriff's office is giving out regarding e-bikes the difference between e-bikes and the things that look more like dirt bikes that you need a license for and all of that you know just all of that um and you know from the sst committee it's like if the parents buy them the parents should be held responsible because the parents are the ones buying them but we want to make sure we educate them first on the rules before they let them jump on well it's the bikes themselves but it's more the attitude that the kids have and they're using the bikes to deliver the attitude whatever that is commissioner scott thank you mr chair uh so just for your information sheriff we've talked here about potentially a local ordinance addressing e-bikes so we've asked staff before pinellas to you know kind of put a white paper together together on that and probably have some discussion or presentation sometime this summer so definitely want to get your input on that and then i'm just curious what did sheriff judge say what's that what did sheriff judge say when you called him he said he said they have him in custody by sundown and they did so he said we got it and uh they helped out and they had him in custody so it was a good thing um you know that was just awful you know you know that guy's facing an attempted murder charge as he should be um you know at 16 years old so and you know there are unfortunately you know there's a lot of kids out on the beaches uh that are carrying guns um and not a lot i mean i don't say a lot i don't want to overstate it but there's there there's too many but it's it's that time of year right now and so you know the best thing we can do is to have a real heavy presence which we are and send the message and then do what we say we're going to do and we are and you know again i just you know hope that you know anybody that that hears this or is aware of it and sees it in the media and again we're going to do some media stuff this week is to realize that don't be doing it and you're not going to like the outcome of it and and again it goes back to it is very concerning to me you know again that people not only are safe but they feel safe and and that we have a reputation because we don't want people up in ohio and michigan or canada or any place else seeing this and thinking that oh i'm not going there because of this stuff that's happening we we have to have zero tolerance for that you know and i've had discussions with the the police chiefs uh throughout the county i think we're all in agreement and i tell you that that we're going to jump on it uh fast and hard and make a statement and i mean what was happening out there is is that you know you have to balance it people have a right to go and be um you know but there's a line and they can't cross that line and these what was happening out there those aren't the people that are and doing what they were doing uh is not good for the environment anybody else all all right thanks all right thanks i appreciate it so commissioner for running a quarter till but uh we thought we were running um ahead of schedule so we asked the clerk and i appreciate him coming over quickly so if we can uh get get them up and before we take a break for lunch sounds good i'm sure he'll be about five minutes long and you know i'm kidding i'm kidding take your time and uh welcome good to have you here i know it's all settled first did you chris did you did you want to introduce the folks that are coming certainly mr chair thank you uh so diana caro is uh the budget analyst for the clerk's office but our our constitutional officers normally present themselves we're just here for questions so but still it's nice of the introduction so we see these we don't get to see the folks very often so it's great to see you thanks for being here she's a first year analyst here in our office so this is her first time mr burke floor is yours it's good to be with you sir it's good to be with all the commissioners and diana thank you for your help this year diana and i worked when she was at the juvenile welfare board together so it's good to see her um i i want to say when i came in i sat back here and i looked up up here and i saw barry burton's socks and they're pretty outrageous and i looked at brian scott's socks and boy yeah some socks folks it's good yeah that's good i appreciate that um just so y'all know and and i know some of you know this already um but i'll just remind you that we have 517 employees in the clerk's office today i'm coming to you for funding for 132 of those employees okay um you fund the ones who uh work for the the finance division the board records the board management um and some of our uh obviously me the partial part of my salary that type of thing um but it's spread out into different funds we have of four different funds which fund employees um of which you fund 132 of the 517 employees so i want to point that out we're requesting a budget which is um fairly conservative um it's 19 million eight hundred two thousand one hundred thirty dollars um there are some um expenditures in there as far as increase and the increases in operating expenses most of them come with our technology needs that we have in the clerk's office um and those include things like payment works which is a a vendor security uh system spending in the sunshine which i'm very proud of um and on base which is um a we've gone from app extender to on base and on base is something that we fund for not only the clerk's office but for the throughout county government the supervisor of election and the sheriff are big users of that but we're the funders of that um we have uh and also our vab software which i i know a few of you are on this vab um that's 75 000 so that's all included in that 300 and some thousand of additional money that we're asking for um the other thing i want to point out to you is the erp that's not part of our budget but it's something which is extremely important we just had a meeting um last week on that um and uh brian who's the who's heading it up from from for us um really said uh he's a pain to say uh everything's going ahead of schedule and doing extremely well um which is really good to hear so that's something and i know with the tax amendment it's it's it's it's something that you're you're looking at and considering but folks we did this back in 2008 2012 we cut monies which we shouldn't have and oracle never has been done properly i see the head shaking thank you chris i appreciate that um we need to do um this erp correctly and properly backfill the positions when i say backfill this is taking people out of the clerk's office they'll be working on um the the implementation and we need to hire people to do their job while while they're working on implementation um it's such it's such a um and and we've been working with uh chris on this um this is something where as we use money we'll we'll we'll we'll use it and if not it'll go back into the fund um and be used for the future years um but that's something that um we we are we are have put into um put as a request for our budget um basically the only other thing i really want to talk to you about and this is going to be a short presentation sir except for your questions um we have 298 people coming into your um into the new campus um and as i wrote you and i wrote you all a letter um i'm very disappointed with the with the with the new campus um it is something which um we're very concerned about all the offices are smaller except for the judges um you know the the offices are are small um the the technology there the setup of it is not very good i know we're looking at that um but i hope um all of you really take a look at that letter and read it uh commissioner schreyer i certainly appreciate your phone call and your concerns commissioner nawicki i appreciate your concerns and and talking to me about it um but i but i would appreciate a conversation with each of you and i'll try to get in touch with each of you um in the next few i know you're you're busy with budget um but to talk about this also so that's where i am as far as our budget's concerned and be glad to answer any questions you all may have any questions for the clerk i was kidding i was really kidding about the five minutes so that's a fairly stable budget yeah yeah i want to thank ashley for taking minutes here at our meeting today all right thank you thank you that's all we have i think um the uh well we have we do have weight here so we can either move wade up um or we can take a break for lunch at your pleasure what is the preference here all right let's just take a break okay we'll start back what time barry um 12 12 20 half hour everybody will be back at 12 20 to start back i'm gonna miss you kim voters know where they're supposed to go it means that ballots went out on time it means that the equipment all worked it means that poll workers knew what they were doing it means that our results were timely and i know that there is a lot that goes into elections but when elections are conducted well most voters experience something simple and that is not accidental it's about planning experience redundancies testing reliable infrastructure and people who know exactly what they are doing my proposed fiscal 27 budget supports three core areas conducting elections runs about 8.8 million voter registration about 1.7 mil and voter education at 1.1 this is not a budget around expansion this is a budget built around continuity our fiscal 27 budget will allow for our office to conduct year-round work that's required by law both federal and state the budget supports one county-wide election four fire district elections two community development districts and although municipalities conduct i'm sorry they um fund their own elections we conduct them by contract and we'll be approximately conducting 19 elections in fiscal 27. the budget's going to provide for mail ballot voting seven early voting sites and 163 polling places on election day this budget maintains approximately 605 000 uh active registered voter registration records also any kind of ineligibility addressless maintenance activities it supports about 38 000 new voter registration applications and about 55 000 updates to registration my budget also includes voter education and registration programs for pinealas county citizens including conducting mock elections outreach for schools senior citizens minority communities and voters with disabilities we also are supporting our cyber and physical security systems and operations with our proposed budget my budget also supports the staff who carries out this work every single day this year our budget includes decision packages that are focused on operational continuity and infrastructure replacement they are not flashy they're not about adding new programs they are about maintaining the systems that allow elections to operate smoothly we are asking for a ballot inserter at one point just under one point six mil a cannon printer for 55 000 and transporters to um securely transport our equipment for 200 000 together these requests support the same objective reliable secure and repeatable election operations the ballot inserter is one of those pieces of election infrastructure no one sees but it directly effects whether mail ballots are assembled accurately efficiently and on time the existing inserter has reached end of life replacing it is necessary to maintain continuity in high volume mail ballot production this system assembles ballot kits and integrates automated postage processing it reduces manual handling strengthens quality control improves turnaround time and supports compliance with the statutory guidelines that govern ballot mailing and processing my second request is for a secondary production grade canon printer again this is about redundancy the current printing environment that we have lacks reliable backup capacity so during a normal operation this is you know a mere inconvenience but when you're in the middle of an election cycle and you have deadlines required by law it require i'm sorry it increases obviously risk and potential lawsuits this printer would allow for us to have a backup system for supporting our ballots to be mailed and also to include in-house material printing including inserts for mail ballot kits manuals test decks and also in structural materials it also provides color capability which improves the clarity and usability of voter-facing materials but the main point of this printer is continuity a modern elections office cannot rely on a single production pathway for time-sensitive materials when equipment fails when workloads surge or when deadlines are compressed redundancy gives us options options are what prevent small problems from becoming operational disruptions and our final um request is for a secure trans equipment transporter it's like a system it's a concept uh the request i can't get into quite detail about it because it is part of our cyber security i mean our physical security uh the request supports uh the secure movement and storage of election equipment and mission critical materials they provide sensitive and costly assets from damage prevent i'm sorry let's try that again they protect sensitive and costly assets from damage tampering and environmental exposure while supporting standardized handling and chain of custody procedures the goal of this budget like it is with every budget i propose is to help ensure that elections are secure and can be trusted and that voters experience goes smoothly when poll workers understand the process they are most likely to execute it correctly when staff has experience with a process they are more likely to anticipate problems before voters feel them and when the voters recognize the process they are more most likely going to trust the process and participate in it we do not do this work alone the county has been a partner in building the infrastructure that pinellas counties residents citizens our voters have come to rely on that partnership has helped us modernize equipment improve security support polling place operations strengthen legal compliance and maintain continuity between election cycles i would like to thank the county administrator barry burton county attorney jewel white bts director jeff wars and their teams facilities human resources and the many county employees who help support our elections over the years i would also like to thank sheriff wall terry he helps tremendously with our sheriff's deputies um during our canvassing board meetings and also transporting equipment and supplies clerk ken burke who helps us as board reporters for all of our meetings property appraiser mike twitty for helping with um mapping and many different things with aegis so on and so forth and the tax collector adam ross who helps us with registering voters at his locations and also with our ballot drop-off locations and to each of you who have diligently worked on the canvassing board and who have seen firsthand the level of detail care and legal responsibility involved in what we do i began with this bag because it says something simple about what we do i love boring elections as an election administrator i do not have a stake in the process i only care that voters have access to it and that the election is conducted fairly and with integrity and it was done securely and to me that is the best part of the process and this budget that i'm proposing supports that in fiscal 27 we are asking for the resources needed to keep the plan together to keep the infrastructure stable and to keep elections boring in the best way possible i thank you for your time and your for your partnership and i please happy to answer any questions you may have yes commissioner flowers not a question but a comment um i know that we are up against a wall and we're all thinking but i for me i believe that um for the soe office that's one of the areas where i'm i would extremely hesitate to to um to scale back anything we have had very secure elections um there are a number of communities that look towards our soe office for the way in which we conduct um our elections um and are able to get the races called and up on the board quickly um and then you know provisionals are handled later but um persons know very quickly what's going on and then the community accessibility going out educating the community showing up at different things that they're asked to attend to um make sure that they're informing the public on any changes thank you so much for the new map also regarding the precincts and the redistricting so people know ahead of time their precinct may have possibly changed and to start looking at that now so um i appreciate your presentation i also love boring elections because right after the presidential recount i was on council in saint pete and we had the saint petersburg recount right after so i know what it's like to hand count balance with pregnant dimples chips and chads and that was not a fun experience so just wanted to share that with you and thank you and your staff for what you guys do i really appreciate it and like i said i know we may be looking at something but this is one of the areas where um i support uh whatever is needed to make sure that the relations continue to be safe secure and are completed in a timely manner with no issues or concerns thank you anybody else and your and your budget as you said does not include the pay adjustments and then and um even with that your budget this coming year is lower than last the current year and commissioners that's cyclical based upon the types of elections say it again yeah that's i understand i understand and it fluctuates a little bit but 24 obviously was a big year and then 25 six and seven have been decreasing each year um okay thank you any other questions for julie yeah keep up the great work and um here's to boring elections here's the boring elections yes thank you all very much appreciate it commissioner so we can um adam ross is on his way we can either um move human resources up or we could do general um the general government let's uh do human resources all right wade you're on mr chair while they get settled may i yeah so i have veronica edel here next to me uh since wade is not an elected official our budget analyst is going to go first um and then we will pass the baton over to to wade so thank you for your patience and belinda amundson was sitting next to me for the elections uh supervisor's budget she she is the budget analyst for that so i'm going to stall for just one more second while veronica gets ready and uh and we'll get going and welcome wade good to have you here today yeah thank you very much pleased to be here okay good afternoon everyone commissioners thank you for having us here today um it's i have the two two two budgets to present get that close to you yeah closer make sure we hear you okay is that a little bit better yeah okay so i have two presentations here human resources handles the employee health benefits fund as well so first we'll go through the human resources general fund budget and wade will talk about that and then we'll go into the employee health benefits fund as well so starting with the human resources budget this this budget increases twenty nine thousand dollars overall point zero point six percent to five point one four six million dollars the appropriate all appropriation for human resources is from the general fund um okay sorry so personnel services decreases by sixty one thousand and that's due to the elimination of one vacant part-time position that's vacant now and another position during the middle of next year which will happen after the enterprise resource software is implemented human resources is the first department that's doing that implementation the operating expenses increased by ninety thousand so overall the department didn't didn't go up much because they did reduce their personnel budget but then the the next year is the biennial employee survey so every other year we do that survey and that is a cost of a hundred thousand hundred thousand dollars so overall they increased a little bit but they came down in personnel and then that expense will be gone cyclical similar to the way we have the supervisor just discussed her her budget so the top of page two on there's one decision package and it's it's actually not something substantial but it's something that requires specifically by law requires board approval so it's to increase the compensation of the unified personnel board members when they have the meetings and it's built into the budget already we just need to draw attention to it then we have the next next down a summary of proposed changes to user fees the point here is that there there is no user fee from human resources to the the public they are an internal service fund they provide services to all of us obviously in inside the inside the county and so the general fund pays for that and then that is recovered from the enterprises and other departments and i'm going to skip there are no cip projects and we'll go over employee health benefits in just a few minutes so i'm going to hand it over to wade right now to be able to talk about his human resources in the general fund his accomplishments thank you i'm wade childress chief human resources officer very pleased to be here today so i'm excited about the budget we have as veronica states about 29 000 increase but that's due to a hundred thousand dollar every other year survey so if you think about that we've been able to cut 71 000 of that hundred thousand dollars out of the budget um to offset that so um it's it's not an increase there we are cutting 1.4 ftes out of the budget i only have 37 ftes in the budget so that's about a five percent reduction for that as veronica said one of those ftes is coming later in the year after retirement we're not doing any layoffs we have a vacant position we're going to wait for somebody to retire and those will be the two changes that we make and that will be concurrent with the um the implementation of the erp the other piece is the decision package for the unified personnel board so in the personnel act that was created in 1975 this board is supposed to be a compensated board the compensation has not changed in 23 years so we're asking for a bit of a just a small increase in compensation for them from a hundred dollars to two hundred dollars a meeting i can tell you in july we will have a meeting it will be eight hours long um it will be a appeal for a termination so they do put in a lot of time and a lot of effort for this but i think it's it's been 23 years since the change has been made in their compensation and i was able to make reductions in the hr budget so that that is flat there is no additional cost to hr i was able to reduce in other areas to offset that increase for the unified personnel board so overall i'm very pleased with the hr budget and would be happy to take any questions any questions for wade okay go ahead oh i'm sorry brian my question actually relates to health insurance okay that's the next budget yep okay yeah that's where i was going to commission i thought there'd be a few questions about that okay so now we're going to walk through the uh the summary document for employee health benefits this is the fund it's a separate fund it accounts for expenditures associated with our medical benefits dental benefits and the wellness program for county employees to start i'm going to go pass the summary table to the budget drivers and start there in the middle of page one so excluding reserves and transfers the 27 budget request is 75.8 million dollars it increases 840 000 or just about one percent over the fy26 amended budget and this is the important distinction here as you read through this so the medical claims over the last it is the six million dollar increase over the 26 adopted but only an 800 000 increase over the amended and i'm going to explain that a little bit now so you see the dynamic i think you all probably remember that we just had the budget amendments in may and one of those amendments was six million dollars to the employee health benefits fund and that's basically three years worth of accumulated cost increases and that's basically three years worth of going from fy23 up to now in fy26 so we had three years of flat budget that could not meet the cost that we were seeing in our in our medical claims primarily and and as was said earlier with the sheriff a lot of that is the pharmaceuticals but then there's other medical inflationary increases as well so at any rate the medical claims costs have gone up eleven percent over the last three years our budget did not go up eleven percent over the last three years so during this budget year last year you added three million dollars to the budget but that was not built into the base budget for 26 so this year that three million plus another three million is six million dollars for to meet our cost that's the cost that we're having not cost that we're projecting so that's this year's this year's budget so the six million dollars is now in this requested budget built into the base for going into fy27 and that keeps us even with where we're at right now with our medical care cost and commissioner just we'll turn it over to wade but we are some looking at some plan design issues um that we're still having internal discussions on so there'll be more before we get to the actual budget recommendation okay and so that is the most important thing so i'm going to let wade take over and share more about that if you could just remind me again because i've forgotten from last year that reserve number that you know and i maybe i missed out on that but it was a big obviously a an operational adjustment or change or something so yes last well last year with the with the reserves we had the 1.7 million dollars a year transfer for the next 10 years was built into the budget so 1.7 million came out of reserves last year and then it was uh four just over four million dollars that we transferred to the general fund to help pay for increases in the sheriff's insurance costs for last year so i'm sorry for this year it was in the in the budget for 26 and we we're doing that transfer this year so the reserves have gone down in part for that um also because we had these budget amendments reserves have gone down as well so the reserves are going down um the costs we do expect to continue to go up we're looking at at least five to six percent medical increases each year um that's compared to the sheriff was talking about they're lucky they'll have they're hoping they'll have nine percent or less on theirs um it's just that's the reality that we're at with our with our health system and a lot of it in a way to talk about this a little bit more there's some of that is has to do with um prescription drugs the the glp ones and the in the the higher cost medications that are out there that we're we're having to pay for so where we're at is we're basically resetting where the budget is right now where our costs are right now for fy 27 to start fresh and in doing that that's to just where we're at at this moment so you'll see if we go to page two or not i'm sorry is it a page two the decision yeah decision packages on page two one of those decision packages is for three point nine million dollars to add to the 27 budget based on our projections for next year based on about six percent medical inflationary factor and we are working uh closely with with wade's staff and the uh the uh health benefits um consultant sorry um and i will let him talk about that more but it's we are basically we're resetting where we're at now we're asking for additional money that's not something that the county administrator has recommended it's just information that we're bringing forward for you all to consider and with that i'm going to let let wade take over and talk about this in context more thank you very much so basically as veronica was saying we've got a uh if you take a flat budget from this current fiscal year and move that into the next fiscal year we're asking for a decision package of 3.9 million dollars for what we think will be the additional amount of claims that's only about five percent of the budget trend for us uh actually has been pinellas county trend for fiscal year 26 is about nine percent medical and eleven percent um pharmacy but we have a couple of things that are in place that we're able to reduce those those amounts and so i'll talk about those in just a minute but in general what we're looking at is taking the current year costs adding 3.9 million dollars that's about a five or six percent trend um the way that we can keep this below national trend and below where the sheriff's is primarily there's two pieces of the puzzle one is we've renegotiated our pharmacy benefits management contract for another five years in so doing we've saved um 10 million dollars over that five years about two million dollars a year because of the way the fiscal year intersects with the calendar year savings for this first fiscal year is about 1.7 1.8 million dollars and that reduces the increase so again if i'm talking about health insurance the costs are going up i'm never going to be able to get you to a negative place with health insurance but if i can mitigate the increases or keep them lower that's always my goal so that's the one piece of the puzzle the second is a decision package for concierge and advocacy services and this is a unique service that we're able to do because we're self-insured where we outsource the um the responses for our employees to an outside external company they have a claims feed they review all the claims they review the um needs of the employees they get the employees to the right doctor more quickly and by doing so they're able to give better quality of health care to the employees and we're able to save money because it's a more efficient operation the net savings that we expect from that is a one million dollar net savings that is net of the fees that are in there so the fees that we have in their total contract cost is eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars per year that is offset because we're moving that service over from umr to this other organization and so the umr currently charges us three hundred forty thousand dollars so that's five hundred and something thousand dollars net but net of all of that that will decrease our claims expenditures and in this case for the first fiscal year a conservative decrease would be one million dollars we expect that roi to rise over the several years of the contract so those are probably my three main points but i'm sure there's some conversations that you all would like to have so i'd be glad to take any questions any questions so so barry again i'm i'm trying to remember from last year why that there was a change in the system here where we talked about reserves jumping a crazy number last year so what was that all about so well there was there was a couple changes one the way we budgeted um conservatively trying to get a a trend a better trend line um and then there was the proposed change that you had on that draw down uh using reserves over that 10-year period okay and that that was a proposal you you made and so we were behind by three million our claims came in higher so we're making that adjustment in this budget um and we're so it's in essence right sizing that budget our our claims came in over budget for this year that's where we were trying to get the trend line if you recall just a couple of years ago we uh our broker which we no longer have that broker proposed a 30 increase um we said no way no how and so we budgeted a 10 increase and it came in about 12. so it's very hard to get a trend line was and we didn't really understand why we were seeing um hike um high claim individuals increasing the numbers because it's a large organization that should be fairly steady so we're trying to get a better trend line so um but because we had that reserve well then we had time to recover well this is part of that recovery and trying to make the our ongoing expenses equal our budget and so those are the changes that are are reflected in this number chris if you want to clarify anything on that that i missed everything you said is correct as well we transferred one time in the current year fiscal year 26 for sheriff's health benefits 4.7 million dollars that was a one-time thing because he was seeing so much go up that's not continued in the 27 budget the 1.7 million is though it is is continued that's where he had a spike and we we solved that and so his budget now is right-sized back to his ongoing cost so chair first of all wait what is what what was our expenses uh total expenses for health care total expense for health care yeah veronica we're right around total i think around 76 million dollars right now i'm sorry for the if you look at just the medical claims which is most of it it's it's about 63 million dollars at this point for fy 26 and that's what the the base amount we have built in for fy 27 so that's where i was saying earlier you know we've gone from about 57 million dollars five years ago and now we're at 63 million dollars in fy 26 so we think 26 is going to come in around 76 with with everything else i mean you have to pay for the met the administration of the plan and but the bulk of it is in the medical claims and right now we're at uh 63 million dollars for that so we and commissioner to answer your question you know also we're before we get to the budget recommendation we're going to be looking at at our plan um that's where i need to go back and work with constitutional officers and the other appointing authorities as we have some thoughts and ideas and any adjustments to that we'll make as part of our budget right well i just i remember this conversation very well last year and we were we were discussing the fact that we had reserves in the health care that were over two times with the yearly expenses for and so we reduced it a little bit and we were going to are we still talking about continuing the reduction to reserves the the reserves would be about flat um maybe a little bit down um and and and that's that that is a challenge i mean we've we've kind of said that we could reduce it there's no question we could reduce this reserve level down now all the money that goes in there is not general fund it's airport it's utilities it's it's other it's other funds you know that's out there so we have to be careful in terms of from a you know audit trail standpoint um but but it but it's still the reserves are very very healthy okay we kind of see that as is when we when we decide to bring that money that money down of using that for a one-time purpose because once it's gone you still need ongoing expense you know ongoing revenue to your budget so it's fair it's a fair conversation that we've kind of watched over that we still need a reserve level but this is too high okay i'm sorry can you explain to me again the rationale in going from umr to quantum yeah sure so umr we're staying with umr right so they are continuing to manage our claims what we're moving away from umr since we're self-insured we can um have a pallet of services we're moving away the the telephone handling and generally that's not one of their best areas so we're moving that telephone handling away from umr and then the uh utilization management away from umr and we're moving that over to quantum but the claims will all be still be processed by umr the physician network is all still umr all the main pieces of the puzzle are still umr that's our insurance company i'm just looking at the increase in the dollar amount to move those services that's number one and number two i was not on the winning end but i did share my concerns based on my experience with umr um in the past and you are correct um their phone handling may not be the very best but that's why i was expressing my concerns last time because it was a number of complaints um and i had done business with them in another round but we had given them two opportunities and service hadn't gotten better so um yeah that's and then um the net increase of 512 and then a recurring increase so let me be very clear about that though that's a net increase of five that's that's a gross increase of 512 the net will bring us a million dollar decrease okay overall decrease overall decrease because what's going to happen is they're going to be able to help us manage the claims better they're going to be more proactive in managing the claims they're also going to be able to provide better customer service for our employees and they've got proven roi they they say two to one roi we're doing conservative calculation at a 1.5 to one roi so net of those fees we will save a million dollars this is guarantee right this is a yes it is guaranteed i appreciate the return on investment but i just want to make sure it's not going to be at the cost of claims being denied i'm not saying that's what they would do no no they are not doing the claims umr still does the claims okay yeah so the claims handling the claims processing all the network is still done by umr they do the customer service play piece and the utilization management okay so for example if you need to get um a prior authorization for a surgery or something like that that will go to quantum they will integrate with umr they work very closely with umr to get that done they'll do it much faster as well it will be much better service okay i'll keep my eye on nc all right thank you thank you yeah oh um before i we moved on i want to say wait you know i actually i don't know who set up the teledoc program but it's great i love not needing to go to the hospital i i love it that i don't have to go to an appointment just to talk to my doctor and get a test scheduled it's really good i don't i don't know if you that's it's new for me i've never had it before what's that that would be true kelly martin our benefits director she's sitting right behind you um we had it originally coming in but just for um for uh mental health she expanded it to be um a much fuller service so that you can use it even as your primary care physician yeah it's great yeah that is on my phone do you get the video chat going on nobody spends yeah we think it's a great service for employees it really is uh one one other question and i hate to bring it up because it should be a strategy or do do we have a a part-time to full-time program in the county you know a lot of successful big companies you know you you work for the company part-time for two to three five years before you can actually be selected to be a full-time employee and then you get the health benefits and the pension benefits and all that and moving forward it might be because we're going to have tight we do have we do have part-time positions it depends on the department it depends on the type of function and benefits are adjusted accordingly okay i didn't know if we had that or not we have internships we have um um yeah some are interns as well they they count okay just a question thanks you have a question okay all right thank you all very much thank you adam's not in the room yep so commissioners uh jim abernathy is is is my deputy actually he's deputy budget director and he will be presenting general government and the general fund um you'll know that um general government is all those charges that don't fit conveniently into a particular department there are things like uh memberships in the florida association of counties for the whole county the things that just don't fit naturally anywhere specifically it is administered in the office of management and budget it's not a separate department but you do get a separate presentation on it each year in the budget budget information sessions and then jim will also go into the general fund he's going to give a presentation on the whole of the general fund which is very very similar to the introduction that we did earlier today but it gives you a a more in-depth dive into the general fund itself so with that deputy director jim abernathy good afternoon commissioners um i'm here for the um presentation of the fy 27 budget for the general government uh general government is a non-department category which aggregates and allocates uh county-wide funding needs that benefit all departments and agencies as well as unincorporated areas uh mstu's expenditures major grant programs such as fema and the arpa grant are included in general government fy 27 expenditures in general government decreased 3.4 million dollars to 144.2 million dollars operating expenses decreased 6.1 million to 44.5 million dollars this change is due to the reduction of storm related expenses that we currently have in fy 26 the majority of operating expenses are for intergovernmental charges for technology fleet operations and risk these three charges account for about 83 of the 44.5 million in operating expenses other expenditures included in general government include payments to municipalities for tiff districts throughout the county at 33.8 million an increase of 1.1 million and memberships as chris said to organizations such as the florida association of counties and the tampa bay regional planning council also included in the fy 27 general government budget is a transfer of 45.6 million dollars from the three dedicated millages to the transportation trust fund as mentioned already the total general government budget also includes the arpa grant expenditures decrease by about 12 million dollars to 2.8 million uh as of right now all arpa projects are fully obligated and on schedule to be completed by december 31st of 2026 the total arpa amount remains at 189 million dollars that's the presentation for general government any question the general fund uh includes the primary governmental functions of the government that are not completely supported by dedicated resources the activities include that are not limited to the sheriff's law enforcement detention and corrections services uh human services emergency management communications parks uh the board of county commissioners the county attorney and all of the other constitutional officers the general fund includes operations for both county-wide functions as well as the unincorporated areas recurring funding comes from four main external revenue sources property taxes state shared half cent or state shared half cent sales tax state revenue sharing and the communication services tax in fy 27 these revenues account for 82.4 of all general fund revenues the general fund also receives non-recurring revenue which are which in certain years can be significant uh as an example would be fema reimbursements for uh various storms total revenues in the fy 27 budget request increased 3.9 million dollars to 943.3 million compared to the fy 26 budget ad valorem revenues which make up approximately 74 percent of the total general fund revenue increase 25.3 million to 694.8 million this is driven entirely by the 4.22 percent growth in taxable values as reported by the property appraiser on may 29th the taxable values will be updated on july 1st the final update before the budget is adopted in september state revenue sharing revenues decrease 174 000 to 27.2 million also compared to fy 26 the local half cent sales tax revenue decreases 6.6 million to 48.2 million this decrease is due to the elimination of sales tax on business leases which went into effect on october 1st of 2025. we are also projecting a 4.6 million dollar shortfall in this half cent sales tax due to this law another large source of external revenues have taken as a group is the sheriff generated revenues the sheriff collects revenues from various sources including the many municipalities who can contract with the pinellas county sheriff's office for law enforcement services such as dunedin madeira beach st pete and others st pete beach along with the u.s marshals service these revenues along with grants help offset the need for ad alarm revenue to fund the sheriff's annual budget in fy 27 these revenues increase 139 000 to 54.6 million fy 27 budget requests for expenditures increased 14.9 million compared to fy 26 to 961.8 million you've already heard from the constitutional officers on their budget request over the next three days you will hear from the other departments and appointing authorities as they present their individual budget request personnel service which includes salaries benefits frs and payroll taxes decrease 2.6 million compared to fy 26 to 104.5 million for departments reporting to the county administrator a general increase was not included in this request and also we were able to keep health insurance premiums paid by the by the county flat in fy 27 operating expenses decreased 9.5 million compared to fy 26 to 163.5 million the biggest decrease is due to storm related expenditures as we get through those projects it is anticipated that many of these costs over the last couple years will be recovered through fema and state reimbursements over the next several years grants and aids increased 2.6 million dollars to 46 million dollars the largest piece of this are payments to the cra's which makes up 83 of the total expenditures expenditures and increased 2.7 million dollars these increases are tied to changes in taxable values in each of the individual districts transfers to constitutional officers including the sheriff the clerk the property appraiser tax collector and supervisor of elections increased 23.4 million to 581 million dollars that's a 4.2 percent increase from fy 26 these expenditures account for 60.4 percent of the total general fund operating budget transferred to the sheriff's office increase 26.2 million to 505 million the sheriff's budget request comprises 52.5 percent of total general fund operating budget accounting for the sheriff's generated revenues this is equivalent to a millage of 3.065 mills based on the taxable values reported on may 29th based on the current fy 26 millage rate this is 67.5 percent of the millage for county-wide services fy 27 reserves decrease 5 million to 160 million 17 percent of the fy 27 revenue which is below the general fund reserve policy as you know the reserve we reduced the reserves by almost 70 or over 78 million dollars in fy 25 to provide funding for storm related expenses uh we will continue to rebuilding the general fund reserves uh up to the policy level over the next couple years as we receive reimbursements from the state and fema that is the end of general fund presentation chris any uh updates on i'm not sure what the right word is but standards um for reserve levels have may change i remember we had this discussion a couple years ago when we were and i was arguing for 16.7 percent because that's what kind of what the standard is in the industry and we went with 20.8 uh i mean we were you know near water and all of that so is there any any changes or adjustments that you've seen in those kind of there is no additional guidance mr sure you're still getting that 16 to 17 percent is yes and then an adjustment if you are you know in in harm's way on a on a i don't even not on a regular basis but you know like where we are on the water everything you're remembering is correct and it is still the same has not changed thank you any questions that was a whole bunch of numbers that's all i can tell you and i was trying my best after lunch to follow all of them i try to throw out as many as we can what's that i try to throw out as many numbers as we can chair yeah yeah um just want to say uh on general government i went over it extensively last year i expect to do it again this year i just this is the expenses some of them are big you know and they got a lot of groupings you know like professional services 37 million uh contractual services 21 um some of them are not very detailed so i'm going to ask you to help me out with that like aids to other government agencies 38 million so maybe there's a couple million in here we can find maybe we can work on not uh going flat on salaries this year maybe we can find that one to two percent the uh to address the the aid of other government agencies the 38 million dollars that is the payments to the cra's uh so as their property values increase our payments to them increase proportionally um so that is i don't want to say a guarantee but it i believe it yes this is something i'm going to give a lot of look at so yeah and and the general fund uh details that i provided is the roll-up of all the departments that will be reporting to you over the next three days so they'll all everybody else to be they have a piece yeah everything else just like the sheriff was included in that yeah so this is kind of this is a roll yeah so this is like public works is included in this human services expenses aren't it's not one because i thought this was what's not assigned to other departments so the general the general government part is and uh that's the 100 and well it's correct there's two there's two different pieces general government and general fund general fund is the roll-up that includes all the general fund general government is the things that don't belong out in a departmental type activity yeah and and one of the things that is in general government is the 38 million payment for the cra so so that's a big piece in there um we have um charges for um intergovernmental which would be like charges to be from bts for fleet and also for uh risk that are not paid for by the department certain departments don't pay for those uh and they're paid for our general government um so the you you do have two attachments or you should have two attachments um and commissioners i've got i've got i think like i don't know 13 14 binders i mean binders okay of detail on the budget if you if you have questions and want to sit down and go through those details to where the numbers add up at your budget staff would be happy to meet with you at your leisure and to go through that type of detail um to where when we get to august and september you you have the information you need to make a good decision so you know we we don't have to pull those out if you want to go through additional detail we'd be but we'd be happy to go through that and and provide that type of detail explanation and you know till you have that and then one other question chris on the the general fund revenues if if if a public works charges the penny for overhead uh and and supervision and things like that would it show up on the general fund revenues so you're referring to contract contract charges i'm still looking for the contract i don't know where they go okay so and the the contract charges are actually a reduction of expense we're moving the expense to the proper final destination of that expense so they won't show on your revenue side but we'd be just as the administrator said we'd be happy to go over that with you as well and we have drew here okay with us and so um you would ask that question so um we'd be happy to meet after and go through that detailed where you can see how those contract charges are actually expensed and where and how we're treating those great thank you okay all right now i think i saw a tax collector moseying around here but he's behind this post i think there he is is welcome good afternoon good afternoon it's good to see everybody chair and the rest of the commission barry every and all staff good to see everybody um well i'll just cut right to it i think it's kind of shortened to the point um we were asked to come with a flat budget and we actually went with a 6.83 decrease um so make it kind of easy um so uh i i want to take this time to give you guys an update i know last year i was talking about um we were doing a review of all of our our business processes and vendor contracts uh starting october 1st of this year so next budget year um we will be going live with a new cashiering and tax system um with this change for just my budget alone is in the ballpark of a million dollars a year in savings not to mention it's got lower processing fees for the taxpayers anybody doing their registration driver's license or paying their taxes online or e-check e-check you don't have any fees but if you use a credit card you'll actually be saving money um we were fortunate to negotiate a more reasonable service charge and cut out all e-check fees and that's where the majority of the savings come from um i uh have some exciting news as you know my previous budget and finance director left us for a new employment but we have we stole somebody from the city of dunedin tanya duffy um and with that i'll open anything up for questions anybody might have any questions for the tax collector and um i know last year um commissioner flowers you you asked about kiosks we actually just implemented three more at publix's and i'm always looking to expand that as much as possible i get back such positive comments about persons being able to go to the kiosk to get their tag you know if that's all they need to do rather than um you know going down and having to wait um in line or make an appointment or whatever um i use it as well i go to the public's on 54 south and usually you know if someone's standing in line it's maybe one or two people but other than that it's in and out in less than five minutes so it's a wonderful resource i appreciate it thank you that's all no other uh tough questions thank you everybody's excited about the six percent i guess yeah yeah thank you for coming in appreciate it of course yeah i'm always available thank you thanks guys okay see you tomorrow very anything else for the day see you tomorrow you've got the list of uh budgets for tomorrow and so again we'll we'll start off and uh kind of go through the the detail you know you we hit on a lot of different things today and you can see there's some things that are just a work in progress and so those have come out in the final budget recommendations uh such as we talked about on the health fund and things like that same thing with employees and you know i've heard a couple of different things one of the things we always do though is we try to keep all of the appointing authorities so everybody under the unified personnel system be consistent in terms of raises and i don't want i don't want to you know the tax collector and the and the clerk and the county administrator the department's report to you doing doing things differently because our employees see that other all our employees and so we need to be consistent and same thing with the sheriff we we really need to be consistent we value our employees i value our employees i know you do too um and so those are things that we need to work through um and so those that that gives us time between now and we make our budget recommendation here in august to be able to work those things out and like i said i'm starting that tomorrow night with meeting with the constitutional officers and the constitutionals each seem to deal with that three percent raise in the budget numbers differently well it's a little bit different and there's two reasons you know mike twitty and and adam ross they need to submit their their budgets to the department of revenue for approval so they they have to bake that in in order to be able to submit it and have it back in time through to go through our budget process so there's a reason for that and then the sheriff considering it's half our general fund he bakes that in as a as just a placeholder and if we make changes to that it's reflected in those final budget recommendations so you know when we've done that in the past he's put a placeholder in we we discussed something else and then i i put that into my final budget recommendations on whatever that adjustment is okay well then we will anything else for the good of the we'll see you tomorrow morning at 9 30.