started. Welcome everybody to our workshop today. We have three items on the agenda and then a couple of other items that we'll take up. And after those three are finished, still hoping to see if we can get out of here by one o'clock at the latest. So if we can keep Commissioner Latvala's wordiness down a little bit, we might make it. So I wanted to do that first. And if any, I spoke with Tristan a minute ago about anything going on up in Tallahassee worth reporting. We just talked a little bit in general. If anybody had any specific questions, we can have them come up and answer those questions. But if we're good for now, I don't think there's anything definitively happening. So just a whole lot of noise and posturing, let's put it that way. Okay. Well, we'll go ahead and get started. Then before I do, I wanted to thank Corporal Clyde Thornton, Deputy Kevin McSweeney, and Deputy Jeff Atkinson for all the work that they do for us all the time. Certainly feel a lot safer with you all here. So thank you so much. Appreciate it. Barry, let's go ahead and get started with Reclaim Water Rate Framework Update. And then I'm just going to add and miscellaneous because I had a couple of things I want to talk about while I have the utility director in the room. Hello. Well, Jeremy's up and you can save all your tough questions for him. But, you know, commissioners, you know, so this was an extra work session that was added to be able to start addressing some of the fall studies that you said we wanted to have work sessions on. So you're going to see these three today. But over the next couple of months, we're going to fill out all the things you identified as things that need a deeper dive. We've got several studies that we're doing as a result of that feedback during both strategic planning and the fall and that fall discussion. And so we're going to populate that agenda. And so you'll see that coming up here, especially on the 19th, but then several here in April. We want to get those done and have that discussion and get your feedback on those because starting in May, May 1st begins budget information or budget meetings with departments. And so that feedback is important. As I start meeting with departments and bringing to you in June, a draft budget. So that the time is here and, and these studies are real important. Your feedback is real important. So we have three today. We have a lot more coming. So that message is that message for our state representatives to on the budget issues that they're dealing with. Well, I would give them a message. I don't think it really matters. We need to take that, but obviously for budgeting, we need that information. So there, there are, we're going to get into budgets and we're going to talk about that, but there's things, you know, there's things impacting the budget that are going to become real crystal clear. Last year, there was business tax that was modified that that's $5 million out of general fund. Okay. So, you know, those, those types of things are coming. We'll see what happens around. I mean, it won't impact the 27 budget, but around property taxes and things like that. But I think you're also going to see, you know, the, the rate and what Mike Twitty comes up with is going to be far different because of the real estate market. And so some of those things will be populated here in May, you know, but, but we're, we, we, these fall studies are important because once we get into the budget starting in May, you won't have a lot of time, you know, for, for these types of things. So we're really trying to populate those, bring those to you here, March and April in preparation for budget. Okay. Good. Yep. So with that, a hot topic, um, uh, for the past year. Uh, and so Jeremy, you're on. Good morning, Jeremy Wall, uh, director of utilities. I have with me, uh, Nori Hancock, our deputy director, uh, and Linda Ben Wall, who's my financial services director. So if I may call and phone a friend, if I need a specific answers to some questions, uh, so what I want to do is go over just briefly where we're at. I was here about a year ago, um, as we were coming through the hurricanes and we were approaching, uh, or coming out of last, uh, drought cycle. And I presented a couple options, um, of where we were going with the mindset for reclaimed water. And there was direction back that, Hey, we need to go listen to what the citizens, the customers think. So I'm, I'm here for the first part of this, just to kind of give you a recap of what we've been doing in the last year, and then to pose some questions for discussion for the you guys. So we are embarking at the end of this year or middle of this year on our, our rate study. So we do a four year rate study, uh, and we implement four years worth of rates at a time. We're ready to embark on that starting this summer. And really the purpose for my, what I would like to get out of this workshop is guidance from you on how we should be looking at a framework for rates. So maybe not drilling down into this penny and that penny or this, dollar and that dollar, but big picture questions, because there's lots of different options we can do with rates and we'll provide you with whatever options you guys want to see. Um, but I don't want to present a hundred different options, right? So what, how can we narrow down the type of things that you think we should consider? So feel free to stop me, um, at any point. Um, but I really want to try to drive into some discussion. Oops, sorry. I'm advancing the wrong slide. All right. So, um, in calendar year 2023, uh, through the winter into the spring of 24, we had extended drought conditions. Um, as you guys are aware, there was a pretty heavy strain put on our reclaim system. There were volumetric and pressure, uh, conditions, pressure deficiency conditions of both North County and South County. Um, you know, the, the story you hear from customers, I turn on my sprinkler and the sprinkler head doesn't even come up or I'm on my one day a week watering restriction imposed by swift mud. And when I go to water on my one day a week, no water comes out of my pipes, right? Um, so we looked at that. We looked at the system. Um, we came back and presented to you kind of some demand side, um, options and some supply side options that we could do. Uh, and, and the board said, well, those are all great, but let's go. What do the customers think? What do they think about these different options? So we went and engaged the customers, uh, to see basically what is their opinion about this? What did they know about the system and what would, what would the will of the people kind of be? Um, just to give you a quick reminder, um, most of you know this, but if you don't, I'll just share it real quick. Our reclaim system is two separate systems. So North County system and the South County system are totally separate. They are not connected by pipes. They do not talk to each other. So if I have a surplus in North County, I can't give that water to South County and vice versa. And you see the big purple maps here. Those are the availability zones, right? That is where we are allowed by code, by your ordinance to supply reclaimed water. That does not mean that every customer in those shaded areas has reclaimed to their houses. So only certain neighborhoods, only certain, um, areas and regions have pipes delivered to them, um, where reclaim is even available. And you can see that currently we have about 14,700 customers actively metered in our accounts. Um, not intended to go through all of these rates, but this is where we currently stand in our reclaimed rates that was approved three and a half years ago, um, with the next approved rate increase coming in October 1st from our last rate study. So you guys approved four years of rates at a time. And at that time when we did the study, we were not the cheapest, not the most expensive, but per thousand gallons, we were middle of the pack or upper middle of the pack. Um, since that time, some of the people that you see that had the lower rates have also implemented their own rate studies and their rates have gone up. So this is not an updated chart with today's conditions. This is where we were back when we did the last rate study. Um, another thing we presented, uh, in April were the CIP projects that we currently had going on to improve supply. Um, you could see that this is a list of projects that are currently ongoing. Um, well, you'll notice that two or three of these projects, we have designs ready, but we do not have the construction dollars in our CIP fund to fund those projects, right? The reclaimed water is partially funded through reclaimed fees and sewer capacity fees, sewer usage fees. So this, and I'll, I have a slide on here that demonstrates that, but, um, we're going to have a broader conversation in April, uh, at another workshop where I'm going to present water and sewer and our overall status. Uh, we'll have lots of budget discussion about where we're at, um, both at our CIP, our reserves that are operating funds, uh, and that discussion. But just to let you know that we have projects that we are intended to help demand and pressures, but we're still looking on how to strategize and prioritize funding between all of our CIP needs. Um, this is a chart that we showed you in April, um, of last year, which was a demand side management strategy where we have different options on how we stagger fees to then influence how people use the water, right? So if it's more expensive, people will use less. If it's cheaper, people will use more. So it's a demand side conversation. And this was, um, right about where the board said, wait a minute, these are great options, but let's go talk to the customers and see what they think about how these different free structures would, uh, would sit. So we've presented, um, at several community meetings, this exact chart with these exact fees. Uh, we discussed in lots of detail how this would impact specific customers. Uh, we had, um, a computer set up with multiple people running the computer. If you typed in your account and we could show the person sitting right there, based on your historic usage, here's where you would fall for you specific customer, um, and got their input on that. But this is kind of an example of just three of the options that we could pick, um, in terms of how we structure rates and how we build different rates, uh, whether it's, um, the blue side option one, if you can see a monthly user fee of $10 means it's cheaper if you use less water because the per valve, the per gallon charge is higher. Your base rate is lower or the other side where there's a higher base rate and a cheaper per thousand gallons rate. And so we let the customers view that input on that. And we collected that data. So in the last year, we've had five community meetings. We had one in North County, one on the beaches and one in South County, and then two virtual meetings. Um, we had a survey at the end of those meetings. It was voluntary, right? But most of the people that attended filled out the survey and they gave us their frank opinions about what they thought. Um, I provided that in your agenda package. You should have the raw results, uh, results of that survey, as well as the actual feedback and comments that we got from different customers. Uh, but there were general themes that popped out. Um, there's definitely an undercurrent of 20 years ago. You promised this would be free forever, right? That's a, that's a community comment. Um, and then you, the rest of it kind of broke into two separate categories. You had the people that were lower users who said, my fee should be less based on per gallons. I like the idea of a low base rate where I have a smaller house. Um, I have a small lot. I don't, I don't want to pay a big base rate. I think I should have a lower rate based on the amount of water I use because I use less water. And then you had the other camp of, I have a bigger lot. I have an HOA. My HOA makes me keep my lawn to a certain standard. I have to have reclaimed water to pursue that standard. Therefore, don't overcharge me on a per thousand gallons, you know, make it as much many gallons as you can put into the base rate as possible and then lower my per gallon usage rate. So essentially the community was divided in two camps. Um, some people in the middle. Um, and I think if you look at the survey results, it was about 30% were in the, I have a big lot of the 30% were in the, you know, charge me a lower base base rate and the other 30% were kind of not sure. Um, one of the things that did also pop out, if you look at the last bullet here is that there were some questions about, because the systems are different, why, if I'm in North County, why do I have to have the same rules as South County? Or if I'm in South County, why am I held to the same rules as the North County people? So that was a fair comment, um, that we're, we'll discuss here in a minute. So starting this summer, uh, we are going to be pursuing with a consultant, um, our rate study update, uh, just to give you guys an idea and understanding of how our reclaimed finances work. Um, historically our reclaimed water was supported just by sewer funds. So any, any dollars we collected that other reclaimed water went straight into the sewer fund and the sewer fund paid for the whole thing. Uh, last year, I think last fiscal year, maybe two years, fiscal years ago, we broke out the reclaimed water into its own funds so that we could track those expenses specifically. So it could really know how much the reclaim costs us and how much revenue we generate. Um, it's still supported under the umbrella of the sewer fund. Um, but you can see that in fiscal 25, and these are the real numbers that we collected about nine and a half million dollars through reclaimed rates, but our overall expenses was about $21 million. So the rates we charge for reclaimed water specifically cover about half of the operating expenses to operate the system, which is fair or not, depending on your opinion. But, you know, the function of reclaimed water is actually treated water from the sewage plant. So it makes logical sense from my standpoint that the sewer should, should treat, have some of the cost involved in disposing the water. That's a sewer function of disposal, whereas, you know, distribution of the water is a reclaimed function. Um, so the first question that I had kind of for discussion here is knowing that our reclaimed water systems are broken into two halves, right? A North County and a South County. Um, currently we have one rate that's a county-wide rate. All of our fee structure is based on a county-wide rate. So someone in Ozona is the same as someone in Tierra Verde, is the same as someone in Lealman, et cetera. Um, should that be the case? And that's an important question from my standpoint as I embark on a new rate study, because that changes the framework with how we would approach the calculations, um, for, you know, building a new rate structure. So I, I've just put some, you know, high-level numbers here that you can see than in 2025. Um, we distributed more water in South County than we did in North County, and that is not because we like South County better. It's just there is more water in South County to give away or to sell. Uh, the North County is a smaller sewer basin, so it takes in less water, treats less water, it has less water to give out. Also, you'll notice that the CIP delivered in the last year was much more heavily weighted towards CIP projects in North County. Probably that's because we've already addressed some of the things in South County in the last five, ten years, but we know that there are some specific projects, and you saw them on the prior slide, of things we know that we can do, um, to help improve the pressure and the supply. Uh, you can see the debt service cost, so that's the borrowing cost, um, that we had to build the system since the North County and South County were built about the same time. Um, it was all part of the same big borrow, and so those costs are pretty fair between the North County and South County. Um, but if you look at the dollars per thousand gallons delivered, it is more expensive for us to deliver water to North County than it is to deliver water in South County. The why is because there's more water to give out, so our operational costs are about the same, but when you break it down by a per thousand gallons and the CIP dollars in North County versus South County last year, it cost us more to deliver to North County. So that's the first, um, question point and framework question. Um, I did put a lot, a little bullet down there at the end is currently our billing structures, our software, our, uh, practices of how we bill. We would have to go and do some technology changes to, to separate the two. Um, but now with our automatic metering, that would be much easier than it would have been five years ago to, to manually separate those two. I think we're starting to get some questions, so I'll go to Commissioner Scott first. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thanks, Jeremy. Um, a couple of quick questions. When does our debt retire? So it tires, retires over a period, um, and it starts in 2027, 2028. So in the next seven years, we will fully retire the debt. Um, assuming we don't borrow more, but the current debt would, would retire. Do we, do we anticipate borrowing more? So I don't have it in part of this presentation, but yes, and the water and sewer funds, I do intend that we need to borrow more to meet our current CIP allegations. I know we've kind of looked at some charts with that in the past, but that, that, that discussion you're going to be ready for in April, correct? Yeah. So we'll have that. That'll be part of the April discussion. When I talk about the state of the water and the sewer and, and, and I'll have similar questions like, where do you want me to go with, you know, we can deliver this or we can defer them some things. But if I need to deliver the stuff that's currently on the books, we have to, we need to borrow. How often do we have surplus? Surplus reclaimed water? Rarely. And the dry seasons, we do not have surplus. And, uh, like right now, um, in the wet seasons, um, we distribute most of the water still. Uh, the South Cross plant, which is the Southern still has a surface water discharge out to Joe's Creek. Um, but that's more of, uh, operational problem. It's not a, a supply problem. So that kind of gets to my last question then is, uh, you know, what it, if it's even possible, would it, would it make any sense to connect the systems? But I'm hearing no. On any specific day, maybe, right? Because on any specific day or between hours or a Monday or a Tuesday, maybe you could connect the system. Uh, we've done feasibility studies of that. We've looked at pipeline projects. Uh, we've looked at repurposing old Duke energy oil pipeline projects that run the North South corridor. Uh, we have not found a suitable solution that was financially feasible for what the, the benefit you would get out of the cost. There could be, and we've, we were, we're talking with our other municipal partners. So Clearwater, Largo, St. Pete, even Pasco County were on a call this week about, should we find a way to connect the different municipalities together? So if Clearwater has a surplus, I could buy it from them. Um, or St. Pete has a surplus, could North County buy it, but I have to, you know, skip through three jurisdictions to get there. So it, it's a good idea. Um, there's lots of agreements and pipe connections would have to be done because generally our pipes end at the end of the network and those are the small pipes, right? So you get smaller as you get towards the fingers of the network. So it's hard to connect the small pipes and get any real volume out of those. So you have to really build some trunk lines to make it effective. Thank you. Um, first of all, I've been getting a lot of, uh, seeing a lot of commentary on social media about our billing issues right now. Um, can you maybe speak to that kind of what's going on? Because again, I don't know, but people just keep saying that there's a big problem on the, on the billing side. Can you just speak to that? Or if you're aware of it or, uh, as, as it relates specifically to reclaimed, I wasn't aware of a specific reclaimed building, but overall billing, um, overall. So some of our municipal partners had a pretty significant billing problem, uh, post hurricanes. Uh, we, I think a lot of the utilities got lumped into one big boat of we're all, we're all bad. Um, specifically the, the high bills and estimating bills conversation. Uh, that doesn't mean that we're perfect and we do everything correctly every time, but a lot of that conversation was really applicable more to a different municipality. And we just got lumped into that. Um, we did make a recent change to our bill, uh, where we separated out the Tampa Bay water portion of the water system versus the Pinellas County utilities portion of the water system. Um, that has caused some confusion. We've, we've received, uh, some feedback from customers that they just don't understand the change and they go back and trying to calculate, you know, here's your rate and here's your number. And it doesn't, the math doesn't add, uh, but we've been working that through that with a customer by customer basis. The other thing I would mention, uh, as far as bills, uh, Pinellas County utilities is the billing entity for a lot of other jurisdictions, right? So a lot of the beaches pay us to send out their bills on their behalf. Uh, and a lot of times those bills will include city sewer services. They'll include city garbage services. And a lot of times what the customer sees is the Pinellas County utilities letterhead and a number at the bottom where multiple components of that bill are not controlled by us. They're not set by the Pinellas County utilities. We're just the entity sending the envelope in the mail. So we have to go through that and explain that pretty, uh, thoroughly because it's, it's complicated for a citizen who just gets a bill in the mail and it says Pinellas County utilities that, you know, your garbage service really happens through Largo. And if Largo increases their garbage rate, it shows up on your, your water bill, right? That answer. I don't know if that was enough. Jeremy, you've also had an issue though with customer service and, and long lines and things like that. So maybe just touch on how you're trying to address that. Sure. You're doing a lot with that and we're, we recognize it's a problem. Yeah. So I don't have a slide to demonstrate this. Um, but really we went from the drought in 23, which had a very high customer increase. We brought on a new AMI meter program and we had hurricanes where we had a bunch of things involved with, you know, billing and people's services. We saw our call volumes increase from about a hundred thousand a year to 130,000 a year. So absolutely the volumes went up. Um, we had staff turnover right in the middle of that. So our service level went down. Um, we've acknowledged that and we're trying to do different things to, to remedy that. Uh, we're, we've done some organizational changes inside, but we've also implemented new technologies. Uh, we've added, um, AI chatbots, uh, to the tune of now a thousand people a month are using these automatic self-help services that we have, um, which isn't enough, but it's, it's better than the zero that, you know, that's a thousand calls that got diverted, um, from my call center because now they're able to self-help. So we're looking, uh, to use newer technologies and newer systems to help people resolve their issue without having to get into the queue because the queue has been long. Are you guys have heard the complaints, right? Sometimes it's a 30, 40 minute queue to get through a customer service agent. Um, we have not reduced the number of calls we're taking per person. Just the number of calls that are coming in are greater than we can handle. Um, we, we tried to hire temporary employees. We brought, uh, seven temporary employees and said, you come in and just answer calls. Uh, that program did not, was not successful. Just be straight out because the actual template, temporary employees were giving the wrong answers. So now a customer thought he got something resolved and then got the wrong answer from Pinellas County. And so, um, we had to end that program and we were revamping how we can shape that the way the customers are, are the calls are taken so that we could scale up and scale down with, with different temporary help or seasonal help or something like that. So we're evaluating all of those options right now. So we, you've showed those purple areas that have reclaimed to some, some degree. Um, so some of those areas have lines that run through the streets that aren't being used some, so they're available, but not being used. Are those still able to be tapped into by people who want to do that? Or is that option because of our, our availability? If we have a pipe in front of your, your house, you are able to tap into it. All right. Because you've been paying for that availability fee, right? So it's available to you. So you've been paying for the availability fee. So we do not, uh, restrict anyone that has, that's in the availability zone from connecting to our reclaim system. That's still available for people to do that. Correct. Um, and then, and I, I'm going to add, sorry, uh, but we are not accepting new neighborhoods into the reclaim systems, right? We, we acknowledge that we have a supply problem and we can't feed the beast enough already. So we're not bringing any more neighborhoods or groups or communities into the system, um, until sometime in the future where, where we get a better handle on the supply. Okay. And so there are some areas, and again, what I'm getting at here is I've, you know, I've talked with you briefly about this is the, there are areas up there that don't have that. They don't have access to it and they don't get it obviously. So, um, there's been some discussion asked of me, can we look at number one, providing a second meter at people's homes so that we can meter out the thing that the water that's going on the, um, on their, their grass, so to speak, versus what's going into their home for, for consumption. Um, uh, for, for obviously for the, the big reason that number one, it's more expensive, but number two, um, they're getting hit with sewer rate charges as well. So if we separated that out, those that are going onto the lawn would not be getting that sewer rate charge. And I know that that's all part of a large, um, rate system. And I just, from my perspective, I'd like to have an understanding of how that, when we do this rate study, how that's all affected. We're talking about how the two areas connect and how they're affected. Well, I think the rate on the, on the, on the, uh, on that would be important as well. So I, so a couple, uh, points to make to that question. Absolutely. I call them potable irrigation meters. Uh, our technology, it's, it's the same technology we already own. They're implemented in other areas. It is a method to, to service irrigation with potable water. That's absolutely applicable. Um, I'm going to say that we probably should steer against allowing someone to have a reclaimed irrigation meter and a potable irrigation meter. That's a, from an engineering and a water quality and a health, that's a problem because you have the opportunity of water going through the reclaimed pipes, through the irrigation pipes with reclaimed water, and then also connected to the potable water system through the potable meter, which is a public health because then you can have contaminants going backwards. So for areas that do not have reclaimed, a potable irrigation meter may make sense. But the second point I would make to that is the cost of the water is the same, right? So the gallon, the cost pennies or thousand, you know, dollars per thousand gallons would be the same, whether or not you're going through an irrigation potable meter or your house potable meter, it's the same water. So really the savings would come as I'm not paying sewer charges on the irrigation water. Fair conversation, right? Why should I be paying sewer for water? That's not going down the sewer. So currently we cap our sewer charges based on what the water use rate is. That's 10,000 gallons. So once you go over 10,000 gallons of water usage, you no longer pay sewer fees anyway. Per month? It's either per month or per cycle. I think it's per month. For one month, 10,000 gallons. So we could have a conversation and instead of buying another, whatever, 10,000 meters and putting in the ground to maintain an equal solution to solve the same problem, we could just lower the limit from 10,000 to 7,000 or 10,000 to 8,000 would then accomplish. So what is the normal house use for potable water and set the sewage limit there? The 10,000 gallons we came up with is basically a three and a half person household. You made a comment that the rate, the amount, the water coming through, the rate's the same regardless of which way it goes. And I don't know the answer to the question that I'm asking, which sometimes worries me, but the amount of gallons that we're using on grass versus in the house may be significantly different. Do you have a sense of what, I mean, I know it depends on the house, but the number of gallons that we would be putting onto the grass versus the number we'd be, because to me, that would make a difference. Not at a specific household level. Generally, we have some data regionally that 50% of the water used in Tampa Bay is put on lawns. So at a specific house, I couldn't, you have industry and other things built into that, but generally a large portion, if you're irrigating with potable water, a large portion of your water bill, it goes into irrigation, probably half. It translates to the sewer, to the sewer charge as well. Up to 10,000 gallons. Yeah, up to 10,000 gallons. And again, it varies versus high use versus low use homes, right? And we purchase our water from Tampa Bay water. So we do not produce our own water. We purchase our water from Tampa Bay water. So if it goes through a potable irrigation meter or a potable house meter at the county level, we pay the same dollar per gallon for that gallon at Tampa Bay water. So I can't have a different irrigation rate and potable water rate, even if I have separate meters. It's the same rate because I'm paying for the same amount for those gallons. I'm just trying to understand the relative use between the potable, or excuse me, between the home and the irrigation, if we had a sense of that. Because it does add to the amount of water. It does. And you could assume double. Yeah, yeah. And so, and again, but again, it gets to the sewer piece. And whether you're a high user, low user, 10,000 gallons, you may never touch. If you're a low, so if you're a single person household, who's watering their lawn, right, then with potable water, then your potable water share for irrigation would be much higher than a four person home doing the same. Because the four person home would reach the 10,000 cap and not pay the sewer. It'd be nice to have that breakdown as we look at this. How many are falling in the under 10,000 versus over just to get a sense of that of that issue that we're raising, you know, and how many are going over by how much. It's all interconnected. I realize that. But I think that our neighboring counties apparently do have the ability to have two meters on areas that don't have reclaimed water and don't have access to reclaimed water. I don't think, and the people that I've talked to, I'm not saying everybody, but the people I've talked to said they'd be, they understand it would be on them. But I do, you know, and that would cut down on the, that would cut down immediately on the sewer rate. And again, I know that there's a sewer charge, and I know that might have other effects. But I do think it's something that is, you talk about, again, connecting and being fair. To me, that's a, that's a, there, and that's why I suggested that perhaps a change in the, the sewer charge on water use, to lower the limit, may accomplish the same objective. Because what's not being considered at the consumer level is that in order to put another meter at your house, I have now purchased more infrastructure, right? So we just spent $72 million installing 130,000 water meters across the county and reclaimed meters. So that can kind of give you a sense of the cost per meter for, cost per infrastructure. So if I had even 10,000 people, which is only 10% of my customer, they say, I want an irrigation separate meter. I mean, that's a several million dollar impact that all the rate payers are gonna have to absorb. I don't have just, you know, it's not coming out of any profits, but it's, they're still going to end up paying more for... Assuming we pay for it. I mean, the county versus the individual user. Assuming that the utility paid for it versus the individual user. But the other complications, though, because I've heard that comment, not just from the board, but from citizens as well, a lot of times the water mains are not easily accessible. So if I need to install a new meter, and I have to cut the road open to install the meter, so that they think they're just going to get a new meter installed, well, no, that just became a $15,000 bill, because you have to cut the road, and public works isn't going to let you just cut the road without restoring it correctly, and, you know, impact, and MOT, and school buses, and all the things that we have to consider when we cut the road. So it's just, if lowering the cap on the sewer accomplishes the same thing, I would advise that's a better strategy. Again, I think that's a conversation that we need to have. And I noticed that when I looked at Hillsborough's rates, they're awfully low. It seems like either we're talking apples and oranges, or, I mean, when I looked at their reclaimed rates, is that, is there a next kind of a thought process behind... I don't know if the rates offhand. If you're looking at the chart from three and a half years ago, I believe that their rates have changed since then. They're a lot higher. Okay. But you'll have that when we... When we do the new rate study, we'll... When we do the rate study here in April, you're going to see updated rate information. Yeah, you'll have the most current rate of all of the regional players. And on the debt structure, you'll see with, you know, the bond market may be favorable. I don't know. But I think that's something that we need to look at and maybe see the items in your capital budget that would qualify in our minds for that kind of, you know, bonding. Because there's some of that, some of the things are going to be 20-year, 30-year investments. To me, those are worth intergenerational considerations. Some of it may not be. And I think that kind of conversation would be helpful. And that's a... So we're going to have that information and that data when I come back in April. Because the debt and our budgets and our overall financial situation needs to be a comprehensive picture. So we need to prioritize. A lot of our sewer and water infrastructure is greater than 30 years old. It's just a fact. That's when it was built. And now we need to decide as a team, right, what are we going to do going forward? Are we okay with catastrophic failures in some parts? Which, you know, if it's small and it's a non-consequential part, maybe you run into failure and you fix it when it breaks. But other things, like the clarifier at the plant, that needs to be in a CIP plan. Because when that goes down, the plant shuts down, right? So we need to have real conversations about what our real CIP needs and then build these demand or supply options and reclaiming this part of that. I think having a sense of the degree of our challenge would be helpful, too. Because I think when I first came on the commission, that's what the outgoing utility person, they were concerned about the roads under the ground that transmit all of our waters and the conditions that they were in. I don't know. I'm sure we've gotten better, but it's probably more reactive than proactive. So, and the only other question I'd ask just as we look at these things is that maybe a sensitivity analysis on the capital that, again, the rate structure that we see there without the CIP, just to see how that affects rates. Because I would, I mean, again, I'm going to get back to the thing that might drive some people crazy, but the idea of using penny money in our utility rates. Because one of the things that I keep hearing about, whether it's Duke Energy or us, utility rates are just, they're hurting people, along with food prices and gas prices and everything else. And to the extent that we can help with that, I'd just like to understand that, you know, that, like if you took the way that CIP of 4.5 million, the rates go down to $4.35. It's probably not worth considering. But if it drops to $2.75, it's something that we might want to just understand as we think about that. And I understand it's going against the policy of, you know, this is a, an enterprise fund that needs to survive on its own. But one could make the same argument for road repair, even though that's part of our property taxes and our, in our penny. So I just, just, it's a different philosophy, but I'd just like to understand the... Well, that... Jeremy, hang on just a second. So, Commissioner, when you're, I mean, a good way to look at that is when we come up with talking about future debt, because obviously the penny is spent for this decade, but we're getting ready to go to the voters in 28. So as you're looking at future debt, you could see the impact of that debt on rates. And that'd be your comparison. If you chose to shift that, well, then you could see the impact on actual rates, what ends up at the homeowner's bill. And so I think that'll give you a little bit of a sense of the sensitivity between the debt and the rates. Well, and I would like to look at those back to the other conversation. I would like to see that, you know, when we look at the, the gallons per month on the sewer, to take a look at that for folks that don't have access, because again, they don't have access to it. And in effect, they're subsidizing those, those rates a little bit. So if we can give them a, a lower threshold on that sewer charge, it might be, I'm not saying fair, but at least more equitable. And to your point about discouraging the additional meter, maybe we can look at something like that, because it does kind of address some of it. It's a model that, you know, we'd have to run the model, look at the numbers, because when you do that, you also reduce the sewer revenues. So then the, you know, we have to evaluate what that means on the sewer side, but it's a fair point. And that's, I think that's a, an easy exercise that we should pursue just to see what it, see how it shakes out. Okay, go ahead. All right. So the next question from a large framework standpoint is when we originally implemented the reclaimed water system, it was a means of disposal of the reclaimed water, the treated wastewater. And we entered into several agreements with several golf courses. And I put the names of the innocent will remain undisclosed, but these are seven golf course communities that we have agreements with. And I put their data here. So these golf courses, as it was originally intended and actually comes into play, are the outlet valve, if we ever need to use a relief system, a relief valve. We have a problem in the system. So the sewer plant is still treating water, but if the reclaimed system goes down, I need somewhere for this water to go. And so we entered these agreements with these large golf courses, and essentially I'm allowed to flood these golf courses. It's never happened, but I'm allowed. And that's how the agreements were written. And because the golf courses accepted that risk that at any point, Jeremy's going to show up and say, I'm flooding your golf course today. Sorry. That they got a cheaper deal on their per gallon cost of reclaimed water. And so these are the actual numbers. These are the real numbers and how the agreements are set. So you'll see that six of the seven agreements don't have expiration dates. And only one of the agreements has been renegotiated in decades. So framework question, again, if I'm looking at restructuring our rates, should we revisit golf course reclaimed water agreements? Do I need to go and open these up with my legal team? And I'm sure their legal team will have lots to say about it. But should this be negotiated as part of the rate study? Or are we okay with this outlet valve still existing? To give you context to the need for the outlet valves, we are pursuing as part of the Senate Bill 64 legislation that went through the state several years ago that we need to have non-beneficial discharges of treated wastewater no longer allowed. So we have well injection projects underway in our CIP program. You guys recently approved one at Chestnut Park. We have some exploratory wells going in at both plants so that if needed in the future, our outlet valve could be these injection wells. And therefore, I would not have to rely on the golf course agreements. We're not at that stage tomorrow, right? So I can't turn off these agreements tomorrow. But in the next five years, that might be a reasonable expectation that I'll have a secondary outlet valve. And that the reason why these were agreed to in 1987, that need no longer exists. So maybe we should open up those conversations. So that's a framework conversation as I go to build rates for discussion. Leave it the way it is, alter it, show three options, and maybe we cut it in half to the golf courses or charge them a retail rate. Or, you know, there's obviously recreational community impacts to golf courses turning brown, because they were used to getting water and now they're not. Well, certainly from when we first started, what we told our residents then is probably in line with the golf courses getting all that they wanted. I mean, we told them then we're going to get all the reclaimed you want. Now, obviously, that's changed for our residents. So we would think that we would at least look at what the golf course issue brings in terms of relief. Because as we look to spend capital dollars to provide more product to our residents, and that still exists, I think that needs to be at least discussed. And I should add context. I didn't put it in the slide here. But all of these agreements require the golf course to have interruptible service. So not only at any time can Jeremy flood you. At any time, at my own discretion, based on supply, I can cut off your water. And we do cut off. So when we're in periods of drought like now, they do not get this water, right? Because we know that we have supply problems, and we're going to distribute it to our retail customers before we give it away very cheaply to a golf course. So that is interruptible service. That's currently in play today under these agreements. And we partner with our golf course. It's not adversarial at all. We're all in, you know, we all understand the community and what we have to do. But to give you a scope here, if you add up the quantity delivered, these are fiscal 25 numbers. There was about a half billion gallons of water distributed to the golf courses. And if I go back a slide, if you look at the total gallons distributed in 2025, there's about six and a half billion sent out. So one half billion of the six and a half billion went to golf courses. So that's water. If we said we're turning off the golf courses, that would go then other places. I think that context was important. Thank you for just to give you a scale and scope of what's being done. Did you have a question, Commissioner? Real quick. So you've never had to flood the golf courses, but in the last decade, if you had a situation where you've had to just send water to them, whether that's it or not. Yes. How often does that happen these days? Is that pretty common or? Several times a year. So that still is a valuable outlet valve when you need to? And today's operation, yes. I don't want to contend that we wouldn't be able to handle it without that relief valve. But because it's there, we use it, right? But could we do some different things operationally? Probably. And still get by? Thanks. We haven't had the situation of the catastrophic failure of the reclaimed pipes. A total pipe failed and you just can't push out the water. It's got to go somewhere. So we're just going to flood the golf courses, right? That has not occurred in a long time. Not that I can remember it. I don't know if my team ever remembers that happening. Have we resolved the pressure problem in Terra Verde? It depends on the person answering it. No. The pressure problem isn't a infrastructure issue. It's a supply problem where we do not have enough water to push through the pipes. So it's the pressure is being perceived as I turn on my sprinklers and the sprinkler heads don't come up. I don't have enough pressure in the line. The problem is not the pressure in the line is there's not enough water to push to them. Because that pressure problem only exists in the dry season. It doesn't exist year-round when it's wet and raining and we have lots of water to give. There's lots of water to push through the pipes. All those sprinklers work fine. So even when we go to once a day, that's not allowing enough pressure for them, enough water to get that? So we've, and I, and Terra Verde specifically, they're on a different watering day than others to try and relieve some of that pressure problem. The real truth of it is there's not enough water to push. And when you go to once a day watering, everyone is using the water on that same day. So even it sounds like, oh, we're just compressing all the supply. So you should have more pressure, but then you have more people taking off that day. So if everyone's used to doing on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I only water for 30 minutes. I'll make up numbers. Because I'm only restricted to Tuesday, I'm going to water for an hour to get my line because it's the same amount of water. So that Tuesday hit is just more volume coming through the system. So it doesn't really relieve the problem going to once a day. It's a week. Okay. So we don't have a resolution for that problem then? So we've tried to offset some of their days and watering hours to help let them water when the rest of their peers are in a different watering restriction to try and allow the more supply to go directly to them because they're at the bottom of the system, right? So they're at the finger at the end of the arm. So if everyone else is pulling off along the way, then they don't have water. So we've tried to offset so that they could get more supply to them. But there's not, I don't have a quick fix CIP project to show you, hey, if you gave me a million dollars, I could fix this. One thing we are looking specific to St. Pete and tying into our, specifically to Terra Verde and tying into our early conversation about regionalizing the resource. We've been working with St. Pete for about a year. Their treatment plant, one of their treatment plants is down in South St. Pete. And they may or may not have excess reclaimed water. Why am I not buying that from them, which is closer to Terra Verde, at least supplementing my own pressures and supply? There's some pipelines and we'll have to, you know, do a project and get to agreements. But we've been working with them and they've, they would like to give us or sell us that water if available. So we've, we've been working with them to try and find a silver bullet for that problem. Commissioner Wicke? Thank you, Chair. Yeah, I just wanted to, you know, say for some direction, I would be in favor of revisiting the golf course reclaimed water, just to include that in the study. So I'm looking at it. So I'd be in favor of that. Thank you. Are we, are we pretty much everybody nodding? Yes. So that one, the answer to that question, yeah, just to revisit to see what options we have available to us. All right. And the last slide here has two kind of framework questions and I'll, I'll tackle them together or sorry, separately. Right now, all of our retail customers, so we call them retail, but that's your residences, right? Your, your homeowners are lumped in the same as all other users. So a commercial shopping center pays the same rate per thousand gallons as the homeowner that lives next door. And is that the appropriate model? I don't know. That's why the question's here. I can tell you that based on our current active count, 14,000 was 15,000 reclaimed customers, less than 200 are registered in our system as commercial users. I'm 100% confident we have more than 200 commercial users, but because everyone was getting the same rate, we never went through and classified them correctly over the last 20, 30 years. So we could do that. We could find the account, find the address, go talk to the customers, knock on doors and say, hey, you're a commercial, you're going to have a different rate. And what should that rate structure be? We could talk about that. But if there's not appetite to do that, that's a lot of effort in a rate study that would be wasted time and effort. So I don't want to go pay a consultant, you know, many thousands of dollars to go get to an answer. You guys say, yeah, it's not important to us. So that's a question. And then one of the comments that came out specifically from the customers in our public meetings is, I have a big lot, or I have an HOA that requires me to water a lot. I should pay a different rate than someone who has got a smaller lot. I have whatever, half acre or an acre of land to water, I should be paying at a different rate structure than someone who's got, you know, three little islands in their yard or a rockscape or something. So since that was customer feedback, I thought I would bring that as a point of discussion. Do we want to do something by like an irrigatable lot percentage or surface area of green space within a lot or one acre lot is treated different than a quarter acre lot? Just a different way to distribute the rates instead of everyone pays the same per thousand gallons. And I'm not quite sure what a large lot versus a small lot where the breaking point is on that. That we would need some direction or guidance. Yeah. And again, I think context is important, like large lot, more than half an acre. How many of those do we have versus how? I mean, and again, I know it's hard to define them exactly because the houses typically are bigger too. So you have a bigger lot, but you have bigger houses on there that don't need the reclaimed water or, um, so I, I think that's, I think that's important to see whether it's, you know, worth doing that. But, um, commissioner Scott, I mean, the HOAs could always change the rules too. Well, I know one big HOA that is, you know, enforcing the, please, um, um, take the mildew off your driveway during a, during a recession, during a drought. And it, and it's like, are you kidding me? Um, and I, I guess we have no say over that. They have to kind of deal with that inside their HOA, but that seems to be a, uh, you know, that's a pretty big use of water during these tough times. So I mean, legal, legal, jewel. Do we have, we don't have any say on that use by the rules that HOAs enforce for, as it relates to water consumption? We, we don't, we don't have any say on the rules and we certainly do not enforce their rules for them. No, I, no, I'm not looking to enforce the rules. I'm just looking to say. Yeah, no, those, those are independent and people will be subject to them. So we limit it by the one day a week use. So when there, and with this, uh, after the last drought came through, um, we reached out to 16 of the larger HOAs in Pinellas County for actively trying to say, can I come talk to you about the watering restrictions, the lack of water? Cause a lot of the customers that I'm hearing from live in your HOAs. Um, and they only had one respond back with anything positive. And then that didn't even turn into a meeting. They ended up canceling us off the agenda and said, can you just give me a blurb for the newsletter? So we're trying to get out to them to tell the story. Here's why the watering restrictions matter. Here's what you can do to change. We'll bring in the Florida friendly landscaping team just to show you different methods to help. Um, here's what the University of Florida IFAS study says adequate water on your lawn is right through scientific study, not, you know, just what, what looks good. Uh, and we did not have very many takers, like zero takers. So we haven't stopped talking to them, but it's, they're not interested in hearing that message. So I've got a question. Yeah. Finished. Um, so for the large lots, and I've had a couple of constituents that this is a real problem. Um, but do we, you know, with the water wise stuff and I mean, they can, they can switch their irrigation system to, um, more efficient systems that would use less water. Correct. So if an HOA is going to do that, well, then maybe they ought to go to their HOA and say, well, help fund my new irrigation system. And, um, because, and, and I don't know, I don't, water wise doesn't offer programs to help do that. I know when you build something, I think there's incentives to when you build something new. Um, but you know, when you got a great big lawn, I don't know how that soaker system works. I don't know what that looks like. I don't know what the cost to put something in like that. Um, they certainly couldn't, and I don't think the HOA would even allow them to, um, put in alternatives than grass, but you know, that's something they have to do with their HOA. And I don't know that we can make our policy based on what an HOA may or may not do. Um, and I think HOAs are going to start shifting with the new law that's passing. So, um, I, I'm not inclined to want to change something based on an HOA rogueness. Um, but if we could work with a water wise program or something and maybe give options or at least education about different irrigation systems they can use, they certainly know about the Florida friendly landscaping they can use. So they don't need as much water. And if they were to take, as I know one gentleman had bought the lot next door, two lots next door. So, so he has a large vacant lot. Um, and it's, and it's very expensive to maintain based on the HOAs requirement, but he certainly could do more Florida funding landscaping on there, maybe change the irrigation system. So it's more of a soaker. And so maybe there's just something we can do education wise or incentive wise with the water wise program to, um, help them with other alternatives. Yep. I mean, great point. And then, you know, building those educational campaigns and, and describing for them why it matters. Uh, one of the benefits that we've gotten out of the new AMI meters is we have a lot more data that we've never had specific data at locations and at properties. And I don't have a good map to show you because it got very convoluted when I tried to create the, the exhibit, but essentially we looked at our high water users. So anyone who is over $25,000 or 25,000 gallons a month of water, we pinpointed them and put a pin on the dot. And I was looking for, is there a community or an HOA that is consistently high and I need to go talk to them and say, well, what's happening here in this specific area. And what I found is that there's not a zeroed in spot that, Oh, I really need to go talk to this group because literally right next door to the person that was over 25,000, 25,000 gallon a month was a person that was 12,000 gallons a month. Same HOA, same neighborhood, same street. So it's. So, well, when I looked at my water bill, I saw all of a sudden my reclaim use was way too high. And, uh, so I, cause my sprinkler system goes on in the middle of the night. I had no idea it was, had six broken sprinkler heads. So I like the system that you have now and showing us our usage. Cause I knew clearly when they must've broken, um, and why that was, why it went so high. So, you know, I get my landscaper, take it out, I fix it. So for a period, I was one of those high users, not even realizing it because I had my sprinklers go on overnight. But, um, so I like the system because it's, it makes you very aware. It's like, okay, what happened? I'm using more reclaim than potable. It doesn't make any sense. So clearly I've got broken sprinkler heads. I got to fix it. Or I got a broken pipe. I can fix it. So, um, I do like the system we're using so far with billing, at least it was, you know, I was where I had a problem. Um, so I think it's just going to be more education than, well, and like, so the analysis I was just describing where there's not like an area, uh, we are pinpointing those specific users and I don't brag about it much, but one of the organizations changes we did is we created a customer engagement team. That's the name of the team. And they actually go and mine this data daily and we find users that have a spike in their users and we drive to their house or call and knock on the door and talk to the person. Did you know your, your use went up 10,000 gallons yesterday and nine times out of 10, they had no idea. Like if you address this today, we can get you leak adjusted before it even gets to your bill. And we're doing 50 or 60 of those a month. Right. And that's, I wish they had called to come see me because I had a really outrageous bill, but that's all right. So, you know, we got a group of eight people and that's what they do. So we're trying to get, but you know, 50, 60 a month out of 130,000 customers, you, you just can't get them all. So we find the ones that seem to be the worst and go talk to them. Jeremy, on the, uh, back to your question 3A, you have so few commercial customers listed here. There's probably more. Yes. Is there a consumption variation among the commercial users that, that I'm, that make it worthwhile to like, I mean, we have such a small percentage. So I would, I would counter that with a commercial user. That's a convenience store versus a commercial user. That's a hotel. Yes. There is an absolutely huge difference in their usage because a commercial user just wants to keep their landscape islands with the, you know, their single code tree planted and the hotel needs lots of flora and, you know, they want to have a very nice entryway and all those different things. So we, we, we, when we look at this consideration, you'll, you'll have, again, context is important. So we'll have a feel for what that looks like in terms of, or you're, you're asking, do you want me to even explore that as an option? And, you know, I said commercial and residential, but you might also have a different land use. You could have, you know, multifamily, you could have hotel. I, there's lots of different options. I don't want to go pursue a bunch of rabbit holes that don't have meaning to you. If there's certain categories you think we should evaluate, we can do that. Or if you say, just go pick what you think is best, we can do that too. Or you can say, ignore it. Did you have, Commissioner? Go ahead. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So, but we could, for those high commercial users, we just have a rate structure for over and above a volumetric rate that sort of captures those as well. That would be another way to do it. And then a residential or a hotel wouldn't matter if you're over a certain limit, you pay a different rate structure. To me, that just seems simple. Well, yeah, that's a great point. And one of the things that we've talked about before is that, again, in Dunedin, they had a structure that was pretty reasonable at any time, especially in the dry season. And then when it got past a certain number, it spiked pretty high, that rate, so that it discourages that use big time. And to your point, that, I mean, we could, we could look at that kind of rate structure that encourages people just to use a certain amount. So that's a similar concept here. And we only did two rate structures of under $15,000 and over $15,000. And different options based on if you're a high user with a low base rate, you're over $15,000 gallons is for almost $5 per thousand gallons, versus a different model where you pay a higher base rate, you're over 15,000 gallons, it was only $2.32 per thousand. So when we, we showed this to the 132 something people that showed up at the customer forums, and they were in two camps. So if you were a low user today, you'd love the option of low rate, low per gallon rate, because I'm a low user. But if I'm a high user, I love the concept of a high base fee, and then I get to use as much money and just charge me very little for how much I'm using over. So it's a, and they were split. I mean, it was a half and half. It wasn't clearly more people were this way, or clearly more people were that way, of the people that showed up. Well, it just, yeah. And those numbers matter, right? And so it's hard to, again, hard to get a feel for how many we would have in each of those categories of use. I'm sure we could address that from a consumption standpoint and see what challenges we have each way, but it might be interesting to see that. Like we have, what the benefits that we have now that we did not have when these was prepared last year is the AMI meters are in. So I could tell you a number of people that are above 15,000 gallons a month. I could, that's an easy number for me to say on average, 10% of the users are over that mark. So that's, you would have a context of how many people are affected by the decision. So you are looking at that tier threshold in these options. Yes. That we don't have now. Correct. Yeah. So it might be worth holding a meeting with restaurants and hotels. So the Florida restaurants and hotel association, it might be worth having a meeting with them individually because it's a very different context. Yep. Because there may be a benefit that is a different billing. The one thing I want to caution on is if we were just to say, well, you know, if they're going to spend more, they got to pay more. Um, and I mean, this is, it's hard to say because we don't know what's going to happen with property tax, but typically if property tax is going to do what I think it's going to do, commercial is going to get the burden of the cost. So I'm not inclined to wanting to add more onto commercial onto commercial and just have them pay more and more. So I think it would be worth an exercise of a community meeting. Maybe when, uh, uh, restaurant and lodging association meets, maybe you could present there and get feedback might be an interesting, uh, their local group. You might, um, get some really good feedback on how that, cause the hospitality industry is going to use a lot. Um, hotel, you know, that kind of thing. I think it's worth having a conversation with them and there may be a structure that would work for them without us just deciding for them. Um, so I think it's worth taking the time like you did in the community. I think it would be worth taking your time and meeting with, with that group. Um, but I'm not, I'm less inclined until we know what's going to happen, um, than putting a greater burden on commercial property, uh, because the burden on property tax may end up on commercial property. And so I don't want to just stack up, pile on and make it not a business friendly County as a result of that. That's a good point. We, we, we noticed all reclaimed customers, but we didn't specifically identify who were hotels and retails and maybe a separate conversation. So they just showed up if they wanted to. Hotel and restaurant use a ton of water. And I, I think that just that group, and it would be an easy thing to get that group together because they meet, they meet here locally in Pinellas County. So, um, and it's just the Pinellas County group. So I think you'd get a good audience if they're coming together anyways. Right. So, but that tiered structure does make a big difference. So that, that will, and maybe it's three tiers instead of two. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I'm sorry. Thank you, Chair. Jeremy, the, the, the, the options you had, are those, you plan on keeping the rates the same through the whole year or would it be possible to have those three options that were presented when you say per year? So you mean like seasonal, different seasonal rates? Is it possible to do a seasonal? It is absolutely possible. We have never built the structures that way. We could, if that's feedback, if you want me to evaluate. There's plenty. Everybody gets plenty. And when there's not, you know, you go start becoming a heavy user. You, Hey, knock it off. Well, you know, yeah. And those, you got to share and those tiered rates that we're talking about during the rainy season, it's off. So people don't get charged. If you go over your minimum usage, you can use, you can use what you want because it's either that or we're dumping it out in the Gulf or, you know, so I just think to your point, I think it's a seasonable rate. Yeah. And then it really ties to that tiered rate. I mean, I know what you're talking about having a different rate structure, but that's the technology exists. We could do that. And there would have to be a pretty strong communication plan because a lot of people aren't going to understand that. And frankly, what I roll, what I, what I encounter every day is that people don't understand, they just want the water to work. They don't care about how they just say, they know when the bill's too high, they just want it to work. And the more complicated and more things that get inputted and included in the bill and the rate structures, it's just, they just don't understand it or don't want to understand it. The education component is hard. It just is. People don't understand. You know, and that's that they went out on a whole campaign trying, and it's hard to get people to understand and tie it back, even understanding what day of the week that they can water on. It's a big deal. We, we pretty consistently get calls for the people that we bill for and they're complaining about their garbage rates. And just because it says Pinellas County on the bill, I don't control your garbage. I'm sorry that X city raised your garbage rate 30, 30%. So you'd be negative on a seasonable rate. It's an option worth exploring. How about that? So now, the benefit we have now that we have AMI meters is I can tell you the seasonal usage, right? By area, by down to a specific house, really. And we've never explored the data that way. Does it make sense to then implement a rate structure now that we have this new data source? And very, it very easily could, or it may yield that you end up with it that doesn't get you anywhere, so just abandon it. But it's worth looking at, for sure. A lot of times, especially commercial users like HOAs and stuff, they're like, it doesn't cost much anyway, so I'm not going to bother with it. But if they see a seasonal time where, hey, we're going to get banged if we don't cut back a little bit, you know, then they probably would. Property managers and people like that would be well aware of it. I think that would, you know, in that area, that might be something to explore. Residences is a whole different thing. If they're going to get charged more for a bad service, it's not going to be a good thing. Because we don't get much product at that time of the year. I think it ties more to that charge, that big charge, if you go over a certain amount. Because that, to me, really cuts back on usage in dry season. You can't use much, or you're going to get hit hard. Right. So we just don't have it. That's the whole point. Okay. So the next steps from my side, I've mentioned a couple times, starting in the late spring, we're going to initialize our consultant to help looking at rates. To Commissioner Peter's point, that rate study will go through into the fall. So we may have some clarity on what happens with the property taxes or not happens, or maybe it'll still be fuzzy. We don't know. But that'll be while we're in the rate discussion. So we can incorporate whatever that impact is into these rates. Certainly the feedback you gave today, we'll start talking with the consultants about how to build those in. In early spring of 2027, we'll be able to present kind of the first draft. And I would propose that we're going to do three or four options, similar to what you saw on the screen. If this occurs, then these three options. If that occurs, then these three options. But I'll try to limit to something that's manageable. If you have 100 options to choose from, how do you choose? And then maybe if we need to, prior to that, we can come through and do some one-on-ones, or I can come back again and show you, here's where we're at. Is this the right direction? And then our new rates would be adopted in June of 27, would be my goal, to be effective October of 27. So that's when the current approved rates expire. So we have no rate approved past October 1st, 2027. So we either need to extend the current rates or initiate the new rate structure. And I'm going to ask for that in the June timeframe, because it takes us time to put together communication plans, the software, the backend stuff to make that effective October 1st rollout. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, Commissioner. So that was a pretty deep dive on reclaim. You'll get a lot more with the overall rate adjustments and rate analysis. Next up, you asked for, you asked a lot of questions around asset management, what it is, what they do, and whether it can be done within the departments. Well, this department was stood up several years ago as an efficiency measure on how to manage our assets. And so Robert is up and he's going to go through a deep dive of what they do and all their different things. And then, and we've also combined fleet with them. So it's going to touch on what we're looking at with our fleet organization. Good morning, commissioners. So again, Robert Mills, director of the office of fleet and asset management. So asset management program as a whole, I'm going to kind of just discuss what we do, how we do it. The goal of the program is obviously in county government is to make sure that we take care and maintain our county assets. And that is through the complete life cycle of those assets. Our core business is to take care of those assets. The asset management program currently right now, we've got roughly about 618,000 assets that are strategic in nature, roughly about 1.4 million assets total. So we focus right now, we're focused on that 618,000 assets. In doing this program, it allows us to be able to make informed decisions with data to help us identify what steps we need to take when we need to make those steps. And so that we're not spending dollars in the wrong spots. Prior to the EAM program network that we put together, it was focused solely on work management. There is a clear, clear difference between work management and asset management. Work management is done at the department level. And we've done this for many, many years. And it is we've got tasks, we have to take care of those tasks. And we just do those tasks day in and day out. Some of the programs that were aligned with with that were varied. They had Maximo, they had several different programs, and they none of which talked to one on one another. And so to get the direction that we needed, we needed vertical alignment, which means alignment with your strategic plan, both vertical and horizontal, meaning the departments need to buy into that strategic plan. So our actions all need to move towards completing those goals. You see the three slides here that pop up on on the left. That is the Pinellas County strategic plan works into our SAMP or the directions that relate to our strategic objectives and initiatives. Those objectives and initiatives are things that our departments are working towards to complete the steps required to fully engage in the asset management plans. Priorities. Obviously, there's, I talked about the assets. There's 214 asset classes, which means individual classes that assets fit into. There are 1.4 million individual assets that we that we touch on. The operating departments have identified 104 asset classes, which make up 618 strategic assets. Again, strategic meaning. So an asset can be a building, could be an HVAC unit, could be a sidewalk, could be pressure valves, it could be our people, right, our people, it could be technology. So there are a couple different things that make up those assets. And we all need to make sure that we're maintaining those assets the same. And in a way that extends the overall life cycle of the asset. Like cover it. That wasn't the voice that we're used to hearing. They, they, they put, they put things into CityWorks, which, which is that, but in, in everything that we have, all the different assets they put in. And then that way they can track how much we're spending on that asset. So we know if something breaks a lot, how much we're actually spending on it versus, you know, buying new or whatever. So it's, it's data tied back to the asset. So let me go with, go with that and try to, try to, try to help somebody that doesn't do this every day understand that. So let me give it just an example. Let's say in the 50s, we, we put a pipe in the ground and it's made of concrete. And we begin to start to see breaks, but this is an actual problem that we had. We start to see breaks in this pipe and we have some spillage. So the data tells us when, because there's unique identifiers that are tied to that specific asset that we have put into our system, we are able, our, our programs able to go in and look at that pipe, see when it was put in, how many times that, that pipe is broken so that we can also kind of take a look at where there are other pipes put in, in the ground across the county. And that would show us the risk that we have in relationship to those other pipes breaking. Meaning if we've put a lot of time and energy into repairing this one pipe, then we probably need to repair some of the others or at least move those up on the capital improvement plan. So the capital, put capital dollars in that. It's data that informs when we make capital investments. And so rather than our sewer treatment plant, Joe, who says we need to do this, you have Joe, but you also have data. And so you can make a better informed decision. And the data helps us identify like a level of service that we want to deliver to our, to the residents and that, in that level of service. And I'm going to talk a little bit about that a little later, but that level of service is very important for the identifying the technical level of service for a specific asset and the performance of that asset. So I talked a little bit earlier about alignment strategic, having strategic alignment, both vertical and horizontal. Very, very important. Taking on this initiative, the county identified that there were some deficiencies. Some of the leaders are really European countries in this area, Great Britain, New Zealand, Australia, and even Canada. United States is, is behind in this category. However, we are getting better by utilizing the ISO 55,001 standards to our assets. And again, assets can be a wide variety of things. Asset could be your desk. An asset could be the clock in this room. Asset can be a wide variety of things. But identifying which one of those assets are our priorities or strategic in nature is where we should be spending our time and dollars on. So currently right now, at the end of 2025 fiscal year, we've spent three full years, the five operating departments have spent three full years in the program. There is a wide, right now a wide level of understanding of how they are all performing. Our goal in the asset management world is a scale of one to five, three being competent. We're right now, as a enterprise, we're about 1.7, 1.6 on that scale. We want to be at a, at a three, which is competent to us. Some departments operate higher, some departments operate lower at their competency level. We, my program, the asset management program, are working with the departments to put things in place so that they can fully understand what it means to take care of an asset. Just going out and doing the work is not taking care of the asset. That's spending county dollars. We need to make sure that we're taking care of the right assets at the right time, extending the life cycle of those assets. Because we don't, we do not have a limited amount of funds available to continue to maintain those assets. We have to be strategic in nature. And looking at the data allows us to be able to do those things. Okay. This? Hold on. Hold on one second. Commissioner Scott had a question. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So, so what's the, what's holding you back from getting to that three? Is it, is it skill level? Is it training? Is it data point? What is it? All of that. All of that. So at the end of 2026, I'm sorry, end of 2025, all the departments submitted their asset management plans. So an asset management plan by class is how they determine they're going to manage that particular asset. So that was just recently completed. Our team is going through those asset management plans now to determine, um, are they complete? Do they have unique identifiers? Do they have the data that's inside of this estimate plan, how they manage that, that asset. So once we review those, we'll also begin to start to work with the departments to establish risk. Um, and that risk determines, um, really how much, uh, risk that we can take on as a county for whether or not we want to spend dollars on a particular asset right now. So, um, the challenge is, is getting through that data, ensuring that the departments understand, uh, their asset management plans, taking a look at the asset management plan, auditing, uh, their asset management plan against their, um, data that's in the system and determine whether or not those assets are performing, uh, at the technical level of service that they have established in the asset management plan. That's something that the departments do not, cannot do right now without our support. The commissioners, if I can add to that, um, this is a change management issue also, because now you're asking a park ranger, okay, to, to put in how much time they're spending on various tasks. We're asking a maintenance person in our building to put in data, uh, because that's, that feeds into them being able to make decisions around, we're putting how much time are we spending fixing stuff. Okay. Versus re okay. It's time to replace it. Um, and so think about that for every asset around the county, he's got a future slide that really talks about the department. So public works was first out of the gate. Okay. Utilities parks. Okay. Um, our facilities group, you know, and, and I, and I only tell you that because like, you know, in my employee forms, not this time, but you know, like two years ago, you know, somebody is like, well, you know, listen, I don't, I don't want to turn on a computer and, and, and do that as part of my job because I've done my job for 30 years. Right. And so, so there's a, a tremendous amount of education with employees, getting that buy-in to where you're, you're, you're, you're feeding good data in, you know, to where then they can make decisions around where we're putting our capital dollars. Um, and, and the, and the whole goal is to spend them more wisely and at the right time versus, you know, just throwing stuff at it because it happens to be 20 years old. Um, but that's, that's the goal. And I'm trying to rationalize it because it's, it, we couldn't just turn it on overnight. It's been a, it's been a process and the, and it requires everybody's engagement. And so they rolled it out kind of one department at a time, if that helps. No, it, it does. Is there a, and this may be in a later slide, if it is, just tell me. Um, but do you have a, a time, a goal in mind, a time goal in mind that we went by three, 3.0 at the end of 27 or just big picture? What are you thinking? So we typically do, uh, the, uh, survey and, uh, the survey, uh, is, is really completed by the departments. We've got roughly in my staffs here, which I forgot to introduce by the way. Sorry. Um, we've got roughly, I think, 75, a hundred questions that we provide to the departments. Uh, and those questions are questions that were created by, uh, the, uh, I am or the international asset management, um, system. And those questions are very, they're very technical and we need to, like, I don't want to say, make them very easily, easily understood by the layman's terms. And they score, uh, on, on those questions. And we take all those questions and we put them together and then we kind of review and understand where they're at. So the, the goal is we do this every two years. We just completed that, uh, last year. Uh, we're going to do it again in another two years. Uh, we, the, at the rate of growth that we're seeing, probably we've completed two. So I would, I would like to say in another two years, we would be somewhere around the two and a half range and be, be moving forward. I think you've got a couple of slides coming up that'll help kind of frame some of your, some of the questions because this is really, really, this is technical type lingo, right? And, uh, um, so that, but there's some things I think that will help bring it home over the next couple of slides. It is, it's really, um, I come from a manufacturing background where, um, I ran a, uh, a tier one supplier to Honda. So it was assembly operation and we built, uh, break components, a rank break components, federally regulated. And so I understand a lot of the, the language is very technical in nature and, and it's that way to establish a standard worldwide. And we need to understand that and be able to kind of get others to understand that at a decision level making process. And your next slide. Okay. Okay. This, this is the, the framework for ISO 55,001. Um, this is the, where we really kind of, our program manages, manages this, uh, process at the top of this framework, uh, is the strategic, uh, plan that you all create. We need to make sure that our actions fit to that. You have the bookends of that. The, uh, and it's really hard to see, uh, organization and people, and then you have risk and review on the, on the ends. All the operational things happen, uh, in the middle of that. So the strategic planning, the asset management decision making, um, and then, uh, along with the asset information. I talked a little bit about the asset management plans. The one thing that if we could go back and do different, we would have gotten them asset management plans early on. We recently, you know, in the past couple of years, we didn't even know what we had. Right. And so that's a, that's a big challenge for us. Now we need to know not only what we have, but the condition that those assets are in so that we can appropriately, uh, request funding or, uh, determine things as far as on a capital, uh, improvement process. Uh, so recently we just this past year, we participated. We being, uh, the asset management program participated in a review of about a hundred million dollars worth of, of capital improvement projects in reviewing that roughly nine million of that actually had the data inside the system supporting, um, supporting the fact that maybe we needed to do more research or, uh, including unique data in the system to make the decision process. So that's a small percentage. We're going to be in our second year of that this year, and we are already, um, getting some feedback from, um, the departments on, wow, you're asking a lot of questions. I need to make sure that this stuff's here. And it ties the operating department then with the capital planners in each of the departments, the, the, the individuals requesting those, uh, those capital dollars. So these are things and decisions that should be. Yes, sir. Yeah. So our departments have a feeling, have a sense of what assets they have. You're talking about you guys in this management program don't. So tell me, tell me that actually it's a partnership. Okay. They're, they're the data managers. Okay. Okay. And their departments are preparing their capital budgets and they're trying to make decisions with limited dollars about where they spend their dollars. They be, they become the feed of the data and to say, here's, here's what we're seeing through the data to where the departments can make better decisions. I mean, I understand. I'm just, you know, for me, the people part of it versus the, our hard assets part that I think the hard assets part would be, would happen a lot faster. And, and that's, and that's, this is where you see that applied. His team is just a very, a very small team, but they're collecting that information, being able to synthesize it to where departments can make better decisions. And you don't have, you don't have individual people in individual departments because otherwise you need more people than what we have. They've centralized that to be able to make, to centralize that data. Okay. So the five operating matter that we have the data right now on our pipes for the condition, the ages and all of that, do we have that information? That's the, that's the information that they've collected. So we, in our particular department, we don't have that. And even in our departments, they do, they have some of the data. They don't have all of the data. And some of the, some of the pipes can't be inspected because of they're full of water or knowing what we, as you said, knowing what we know versus what we don't know. That's exactly correct. I mean, that's, that's a hundred percent. That is correct. Knowing what we don't know and knowing what we don't, don't know and knowing when it was installed so that we can start to try to begin to, uh, assess a condition of those assets to try to plan for the future for replacement. Go ahead. Okay. So these are the five operating departments here, the assets, uh, the assets that we talked about, uh, earlier, this is their portions of that 618,000. Uh, as you, as you look through, through this, um, the ownership solely belongs as, uh, uh, Commissioner Scheer had talked about before the maintenance of those assets solely belong to the operating departments. Our function is to, uh, manage the program and to bring all of them together so that they all understand and are marching to one to one. Mr. Scheer, do you have another question? Um, is this a relatively new, uh, department that's working on this, putting all this together under one house? So it was created, um, in 2017? Yeah. Huh? Was the, was the first year stood up? Okay. The board, the board approval. Yeah. Yeah. The board approval happened before me. It was 2016, but they were forming it. I think right, right about that time. So the idea is to put it all together. The idea is to get better data so you can make better decisions around where you put your capital assets and centralizing that means you only need three people doing that rather than having two people per department. Um, and, and then you get disparate, you know, when do we think we'll have the data? I mean, well, they have it, you know, they're continuing to build that out and improve it. All right. So I'm, I'm just, when, when will the collection period be over and then it'll be, when do you think that's going to happen? You have, you have a lot of data right now, and I don't want to say that the departments didn't have data. You've seen Kelly's presentation. Yeah. No, I understand. But you've seen Kelly's presentations on roads, right? And we say, you know, we had, we had over a thousand roads that were in failed condition, um, seven, six, seven years ago. Okay. Today we have less than 300 roads that are in failed condition. That's data on our roads condition index for that. Trying to build that same type of system on all of our different asset areas is dependent upon the department, dependent upon where they're at. Um, a lot of times they have decent data by knowing these pipes failed or whatever, but you haven't put it into a city works data system where it's all in there and then you can assess it and you can also track the time you spent maintaining those assets. That's the enhancement that, that this process is from. Okay. Okay. And it's, so it's a continuous work in progress. Okay. Go ahead. Go ahead, Chris. I just, one other quick, and this would be because budget season is coming up, uh, time you work on utilities and stuff like that. Do we have some kind of a utility department? Oh, we bill Jeremy for everything. Did you get hit Jeremy really hard on his budget? Yeah. Okay. Just trying to figure it out. It's reason for the rate increase. No, I'm kidding. But, but, but if, but if this is, if this is a big deal and if this is really important, it seems to be moving, like we need to move it faster. Um, and I don't know if we need to hire, as you know, get some other folks to help with that process, but it, I mean, if we're going to start doing good decisions, we, the sooner the better, right? I mean, they, they are, I don't think it's a question of putting more people at it. I think it's a question of the change management and getting people to put in good data. And then now their team can assess that data and try to apply it back to our capital program groups. We have lots of different, uh, groups that are making capital improvement decisions, you know? Um, and you know, they're all in some, in some form of maturity. Um, and, and that's what they're trying to do is connect the data with that. But you say we're just doing one department. No, they've been doing one department. Everybody's on that now. Yeah, everybody. So we started initially, uh, we, we rolled each department in, um, one step at a time. And so we started with, uh, public works and, um, we finished with solid waste. They were solid waste was the last group. Each one, uh, launched at a, at a separate time, launching all of them at the same time for, with change management would have been, uh, very, very difficult to do. So all five departments have been in the system right now. When I say the system working underneath of the asset management program for roughly three, uh, for three years, all of them have been in for three years. And we have now have a sense of how, what percentage of our assets within each of these departments are covered or ones that we don't have covered. That's exactly correct. We do have a sense of what assets are in the system. We have a sense of what data is, uh, complete, what in a sense of what, uh, data is incomplete in a system. Every time a, a, uh, utilities, uh, staff member goes out and touches an asset, he gets some data from, from that asset. We don't touch that asset every day, every other day, maybe once a year. So getting all of that data for 618,000 of those assets, uh, it takes time. Uh, so again, having, go ahead. One quick question over here. Is this in any way tied to us implementing the new ERP system? No, no, no, no, but the new ERP system is going to greatly benefit us because we will be able to now track, uh, what, uh, departments are purchasing and be able to tie those things back into the, uh, inner, uh, into the storerooms, into enterprise asset management, uh, system and be able to get, continue to get better, uh, full life cycle cost of the asset. So, yes. We put this on, I know this is confusing. I can see this. It's just, you know, kind of all over the place, but, but, but you ask a lot of questions around whether, you know, we're spending money on an asset management department and whether that's, you know, worth it or not, and, you know, should it be done a different way. And, and so we wanted to at least understand, you know, have a presentation on what their goal is. Why, why do we have this group? Why are we spending time and money and resources on this? And this is kind of where they're at at this point. Um, I still think it's very cost effective decision, and I think it'll pay us pay dividends on where we put our capital management. It's no different, you know, five years ago, you know, when we got here, I mean, I couldn't have told you our, our building assets. We did, we don't have any formalized way of looking at where we're doing and you've seen, you know, um, roof leaks or, you know, the skylights when you and I were out and, and we don't have, we didn't have a, a way of tracking and managing those assets. And, and we're putting those in place now to where they're, you know, they're there, they have a handle on them. Um, doesn't mean there aren't things that happen, but now they make better informed decisions. And that's why when we see the roads and we know their conditions, we don't see the utility conditions and, and the pipes and all of that that are going on underground. And that's why I keep talking about diverting some funding to help capitalize some of those projects, because I'll bet you we're not in as good a shape there as we are on the road. Well, and you, you know, and, and I will address it real quick. Um, but you know, Jeremy and, and, and even before him, we were working hard at updating our utilities. You, you've been very supportive of them being able to put capital programs in place to where we don't continue to allow SSOs down in unincorporated Seminole, for instance. Um, you know, you, you approve several targeted programs. Now from the time you approve those programs, it's four years later, design done. Now you're, you're ready to start implementing, uh, those capital programs. And so we're in that height of construction season, both from a utility standpoint, which he's got a lot of challenges that he's really had to work on from, from his, um, uh, engineering group and, and, and project management group. Um, but also you're at the height of the penny right now, where you're seeing the big projects actually hit. Uh, so we're right in the middle of a lot of those capital improvements. All right. Let's, let's, let's move it along here. We're running out of time. So just, uh, our department, uh, now that we've merged with, uh, fleet. Uh, so asset management, again, uh, side of things, we, uh, administer the enterprise asset management program, uh, which means we perform a lot of the analytic analytics in the background that we provide to the, to the departments. We coordinate training, uh, technology requirements, state and standards. And also we're managing the, the platform itself, uh, on the fleet management side. We all know that we've got roughly about 22,000, I'm sorry, 2200, uh, total assets in the rolling stock. And, um, my goal is, is to be able to bring the asset management focus of things to the fleet side of the world. Not saying that we don't currently manage that way, but I want to, I want to improve on that. And so, uh, it's, uh, it's gonna be a great opportunity by putting the two together. So the EAM program administration, as you see here, we have the five operating departments and then including the office of fleet and asset management. Uh, EAM provides a strategic, uh, risk-based support to all the departments. Um, we, uh, provide a lot of enterprise-wide transparency and metrics, uh, that'll, uh, help the departments better make decisions. We've got dashboards that we provide. Uh, we work with the departments to establish their, uh, dashboards, uh, that'll allow us to basically create a model that's much more cost-effective, uh, as Barry alluded to. If we were to do away with the, uh, asset management, uh, program itself, uh, the departments would, would be then burdened with, um, maintaining those things to continue the efforts that the board, prior boards have, have, you know, committed to. Okay. Uh, past, uh, asset management versus current. So to me, I think this is really important for us to understand in a decentralized, uh, system. As you see, uh, on the left, the asset management infrastructure requirements as they go up in aging with time, the work management resources become greater. Uh, and that's, that's a really important thing to understand because we've got aging infrastructure. Uh, and so what typically happens is, is, is we continue to throw labor at those things and may not be the most effective way to do things. And I was counting in the past three years. We balance, uh, level of service cost with risk. Uh, and, and what's meaning by all of that is, uh, the goal is to make sure that we are evaluating which is the, the better method, uh, to be when I say better method. So if we decide a particular asset doesn't need as much maintenance, uh, to it, then we are able to accept more risk with that particular asset. And maybe we offset the, that risk with insurance or maybe it's a run to failure. And so, uh, there are some things that we just need to, to pay attention to that with that. We help the departments make those, those decisions. Uh, and I'll give just a, you know, just a, uh, a real quick, um, example of this. We currently have a, uh, stormwater rate model that, um, is funded at a certain level, which, you know, that level can be, uh, is set as a regulatory, um, and it performs and meets the regulatory requirements. If we want to perform those, those stormwater structures or stormwater devices, uh, to perform at a higher level, then we need to increase the amount of, uh, funding that we provide, uh, to public works to maintain those things. So it's a, it's a, it's a cost versus risk, uh, reward along with service. So balancing those things is, is pretty. So he's giving you the data that Kelly's going to present the storm, the surface water management stuff to you on April 2nd. Yeah. So he's the data guy behind what her presentation is going to be about. So the benefits of an enterprise asset management system, I kind of listed them here. Um, it's, again, it's to extend the life of an asset and to try to make sure that we maintain the lowest life life cycle costs. Uh, it's establishes, uh, levels of service for an asset class. And what I mean by that is we have shared assets across the, the enterprise. Uh, for instance, um, parks may have a pump station in inside of parks, parks, those not know how to manage or maintain a pump station utilities, uh, is the expert there. And so sharing those resources to understand how parks should be maintaining those, uh, assets is very, very, uh, critical. So again, that establishes a level of service across asset classes, uh, provides the information decision-making on the risk-based costs. So again, it's something that our risk department, I know in the future is going to be very, very interested in. Once we, uh, finish the, uh, asset management plans and we get into, uh, monetizing risk models and determine what direction we want to go with, um, how much risk we are willing to accept financially, it'll be a, uh, a good way to look at things. Yes, sir. Okay. Um, while we can all potentially continue to review these and identify the benefits of, uh, enterprise asset management system is, we all know that it's, it's, uh, beneficial. Um, it provides a centralized point, uh, for all of departments to continue to focus through. If a department has problems, we can assist them with those, uh, those problems with, uh, connection to another, another department. I want to just also talk a little bit about our, Pinellas County's energy and water conservation program. Are there more questions before I get into that? Is there more questions about, uh, the enterprise asset management? Okay. Um, so Pinellas County water conservation program, it's, uh, the goal is again, to track and benchmark and analyze energy and water trends for all the county assets. Uh, one person, uh, in our department, uh, does that. Um, uh, she also provides the data for our budgeting process across 1700 accounts across our entire enterprise. Um, and she also serves as the liaison with Duke Energy, TECO, and with the Luchi, uh, cooperatives. Um, she also performs energy audits at our buildings and, uh, determines places where we can, uh, cut energy costs. So position is very, uh, very important to us. On the years, uh, uh, prior, uh, she worked with, um, a contractor that came in and, and the detention center replaced, replaced roughly 6,000, um, LED lights. And I think we had talked about that in the past and it was, uh, roughly a, um, um, after six years, it'd be roughly about a $68,000, uh, savings. So a little bit each year, uh, that we would save those savings were, were spread across six years to help us pay for the program. The Pinellas County resiliency program, um, based on recent board direction, the Pinellas County, uh, resilient Pinellas plan was modified to be in alignment with the board's current, uh, strategic priorities. Uh, currently, right now, uh, the plan shows five completed resiliency initiatives, 34 initiatives on, on track, uh, 20 initiatives, uh, that were revised to better reflect, uh, the county's resilience, and then 11 initiatives were completely removed from the plan altogether. Lastly, with the resiliency plan, we believe the resiliency plan is in a position that has matured enough, uh, at this point, we made the decision to, uh, remove the dedicated position for the resiliency program and has been returned to county administration for, uh, further, uh, use. We had a vacancy of that, so they, we kind of defunded that position. Fleet is our last, uh, my last topic on here. I just wanted to say later this year, we'll be, uh, completing a comprehensive review of fleet operations, uh, to, uh, review, uh, asset performance, their efficiencies, financial efficiencies, and looking for opportunities for improvement, both internal and external. So, um, I'll be bringing something back to you, uh, later this year when that, when that's completed. And I do want to speak about that, because we've, we've talked about that a little bit, because I brought it up. You know, it, it, our, our staff is doing a good job. You know, so our mechanics and stuff, they're fixing things, and we, and we have stuff in, but we've got assets all over the county. So whether or not the way we do that is efficient, you know, when somebody has to drive from Caraberti up, you know, to Almerton, drop off vehicles, et cetera, and stuff. And remember, it's not always vehicles, golf carts, um, you know, every, every type of, um, equipment that we have. Um, so it makes sense to look at the way in which we're managing these assets from a fleet management, um, to determine if the way we're doing it is efficient. So, you know, I don't want, uh, because, you know, staff sees this. I mean, it's not a question about, you know, how we're doing that. Is it, is it's operationally is it, should we be organized or doing stuff differently? Um, so I think this review will give us some insights into that. Um, and we'll kind of go from there. You know, I think a lot of times we manage, you know, we need to take this asset, et cetera. What we don't manage is the time spent doing that. Two people driving up, dropping off a vehicle, two people coming back and getting that vehicle and, and things like that. And they've already changed remote oil changes. And so they've done a lot of different things, but because we're such a large county all over the place, we just want that outside look, um, to determine if we have best business practices. Again, I'll look forward to bringing something back to you and getting your input on that. Any questions about, uh, the group? I just, uh, nice presentation. Thank you for explaining. Yeah, I, I, uh, I appreciate that. I think there's a lot more detail in the, uh, two attached documents that I included. There's a executive summary and then a, a full, um, a full review of the program and some of the things that we do. I think it's really important, uh, that, you know, if you took the time to review it. Certainly, the, certainly taking care of our assets is one thing and you're talking about that, but also the operational efficiencies and how we do, and how we do the business. I understand that. It's a whole different, a whole different app. Just being strategic about our decision processes, using data to kind of drive us to where we need to be. Well, thank you. Thanks for the presentation and kind of, uh, help our understanding of the process. Continue good luck with everything on that and bring it back as you get stuff. Then you have one final piece, um, which is what you had asked for also, uh, which is our electric vehicle charging stations. So he's got some information. I want him to move through quick. Okay. Okay. I hear you loud and clear. That's a ding, ding, ding. All right. Um, but because you had asked about what we're doing with electric vehicle charging stations, we haven't updated that. We haven't looked at it and we got a lot of them broken. So, uh, now's a good time to have that discussion and he has some ideas and thoughts for consideration. Okay. So February of 19, we entered into agreement with Duke energy to, uh, participate in the plug and park and plug program, uh, at no cost, uh, to us. So they Duke energy brought in, uh, roughly 20, uh, publicly facing charging stations. Those charging stations, uh, were open for free for residents to use. Uh, the County only paid for, uh, the, uh, electric usage. At that time in December 23, uh, those 20 publicly facing charging stations were turned over to the County. They became ownership, uh, of the County and continue to operate at for free to the residents. Our current challenges that as Barry indicated, um, uh, after more than five years, uh, many are, are hitting the end of life and the decisions need to be made, whether we are going to, uh, it's in the best interest of the County to replace those units or, uh, maybe go into some other direction. And so we've got an analysis of the EB charging stations, uh, a little, a little later for you. So future direction, uh, we can either current, uh, to maintain the current state, discontinue the publicly facing charges or charge the public for the use of chargers. Uh, what we see here is a, um, current main state current state of the publicly facing charging stations, the annual kilowatt usage. It costs us roughly about $56,000 a year. Um, that includes, uh, energy use software license maintenance and replacements at, at, at failure. So just remember prior to 2023, the only thing that we paid for was just the energy. So after 2023, the December of 2023, uh, that's the $56,000 is what we took on as a burden. Uh, again, not charging, uh, residents. So considerations to, for, to ensure all organizations are responsible for the chargers. They have a full, full understanding of the O and M costs are. If we continue to move in that direction, here's the current state model. What you can see here is the charging sites, the usage, the energy, uh, the replacement cost, and that replacement cost is spread over, uh, four years, the number of ports at each station, uh, the network charge per year and the annual, uh, network charge. And then you see the total annual cost. Again, uh, depending upon, uh, what, uh, level we get, you can see roughly $56,000, uh, a year. So considerations underneath of option two, the, to eliminate the public, uh, facing chargers. Uh, we're generally, again, we're seeing, uh, failures around year five, four of the 20 chargers right now are, are down and have been down for several months. Uh, two of which have been almost down for almost a year. So again, all the sites are within county owned public facing, uh, chargers, some of which are on county sites. They are publicly facing, but they are technically they're in areas where the general public may not have good visibility of them. So considerations, uh, if we decide that we're going to eliminate the publicly facing chargers, a communication plan is, it needs to be done based on the number of people that are using. And then, uh, we need to ensure that, uh, you know, removal costs, uh, are, are taking care of, uh, for the future. I just wanted to demonstrate very quickly. Um, so we took a look at our publicly facing chargers and, and if we were going to actually hurt the public by removing them, as you can see all the little green dots that are on these charts, we took some remote, remote views of some of the public facing chargers. The green dots are others that are in that same area. So, and the others that you see on this chart are all, uh, charged publicly facing chargers. So maybe a minute and a half, two minute drive between each one. Here's some usage patterns, uh, for the public facing chargers. Um, it's really kind of interesting to see. Um, if you look on the box on the right side, the higher, uh, session, um, chargers, uh, where you see the annual kilowatt usage is high would be the star center, the county justice center, and the Palm Harbor library. Um, we are able to tell, um, inside the software system that, uh, is monitoring these. We are able to tell that it's a very small number of people that are consistent consistently using those chargers. So at the star center, there's roughly about 80 people using 80% of the sessions, which to us says that it's people that work there, uh, the county justice center, again, 11 people make up roughly 40%, uh, 48% of the sessions, which to us would be probably judges, uh, attorneys, people that are there every day, employees. And then, um, the Palm Harbor library, it's very, very clear that two people, uh, make up 45% of sessions. So, you know, it's, yes. And it's neighbors. Yes. So option three, um, is, uh, to move to a, you know, charge for public use for the EV chargers. O and M costs, uh, would obviously go up because, um, we want to make sure that if we're going to start charging for the, the charging stations, uh, there are a couple of levels of, of response that we would need to pay for. Our staff are not the experts at maintaining the elect, the, uh, EV charging stations. And even under warranty, you would need somebody very specific to do those. So the vendor that we would work with would have response times, um, recommendation. If we were to go this direction would be to charge a fee of 25 cents per kilowatt hour, and then $5 idling fee after two hours. What is meant by that is if I plug in and I am charging and my car is now fully charged and I just decided I'm going to park there and leave my car there for the day. And then, you know, um, after the first hour, my car is fully charged in the third hour, we would start charging a $5 idling fee because somebody else can't use the charging station. That is very typical across the other, other municipalities or, or locations that are charging. So considerations would be two of the sites with the highest, uh, income potential. Um, we may see changes if we start charging, they may or may not, uh, participate. So it's very difficult to project, um, whether or not people are going to continue to come to utilize those sites when we have to start, you know, they start paying for usage. The annual onem cost of operating costs for EV chargers. This is fee based. Again, this is, you know, my staff put a lot of time in physically driving to the sites, verifying the condition and they're working. So you have a couple of different levels of chargers of repair and maintenance, sorry, uh, opportunities for us currently right now, we are in a level one, which has a, um, a, like a computerized bot that whenever it detects that the charging station goes down, it goes through a reboot process. And then there's level two and level three, and those just change, uh, the response time. A level two, uh, the vendor is required to respond within five days and a level three is, uh, the response is even quicker. So in summary, most of the EV charging station has been in service for approximately five years and likely reaching in alive soon. So, uh, we are just requesting some direction on, on what you all would like for us to do, either maintain current state or discontinue the publicly facing charges, chargers, and then, uh, or charge the public for use of those, those 20. Uh, so I just need to make sure everybody understands that, um, we still do have chargers that are inside of our departments that are specific to county owned assets only. So those are on, those are non publicly facing chargers. Commissioner Scott, do you have a question? Uh, just a comment. Thank you, Chair. And thanks, Robert, for this, uh, another great presentation here. My personal opinion is, it's not a core function of government that we provide charging stations to the general public. Yeah. I, I, I personally think we should just let the private sector deal with this and that we should not be in this business at all. I mean, if, if, uh, company wanted to approach us and say, hey, we'll put these in, we'll maintain them, and we'll just give you a commission or a franchise fee or something and it's hands off to us. That might be something I would, I would consider that. But I, I just don't think that we should be in this business at all. Which is my, my two cents. Uh, Commissioner Lett-Valley. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Uh, I agree. I support option two of getting rid of them and let the private, uh, deal with it. I don't think that we have any purpose in wasting our time dealing with it. On those acts, you had that one slide that showed where a bunch of other stations are. Um, those are, those, those aren't our control. They're just out there. Those are just out there. Yes. Private public sector availability. That's exactly correct. Okay. I mean, I, I certainly don't understand why we're at, at, you know, doing it either. So I have a... Yeah, we don't, we don't currently right now, we're not providing fuel to the, to the, to the public, you know, unleaded fuel. So, uh, well, we're, we, we are in the business of, uh, of making services available to the extent that Commissioner Scott said that we have a company that wants to come in and operate a business like that. That's something we could consider. And, but it just seems like there's so few people that are making up the biggest bulk of the use is very isolated to a few people. And it just doesn't make much sense to me. Any other thoughts on that? Yeah. Yeah. Um, so I, I agree with that. Um, but again, I'm going to step back because I do completely agree with that. And I would love a company to come in and, and pay us something. Um, but that said, these vehicles are heavier than normal vehicles. They do more damage and wear and tear on the roads. I never supported them being free. Matter of fact, I brought it up one time that I thought that should change immediately. And that didn't go, I didn't realize we had a deal that we had to keep it free, but I wouldn't have even supported that deal. Um, but we also need to start looking at revenue generating options. Um, if we have tax property tax rollbacks, we're going to have to start and we brought this up in strategic planning. We have to start looking at different revenue streams that can be created that are not property. That's not taxing people. And so a usage fee is a great revenue stream. Now, is this the project I want to get into on that revenue stream? Um, so it's going to bring in more than what you're projecting. No, um, I don't think, I think the time and the energy that's put into it, I don't think that's it. But I do think as we move forward, we have to start looking for different types of revenue streams that are not taxes. And so, um, yeah, I, I don't support this one. I don't think there's a real return on this one. Um, so I don't support it, but I do think that we have to continue looking at either innovative things that we create that we can patent or get a license on, or we got to start looking at different ways of doing business that does not tax the residents. And that's my, my thought. It would be nice if all levels of government recognize that the wear and tear that you're talking about, and we pay for the regular cars are paying for it through their gas taxes. And they're not, they're not getting us. That's a whole different discussion, but it's, it's a valid one. I mean, uh, not to mention the whole idea of, you know, escalating those, those rates like the state does. That's a whole different thing on a different issue. But yeah, we don't, that, that attitude is not even, they're not even paying anything for the use of the roads and they are, you know, the wear and tear is a big deal. So I totally agree with that. So, um, if I think, sorry, did you have, sorry, I was just going to voice my support for option two as well. We'll come up with a kind of a communication plan and phase time out timeline, and we'll implement that and discontinue, um, their use. You just put a sign at each of our state, those stations that say this. Well, there's, yeah, there's only a few people we have to get to. Well, if, if, if, if he wouldn't keep sending his folks from district five up to the Palm Harbor. Okay. So we can do that. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it. All right. Barry is all done for the day on your end. Okay. All right. We're going to jump into the last two things. And I know Brian, uh, put a letter on our desk here to talk a little bit about some of the progress that's being made in a couple of meetings he's had, and maybe just can we summarize where we're at Brian? Uh, thank you, Mr. Chairman's. So last, was it last week or week before? I can't remember. Uh, days run together, but, um, Kelly, uh, Levy and, and I had, uh, meetings with the, uh, city councils of Reddington Shores and Indian Shores and, uh, basically encouraged them. Well, first of all, we updated them on our, on our conversations, um, with the Army Corps that we had up in DC, um, that were very, very positive and, uh, pointing to the fact that if the Army Corps had customary use ordinances in place in the communities where beaches needed to be re-nourished, then they could point to that and not have to have permanent easement, uh, language. So, uh, we met with both those city councils and gave them a presentation and encouraged them to adopt a customary use, uh, ordinance. And they were, they were both very, very well received. And, uh, we also highlighted the fact that, um, um, the county wants to work with them, um, and provide, um, whatever resources we can, uh, to get this across, uh, the finish line. Because we have, we have a window of opportunity here with the Corps and, and we need to strike while the iron is, is hot. So just as a suggestion, I, uh, wanted to put this, this letter out and, um, and see if we were all okay, um, either with the chairman signing the letter or all of us, uh, signing the letter and, and sending that to their city council members just to encourage them, uh, to move forward and, uh, underscore our, the importance of it and our willingness to partner with them to get it done. And what does that do if they do that, uh, or the pro property owners that have had an issue, what does it do to their, their property, their private property? So, um, the, the ordinance, the one that's being used as a model is Indian Rocks Beach. And that outlines very, very specifically and clearly what is allowed and what isn't allowed. And it also provides a 15 foot buffer zone that also gives property, should give property owners, um, also a great deal of comfort, but also the Army Corps is also willing to be flexible on the easement language itself because we won't need, we won't need the, the, uh, permanent easements with perpetual public access. It's going to be a temporary construction easement and they're willing to be flexible on what that language looks like to appease individual property owners. So, you know, we've got, I think a really good opportunity to try to get this done. I recommend all of us sign it. Oh, I agree. If everybody's, if everybody's comfortable with that, I think we all have to sign. Yeah. I think it'd be great if it went out with seven signatures. Yeah. Yeah. We've got six around the table and we'll make sure that we touch base with Commissioner Flowers on, on that as well. Yeah. And I want to thank Kelly, uh, for, uh, you know, she's awesome and, um, so. Well, I just want to thank Commissioner Peters and you and Kelly and the entire team, our, our, our Congresswoman, our, you know, senators and all the folks that have kind of, I mean, again, you'd think this wouldn't be so darn difficult with folks, but all of their efforts for getting us at least closer to where we. So I, I had, um, after I attended the, uh, the hearing at the Transportation Infrastructure Committee on Capitol Hill where, uh, Secretary of the Army, Adam Tell and, um, uh, the, the, uh, commander of the UMS Army Corps were, um, testifying. There's probably 20 members of Congress that asked questions and every one of them, every, I mean, from sea to shining sea, I mean, California, Missouri, Ohio, Arizona, New Jersey, New York, they all had core projects that have installed sometimes for decades because they just can't get permits issued. They can't get decisions made. So the, um, basically the, the, the testimonies, um, suggested pretty strongly that, you know, that's been an ongoing culture problem with the Corps and these new folks are there to change that, to change that culture. And so much so that they actually, uh, terminated, um, their Little Rock, uh, commander, uh, for basically not following instructions because they were taking such a severe enforcement posture on property owners that had property adjacent to core projects. And, um, they said, we're, we're doing what is best. We're putting citizens first. So we, we've got a window here. We've got a, we've got a new attitude there. We need to, you know, I can see the finish line. We need to sprint and get that and get it done. Well, yeah, seeing the finish lines that were important, right? Yeah. And then we know in a couple of years, there'll be a new administration, which gives you new leadership and Lord knows what will happen with that. So it's best that we get it taken care of while we have that window, like Brian said, really important. All right. Well then we'll get the, get that letter put together and up and down the, I guess we can just use the stamp or whatever, but however you guys want. Yeah. I mean, if we want to make some change to that, that's fine. It was just, it's just a sample that Tristan helped and put together and well, again, I'm not hearing about any of those changes. So if we can get the letter done, Brian, if you want to get that put together and walk it up and down the, or use the stamp or whatever, however, get it out. I mean, maybe I'll go hand deliver. It might be more impactful to do that. Sounds good. All right. Everybody okay with that? All right. Um, last thing I wanted to talk about, um, I think a few weeks ago, we had some, um, uh, discussions about brief discussions about, um, a letter that Barry had sent to commissioner Nowicki with some concerns, um, and, um, about, uh, concerns and in terms of, uh, um, um, the way some, some issues were being handled. And, um, and I'm, I'm not going to get, I want to stay general as possible here because, uh, Barry, uh, commissioner Nowicki met with Barry, met with Jill. Then I met with Barry and I met with Joe and for me, and I wrote this note and, you know, you all can weigh in on it if you want, but for me, it was pretty basic. And that is that I think it would be good for all of us to maybe look at what these, the issues that maybe came up through some discussion or some presentation from jewel on our charter and the significance of the people's voice. That's what the charter is as people's voice. County attorney makes interpretations of that, uh, for our use collective individual use. Um, because changes that are made to that come from our residents that just like we did on term term limits last year, that's now part of our charter. Um, so when our, when our residents speak, they tell us. And so I thought we'd talk a little bit from that perspective, more of an educational thing so that we could all make sure we're on the same page. So there's no like, okay, where, where's the confusion? And then, and then the, the second theme was just a general respect for each other. It's respect for each commissioners, our colleagues, our residents, our staff. Um, and to the extent that I'm just going to share one story. And that is that when the previous county administrator, uh, uh, made sure that every conversation with every employee had to be in his presence with a commissioner and, and there's been various pieces of that along the way, the different county administrators. And when I looked at Barry, when we were thinking about hiring him, I asked him, did he have a problem with us? What level? He said, talk to the directors and above. And if the directors give you permission to talk to some other folks below them, that's fine too. Just don't give direction. And to me, that was a, that was a godsend to be able to have conversation and interact and interchange ideas and concepts with our, uh, with our, with the folks that are on the ground doing the work every day. Um, and so I thought that was great. And I think that's the kind of thing we need to kind of look at and, and be appreciative of as we hire keeping Barry, but also in the future and hiring future county administrators that, that that flexibility and that self-confidence that each county administrator brings allows us to have that conversations with these folks that are sitting over here. It is a big deal for me to be able to talk to any of those assistant county administrators and any of our directors. It is worth, you know, so much because, um, you know, we, we, we, it's just the way it should be. So anyway, with that backdrop, and then I asked, uh, Brian, if he might just touch base on our, um, our, our own manual, our own commission manual to see if anything needs to be added to that, or if we seem to be okay, uh, with our manual. Again, these are things that any new commissioner, any ongoing, any older commissioners, Commissioner Latvalo would remind me. Um, I have to be reminded from time to time as well about how we comport, uh, in the interest of being excited about making changes or having changes considered. This is the body that we talked to about that. So when commissioner Scheer comes with an idea to get support from three others here, to have it explored in detail by staff is really, is really important. And so again, making sure that we're all on that same page. So, um, I took the, um, the letter that was written. I listened to the comments that were made after the discussions with, with Vince and then with myself and the two, um, County Administrator and County Attorney. I wanted to, to play this down as far as any further action goes, but rather look at it as a way to just kind of have some just open discussion about if there's any questions, issues that we have with the way we're supposed to behave in certain avenues, that we have that discussion here. Um, and so that's how I want to move forward. And I've opened that conversation. If you guys have any thoughts on that, I'm welcome, willing to hear that. And if not, I'll let Jewel lead the way. Yes. Commissioner Latvalo. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Um, I don't mean to, uh, pick on you at all. Uh, but I think this largely is a waste of time, um, and that our time could be spent doing important things that we were elected to do. Um, you know, we've talked about this letter, I think a whole lot more than we shouldn't have. Um, and you know, uh, commissioner Nowicki and Barry met, I think Joel was there and I've spoke to, uh, both Joel and, uh, Barry afterwards. I've spoke to commissioner Nowicki and, you know, I think, um, Franklin, I've told, um, you know, uh, I've given advice to both commissioner Nowicki and to Barry as to, you know, people just need to move on. And I think too much time has been spent on this topic and, um, you know, um, commissioner Nowicki was elected and I think that's the important thing. And if people are not satisfied with his performance, there is a review process in a couple of years, uh, that, that he, um, if he chooses to partake in, he can partake in at the ballot box. And, um, if people don't like his performance, they can run somebody against him. Um, and you know, one thing that I have, uh, found discovered, um, shortly after I was elected is that, um, and, and I really, when I was in the legislature, I did not realize, um, how powerful the, and this has nothing to do with our current county administrator, because I think he does a wonderful job and my reviews of his performance have shown that. But one thing I did not realize is how powerful our form of government is for, is for our, uh, county administrator. And, um, the, and, and I, you know, once I got elected, I, to this position, I did not, you know, realize that. Um, and so, you know, to your point that a, you know, previous county administrator wouldn't let, you know, county commissioners talk to any employees outside of, you know, y'all's presence with him. I mean, that's on the county commission. That's not on the administrator. Um, the, you know, Barry is as powerful as we make him. And, um, you know, and so, you know, the, the, in the episode in question, um, yeah, there might've been one part that, uh, of the story that was told that commissioner and wiki may not have should have done, but I also wasn't there. And I think it was much to do about nothing. I think the important thing is, is that no laws were broken. He may have violated the charter, but there's no ramifications or violating the charter. And at some, uh, point in time, every single one of us may have violated the charter. And, and there are things that every single one of us, um, I'm sure would not want to be talked about publicly. And so just focusing on, you know, commissioner and a wiki, uh, just because he rubs people the wrong way, I think is a complete waste of time. And our time could be spent doing other things. And I know previously there was talks of having an independent investigation, which I think is the most stupidest idea that I've heard in a long time, uh, in government. But I think if y'all want to do an independent investigation, my idea is to have the tax collector's office do it. Um, because I think we could, uh, do it for free, uh, with him and that would save our, uh, tax, uh, uh, payers, uh, uh, funds. But in, in my time, uh, in this job last, uh, few years, and then campaigning for this job, um, I, I never had any constituent mention, um, you know, violations of the charter or anything like that. And so, you know, I think our, basically our time can be spent doing other things than trying to air, you know, people's laundry just because we don't like them. Thank you. Um, and again, the idea was not to air any laundry. The idea was to make sure that we're clear what the charter says, because you said as powerful as we make him, oh, well, it's really as powerful as the charter allows him to be. Um, and we can make changes to the charter. The residents can make changes to the charter and the charter review committee can make changes to the charter. So it's one or two or three different sources that can come, but ultimately, um, our residents are going to vote on it. And so to me, it's as powerful as the residents choose to make him, um, through the charter. And certainly we have input as we discuss all of that. And I, I just want to make, you know, again, I, we can let this go as far as I'm concerned. If you guys want to let it go, I'm, if we have four people here today that don't want to talk about that aspect of it, I'm fine. If you think it's airing dirty laundry, just to have a general discussion about our charter and the importance of it and the respect that we should have for it and our resident, or that's, then we don't have to do it. But to me, I don't think it hurts at all to have that reflection. And if, and if anybody wants to take it personally, then they need you to look in the mirror. This is really more in my opinion. Now I could see how there can be confusions. I can see what the thought, the thought might cross people's mind and where we might stray and, and knowingly or, or knowingly doing a violation of the charter is, is a problem, not knowing it and doing it. Heck, we can all learn from that. As you say, we probably had some of those along the way. And if somebody calls you out on it, it's like, Oh, I didn't even think about that. So I don't think it hurts us to have that, that session of, of going through and making sure that we're all clear that we all have that, you know, but I don't want to waste your time either. So if there's two other, three other people that share your opinion, then I'll take that and we can call it a meeting. But I'd like to hear from any of the commissioners, if you want to have the discussion that I proposed or not, then we can call it a day. Commissioner? Just really on the, on the, on the policy manual part of that, I didn't come here today with any specific thoughts or recommendations on that. It was actually, it was during Commissioner Peter's chair, chairmanship that she memorialized all of that, which I think was a great thing. And then last year during my chairmanship, I just put some workflow efficiencies in place for the fifth floor regarding proclamations and a few things like that. I think it's a good idea to do a biannual review of the policy manual. So my thought on that would be, is that we, you know, we pick a date in the future at the end of a work session, like we're doing now and give everybody the opportunity to go through and review it and just bring back their thoughts and their ideas of, you know, of whatever changes that we think are appropriate, and then we can discuss them. And if we want to make any changes or, or redactions or improvements or whatever, then we can, we can, you know, discuss and vote them on at that time. So every couple of years. Yeah. I think every, like every two years, every, I think it's a good, a good healthy thing to just review it. And so I would, you know, we've got a lot of kind of chunky work sessions come up some coming up. So maybe once we get through budget season or something, we can, you know, maybe a little later in the summer, just put it at the end of a work session. We'll try to get it done this year. So that will be, then we won't do it for another couple of years later in the, later in the season. Right. That's like a good idea. Any other thoughts on the charter discussion or, I mean, you know, like, like Chris said there, I mean, there's no, there's no penalty for violating the charter. And I don't know exactly if it was, or if it wasn't, Jill may have an opinion on that, but I don't, I don't, I don't know that we're really going to get anywhere having that, having that discussion. I mean, I personally didn't appreciate what happened, but that's just my personal, my personal feeling on it. But I don't know that since there's, there's no penalty mechanism, I don't really know where, where we go with it. So let me ask you a question on the, and again, I'm not, I don't, I certainly appreciate your thoughts on it. And again, like I said, it doesn't lie with me, either way we go. As to charter issues, charter counties are so many of those charter, charters that are put together by the residents of our county are basically helping construct that over time and it changes. What are, what are, what, what have you, do you see anything out there at all that tells you shouldn't be doing this and that's what you get? Or what, what's the, what do you have on that front? Well, I, I did some, you know, research subsequent to the discussion that took place here and you have all heard me say there's no penalty for violating the charter. Um, but I will say I did some research and I can tell you that although there's not like an enforcement mechanism per se, um, there have been some court opinions and some ethics opinions that have turned on a finding of a commissioner acting inconsistently with the city or county charter. Um, so there's been an ethics case that, uh, was brought forward where a county commissioner, I think it was in Charlotte County. Um, the ethics commission found wrongful intent that supported a misuse of position, um, case based upon the fact that the commissioner had acted inconsistently with the, uh, charter. So there are some things out there like that. There's a court opinion where, um, inconsistency with the charter supported a finding of malfeasance to support a recall election. Um, so not, you know, nothing direct. I mean, probably the, probably the most concerning case I found was again, where the court said we find inconsistent action. Um, the court found that there was no sovereign immunity for the commissioner because they were acting outside the scope of their duties. So not enforcement per se, but, you know, depending, I guess, on the facts and circumstances, the opportunity for something else to happen that along the lines of what I've just described. Um, but there's, you know, there's quite a number of counties in the state that have charters. There's 20 counties. Actually, most of our, most of the big urban counties have them. To my knowledge, there's not an enforcement mechanism for any of them. But again, you know, some of these findings that I did find that, you know, it could be problematic for the elected officials, depending on facts and circumstances of the situation. Yeah. Well, again, I think the charters, one of those documents, it's, you know, that a lot of people don't know about it. I'm sure our residents don't know about it. Um, I've gotten a, a better appreciation for it sitting on the charter review committee last year and, and going through that in, in, um, in glorious detail. Um, uh, and some of it was really enlightening, and some of it was just, you know, kind of ho-hum. Um, so, um, in the, in charters for counties there, they're, the way I describe them to people is it's basically like the state constitution. So it's like our local, you know, mini constitution is, is how I would describe it. Um, and for any of you that haven't gone in and looked at it for a while, go and look at it. It's a good, I've, I've reread it, you know, myself a few times here over the last couple of weeks. Um, probably the most interesting thing for you all to take a look at would be section 2.04 that talks about the county wide powers that the county has. Uh, that's probably the best part of the charter from the county's perspective, because it does set forth, you know, areas where we have county wide jurisdiction, not just in the unincorporated areas, but there's a lot of good information in there. It's not terribly long and you're right, the way you describe it. Um, there's the three different ways that it can be modified, all of which have to go to a vote. Um, so the, the, the residents here always have the final say, so on any changes that get made to the charter. So you're very correct in describing it as the, you know, the document that the residents put in place, because whether it's the county, the citizen initiative or a charter review commission that makes a suggested check that suggests a change to the charter, all have to go to a vote. So they're always going to end up on a ballot and the residents will always have the final say. Um, so commissioner Scott, I'm not hearing your, you have any interest in looking at anything today, commissioner ballot, no interest in looking at anything today. As far as the charter conversation goes, I'm not going to trudge through the whole charter. Yeah. It was just a paragraph or two that were related to how we, how we interact and how we, what our powers are versus maybe what Barry's powers are and how they're different. Um, I mean, to, to, you know, kind of walk through that, I don't think would be a bad thing, but as far as, you know, I mean, I think it's commissioner Lavella said, I think it's really up to the voters to kind of decide as far as that piece of it. That was the premise of the letter that I wrote, which is we're just, you know, I'm not, I'm not interested in looking at any of that stuff. So just to me, it was simply about a learning opportunity. Yes. Just to be, just to clarify, Mr. Chairman, um, when I was referring to a waste of time, I was talking about the, um, uh, us talking about the letter again, I wasn't talking about discussing of the charter. Yeah. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not. So if you want to give us a history lesson, since you have many years of, uh, on this earth. I thought I was going to get through the meeting without a comment, but, uh, thank you for that. I appreciate it. And I, and I share your comment regarding the original letter. I'm not really interested in looking at that. This was more about the letter that I wrote that just kind of summarized suggestions. Uh, Mr. Shearer, did you have a comment? Well, I'm thinking about it. You know, I, uh, um, first I want to say that, um, you know, I was a little upset about the letter in general because very, I appreciate your, your concerns, but it wasn't placed on the agenda. So last meeting, I was just like, what in the world's going on here? Because I didn't see the email before the meeting because I was busy preparing for the meeting. So, uh, there's that. Um, but immediately afterward, I was like, well, I better review the charter because what if I've done something wrong? And then all of a sudden everybody's asking me to prove myself innocent here because I didn't even know that was a chart. So I met with Jewel, went through the charter, reviewed it really, you know, I want to make sure all of a sudden I'm not, you know, the guy, everybody's, Hey, what are you doing? So anyway, so I did review the charter. I didn't see anything, uh, in the letter that, uh, raised to the level of a violation of the charter. I just didn't, I reviewed it with an attorney and see it either. Uh, so anyway, reviewing the charter again, fine with me. I, you know, I don't, I want to stay out of trouble, you know, I don't want to do anything wrong. So that's it. But, um, you know, uh, so those are my thoughts on that. Uh, I thought it was a little, the whole episode was a little embarrassing for the commission and I, I want to avoid being seen. We as a commission are very well respected. You know, we don't act like, you know, a small city, uh, you know, commission. Well, I didn't want to say that, but you go ahead. Well, sometimes it can be rather ruckus and I, I don't want to be like that, but, uh, you know, I do want to just really quickly, uh, point out that we have a good commission. Uh, and that just a minute ago, we decided that we want to do a program that another commission would probably extend it for another 15 years. And these are the types of decisions that, um, the people brought us here to do. A lot of people work really hard to get us here to change this commission over. And so I intend to be focused in the future on my mission is lower taxes, uh, protecting our environment, our beaches, maintaining our public's, you know, our roads more and funding our first responder, uh, funding our first responders and then eliminating programs like the one we're just decided we want to get rid of. So that's kind of where I wanted to leave it. If you guys wanted to review, I'll be happy to sit here for two more hours and review the charter. Well, we wouldn't be sitting here for two more hours. I guarantee you we're going to be done at one at the latest, but, uh, I appreciate your comments regarding the overall tenor of our commission. I mean, and it is good. And somebody said, well, tell me a little bit about, I said, well, we have a 30 year old, a 40 year old, a 50 year old, a 60 year old on our commission. We have a lot, you know, a lot of times we get critiqued that, gosh, you don't have anybody representing young. I didn't say 70. There's nobody in this room that's 70 on this board. So stop it. Not yet. Anyway, God willing, I'll get there. Um, but, and I, but I think somebody said, you know, at least all voices are being heard and all voices are being represented at this commission, because unlike some other commissions that may have been older, this commission has a good cross section of age. And I think, uh, and a good, and a good approach to discussing issues. And, and what I've seen is seems to be a genuine respect for each other, which is also important, which is why I came to you last time to get permission from you guys to see if I could pursue the re, you know, naming of a piece of county road one or the gold star thing. Cause I wanted you guys to, you guys are weighed in now. So I'm going to bring that back to you for consideration. I don't want to waste a lot of staff's time in the meantime, unless I've got interest here on this commission. And I did. So that was great. So appreciate your comment on that. Uh, Commissioner Peters, Commissioner Nowicki, any other comments? Okay. You're good. Commissioner Nowicki. Okay. All right. All right. Um, well, I'm going to take, actually, I knew if I wait, pause one, one, go ahead. I mean, obviously I'm very supportive of, you know, reviewing the charter and, you know, I'm fine with that. I think, you know, a fresher for everybody is good. And, and with that, I mean, I think it's good to, you know, review the charter and, and look at, um, you know, the full, the full charter of the powers of everything. Um, you know, as commissioner, you know, sheer just brought up, which, you know, I didn't really know. Um, you know, he didn't know, you know, about the letter to the meeting, you know, I didn't know about the letter until I got the email. Uh, but yet some commissioners knew about the letter before the letter even went out. And so I think, you know, if we're going to, you know, look at, you know, charter roles and responsibilities, well, how did, you know, some commissioners know about the letter before it was emailed while others did not. And so I think we, you know, got to look at the administrator's role within the charter that, you know, like I said, this could have been handled one-on-one. So, um, I think if we're going to review the charter, we need to look at, you know, the administrator's role of giving information equally to all commissioners, because I think that's something that's very important. Well, as it, as it regards this issue, you know, that's a whole nother thing, but generally speaking, I, I think that generally speaking, he does come to talk to each one of us. Yeah. So, so yeah, I'm, I'm in favor of reviewing the charter. Okay. Yeah. All right. Sounds good. Um, and nothing here. I wouldn't, I don't really don't want to review anything again like that. I just want to focus on my mission here. You don't want to read. I'm saying, I wouldn't be in favor of reviewing emails. And when people got letters, I didn't mean to imply that at all. I just want to stick to my mission. Yeah. Well, the idea is not that the idea would be just to look through the charter as it relates to the performance and, uh, of our actions, but I'm not, I'm not getting a like warm fuzzies here to, to have that conversation today. And as far as I'm concerned, I've had the chance to look through the charter. I feel pretty comfortable with it. I went, sat through many, many, almost a year of conversations about the charter and bringing things to the vote for our residents. And I'm not, again, I think Vince made a comment about, he'd like to see, uh, have discussion about the charter, but I've really not gotten a sense that we have, uh, four people here who want to chat about the charter. Um, so I'm going to let it go, um, and, um, consider the whole, the whole issue here, uh, done, but I would suggest if you haven't looked at it, it is important to understand what our role is in the context of, of how we govern and how our residents want us to govern. And, and the interpretation of that is with our county attorney. Um, and we can have that debate here on any issue. Like she has an interpretation. We can have that dialogue right here that we disagree and here's why, or, or she can tell us why she feels a certain way about an issue, but essentially that is our residents voice to us about how we're supposed to conduct our business. So having said that, I'm not going to belabor. Is there anything else that anybody needs to bring up? Yes, Commissioner Peters, go ahead. So I, I brought this up. I think I've brought this up twice now and brought it up today. And I, I misspoke and said water wise. And what I meant was the stars program. And I brought this up and, and asked that you look into putting that stars program into our building department so that any new construction would be inclusive of water saving energy units and, um, landscaping apparatus. And so now I think this is the third time I've brought it up and I don't know that we've done that. My intuition tells me we have not, but we know that there could potentially be water shortages. We know that the bills are going up and we also know we don't have enough reclaim. And if we're allowing building permits for brand new construction, why are we not making sure they are using the stars program to ensure that they are doing smart irrigation and smart water appliance, especially affordable housing? Why are we not making sure that that's completely inclusive in our plan? It just, to me, it just doesn't make sense. And here we had this whole conversation about not having enough water to push to Tierra Verde. Yet we're developing tons of this county. Reclaim, reclaim, reclaim, well, reclaim water, but still, but still it's, we don't have enough for reclaim water, but we're not making sure any new development is using irrigation, which is reclaim water as, as part of our policy. And I just don't understand why we have not, and I, and I have brought it up. It's been more than two years since I brought it up because I learned about it when I was on Tampa Bay water. And then I was off Tampa Bay water for two years. So, so I brought this up while I was still on there, the first round. So I, I just don't understand why that is not a fundamental. You, you did bring it up commissioner. Yeah. Okay. And I thought we did discuss this as a follow up, but maybe we didn't, but we did research that. And I'd be happy to bring you regulations that'll put additional requirements on our developers that I think this commission would have, would struggle with because it's, it's going to be regulatory, but let us get you the research and I'll bring it back to you. If it's brand new construction and they're putting an irrigation system in there, uh, uh, uh, uh, the new irrigation irrigation system is not going to be much more than a regular irrigation. So an irrigation system is an irrigation system. We did the research. So let me, let me bring that back to you. So yeah, bring it back to me because if there's a way that we could do that, that can keep water bills down, um, it would keep water bills down. And I'm not looking to put extra burdens on developers at all. But I do think if you're looking at one irrigation system versus another irrigation system, it's not a lot of money. Um, and then hopefully we have enough water in our system to make sure we can provide tier 30 with reclaimed water. It's a simple, we don't have to do the whole program, but we certainly can do the irrigation piece on new developments. It just doesn't make sense. It's been a long time. I don't want to re I, I remember pieces of it, but I don't remember at all. So I'd rather bring it back as a, as an agenda item for discussion. Well, again, I think we had the discussion about availability of reclaim being an issue. So even though we have a policy that says that there's a line out in front of your property, right, you can plug in, we have a problem with availability. So whether that new development that you're talking about has a line out in front or not, is a whole different issue, may not have a line out in front. So we don't have the, we're not going to build more infrastructure to provide. I will bring this back to you in April. All right. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Last piece, last piece to close the meeting. You've got a full agenda on the 19th. So please, we're going to have lunch, maybe dinner. Okay. So please don't block off, you know, for time. You've got North County Service Center update, Palm Harbor Recreation Center update, downtown Clearwater properties discussion, Lelman initiatives, and the vulnerability assessment. So we've got some pretty meaty topics. So just plan accordingly. Go through it. Go through one more time that list, please. So you've got the North County Service Center. We're going to bring you the maximum guaranteed price for our new service center up north. The Palm Harbor Recreation Center guaranteed maximum price. Right. The downtown Clearwater properties and where we're going with that. We've discussed that individually with you. Now you need to discuss it as a commission. Um, Lelman initiatives and we're in, and, and all the programs that Amy Davis is running out there and the vulnerability assessment with Kelly. So, well, we'll give you lunch. All those don't count on dinner. Okay. So it better be done by five. Just, so just please plan accordingly. All right. Okay. All right. Thank you. Anything else, guys? All right. We're adjourned.