communications and everybody who was here last night and especially our vice chair for chairing the meeting good job last night i thought that was really good and a lot of good feedback from our residents so but thank you communications for stepping up and doing that yesterday and being at the ready this morning so all right we've got uh solid waste care about me office of human rights uh we're going to move the clearwater parcel disposition update to tuesday correct um and then we'll have the agenda briefing after that so let's get started with the solid waste department hello there mr sacco good morning morning commissioners paul sacco the director of solid waste department with me this morning is cassie hartman she's our manager of business and financial services lift that up to your lift this up closer to you if you don't mind it's just i'm not picking you up sorry about that there you go so today we're going to be providing updates on the power brokering sales for power generated by the waste energy facility give you an update on the fiscal year 27 tip fee recommendation as well as the lalman msbu solid waste collection rate recommendation so first up with power brokering power brokering began in january 1st 2025 that began after the expiration of our power purchase agreement in december of 2024 any power that is not brokered on the open market is actually what we say dumped to the local utility which is either duke energy or the seminole electric cooperative rainbow energy is our power broker and the way that they are paid is they get 10 of any revenue that's generated on the open market but it has to be the revenue that's generated above the power that we would dump to duke so they're you know they're motivated to sell power at a rate that's greater than what we can just sell to duke as an as available rate apex power is our power power consultant they help us with reconciliations with invoices that are coming from rainbow energy and the hourly charges that are coming every month associated with that and they also help us identify possible other power purchase agreement or power purchase opportunities with other utilities uh in the state or even outside the state so this chart shows the existing markets and rates this chart was shared with you last year as well you can see the green line at the top that represents the um the power sale market and and and what is being brokered on the open market the green line there so as you can see through 2028 it still shows that power brokering remains the best option for for us to generate the maximum amount of revenue for power that's generated in 2028 that begins to shift a little bit you see a break even and then in the in the out years it appears that duke's as available rates which may either be just selling our our power to duke outright or maybe entering into a power purchase agreement at that point in time maybe it may be the best opportunity so staff will continue to monitor and we'll assess and we'll react and bring recommendations back to the board as we get into the out years but we always have that backstop of a power purchase agreement with duke if we feel like we need that what paul what what's creating that that spike in 20 i'm sorry maybe i missed that no um usually every utility has different operating components for demand and what they generate and then they also have their plans they they issue their 10-year plans every year that talk about how much solar they're going to do they can have plants that are expiring so in this case i don't know specifically what's happening inside of duke but usually plants are expiring and they're generating different capacities or with a spike like that where they're saying they want to pay more for power they may be in a in a dip where they don't have enough power available and they may have to buy more so they may be predicting well that's what i think is being forecasted here and what drives that is the open market for power okay thank you and everything here that you see is all driven on the natural gas market so you know what i understand and i know enough to be dangerous is in the natural gas market for every dollar of natural gas per therm that increases results in about five dollars per megawatt that we can generate and and uh put on put on the open market for retail so natural gas prices have been suppressed for a very long time and they continue to be we're not seeing much change in that over the next 10 years when i was talking to the power consultant so unless there's changes that are happening within the utilities that we can can uh are connected to or operate um with shifts like that it may or may not drive what we see on the on the open market as far as what we can we can sell but this is the best that we know at this point in time so just a little um comparison for what was forecasted last year and what the actuals that we received so we were forecasting 480 megawatt hours to be generated at the waste energy facility that's based on you know on the the tons that we believe that are coming in the the processing rates in which we experience with the facility taking into account the scheduled outages that need to take place so 480 is kind of our baseline last year we achieved a little less than 340 and almost all of that was attributed to a vibration that we had in our turbine generator number one and then turbine generator number one was actually removed for service for the entire month of december for a major overhaul so we weren't in the you know we weren't able to achieve the 480 000 that we were hoping to achieve now moving down to the the dollars per megawatt this would be net now after we were selling our power in the open market and we paid rainbow we paid for our transmission to get the power you know outside of the duke territory we were forecasting 27 dollars a megawatt we actually achieved something you know greater than almost 37 dollars a megawatt so it was a it was a good year as far as um a rate goes um when you look at the forecasts with the net revenue that we were looking at at 12.9 million we came in at 12.8 and that was really because of that difference and the increase of the the actual revenues that we were able to achieve for that higher rate if turbine generator was available like it was supposed to be through the vibration and the event we were looking at something we were going to be on the on the you know on the path to achieve something more in line of about 18 million so to me this validates that power brokering is still the best option for us and we'll continue along that path and all that just goes back into our capital fund for it goes back into the solid waste reserve that we'll use for operation capital and whatnot yes sir i just commissioner sheer that that the 12 million that goes back into reserves for the power plant every year it goes into the solid waste um reserve so they're an enterprise fund so whatever they spend and and run over revenue is all is within one bucket you you can't spend it outside of that use yeah i i sorry i just wanted to clarify every year 13 million just goes into reserves and we don't well no no no they i mean it's it's used for their long term and they have post closure requirements and everything so they have very large reserves that they have to have for the landfill etc and stuff and the replacement of the plant and everything like that but i just wanted to remind the board it is an enterprise fund and so it is restricted and and the use of the funds it was a discussion about the reserves though i think even though we know it's right you know targeted for that you would be interesting to to have a feel for what that is yeah we can do that yeah yeah okay i just had as long as we're doing questions on um rainbow did you have to have a license to be a broker for power that's a good question i don't i don't know that i i would have to find that out i know there's not many in the in you know domestically in the u.s um it's usually a a talent that comes from that industry but i i don't know that i i i'd have to find that out sir one other question real quick if we chose to go direct to duke sometime would that require a broker no so the the 10 percent we wouldn't have to take them correct correct go ahead okay um that's a good segue actually into the the next part when we're looking at the the tip fee recommendation for 2027 so i just want to take a minute just as a review as i mentioned the 30-year uh power purchase agreement with duke energy expired in december of 2024 that was a 30-year agreement that was heavily benefited pinellas county um i don't think at the time when it was generated a lot was known about waste energy i mean i can say that for sure um we were one of the first out of the gate pinellas was and then others kind of followed um but it was so heavily slanted towards us that the last year of payments that we received from that power purchase agreement for capacity payment alone i think was in excess of 50 or 60 million dollars so when that agreement expired that represented about 55 percent of the revenue that was coming into the solid waste fund for for operations and whatnot and as barry said since we are an enterprise fund 55 percent is a giant hole for us to to to bridge so power brokering as you can see we were on target to to generate maybe about 18 million dollars on power sales alone the standard power purchase agreement that we were being offered by duke was somewhere in the neighborhood at 12 so we went from a very high lucrative power purchase agreement almost to the floor and we're just trying to gain back a little bit more for maximizing the power of the 18 million the other major source of revenue coming into the fund is the tipping fees and our tipping fees really were not raised for 25 years we didn't start increasing the tipping fees until 2019 the department spent several years trying to renegotiate the power purchase with duke energy and wasn't able to do that so realizing that the standard offer wasn't only the only thing we needed to do we knew we were coming up to a cliff in 2024 so we put a strategy together looking at the the rate studies and coming back to the board and at that time the board adopted the strategy that we would start increasing tipping fees at a steady rate over a long period of time instead of waiting until we got to 2024 and doing a gigantic stair step increase and then other continued increases on top of that so from 2019 to date the increases have been around six percent six and a half percent last year the board adopted a three year over year increase beginning in 26 at eight percent for eight percent 26 27 and 28 the recommendation stands as you'll go through or we go through the slides today at that eight percent but i just wanted the board to kind of understand the background and the history is the trajectory that we're on we need to continue to increase tipping fees because our operating expenses are higher than what we would see with the revenues coming in and the operating expenses aren't just solid waste department the operating expenses is the processing fees that we receive for putting trash through the waste energy facility the fees that we need to landfill those things that are not going through the waste energy facility they're two of the biggest contracts that the county owns and together they're probably 40 45 million dollars uh a year to operate those two contracts so you're going to see our break-even point if we continue to operate or or continue to increase our fees is around 2038 and you know i'll talk a little bit more as we get there but that's a little bit of the background or where we are so why it looks great that we're receiving these revenues for power that's only a portion of what's needed to make the fund whole as far as operating year over year we're actually going to be taking money out of reserves to bridge that gap until we reach that break-even point so that's that's the that's the plan that's the that's the trajectory that we're on right now as a department and i'm just factors that are so the factors into that increase are not just the duke energy contract that expired no that was the one that we were concerned about clearly but even to this year's looks like we hit what we were getting from them anyway i mean this past year well just just for what they would have offered for a for a standard offer when you look at where we were we're at 50 or 60 million oh you're talking about the oh yeah the old contract yeah yeah so we're looking to bridge that 40 million dollars in revenue over time and the only way to do that is to increase our tipping fees because it's the only other place we can go unless there's some market ratific or radical change in the market where we're getting you know a lot more money for our electric power which we don't see because gas isn't really moving or doing anything so that that intersection point that you're talking about we're going to see that when when are we going to you're going to in a few slides i wanted i wanted just to you know kind of back up just so you have the history on that we tried for years to renegotiate that duke the duke contract and they really had no incentive to renegotiate because it's a closed system i can't i can't buy power outside of that and we can't even take the the um the power that we use or that we generate and send it over to operate our wastewater treatment systems they can only use it on that site on the way the regulatory structure works so they were willing to negotiate until they were successful in tallahassee and once they were successful in tallahassee then there was no more negotiation because they didn't need us so just so you understand that they have a closed system um and you and you cannot operate outside of that that's the reason we've had to kind of restructure this and that's all occurred in the last five six years can we send them power when we want to and turn it well that's the brokering that he's doing okay and because we we we proposed a lot of different options um but they weren't interested because they have a they have a closed system um you know that we went through that for years and we met with their senior executives from north carolina and and and everyone trying to find a solution on this so unless we have a power purchase agreement and there's even in the power purchase agreement what you sell your power at varies because they treat us as a utility so they're buying and selling power and treating us like they would buy and sell power from any other utility which is really low then they turn around and sell it at a retail rate that's really high so we don't get that benefit we're never allowed to sell our power retail on the market we can only sell to other utilities so we can always dump our power to duke because they're in you know they're our local utility we're connected to them if we want to send our power out of state we have to send it through duke energy's um you know region or their zone we have to pay them for the use of their transmission so we may sell our power at forty dollars a megawatt hour but we usually have to pay them eight dollars a megawatt hour as a fee to get the power out of state so it's just it's the way that they have it set like barry said it's a closed system we're fortunate enough that we only have to go through one utility to get outside of florida people in south florida have to go through two at least to get out so it's puts pressure on what we can sell outside and if for some reason you know the the sale is not you know attractive enough because of the transmission then we end up selling the money to or selling our power to duke anyway so with that you know as i mentioned the board approved a three-year over year increase of eight percent for fiscal years 26 through 28 the annual rate study was performed by ref telus um and it was actually presented to the solid waste technical management committee your advisory committee and that was brought back for for your review each year the rate study considers operating revenues uh as well as expenditures the capital improvement plan any planned operational changes they look at industry indices as well as landfill closure and long-term maintenance for a closed landfill all those components have to be considered and a lot of those components remain in our reserve because some of them are things that have to happen you know in the future and we need time to build the reserves up to make sure there's money there when these things actually are required to to be asked to be performed so the key changes since last year that we're bringing forward our municipal waste volumes that are coming to our facility remain high they're almost 15 to 20 percent you know month over month what we've seen before the storms in 2024 and we expect that we're going to continue to see those increases because people now are just getting permits and they're starting to do their construction and we're seeing a lot of construction material as well as materials that are being pulled actually from the inside of your houses so why it's not the fine storm debris like you would see right after the storm it is storm debris in a sense that it's delayed because people are still doing construction and we're seeing those volumes we have a new waste energy operator that that took over the facility in january 1st their processing rate the processing rate of the old facility operator was forty dollars a mega or forty dollars a ton that was being put through the facility the new rate came back at 34.25 i think is the rate we were budgeting or forecasting at 32 so we didn't get as low so while we did achieve you know a five dollar plus increase it was still a couple dollars more than what we were hoping for as we were going through negotiations uh the solid waste reserve investment income was a little bit higher than we were forecasting last year um again things that we don't have any control over with that no significant changes in in our capital costs that were that were predicted last year and some of these um key changes actually lowered our out year rate increases in the 30-year plan and actually pulled forward the break-even point the fiscal year 38 when we first got on the trajectory of doing these increases that break-even point i think was at fiscal year 40 or fiscal year 41 so we are making a little bit of gain with that and i think we're benefiting from additional monies coming in with the additional volumes uh that we weren't really prepared to um but the other things kind of remain the same from what we saw last year so this goes and actually we'll show you where our break-even point is you can see that 2038 are where the lines kind of reduced down so the dark green represents the funds coming from our tipping fees the light green is funds that we come from other revenues other revenues are your electricity sales uh metal recovery revenue and also the interest income that we would see on our on our reserves and then the orange represents the amount that's actually being pulled from the solid waste reserves the bridge the gap between our operating and our operating revenues and expenditures until we get out to that break-even point i just wanted to pause there make sure you you understood and you're you're good with that okay next up is the key assumptions for capital so you can see these are all over the map um i'm proud of our team i'm proud of the the you know the the previous operator of of of the waste energy facility as well as the the new operator coming in we're looking at almost 480 million dollars of proposed cip projects over over the next cip period which is 36 to 37 most of that is with waste energy and you say that's a lot of money it is a lot of money but when you look at you know the mission to reduce what's going to the landfill because we'll never get another landfill waste energy reduces that waste by 90 percent there's no other technology there's no other process there's no other silver bullet that's going to do that other than waste energy the board has invested 240 million dollars to refurbish that facility from 2016 to 2022 to bring it and extend that life another 20 25 years this money is for things that are just going to happen in the plant during that period of time where you're going to have tube leaks known total room work and other systems and components in that system that are planned so this is all planned work that we think we're going to be doing over that period you know in the out years we may be looking at a bulky waste facility where we would actually shred large materials that come into the facility that don't fit into the waste energy facility right now all those materials are being landfilled like boats couches mattresses things like that we're hoping that we'll be able to divert some of the materials that are going to waste energy to make room for these shredded materials that would be able to come in at a later date we're in the process of refreshing our 30-year master plan that was adopted in 2020 and before we get into these major spend elements we want to make sure that we're still doing the right thing the environment hasn't changed technology technology hasn't changed but you're talking about generational type investments we just want to make sure we're on solid ground before we come back to you and recommend pulling the trigger on some of these projects the enhanced metals recovery project that's a 20 million dollar project that's something we would put on the back end of the facility and this is actually a payback i've talked about this to the board before we know that we're actually burning gold in the backyard there are fines in the materials for the non-forest metals that we we have piloted and have demonstrated that we're putting about one and a half to two million dollars of fines that we cannot get out through the regular you know metals extraction of waste energy and they're just being buried with the ash in the landfill so by putting this enhanced metals recovery system at the back end you know two two and a half million dollars a year in recovery we have the the new operator sees that they want to contribute 50 percent of that 20 million because they see that this is going to be a revenue generator for them because we actually split the revenues of the metals that are recovered from the facility so this would be a joint venture between us and the operator um i think the rest of that speaks for itself the only other thing that i would say is the the bars in the out years that look like a steady stream that is ref tell us plugging in capital costs that are kind of our average over legacy spends and then putting an annual escalator on that we come back to you every year with an update so you're going to see these bars kind of move but we needed to plug in a capital number for the 30 years to make sure that we're getting a good number to come back and recommend a rate you know when we're looking at the the fund over a long period of time questions on anything with the capital again we're building the reserves looks like up in 27 28 that's what the increased tipping fees help us get there yes and then of course we're spending it down too and then yeah and you know we have reserves now that are helping us with that so we're not having to borrow we're not anything like that we do have reserves to make this happen and we're fortunate enough that we have the reserves to bridge the gap to support you know the the strategy of increasing those fees over a long period of time are these the reserves that we sometimes use for interdepartmental capital loans that's correct so um and we'll come back and have a specific conversation about uh their reserve levels um but they do have like post-closure requirements so they have to have they have to set aside a certain amount for things uh like that but we can outline that i also want just to highlight you saw in its first chart a rate stabilization fund so when we originally looked and we were losing the duke amount we took uh one-time money and and so it was a planned expenditure that way you didn't see spikes in the increases we would have to you know increase it a lot over and and so that was a planned drawdown of of that one-time money to be able to get us out to that point where we're going to break even and stuff so it was all of those things but this is the fund that if we rather than go to a bank and borrow money we could we could borrow money from here like if we had a hurricane or something like that that we couldn't cover up through our own reserves we could take a loan out pay it back with interest because this is a enterprise fund but that's how we would do an enter fund loan and we've done that we did that before before i got here you you did that with um some capital projects in anticipation of the penny after the penny had passed in 2017 i think you did a loan either that or or the previous one it was the previous one yeah and so you took a loan out advancing some capital projects until the penny started coming in then you paid it back so so it is it is a good stabilization fund for us commissioner sheer uh what's in the fund who manages it say again what what dollar amount is in the fund and who manages it um i i don't know that off the top of my head paul might we're we're over 400 million in the fund and the clerk of the court actually manages all the funds as far as where monies go for for interest and and whatnot but we'll come back and show you because what we'd have to show you is what we're required to have versus what we have and the drawdowns and things like that we'll we'll prepare a a presentation and have that discussion okay thanks okay okay so just finding a recommendation coming again from this year's study so you know as mentioned minimal changes since last year therefore the recommendation is for the board to adopt and remain remain the course with the eight percent for fy27 um that fy27 increase you can see there represents a four dollar and 71 cent increase per ton that's coming across the scales at the facility so we estimate that a single family home in pinellas generates about one ton of waste per year so that would be 471 annually the increase they would see is about 39 cents per month now you know you have the municipalities that are doing the collections and transports and all that the disposal is part of you know their components of what they're charging the public we don't really control that other than what we see in in loma where we actually do the franchise collection but that really is the input impact from a disposal standpoint from the facility that would be the impact per year at that new rate of 63 57 and then the next chart is kind of put this in perspective when you're looking at uh tipping fees across the state so you'll see those with waste energy facilities are denoted on top of the bars you can see the the existing fee for pinellas county in the first light blue bar the new proposed tipping fee rate for pinellas county in the second blue bar the state average is you know what 82 almost 80 yeah a little over 82 dollars um a ton so you see pinellas remains below the average we've always been below the average um and then you can see how the other waste energy facility municipalities stack up and lee county palm beach county in addition to tip fees they also charge a non non ad valorem assessment for collection and disposal that goes into the the component that you see there you know on the bar chart yeah so always being below the the the average is probably because of that rate we had that correct we're lagging so now we're we're catching up in a few years we'll probably be more towards the norm the mean uh i don't i don't know commissioner because i think everybody's moving at the same time you know i i think we've we've had the benefit of of that and i think we'll get the remain near the back of the pack i'm not saying we won't increase we will but i think everybody's moving up because we've seen this shift over the last six years almost almost the same as ours i mean the cost of business out there whether you're a waste energy landfill you know the price of doing business in this industry is the same for all so wherever you are on the chart you're just going to kind of move up with whatever that is you're saying our increases eight percent is more than just and i think i mentioned a second ago more than just the well i think the eight percent for this year is a little bit more than what we've had in the past i think we're going to see that dip i don't think we'll be at eight percent again i think we're going to be probably more in the the six percent when we go through these studies you know maybe in 28 or 29 um i don't know exactly what the others are seeing but i believe it's about the same i think it's in that six to eight percent bar is is my understanding i'm understanding that you know those solid waste rates in cities are significantly increasing yep becoming it all it all flows through it's not just the tipping fees but correct i mean you're looking at labor your transportation you know the collection you know with the fuel prices going up i mean all those are components to what's being charged to the citizen for collection at their at their home so that's it on the on the tipping fee update i don't know if there's any more questions with that before i transition into bringing cassie up to talk about the lelman i do want to let you you know i give you a little bit of background here as well we were here last year and we were recommending a a two-year increase uh for 26 and 27 uh between my department solid waste and omb we had some administrative uh confusion as far as the timing and getting this as a public hearing item and getting it right for before the september 15th deadline to enact this as a as a uh a non-ad valorem assessment that actually worked in our benefit in a sense that we went we were going out for a new collection contract for the lelman franchise the area and that rate that we received back is much less than what was forecasted so the fund was able to survive for 2026 but in 2027 we are going to need some type of increase because there's great pressure because we didn't increase in 2026 so we've run almost to the bottom of the barrel as far as available funds but like i said it's now based on what i believe is a firm collection contract rate that we know where last year we didn't know and we promised we were going to come back and and maybe maybe adjust based on what we found so the delay worked in our favor but i do apologize on behalf of us and omb for any confusion that may have uh may have caused but cassie's going to come up and run through what's comprised with those two increases for both 27 and 28 that's going to be recommended to you oh yes question um not a question i just want to thank you again um for going to mainlands mainlands if you don't know is a very large community in pinellas park and they were getting frustrated because we had uh some issues that and we had to put more stuff in the landfill than we normally do and um so they were getting a lot of trash dumped in their yard from the birds and so and when in the it's the largest turnout i've seen at mainlands ever from the people coming to talk to paul and they were not happy when they walked in but when they left they they weren't happy but they weren't as upset so i want to thank you for keeping a calm head and and um and helping them understand and just it you did a really great job so thank you i appreciate that thank you so with that i'm going to have cassie come on up good morning commissioners morning so this morning um cassie hartman from solid waste as paul mentioned um i'm going to be talking to the lealman msbu solid waste collection disposal fund um as you see pictured here is a map representing the collection area of the lealman lealman franchise um it's west of 275 a little east of 58th street north starting at about 40th avenue north going up to about primarily 62nd avenue the colors represent the collection zones we took this map from the current uh collection vendor the fund was put together in an effort to minimize the illegal dumping a while ago it's managed completely within itself that's why the pressures of the expenditures and the fund that we are experiencing are really important to make sure that we're staying on top of what those increases are as as we mentioned in 2023 the fund had added pressure because not only did the cost of inflation go up but also we had an increase in participation in the fund we had two large mobile home parks join and it increased the number of units that were participating at an expedited rate in order to save the fund in that sense the solid waste operating fund acted as the bank and loaned 300 000 to the fund to be able to continue operations we then adopted the 24 increase for 24 and 25 we made the recommendation to do the increase for 48 dollars in 26 as that didn't happen as paul mentioned we're recommending the same thing for 27 and 28 the contract originally for the collection was we were forecasting 54 to 102 dollars per unit increase for the year it came in an additional only 20 dollars per year per unit the rate study was completed by raft helis this year and that shows where we are today 26 is at 20 dollars and 68 cents the bottom visual that you're looking at is the bid that came in for waste management who is the selected vendor and the new rate will be at 22 25 and then there will be five percent escalation increases to the contract year over year the current annual assessment is 240 dollars with the proposal of 48 dollars that'll take it to 288 per year for 27 and then for 330 it'll be 336 and 28 after those two years when we get the fund back stabilized in 29 we'd be able to do increases that are more stable and in alignment with the collection contract where we saw that five percent increase over year year over year because the assessment increase did not go into place for fy26 the fund does have a little bit of opportunity where we have to do some administrative things to make sure that we don't run out of cash flow specifically the loan payback that we talked about previously in fy26 we plan to pay back thirty thousand dollars towards that this year we'll need to drop that to about ten thousand eleven thousand dollars to make sure that we have cash flow going into the new fiscal year so that is one change that we'll need to make so this just shows we are still making that recommendation we delete it by a year there were no increases to the fy26 assessment 27 and 28 again we're recommending that 48 increase which is the same recommendation as last year and then post fy29 we'll reevaluate and we should be able to keep the increases just very small and in alignment again with the collection contract and that's all i have do you have any questions so these rates include that assessment that assessment per unit yeah the assessment is currently 240 dollars per year right and then the increases it would be 288 dollars per year and this gets the fund health if you remember we got we had a change in contractors a couple years ago that put the fund negative so that's the reason they had to do another fund loan to it again this area is treated as a special assessment and and so we phased that in but we also now have a new vendor that dropped their costs down so it's a combination of all those and this gets us out to where the fund gets aligned out post 2028 so the rates that you're showing us are that covers what correct yes yes it's a back hole to where the the the um the franchise fee which is what this is it's a franchise area where everybody's using one vendor um you know unlike other unincorporated areas now it's it's right there and it's on your tax bill and and so this is this gets that fund back in alignment because the um assessment didn't go into play in 26 the fund is at risk of running out of cash so the increases that you see here for 27 and 28 although the contract um proposal came in much less than we anticipated it worked in a benefit for us not having done the assessment in 26 so it's the same recommendation for the next two years to stabilize the fund and then once the the reserves are built back up um we'll be able to just keep the increases in alignment with the contract the collection contract not need the assessments the assessment was it is the way the fund takes money in is by assessment that is the only way the revenue comes in is by assessment yes i got you this covers the franchise fee yes commissioner newick thank you chair uh thank you for the update um what's the reserve add or percentage of the budget i mean is there any reserve numbers you have um i don't have it showcased here however the forecasted projection the ending reserve balance is projected to end at 392 000 this year and it's projected in 27 if no assessment increase is made to end in the negative okay thank you you're welcome anybody else okay just yes did you have yes thank you uh the assessment itself is it assessed to individual parcels or property i don't understand yes it's done by the parcels uh there are communities like mobile home parks where they enter in as a community but it is by resident and it's um it's applied to the tax bill and it's a flat fee or is it based on their millage rate or the way of the way a franchise let me just cover that real quick the way a franchise thing would work is you you could do this in any part of unincorporated where you take and say okay in this zone we're gonna we're gonna do it we're gonna create this as a franchise now that's going to go on their assessment and you can do it as a bill um and that way you have one single provider not everybody individually going out and getting a a contract and and so you you have that in a lot of homeowners associations you have that in a lot of mobile home parks and things like that they've done this for lowman and this was done years ago i forget which one yeah it was a long time ago it is a non-ad valorem assessment so it has nothing to do with any of the the millage or anything like that it is a non-ad valorem assessment it's one time per year on the tax bill the assessment for is the assessment for a for your garbage collection one bedroom apartment the same as a three-bedroom house in an apartment that's a commercial so these are residential only but how how is it done is it based on the size of the home or anything it's just no it's just one yep one person one unit and that was done again years ago yes thank you uh chair um and so you so we entered into a new contract with the new franchisee for the trash pickup yeah periodically we bid it out and we when we bid it out then we get people bidding on it and then that becomes the new rate that we use so that happened recently so county sanitation was our prior prior prior um collector collection vendor coastal bought out county sanitation so it's currently coastal the contract was due to expire at the end of december this year of 2026 we did the rfp early in an effort to make sure we could get these rates nailed down ahead of budget um we just did it you should see the contract come through very soon so that that bid was the evaluation was completed so the contract is in process of being executed now okay but then we increase our tip fees at plant where they take the trash now they're going to come back in a few years and increase but they need to charge because we're increasing our rates and then we're going to have to go back and increase more again right i mean so the contract here it has they have yeah this contract right here if you look at the bottom the visual it'll it has the rates built out for the next five years of the contract which is a five percent escalator they are aware that our our rates increase and we do pay more because of the disposal and that's an evaluation that we'll do when we do the rate studies with the five percent increases from 29 but i i strongly believe that we'll be able to keep closer in line with the five maybe six percent just because of administrative stuff you know we have we paid the tax collector to collect the money on the tax bill so there's a two percent on any revenues we take in so of course we have to take into account for those items when we're looking at the assessment and we got a great tax collector we do thank you anything else any other questions no all right thank you all things solid waste for today you're ready you're ready okay next item up is care care about me update and so karen's on has a presentation for you good morning commissioners so this morning i'm going to talk to you about our care about me update and i'm going to walk you through three areas so program updates marketing updates and then future planning so just a reminder the care about me program was first initiated by kpmg who came in to provide recommendations for our system of care in pinellas county specific to mental health substance use and addiction services the care about me pilot is the first of its kind in the state this was launched may of 2024 almost exactly two years ago today the hours of operation for the cam monday through friday 8 a.m to 10 p.m saturdays 10 a.m to 6 p.m and it provides a multi-channel access for residents to call text chat or go online and request services on their own this program also allows a strong referral pipeline from community partners so if we have residents that are working with community service providers they can call with the resident that they're working with or they can submit an online referral to connect that resident to a behavioral health service our current vendor is unite us the annual budget is right around 1.4 million dollars per year and that agreement runs through september 30th of this year with renewal options available the provider network that we are working with we currently have 24 different behavioral health organizations with 66 programs and on average per week we have 250 appointment slots available for residents so this is a slide you've seen before um in the in the updates that have been sent in and this really just provides an overview of of who we've served and how well the program has served residents so to date we've served right around 2800 residents of those around 1300 have agreed to have an appointment booked on their behalf so just a reminder the cam does the assessment and books the appointment with the provider so it really takes that lift off the resident having to look for appointments on their own our appointment attendance has increased over the last few months so we were typically right around 38 so of the appointment scheduled right around 38 of those residents would attend their appointment and over the last few months we've increased that to right around 49 are in are attending their appointments the average call time is right around 20 minutes so you make the call you speak to a clinician they collect demographic information they do various assessments to really make sure that they can match you with the most appropriate service they book the appointment they send you reminders that entire interaction is 20 minutes so it's it's really efficient right now appointment availability is right around zero to seven days so if someone wants an appointment today if someone wants an appointment tomorrow they can more than likely get in the average time that residents are choosing to have an appointment is right around 12 days so they're making the appointment you know to match their life you know life gets in the way of things and right around 12 days is when they're selecting that appointment on average it takes about 3.5 contacts per resident so sometimes we're calling them back so if you request a service at midnight let's say you submit the referral in the specialist come in the next morning and it may take a few times to contact you and then that also includes those reminder calls of your upcoming appointment we have about a 26 no-show rate so that really is someone has had an appointment booked for them and they just do not show up for their appointment and that remaining i'll say 25 from appointments attended and no-shows are patients who book the appointment and then call and later decline or reschedule so you know we're right you know and i would say that's that's that's better than typical kind of non-profit behavioral health work you're usually seeing greater than a 30 percent show rate no-show rate so now i would like to move into the marketing so the marketing for care about me really has two parts so we have a small part within the current vendor and that really was focused i would say kind of more on the typical social service human service marketing strategies so tabling events um submitting flyers in-person engagement working with referral sources but it really wasn't the splash and so last year i'll move into the next slide last year the board approved the use of human services contracting with bkn creative and we we did that through our opioid settlement miscellaneous funds and so part of those funds can be used for um prevention marketing warm handoff programs which which this with this program qualifies for so bkn is a human center they developed a human-centered storytelling marketing campaign that builds trust visibility and sustained engagement for pinellas residents it is a hyper local marketing strategy multi-channel creative content really designed to reduce stigma and to ask residents to like a call to action to make those appointments the goal was to ensure cam was not only visible but it was a trusted remembered resource specific to pinellas residents that annual contract was 600 000 that contract ends september of this year sorry for the typo it's september 30th of this year and again that was funded through opioid settlement miscellaneous funds and now i'd like to walk you through um what that firm has done um since august of last year so the first place that this really is this is the website so this is where all marketing goes back to so qr codes will link back to the website flyers online ads everything really brings you back to this place and this is where residents can request services on their own providers can sign up to be a cam provider and you can learn more about that this last year we had over 30 000 visits to the website and since that marketing firm took place we've had 28 000 new visits to the website so we are really seeing an impact as far as traffic we've had 2600 returning users and on average people stay on the website for about 30 seconds we've also worked really hard to make sure that this um searches come up so it's the you know and i'm going to get this wrong because i am not a marketing person local search engine optimization so the goal is that if you search mental health services near me or mental health services largo this work kind of creating these sub pages helps bring care about me to the top and in some of the testing that we've done care about me is usually around 10 to 15 in those searches that come up and the goal of course with that it would with this continued work we would be in the top five or number one so the firm has spent a lot with social media and we've really tried to make sure that again we're reinforcing that this is really only for pinellas residents because this was a pinellas investment and so social media ads showcase areas in pinellas county so you can see that the pier is there the beach is often showcased and and we're moving into kind of this call to action in social media so the the firm continues to evolve their strategy and so you can see on that third picture it says overthinking everything let's talk so it's really trying to generate that call to action and normalizing what some behavioral health symptoms may feel like with the organic and paid social media we have generated 134 calls from those ads over a half a million impressions about 180 000 link clicks and that has reached right around 2300 residents the firm also conducted influencer campaigns so they found social media influencers with high numbers of pinellas followers and they purchased their time to go on and speak about behavioral health mental health addiction to their viewers and that has generated 29 000 views 1200 interactions and that's where people are clicking and liking ads and following and that has reached 18 000 residents for those influencers and now we can move on to the splash which we talked about at the board session where this original contract was approved so the firm initiated a contract with iheartradio and had social media ads and radio ads on the beat 93.3 flz and rumba and those ads have generated right around 2 million impressions and around 2 000 social ad clicks so people are clicking to learn more about care about me next are billboards and i have a slide in a few slides that will show you kind of where those locations are but several billboards both static and digital have been placed throughout the county and i and the messaging i would say continues to evolve so the top right um this the be yourself that was where the strategy really started so kind of empowering residents be yourself you are strong you are worth it kind of reinforcing you know just empowering residents to reach out and ask for help the next strategy which actually was very popular on social media and also the billboard was strong moms ask for support too so this was really geared towards postpartum moms who may be isolated and caring for a newborn and may need help so we got a lot of clicks on those ads as well on social media the bottom two are the newer strategy and this really again is that call to action and so it says i know you say i'm fine but if you're not care about me.org and so it's really kind of normalizing again what some people may be thinking all the time like i'm fine i'm fine but maybe you're not fine and and maybe this can resonate with you to click and reach out for services the next um billboard is this one on the right where it says if you've been saying i should talk to someone this is your sign and i will say this billboard has moved the firm into kind of that next the gorilla marketing um concept where signs are being placed throughout pinellas county in various ways with that very message so kind of normalizing this is your sign to make that call to to reach out for behavioral health services the billboards throughout pinellas county have reached 40 million impressions and that's data that is driven by the organization that publishes those billboards the marketing firm also wrapped buses that went up and down us 19 bus shelters and then we tested out the bus benches and we sunsetted that campaign because as you can see there was a qr code and we did not get as many clicks as was anticipated so you know part of marketing is kind of testing different strategies and seeing if it was successful but the buses are still ongoing and the bus shelters are also up as well throughout the county and this just denotes where the billboards are placed so we have three two permanent billboards three static billboards and then rotating billboards throughout and again that has demonstrated over 40 million impressions and so this is the newest initiative um this is called with love from cam um and the goal here is um i would say a guerrilla marketing tactic where someone goes out into community and hands someone this note and and i'm going to show a video just kind of about the impact hand someone a note that really reassures them and provides them with comfort about they mean something and if you need help this is where to get it this i would say is probably the most successful social media strategy that the firm has had um in i want to say the two weeks that this ad was running they gained almost 400 followers on social media um and and there's another version that just was posted and they've gained i want to say 50 in 24 hours and so i'm going to play this video so lastly for our marketing part of the strategy was to also build community awareness and so on may 30th um the becan firm is hosting a community wellness event um this is at the england brothers park um we have jed from the joe show as the mc we have a mental health panel that is going to be facilitated by wendy ryan with abc action news on that panel we have commissioner kathleen peters who will be speaking about the importance of mental health um substance use and addiction we have representatives from nami we have a behavioral health provider we have a cam specialist and we also have a representative from the pinellas county schools which really has been um such a great resource for us and is a is a big champion of the cam the wellness um community wellness event will have family friendly activities um community connections really again a call to action um and i believe we're also going to have pinellas county animal services there because we all know that animals you know are part of wellness as well so now i'm going to walk you through um both i would say peaks and valleys of the cam pilot um so we'll start with successes since the cam has been initiated um and since the marketing i'm sorry has been initiated we have seen a 27 percent increase in volume so that investment of marketing and getting the word out really has demonstrated some improved results with volume the cam is a trusted resource with various community stakeholders such as schools and primary care offices the closed loop process really has proven to be successful so we often meet with partners such as the school system almost weekly to find out is the cam meeting your needs is it helping with youth and we always hear that that closed loop process really has made a difference so historically you would connect someone to services and you really would never know if they connected this cam program provides that closed loop so the referral source knows yes this person was connected yes they went to their appointment and that didn't exist before the cam also expanded provider networks so historic or pre-cam when we did a lot of community outreach what we would consistently hear there are two places to go in pinellas county to receive those services kind of those larger community mental health centers the work that this program has done is really expanded that provider network so now we have 24 different providers that residents can choose from which has provided again that greater accessibility of behavioral health services we've already talked about appointed appointment attendance but it has improved again from that 38 to 49 with attendance and we recently received statewide attention on this pilot so over the last year i worked with a few representatives who wanted to take the pinellas model and expand it into three counties in panel in in florida um and so i went up to tallahassee and testified and we were really hopeful that it was going to work it did not move but what i continue to hear is that those efforts are continuing because of the work that pinellas county really has spearheaded with this program and with any pilot you have challenges so i'm going to talk a little bit about the challenges that we've experienced i would say you know right off the bat if we had a time machine and i could go back and make some different changes i probably would say that our um hypotheses about the phone lines being overwhelmed and too much volume based on that need um we paused on really that that marketing um blast and i think in hindsight we really should have done that from the beginning we didn't see the volumes that were really early um recommended by the consultant um and so that was you know more a year and a year to a year and a half in we've also had some challenges with the current vendor um so when this was procured we had one vendor that responded that was unite us um and their platform wasn't built for cam so we adapted its use for cam and working with technology sometimes that is challenging so right now we have what we call a stacked technology program so we have one system for the phones we have one system for the closed loop process we have assessments that are outside the platform we have um the scheduling widget which is outside the platform so you know lesson learned you know and if there were more options i think our goal really would would be to have one platform that could do all of those things um we've we've tested that in our contract monitoring and it takes about 20 steps for the staff to go from point a to to the end and if volumes were where we hope they will be i think that that's going to cause greater delays in residents receiving services and may also impact some of the cam specialist turnover because they would probably lose job satisfaction and going back and forth between several different technology options we've also had pretty significant turnover in their leadership overseeing the cam from that vendor so not the staff that are taking care of the residents it's really that kind of administration level that's overseeing the program and so we have had that vendor on a performance a contractual performance improvement plan for over a year working on both of those things we've also had some slow adoption from non-contracted providers so if they're not contracted with the county they are not contractually required to be part of the cam and so often this takes negotiation with vendors about why this is important and why it's meeting the residents needs and why it's helpful for our community and so we've had some slow adopters as far as the providers who are willing to enter into this stigma also plays a really big role in accessing this type of service and so again kind of back to that marketing campaign i think going back and realizing that this takes more than tabling events this really takes people understanding that behavioral health care is health care and accessing it should be no different than going to your primary health physician and overthinking things as normal and questioning maybe if you're drinking too much as normal like those things are normal and they're experienced by a lot of people in community so kind of again going back reinforcing those messages from the beginning i think would have really been helpful based on volume this also this is a this is a high cost which i know we've talked about before in other um meetings it's it's high cost for the volume and it's even higher when you look at that appointment attendance which i know we've talked about before at these meetings um one area too that's also been a challenge so we work very closely with the juvenile welfare board and and working with the cam is part of those contracts so if you receive funding from the juvenile welfare board you are required to provide appointments with the cam but that's not the case for the state and so i think we have some opportunity here that if the cam were to continue that maybe there's some legislative action that could be taken that if you receive state funding you are required to cooperate and provide appointments through the cam we've worked with our managing entity on this so central florida behavioral health network and what we consistently hear is that they are unable to infuse contractual language into their state contracts without legislative action and so i think that's an opportunity for us in the future so now i'm going to walk you through a few options for future planning for the cam so option one we could renew the contract with our existing vendor i will say that we have worked very closely with this vendor to try to right size the scope right size the budget and the vendor's best and final offer is a savings of around one hundred and fifty five thousand dollars um they did make some adjustments as far as their per license fee so right now part of our contract is built on a per license fee for users and one of the negotiations that they have provided is that they would allow for unlimited licenses for all k through 12 schools and there are a lot of schools and there are a lot of social workers and guidance counselors so that is that is an overall savings i do think we had hoped to get them a little bit closer to what we would like to see as far as kind of right sizing budget that also reduces the cam specialist by two staff and it completely changes their marketing initiatives from a local entity to a statewide entity that will only do digital marketing option two is we could initiate a new procurement to see if there are other vendors that are willing to get into this space this was four years ago and we did the original procurement and again we had one vendor at the time our staff are ready so we've already written the scope because we wanted to make sure that if that was a decision for today that we would be ready to take action so the scope is ready we could release that within the next month and i've worked with the purchasing team to make sure that they are kind of poised and ready if this was the action our target of course would be that we could be live october 1st if we have the right vendors that propose a program but it's possible we may have to have some overlap just to make sure that there are no breaks in service so it's possible our go live date would be you know around january so we would have overlap with the current vendor one challenge here just just to note is that what we are asking for with this is a behavioral health specialty so clinicians that do that work and have skill in that work and a platform and so that was really the challenge when we did the initial procurement is that doesn't really exist you either are usually a tech firm or you're a provider and finding that blend of a organization that can do both has been challenging option three is that we could transition the cam into a pinellas county service so we could hire staff to do the work and we could use our new human services case management system that we are still implementing now and that was an arpa funded program so to build what we're looking for with the cam i met with that firm just to get an estimate of of what could it be also making sure that it's not another stacked technology kind of situation and what they have stated is that to get the cam up and running it would be a one-time implementation cost right around 1.1 million dollars one thing that i think is important to note that is the implementation cost and so in year two once we're implemented the licensing costs are 30 000 and so we would be looking at i would say around 700 000 on a go forward basis for this program to continue in pinellas county and lastly depending on the decisions of today we do have a renewal option available with the current marketing firm and in the opioid settlement miscellaneous fund that's kind of that third fund that we have available with opioid settlement we have around 440 000 remaining and so we could renew that contract to keep the momentum with marketing using those funds and not general fund thank you okay commissioner let that thank you mr chair um karen i just wanted to publicly commend the job that you're doing uh with cam and i think i've told you before that this has caught the attention of influential folks in tallahassee um and you are to be commended for that um are there providers uh in pinellas county who do not participate uh in cam yes okay is uh suncoast one of them no suncoast um finally was i would say one of those in that slow adopter category but they are on board so they're finally on board they're finally on board okay is uh directions participating they're not okay uh and i have some issues with that um so for the folks that are not participating um is there a way that the county um i don't know if punish is the right word but basically hold that against them when they're trying to seek funding for other things um because if they're not going to help our residents in this area can we remind them that uh you know we may not cooperate with them when they want funding elsewhere well i mean is that and i don't know if that's like a legal thing that we could do but well we we always have you always have the option when you're just choosing a contract or provide funding for someone right so you always have that option and let's go back because you hit on this um you know get i already text you know um tristan to say this let's make this a legislative issue because getting the um the state support on that our legislators were very supportive and we were trying to get this and not getting cooperation from these uh the state entities um because we actually issued an rfp out to to try to get them to the table to work with karen when they were talking about option and ideas so i think taking that up as a legislative issue and looking at other providers that we provide funding for i think is an absolutely reasonable thing to look at so are are there providers uh that are not um participating in cam that are receiving county funding elsewhere no no right now this is in our behavioral health contracts it is a requirement to receive funding from human services that you cooperate with the cam and jwb also has that in their contracts okay so that that's helpful then already um thank you mr chair or commissioner flowers thank you mr chair um first off great presentation a lot of information i was taking notes in between um i really appreciate the utilization of the marketing realm even utilizing influencers making sure that there's that that those infomercials um are geared towards focusing on the service provision so that if they have any other things that they are influencing on behalf of it doesn't um rub up against what what we are and degradate our mission and vision in this realm um i'm really impressed with the numbers i know before we were very slow on our some of our marketing efforts um but i know a large part of that um when we first started it was the testing system you know for us to do the testing and that took quite a bit of time i know i was one of the people like what's going on why is it taking so long to kind of get this um get this moving um for the number of persons who don't follow through on appointments i think it was like 25 percent that's not extremely high when you're talking about persons who are seeking services in the areas that we're providing through the cam system but maybe going forward if you could break that out so i know you gave us a verbal x number of individuals who may have switched their appointments you know or whatnot canceled because of the times didn't work or whatever but if we could kind of switch that out or expand it so that we can truly see who how many people are booking appointments but absolutely not following through on those appointments i know they're getting follow-up calls hey you missed your appointment would you like to reschedule but i'd like to see those numbers because i think for me that'll have a difference that will make a difference for me um i would hate to see us bring this internally um you are hiring staff and you're paying about the price that you would but for areas of specialty i think it needs to stay where it is i would hope that it stays where it is um because of that anonymity kind of peace um that the residents get when they're going to see persons from organizations who have this skill set and that's what they do um so i that's why i would not like to see it brought inside internally even though over the long haul it may save us a few dollars um i would still like to do what's best for the client um the last thing i i agree with what you're saying commissioner a lot while on that i was gonna say um but it's already being done where you could um for persons who are applying for our funds they get 10 points if they um are currently um a part of the cam system and i know they do that when i served on the school board persons got i think it was 10 to 15 points if they had already done business with pinellas county schools or whatever and that that really separated people who were willing partners versus doing it because you got a you know partner so i like that idea um the last part is i really appreciate the strong relationship with our hospitals i know we had them come in initially at the very beginning of this um and we saw what hospitals were on board i'd love to maybe hear from them um if we could invite them in it doesn't have to be all the time you know but maybe periodically just to kind of hear from them how it's working on their end because sometimes things get mixed in the wash when you have a social worker working at a hospital and they're pulled in so many different directions but they're trying to make sure that they're integrating all of the resources that persons have just where we are you know with their numbers so i'd love to see a follow-up on that um other than that those are all of my my comments um and um again i think that we're moving in the right direction anytime you have anything new especially when you're talking about services that we're providing here it does take a moment to have people become vested in you to become invested um and to really see this as a resource and build it in as a part of their script if you will when they're talking to clients it takes a moment so um i'm i'm pretty pleased i know there were concerns about whether or not we were actually where we were with advertising i sent barry i was home and the commercial came on the television i ran in the living room and i started videoing it on my phone and then i sent it to barry and i said we're on tv so um i've begun to really pay attention and to see that and i'm sure i'm not the only one that um has seen those commercials so thank you so much for hearing what the concerns were of the commission responding adequately um and making your presentation and show what some potential options are thank you thanks um yeah i i think the the whole part about building awareness for our residents has failed um i think the last piece of the with love from cam starts to get to more that top-down kind of messaging but i've been to so many different groups and there was a stretch of a couple of weeks where i was in front of about four or five groups including uh retirement home you know nobody's ever heard of them nobody's ever heard of cam host churches i've talked to they have no idea what i'm talking about so the message is not getting to the grassroots and again i to me i i understand the the the macro app marketing and then the the the digital marketing but if you don't know what it is it's not like buying a product off a shelf at a grocery store you know you have a need um so it's really difficult for people to grasp what what it is and and so i think the awareness thing is the problem um you know the and i certainly understood the slow start with it because we were concerned the other way knowing that there's a real need but the connection between that and providing the service is just oceans apart um so i'm not again i'm you know and again it does take time it doesn't happen overnight i understand that as well so some of that macro marketing is good but it really needs to be more grassroots i mean i you know there's 20 churches 24 churches in dunedin they have a group that meets all the they get together once a month or once every two months or something they that's a meeting they should go to and those pastors would love it um and i just talked to a couple of them in town it's no no big deal um we we all we also you know know our our favorite group that we all talk to every year um the fast folks um which sometimes irritating is an understatement but their their point to with their members they don't know them they they don't know of that service so i don't know where the connection the where that connection is falling or failing on the marketing side um i'd also like to get a little better understanding on the demographics of the users because i see a lot of things directed at the schools which i'm glad i think that's great one suicide and our you know with our kids is just way too many uh and there's a lot of issues for kids that are today i you know be able to i don't know that they're connected yet but maybe they're connecting on being able to find a place that's um that they can that they can have some anonymity um but there's a bunch of seniors that are lonely you can do the the ride around on um our feeding the the program that delivers food to the meals on wheels group isolated people depression loneliness i i don't you know don't you know how do we touch base with those folks um you talked about the moms going through postpartum um but there's just a lot of niche areas that i don't know that we're touching i i am totally i know that there's a need for this i'm not i'm not going down that road my my sense would be uh to at least go back out and see what's going on now versus five years ago when we first started doing this and there was one vendor there might be 10 vendors now that have more broad-based experience that bring the the shortfalls that we have um that's kind of the way i'm leaning i you know again we go out and we find out that it's two million dollars maybe the ends and somehow the in-house piece but i do share uh commissioner flowers concerns about you know it's a government group an independent group doing it there's a there's something with that too so um just some comments that i had and so you know maybe you can respond to it sure so um i i routinely i would say meet with fast um and have worked with them on you know distributing flyers and hearing their input and hearing feedback from them i do think that um i still think kind of both tracks are needed and i've been very clear with the current vendor that you know i'm not in agreement with the statewide strategy my recommendation is this continued parallel process of that grassroots work tabling events working with providers educating staff you know there's a lot of turnover in the social service kind of case management field so staying with them and educating the staff that are working with the populations is really important um so you know one thing we could consider is with the current marketing firm we also could say we want a grassroots approach as well as the continued online strategy um they are wonderful and and they've they've indicated that they can get into that space um that really was with the current vendor so you know with shifts with contracts if we renew with bkn i feel very confident that that would be something that they would also be willing to do while they're working on kind of that social media billboard awareness brand splashing marketing strategy a little more expensive i'm sure that the grassroots obviously is more timely and more cumbersome but i do think it's the right way to do it and i don't i disagree that there's some of that general marketing is important too you make the connections more than once but having that that handoff is is is a big deal and i'm not saying to every single resident but i'm talking about those points of those points that are out there those points of light you talk to the churches you talk to um you know retirement homes you know whatever the groups that are out there i think the the programs that we have in our communities that are where our own staff goes to them there's no reason that we don't have a table with them at the table agree and so anyway all right that's all i had and if i can respond also you know to commissioner flowers and your point as well you know when you look at the marketing we've been very intentional to not have it look like pinellas county government because we don't want anyone thinking you know like pinellas county government is providing behavioral health care so that is just something to consider with that third option is that would shift because it would become you know a government program versus the vendor yeah so um about your comment about churches i'm surprised uh because fast is so active and they've got so many churches so many churches engaged in fast but um it's just whether or not that pastor or that minister sure i love this i know about it but the forefront of his mind is not promoting something else the forefront of their mind is is their liturgy and other stuff so i i don't know why we're not penetrating more with the churches because we should be based on fast and their action and their call to action surprises me that that um you feel churches aren't aren't getting connected um and and with seniors you first off when you when you work with someone with addiction it takes typically seven times and seven attempts on rehab before they get successful and with stigma associated with behavioral health that i mean if if we're getting them in three and a half touches that's impressive because typically with this particular issue um coupled with the stigma it normally takes more than three so if we're getting them in three and a half that's better than average average uh because average is seven um and and the other thing with seniors which i agree and there's very isolated and but then you got not only do we have the stigma issue but we have a generational issue um because a lot of our seniors are from a generation of you know family business and if someone's got mental illness it's a lot of times they don't admit that there's mental illness but you don't talk about family business outside of the family right and so there's barriers that come with generations um you know my generation was you never talk about the family business outside of the family uh and if you got a problem we don't talk about that outside of the family and so there's there's a lot of barriers that you know this is a this is a tough issue to break through many many barriers and i think this marketing finally is is getting us there i i agree with you we should have done the marketing sooner we should not have been so conservative on that i you know and and scared i think we should have welcomed that overflow if it would have come but um i agree with commissioner flowers on number three i don't think that belongs in the and uh well evidently barry has something to add that's really good i mean one of the issues that we're here because we're struggling i mean i i heard the board and in your preferences to have an outside organization and see what's out there the concern i have is when we when we built this platform we were kind of we were linked to that firm that owned the platform and so i just passed to karen a note that said can't you know could we build out because now we have a human services system could we use build out our platform but then hire a vendor but they operate under the platform that we own that way if we want to switch vendors or stuff in the future provide more flexibility she said she said maybe so my next comment was going to be can we not make the decision on those options yet because i don't think we've had enough time to even flesh it out in my mind um i'm not comfortable making a county program staff our our our platform i'm very comfortable with and and contracting out so i don't know that i'm prepared to give you a recommendation on which option today on the marketing i'm prepared to say yes um i think we should move forward on the marketing um it's still opiate money right and so it's two hundred thousand less than it was before but it's not general fund it's not ad valorem taxes so i think i think on the marketing i'm a yes on the marketing but i i don't know that we're ready for a decision on what to do because i think barry's idea may be the best one yet um and what would be the timing for us to use ours how long would that take um and so i think if we did something like that we're not ready for that decision yet so that's just my thought so the the firm that we're currently working with right now to implement our system through arpa indicated that they believe they could be ready by january fully you know ready to go um partially maybe by 10-1 which we could probably work with um the current agreement with unite us is is slated to end 930 and so i just if we're gonna go out to procurement we could we could we could put out probably several different um versions we could try to procure both see what occurs we could also procure just the clinical component and see who responds i mean it's just really casting a net to see i'm not saying throw this down the road a month i'm saying can we wait till tuesday do you know what i'm saying can you get a little bit of that information you have you have time um i just threw carrying a curveball obviously and i usually don't do that but you know i was listening to the board's preference around having that outside of view and which makes a lot of sense my concern is you know we we can really reduce our cost utilize on our platform and not and not be beholden to a vendor right yeah see i i love that so if we could see if that's possible and then bring it back to us to say or bring us back to us next week i don't i'm not saying i'm not ready and i need a month i'm just saying i need a day or two a couple days and um and i think that to me that's the most ideal option which wasn't even on here so i think just not not i'm not i don't mean down the road i'm just saying soon make that decision i don't want to see it go away i that's the one thing i will not that wasn't an option get rid of it there was talk about getting rid of it i think if you get rid of it you have a huge impact on er's will have a huge negative impact in the in the jails and i i just i am not in favor of getting rid of it at all um and we saw a huge increase in in less than one year of marketing um and i think if we continue that marketing effort it's going to be more of a household name it'll be more common i spoke at a an event yesterday morning way too early in the morning um and nearly every a lot of principals were there a lot a lot of principals were there um from middle school and high school and i mentioned the cam and they were not and even the students that were in there and were nodding their heads so the schools and the students know um and and and now what what we're doing is by allowing this in the school which is so critically important because now you're making generational change right we now are letting middle school and high school kids know it's okay to talk about it it's okay to understand if you feel not right um and this and so to get generational change is not going to happen overnight but i can tell you to get some generational change in the in the senior population is it's not it's going to be really difficult um and it's unfortunate but it's going to be difficult because of some of those barriers but but i do not want to see this go away that to me is not an option that's not shouldn't even be on the table so yeah let me just follow up real quickly and then we'll come to you here um i totally agree i mean i think the the fertile ground so to speak for the intergenerational group is our kids and you know the high schoolers and and even middle schoolers perhaps but you know again i don't think that keeps us from being a little bit more grassroots so if we go to that marketing and i i'm agree i think you need both tracks uh if it's going to be effective so if we have the 400 whatever it is from opioid that's that's one thing but i mean i don't want us to do a program that like you said is a statewide it doesn't that that's not doing it however back to the comment that was made about seniors and being more difficult and i'm not saying it isn't you know you know as commissioner let ballot would say the older we get the more difficult we are to to make changes um he's referring to me i mean um but i but i do think there is i i don't think that should stop the effort i don't think that should keep us out of out of the homes because our retirement homes i'm telling you i had a group of about 40 people 50 people and i was talking about this program and i had four or five that said we haven't heard of it and it doesn't mean that they're going to rush to to get involved but if they have they have all kinds of activities there they have all kinds of ways to introduce services that might be available and even if it's one or two or three when our what our what our vets have gone through they've got the va but some don't use the va and they want to again at anonymity from that organization so i just think it doesn't mean that that's going to be the high success area but it doesn't mean we don't keep trying and i know that's what i know commissioner peters wasn't saying that either but um so i i think we're all kind of on board with that i just make sure that our marketing touches base with all of that and that our grassroots efforts touches base with that too so that we can you know it's real hands-on i could you know explore so what i had listed up there was the 440 000 that we have in the opioid miscellaneous fund we also have the city county fund which is you know it's not part of that you know regional fund so that is decision making within this board so i can reach back out to the marketing firm to find out what would it look like to continue this kind of massive digital you know splash that they're also executing but then also say what could you do for that kind of grassroots work you know maybe it's hiring an additional person to go out there and do that work that you know those connections just to see so there you know my ask would not be of general fund i would look to explore how can we use maybe the second pot of opioid settlement funds for this especially as we're trying to get yes thank you chair i i have a quite a few things um but first i want to care on the the marketing you said it was 600 000 that was what we approved last time yes is there anything left i'd have to get the year to date we're still working with them through 9 30 so i believe there is still funding left through the contract and then you were that that's going to be gone and then you're thinking maybe with another marketing campaign for 440 000 a renewal sure with that with that firm for the 441 or more if we want to have them explore a grassroots campaign as well that would come from arpa is that what you said no it would come from opioid settlement so we have three funding allocations through opioid settlement one is the regional which that's part of the opioid abatement funding board that helps make those funding decisions then we have a city county allocation which is um you know facilitated and approved by this board and then we had an opioid miscellaneous fund which doesn't have the same requirements that those two other allocations have is that is that what's funding the 138 uh 1 million 381 000 for this budget or is that coming out of that's coming in a general fund i just needed to have that um so i i just wanted to say i had a little marketing experience and i i'm for me the problem is like commissioner uh egger said nobody knows this programs out there and i think it's a a branding failure because i believe people would take advantage of if they knew of it and i just i wasn't around when this created but for me care about me it it's it doesn't say anything you know why why i don't know why it doesn't say help for you this is our program help for you billboard would say desperate for help help for you free counseling from addiction mental health but make it simple these billboards that they've created are so abstract i'm not even sure what they're selling and uh are the services that they can get connected with are they free to to people they are not they are not so but you can get them connected so right you get connected based on your insurance so they they match you to your insurance so to be more specific with the ads i just i'm not crazy about the name i don't think it's too late for a rebranding um if you want to spend more money on marketing i'm all for it because i think that the system would work but i just we we need a new marketing program to get people to understand what it is because these billboards don't really tell me what it is we're trying to do we're trying to get people connected with the services they need care about me doesn't do it for me but if you could if the advertising gurus could come up with a way to get people to understand we're going to get you connected with the help you need because you you're desperate for it right now then i think it could work but those are my thoughts i'm just and to your point i'm guessing i'm guessing that the connection with the schools has been very not targeted on issues that the kids face right so i mean if it's as successful as i am hearing if people are having issues with bullying if people are having issues with stress and and and that kind of there it's very specific and these kids are picking up on it i i i don't disagree with your comment about that general that general marketing it's almost like towards the end some of that stuff towards the end was even it was much i think getting better as it complements a grassroots effort but before that it was like such a like i'm not even feel good for something i wasn't even sure what it was for and if residents are trying to even know that we have such a service in this county i mean it probably wasn't making a connection either uh i don't know did you have anything else i'm sorry maybe we should consider a new marketing uh firm with new ideas on how to get the message out uh before we spend more money just what i was thinking kind of going out for reopening and have them pitch us on part marketing program uh maybe in rebranding of the name maybe here's the ads we'd like to put together you know you know commissioner thank you chair um you know hats off uh to you karen you know i'm a saint pete guy and you know i see things on the pier posted to lamp posts i've seen the billboards um you know i've seen a lot of the you know marketing um over the last few months really gear up and you know i guess it shows in the appointments because it looks like last year at this time there was only 740 appointments scheduled but this time you know this year it's 13 158 appointments so you definitely see more appointments scheduled um which is good um though i'm a little hesitant on like a potential like penalizing a provider for not working um with or like mandating that somebody works with this program um just because it's my understanding that there's a duplicate service that was and i you know i'm kind of new to this and learning on the fly but pinellas wellness connection which started in 2022 and and maybe i could have a one-on-one or something or a conversation about that that is a group of providers that does the same exact my understanding same exact thing as as can and so and our appointment attended rate is 49 so you know we're scheduling appointments and providers are making themselves available but then these people don't show up you know that services and time that they've allocated to see somebody um and then you know they're not showing up from an appointment we scheduled but then we're going to say hey if you don't work with us and get a 50 appointment show rate you know we're going to penalize you for not working with us you know so i just don't necessarily know if that's fair and happy to have more discussion on it but i think the marketing has been um really you know good and it has seen an increase in appointments you know i would just like to know more about you know the pinellas wellness connection and those providers is it is there duplicated service from the non-profit side um but i support the marketing um and happy to you know continue you know doing that because i i think there's good results from that so i can happily meet with you to talk about the difference um the wellness connection is a group of about five to six providers kind of those local community non-profit providers it does not include private providers it is about five and they do not schedule appointments so you can refer to them they have a line and they will call you back and schedule you with one of those providers but it is not a booking service um and it does not have the same number of providers and they do not do a clinical assessment with the resident on the phone prior to matching them with the appointment you know follow up did you have something yeah oh go ahead so um i think because see i've seen a huge shift in the marketing and not even a year so i don't think the marketing is bad and i wouldn't want to throw that away and start all over that means we would have wasted six hundred thousand dollars um i think since we've seen a tick up on appointments that we keep steady on the course and and and go i i don't think there's anything wrong with the name and the the obscurity of the slogan is what makes people curious so i i don't i don't know that that's an issue and i think because we didn't do any marketing before really to speak of we're doing marketing now we've seen a big tick up i think it's going to take if you keep changing your brand you're never going to have branding right so i think we i don't i don't agree with changing the the branding i i think we work on branding but i don't think we change the name and change all that and i know we talked about another phone number and all that kind of stuff and and i i you know maybe i don't know but i'm not the expert my knowledge of marketing is very small um so i i don't think i want to disrupt i don't i i really want to see this through and see if we can really make it work um the not show up rate is actually a good number compared to typical so even in the wellness center if they have someone call and make an appointment they probably have a higher no-show rate so it's just this is a different this isn't like regular business this is so different um when you're talking about people that suffer from mental illness or addiction and and a lot of times it's not even mental illness it's a very different mental illness is very different than mental health and a lot of people don't even know that and and it's not like this is a huge they're not in crisis this is not for crisis we have a crisis system so someone who's in crisis is we're getting 911 or they're going to a bay crack facility that's a whole different system this is not that so people that are dire they're going if it's dire they're going typically to a baker act this is for people who are are just not feeling right this is an emergency kind of stuff it's not that this is very different um and this is a very complex issue to even begin to try to understand and you know it took me many years and a lot of tours and a lot of interviews with a lot of judges and a lot of sheriffs and a lot of people in mental illness to to even scratch the surface on understanding it so um so this is just a different animal it's not regular business it's just very different the other question i did have is commissioner flowers mentioned hospitals which hospitals are partnering with us yeah great so we currently have for the panelist matters program we have staff in north we have a vendor and staff in north side hospital and bayfront and they once they meet with someone in the hospital and they're ready to activate for treatment now is this matters are different than panels matters this is panels matters so those staff use the cam and so before they would just link to what services they knew so when someone is ready to discharge from the hospital from that program they call the cam they do an assessment a substance use assessment and then link them and we have warm handoff to detox so someone can go right from the hospital into detox we really haven't talked about pinellas manner and i want to talk to you about pinellas manner because i don't understand what the holdup is at largo but we can talk about that on the side um because our goal is to have that in every hospital in three years and it doesn't we seem to have hit a i want to learn about what the snag is and why we're not moving forward um so i was just curious so so bay care is not a partner in the cam not yet no not no um and that's why i had to come off of north side hospital's board of trust right i had to come off a logo for the same reason of the interaction yeah yeah i had to come off largo for the same reason so so so we have orlando they're partnering hca is partnering um advent is there's only one do we have an advent here one we have one advent in um north county and we meet with them for the health program so they're aware of it but we haven't um operationalized panels matters i got it um but she has had meetings you've had meetings with like just recently with bay care we meet with them quarterly talk about updates yes okay so and they were on the list for aren't they after largo at st anthony's yes okay for pinellas matters for pinellas matters okay and i don't want to mix them up but i just when she had mentioned hospitals i was like are they can and then and then pinellas matters yes i get why they're connected um okay thank you question your background on this the option one and two were it was not about bringing it it was really about keeping with who we have versus going out to see if there's anybody else that not only provides a different perspective are you saying do you want to stick to the microphone excuse me thank you did you say you wanted to stick with number one no what i i liked barry's option that's not on here which would be number two but using our platform correct yeah you're going out seeing who would be willing i would ask for karen to look at that and see if that's a good option and before i commit her to something it could be that unite us would re-bid anyways yeah right yeah so um so i really like that i like first off i don't like the stacked um because there there were there are a lot of drawbacks and as we grow we could you know you mentioned some of the things that would be unintended consequences and negative outcomes so so i like that and so i like that i don't like the stack so i wasn't crazy about one because of the stack not at all liking number three yeah um and and i don't know if we go out if we're going to find that seamless but if we have something already in house that we can build on that to me as we'll always have that kind of yeah so so i i think we need the that information and make that decision later but i know you need a decision on marketing or consensus and i think we stay the course on marketing um um regardless of what group we end up with we can move forward on we're going to and again i just think again we're not the marketing experts here but i know what i like when i see it and and that this early stuff was just i i i'm not even sure it helped with awareness frankly it's i'm just talking about the pure marketing side the later stuff was actually a little i liked it it was better it seemed more to the point about what it is we're talking about um yeah i too i'm not a marketing expert as you know like social services really is it but i will tell you the firm we're working with they are very willing to pivot so we meet with them weekly we can give them feedback i would almost guarantee they're watching this to kind of hear this feedback um so i do think that you know we can evolve if if if the goal from this board is to stay with that firm and renew that contract and and ask for different outcomes and in different strategies so my thought i'm sorry oh just real quick we we've had the program for several years but to your point the marketing really has only been this last year before not even a year it was it was virtually non-existent and so the reason people didn't know is because we didn't do a good job with that period okay regardless of the reasons so the marketing piece is kind of really a rebranding the cam they care about me is a rebranding um that is just really started i'm not and you said not even a year into it um but also you did bring some internal resources to even look at what the firm was doing maybe talk quickly about that i'm sorry right so we did go on on the money real quick so and i i understand the nursing and i think you you really hit a good spot on that i really do um so the question would be i would have thought the first year startup getting going gearing up would be more expensive than the second year so so i i don't know how different it is to go from 600 000 to four whatever it was um but if if you so since we didn't get into largo i'm assuming we didn't spend the money we planned on spending on that opiate money to get pinellas matters moving so if you feel and that would be up for you and your negotiations if you feel that more grassroots and getting in that that generation of of um population um we could we could move forward on the 400 and if they need more because we feel we're not hitting that target we could always use some of that pinellas matters money that's still opiate money still not taxpayer money still opiate money um and we can use that to enhance if you don't feel we're hitting that target audience again see the marketing program you know so so i mean so there is an option to beef that up if we have to but at this point it was 400 whatever the number was and i'm good with that unless you know because because when you gear up that's when you cost more money right and so it should to go on it which shouldn't have to be the same amount but i don't know if you want to gear up another that's what she was kind of saying too that they were looking at that program it may not be to your point yeah so i again i can meet with the current marketing vendor so bkn to look at what could you do with both that parallel process so removing the line item with unite us for marketing and then talk to bkn about what does it look like is it more because you're going to be doing the continuous kind of splash the continuous digital strategy and grassroots the 441 remaining was just what's left in that opioid miscellaneous fund so if you know if it's more i could come back and say it would be this amount out of the city county fund which really as you stated was set aside for the pinellas matters program and i want to say we have about and i could be off but about 20 million in the city county fund for opioid abatement activities so it would not be an ask of general fund great what what's your thought on that going out to market and seeing what's out there from a kid standpoint uh you know or the program i think it's i think actually option four which i'll call it very you know best i think that's a very smart option you know i think um i think it's really important that we own the data we own the platform that we're not reliant on a vendor and their kind of technology struggles we have you know worked very closely with bts on our current implementation and what i consistently hear from you know brian at bts is the system that we've implemented is extremely powerful um and so there's there's really a confidence level that we will be able to accomplish what we need to with the cam um with implementing it in that system it's just a million dollar implementation so i i feel like if we're asking for a clinical provider to run the kind of cam operations i think we will absolutely get a lot more than just one run response i think asking for the combination has proven difficult and if if her if what she if the figures that she used to bring it internal is consistent with what an external agency would pay to be able to run something like that well then we would we would recoup the upfront cost within a couple of years so it'd be a it'd be a very cost-effective decision good idea any other questions uh before we move on um no i'd just like to say i like the berry uh alternative myself we're going to call it the burial i think so yeah good i'll put it out to bid as the burial and i i'd rather call it the karen alternative but i'm kidding and i would like to continue the marketing i just wanted like to see a little more focus on what problem somebody might have and why they should call that's all are you got some some direction some thoughts and directions okay thank you thank you very work very great work okay moving on to number three office of human rights program review all right so you guys went up so um commissioner so uh last year you asked us to look at the office of human rights and really look at the uh what what they did and whether the program um was needed either in part or in whole um so as we as we began looking at this it got really complicated uh really quick because they do a lot of things that in other places it's decentralized so you know they do things for our grants over in transportation and over in different departments and um that other in a different county they may have a person down in that department doing it so getting an apples apples comparison uh was very difficult so i put uh tom and blaine to kind of over shepherd kind of this review process but we really need a data collection we needed to be able to dig in and break down their programs to where we can provide you in apples to apples as you make a decision regarding going forward uh with uh this program so we employed uh local government solutions to help us with that data collection piece um and so i'm going to turn over to tom and alan to let them um kind of present to you the findings and um kind of uh get your feedback on where you know this is this is the data dump this is the information at the end we'd like to know where do you want to go with this so with that i'll turn it over to tom thank you barry commissioner tamar monte assistant county administrator as barry mentioned this is one of the studies that you asked for the staff to conduct a review this has been a staff-led process as barry mentioned blaine uh chris rose and also in the crowd is the director of the office of human right bettina barron and she was instrumental in in how we completed this report a copy of the report was sent to you it was also provided to the office of human right board uh ellen will walk you through the presentation it's a brief presentation and uh we'll make us available to answer any questions but the report that you've received really went through the detail of the department so you can be informed as you make decisions through the budget process so with that alan morning uh honorable chair commission mr county administrator my name is alan rosen i'm the ceo of local government solutions and i'm honored to be here with you today thank you so much for having me so i'll be with you for about 15 minutes and then we'll open it up for questions um we're going to walk through basically a high-level overview of the report obviously it's a pretty in-depth report um and we'll cover kind of the highlights so what we're going to kind of talk about today we'll walk through the project goals some limited recommendations an overview of the department how it runs uh funding comparison program overview uh and then any questions we also have some addendum material in here we're not going to go over those slides but they're there for your information if you want to go through some of those so um just to kind of reiterate what this project was and what it was not our goals were to clarify the purpose authority and the customers for each of the programs determining the staff and staffing budget and performance identify any overlap from internal and external organizations and compare to peer agencies also assess the risk of reorganization reduction or elimination specifically it was not a recommendation driven project and therefore as you read through the report you'll see there's not a lot of recommendations in there it's more about giving you the information you need to make a policy decision that being said as you do go through these things sometimes things jump out to you so there were four limited recommendations that we did have including increasing you know cost recovery efforts evaluating cost recovery from different organizations like federal government from when you do grant administration and evaluating cost recovery from constitutional officers as well and exploring additional revenue from the wage theft program the other one is to just continue monitoring federal guidance and state guidance as you know it changes all the time and just as you would with any other program just monitoring what's out there so that you're making sure that you're keeping up with the requirements and also to let you know that the organization is already they are already aware of these and they're already working on these things so for context on governance ohr is not structured like a typical department it does not answer directly to barry it answers to the human rights board which you see here and includes representatives from across the county so it's a more decentralized governance structure and the office is relatively small covering all the programs that they have with about 10 full-time equivalent positions what we did was we tried to combine the programs into an understandable framework and we we group them into 10 programs across five different categories and you see them here across starting from the left to the right the federal partnership programs disability access title six discrimination work grant compliance and local regulatory compliance so the main thought of these is you know it's they they serve internal customers they serve external customers some of them serve both and it's really a very diverse portfolio and these staff serve this broad portfolio of programs looking at the budget the five-year trend looking from fy20 actual to fy25 actual the budget increased by about 17 which actually follows in line with uh cpi over that time inflationary pressures and um also with um the budget present the budget uh proposal for fy27 that we saw from the department it actually includes a decrease of eighty nine thousand dollars from fy26 budget amounts so the trend is not specifically upward uh mobile and also looking at the revenues you can see they're kind of volatile um that's because they're based on federal reimbursement timelines and program activities so um sometimes their timeline doesn't hit you you know you look at fy25 it goes down a lot but it's just the the processing timeline for the federal government to get those monies back to you so we wanted to um do a comparison of uh peer organizations and these were chosen based on demographic information above and below your county just to kind of get a general idea of where you sit in the middle of those the top five you can see those are required programs so as you can see all the counties do those because they're required uh the ones below there's a little bit more variability because they're not specifically required programs they're more uh local um decision on what you want to do so for example not all organizations have something similar to councils for persons with disabilities uh some agencies do not have a federal partnership for something like uh FIBA or FHAP even if they don't sometimes they have local programs that aren't partnerships so they don't get funding from the federal government but they do something local and that's where you see some of those notes there and then in addition you also see some variability in refueling uh assistance and wage theft as well and uh all right moving on to another comparison we wanted to look and see do other agencies fund these in a different way than you do the answer is basically no uh most of these especially the required programs uh are required kind of like unfunded mandates and funding comes from the general fund or indirect cost recovery for grant compliance that sort of thing so there were no surprises there so in looking at these programs we kind of split them into two camps uh so we're going to look at the required programs here first and when we talk about required programs what we mean is they're either required by federal or state law or the cost of eliminating those programs would be so onerous it may not make sense to eliminate those so for an example it's EEOP reporting um the DOJ that's related to the DOJ grants that you get you get about 3.2 million dollars a year in DOJ grants it typically they require reporting on EEOP type programs that you provide they are not currently requiring that reporting but it's still incumbent upon the county to collect and keep that data you don't necessarily have to do that but if you don't you would be at risk of losing 3.2 million dollars a year in funding um and when you see uh expenditures and FTEs on the right that's based on FY 26 budgeted amounts and it reflects the department's understanding of where they spend their time so where you see something like 0.8 FTEs for ADA coordinator and that type of work that's not one person it's uh a number of people spread over uh that that work spread over a number of people but it takes about the equivalent of 80 percent of one person's time during the year if that makes sense looking at the locally authorized programs these are those other five programs uh again it's a mix of both internal and external customers and um the biggest thing here is there's this is where you see a lot of variation with um the peer counties as well right because they're not required programs uh the only programs here that have any sort of revenue generally are FIPA and FHAP and as you can see they don't pay for the entire cost of those programs uh and that reimbursement is based on uh the case work and program participation uh so the the remaining everything else is really supported by the general fund and one example we highlighted earlier actually i forgot to mention it was the wage theft program uh wage theft they do currently recover costs for things like postage uh but one of the things that we saw was in the way it's worded in the in um uh in the organization is uh you can uh try to get back money for administrative costs so one of our questions was what does that really mean and the department's working right now with the county attorney to determine is there more cost recovery that can be done to help support that program so uh we're going to spend a majority of our time on this this is a very detailed uh slide here with a lot of in-depth information uh we kind of want to go over uh the main point here is what happens to your customers basically if you decide you don't want to do these programs obviously these aren't all your programs what we wanted to focus here on was programs that have somewhat of an overlap they might be provided by the federal or state government um for most of them wage theft recovery is not that is not the case there but what would happen if um the county decided they did not want to provide these services anymore we'll start with with fipa the fair employment practices agency uh basically this is the um the county's local partner for the eeoc uh agencies uh people that work in agencies in the county if they have an issue with their employer on discrimination they can come to the local level instead of going to the state and the federal level the biggest difference here between what you provide and what is provided at the state and local level is that you um help provide services to those people that work in really small agencies so uh small organizations that have between um five and 15 employees or five and 14 employees they can come to your office and help get those services and those services are uh basically um focusing on mediation with those organizations to try to come to a conclusion or moving on to allowing them the right to sue in court if they feel like they were discriminated against um and the biggest issue if you didn't do this was reduce access for certain employees because the federal government will not provide those services for those really small agencies it's only you that does that and also increase timelines uh and increase cost to get to that determination of right to sue moving down one to fair housing employment uh this is the county's local partnership with hud to investigate housing discrimination issues and complaints and working towards resolution for those primary services are individuals who have fewer resources limited housing options cases would shift to state or federal agencies if the county didn't do it and while those services still exist the county ohr is able to meet those timelines 100 day timeline target with 70 of the time whereas currently state and federal government agencies uh they're only able to meet that 30 of the time so it takes them a lot longer to get to that point as you know if you've worked in housing or homelessness every day counts when you're in that situation and so being able to provide that services faster really helps out the people that live in the um in the county that are going through these issues moving down to refueling assistance this is a program that um basically received complaints uh from pinealas county residents um i don't think that there has been any cases over the last year either at the state or local level so basically what it is is um it requires uh if somebody with disability needs some assistance in refueling they can honk their horn or do something else and get somebody's assistance to come uh help them um pump gas um the state and the federal government do have laws interestingly enough the way the state law is uh written it actually doesn't apply to any gas station in florida because it's only for gas stations that are full service only and what the state told me is there actually are no full service only stations in florida that may or may not be the case that's what they told me um but still there's federal law that requires um signage uh and people to assist if there's more than one person working uh the other difference with the county is you have the ability for code enforcement and fines to get compliance um that does not exist at the other two levels and um so if somebody wanted a resolution it may be longer timelines if they had to rely on the state or federal government uh maybe more burdensome process costs a lot of money and the goal here is actually not if i read the law correctly and i'm not an attorney um it seems like the um the goal in this area is compliance not damages right so somebody suing those uh agencies can't get damages only compliance uh moving on to harassment and training this is more of an internal um program for your staff so uh it supports county workforce and basically provides harassment prevention training to employees and internal investigations of complaints they basically help work with early resolution before cases escalate and they're able to solve cases in about 58 days based on the information we got from the department if this program were eliminated the county staff would have to rely on external organizations like the EEOC and then go into court to get resolution if they feel like they were discriminated against or harassed uh this generally goes to the right to sue pathway uh if the county did not want to provide this program anymore the county staff would be faced with longer timelines to resolution and the biggest thing is you know increased legal exposure to the county because without having that outlet here they would have to go somewhere else and the next outlet is that direction oh sorry i got click happy there for a second so the last one is the wage theft program uh this is uh a program that allows people who feel like their wages have been unlawfully withheld from them uh or not provided allows them a way to uh negotiate um mediate that process and and get their money back um they file complaints directly with the county uh the county targets about a 90-day resolution timeline and if the program were eliminated these people would have to go through civil courts federal processes uh what we understood is that a lot of times these are for lower wage workers your service workers and um a lot of times the attorneys that they would turn to wouldn't necessarily take the cases because uh the threshold for them making any money for these cases is so low they might not take them on so if eliminating the program um it would eliminate that accessible efficient path to resolution higher barriers to filing claims longer timelines and access to justice in cases that just wouldn't be pursued at all so wrapping up and stepping up stepping back uh looking at this slide uh basically uh these are locally authorized programs you're you're balancing cost savings against access and timeliness and local control of services and in many cases the services won't disappear they would shift to slower less accessible external systems except in the case of wage theft which would not be provided that's what i've got for you today and we're happy to take questions questions commissioner flowers um i have some questions but first just a couple of comments um thank you um very much for the time that you all um took to communicate with our peer organizations of course outside of pinellas county um i think some of us are aware of those organizations and have been communicating with them when it first came up that there was a question about the origin of the office of human rights and its um services i also want to thank all of the um office for human rights staff this has been um very concerning for them because like anyone else when uh you're not sure um if the department's going to be around or not that brings about a lot of angst um however all of them have stayed on board and have continued to do their jobs with the level of excellence um that goes above and beyond so i also want to publicly uh thank them and acknowledge them for that um i think the report speaks for itself uh i did request that the board of trustees any members that could possibly attend if they could do so we have here present with us today uh dr ricardo davis um who serves on the board um we have letters uh and comments that i believe everybody should have received through an email from mike twitty who is at a conference and from kim burke both acknowledging the thoroughness of this review but also acknowledging what it appears that the review um states um and they fully support the continuation of the office um for the services that they provide we also have in the audience council member deborah fix sanders from the city of st petersburg who i appointed as my appointment to the disability um uh commission and that um committee talks about the things that may be potentially barriers for persons with disabilities and how to work to overcome that as a matter of fact um i know last year we talked a lot about the mats that we provide so that persons who are in wheelchairs and whatnot can get down to the beaches um and so i want to thank her as well for her presence and for anyone that may be listening um i i've always supported this office i know one of the comments that was made that uh some preferred the change of name which this didn't really address and shouldn't have i just want to go on record um for saying that some of the names that have been suggested just don't work especially for the letter that we just received from representative bernie jocks asking for all of this information related to diversity equity and inclusion and whether or not we have those names um highlighted in our program or office titles so um uh the names that were suggested at our board of trustee meeting i said then doesn't work wasn't gonna work because if the governor signed the bill um uh opposing dei or the inference of that um if he signed that we certainly will be out of compliance he signed it last week so um we cannot use any of the names that have been suggested um um i guess uh what i want to say or would like to say is that the services that we provide help residents throughout canela's county irrespective of who you are if you are a resident of this county and you have an issue where you've not been paid fairly um this department handles that if you are someone who's been um challenged with housing this is a department that can help with that or that does help with that if you are having some concerns related to disabilities um this is a department that can help with that and can help better out whether or not it is a justified um claim that's being made or unjustified i don't have a problem with uh seeking um avenues by which we could maybe increase cost recovery i think it's always a good thing to look at you know if we're providing this service for the entire county can we get support from the other municipalities because we are providing a county-wide service so i don't have a problem with that the only area i i'm a little antsy about and would need to look legally um with our attorneys is for the wage theft ordinance because we are on behalf of that employee seeking recoupment for either not being paid for overtime or not being paid adequate excuse me adequately for the hours worked or being completely gypped on the payment for services for work that has already been performed so i wouldn't want to charge the resident because we're trying to help them get something back that they're due from another entity whether or not we could uh place some type of penalty for payment from the employer i don't know that's why i said that's something we would have to look at legally to see what mechanisms could be in place to even do that but i don't have a problem looking at that because i believe if you do an honest day's work you should get an honest day's pay for that work um and if you are an employer who's not doing that then that's a bigger issue for me um that we could take up in another vein um for the peer groups that you weren't able to get responses back for um you don't have to state them now i would love to know who those were we could talk about that later um because i just like to reach out it could be you know know everybody's busy right now because of all that's going on both on the federal level and the state level um but i would like to know who they were and just you know follow up with the communication to see if there is something else that maybe we need to talk about or consider that they're going through that we aren't so you can share that with me at another time or or email that to me um i made a couple of uh notes um particularly in the area of uh fhap i'm going to say it like that the florida housing component piece um just noting that even dissolving that program would not be at the complete discretion of the board of county commissions um because that does affect about 20 percent of the funding or service provisions that we have throughout the county so it would be i think it would be somewhat detrimental to even talk about disbanding that service um and even when you're talking about rolling some of these components into other departments you still have to have funding that follows rolling that into other departments so you're not saving money because you've got to have a body that does that work and they have to be paid accordingly and then we still have to go through the processes our current certification um for a fhap goes through to 2029 so after that you know it's called what do you do for the eeoc office there's the the closest and and i could be wrong so please correct me the closest eeoc office is over in hillsborough county hillsborough county funds their eeoc office i'm not quite sure that they're going to be willing to take on case work of pinellas county residents when they don't receive funding from pinellas county residents to provide that service um and just how far down the line would our residents be and now we're asking our residents to traverse to a whole nother county to get help when they should be able to get that support and assistance from here locally so um i don't want to take up everybody's time on that i made some other little notes but overall um i'm i'm pleased with the the report i'm grateful that when you all had questions you asked for clarity so that you could provide clarity on that because the constructs of this program are not singular they have many tentacles that flow into a number of different areas um and even when i was appointed um to that committee i had to learn how all of it work how all of the machinations work the last thing i'll say is um you may have communicated with the um constitutional officers i'm not sure but i did see the piece in here where it was perhaps charge them for the service i don't know how that's gonna go over with uh our constitutionals um of course i could not communicate with them about this that is something that you know they have a chance to read and and i'll make sure it's on our agenda for the next board meeting um for discussion um but uh like everyone else you know we're all tightening our belts um and while they are constitutionals they still provide services under the larger umbrella of pinellas county government so i'm not quite sure how that will be taken but again i want to thank you for the work that you did and the time i want to thank you for again communicating with staff and getting a better understanding and even drawing out how a percentage of their time is not necessarily geared to just one program it's metered out over several different programs which in my opinion would make it even more difficult if you talk about infusing these services into other departments within the county because those pieces will still need to be metered out um for time so thank you mr chair for allowing me to say that um i may have some additional comments as i hear from my colleagues um but just want to say again to each one of you as well thank you for taking this up and having the conversation a broader conversation and for those of you that did meet with patina and or staff thank you for doing that thank you for um providing some little nuggets of refreshments to them i got calls from staff they were super excited and they thought that that was very refreshing to provide that so i want to thank you for that as well i'm talking about commissioner peters um but for all of you that met with patina um and staff and had questions and conversations i want to thank you for that hopefully it broadened your knowledge base of just what all this office does thank you commissioner flowers any other thoughts around the table yeah i'm not i'm not forcing it i'm just asking while we're here commissioner latvalla thank you mr chair um as i've said before the um office of human rights uh performs uh you know activities that i think are important to to to our residents and um if they if that office did not um do those we would have to find somebody that did uh because i certainly would not support uh getting rid of those services um and so that's first and foremost and then the other thing that i wanted to add about the name change um you know know i'm kind of indifferent about that um if we change the name that's fine um i don't really necessarily have any ideas to what we would change the name to i would be open to to suggestions yes thank you chair um barry i appreciate you and i appreciate you bringing us the report in i think it's very important uh that uh every once in a while we evaluate departments and see what they're doing and make sure that we need to fund them and um that's what my tech that's what my voters asked me to do and so i'm glad that we've done this and it was you know six months of evaluation i appreciate it i when i originally looked at the department i saw a lot of overlapping jurisdictions and expenses i still do but uh i'm not going to argue with ken burke and mike twitty i don't know how i'm going to do that seriously though i i do see you know uh the grant reporting and compliance and i do not want to get rid of the wage theft i talk to people about that it's very important because we have a lot of small businesses uh out there and so it does happen so i do think that those two departments or those two services could be provided underneath consumer affairs in a different department within the within under the barry's administration but uh if nobody has any interest in eliminating the duplicated efforts between the federal and the state and our uh department of human rights then that'll be that so but i'm glad we did the exercise because it's good to tell the people uh that put us in office that we're looking at everything we can to save them money on their tax bill so thank you so i want to echo that um and thank you renee you did a very thorough job about how wonderful they are and how important they are um but i want to thank commissioner shear for the exercise because i learned stuff i didn't even know about i think they have an outstanding team i know they were exhausted i know it was a lot of work to do this but i think it was a great exercise that really educated us on how value each and every person in that department is um and so you know i just want to thank you for all your hard work um because you really we we don't really hear the outcomes of their great work and so we don't really get to celebrate those outcomes of their great work because we don't really get reports about it and so although it was exhausting and i'm sure challenging for you to do this exercise the value is great and i think our at least my appreciation for you is much much greater and and it just excites me that we have a team of people that are really looking out for our citizens um many of our most vulnerable citizens and and and the timeliness on on how you get your work done compared to if they would have gone to the state or the federal you know government to do it so i'm really proud of our team i support you and i am so grateful to you and i applaud you for all the great work you do and again chris the commissioner shear had you not we had you not presented this you know it was really a great exercise so thank you the department myself yeah and so i'm glad i did and i've been here longer than you so i should have known more so um so it was just a second that yeah me too you know i learned so much and i just should have known about it sooner and so i just love that we did this well they do a lot of great work and i learned that myself so thanks thank you thank you commissioner the wiki thank you chair and and thank you for the presentation one quick question uh the five percent that you're donating do you have the non-profits uh picked out locally um um i i don't i usually wait till everything's over and done with to figure out what the you know my total cost is and and get that net amount and then um you know we go out like we've done um organizations like uh that collect money for cancer survivors that don't have a lot of money we've done horses with the mission and some other counties that do um work with disabled people and horses or people that have trauma and horses so uh we try to pick something that's you know good for the community and and something that matches what our mission is as an organization as well awesome yeah um i guess local government solutions donates a five percent of their contracts to a local 501c3s in the area so i just saw that and thought that was good um but back to office of human rights i appreciate all of the research and analysis and one thing that i came across um you know is this office administers chapter 70 of pinellas county ordinances and within that i think there may be a subtle contradiction in our um ordinances with federal law um where pinellas county has gender identity absent of what you are biologically um assigned or biologically born with is a protected class in chapter 70 of pinellas county code ordinance but yet federal law i don't think protects um gender identity um anymore so i don't know if there's a desire for this board to get in a line with federal law but i would like to see an alignment with federal law so you all have the ability to exceed federal regulations and i don't know the genesis of whether that may have been why we have the ordinance but we can certainly review that if that is the will of the board yeah i think it's a good idea to review but again it's not making a decision we're going to discuss that here um yeah i i'm i was you know i kind of echo what commissioner peter said you know i've been here a while and um a little embarrassed that i didn't know everything that goes on in the group patina was great we had a great meeting i really enjoyed that conversation and it just kind of reaffirmed you know the importance in general you kind of got into the specifics again and i think that that's that's helpful um miss jessica anduhar last night talked about businesses getting more courage by doing something in downtown clearwater so it makes them feel energized and empowered to do their work and so i think our residents need to have similar confidence that they have a group here that protects them you know we have other groups that do the same some other things there might be some overlap but i don't see a whole lot of that um and i i think it helps our residents knowing that they have a you know a fighting a champion if you will or for effort so i'm i'm glad this i'm glad of the effort again to echo the commissioner shear for bringing it up i think it's important that we do that um i do think the the department that that i guess uh was a little concerned if you will about the process um again i think at the end of it they can be re-energized if you will about we know more about it and that's a good thing um we know the work that they do and that's a good thing i mean it's all empowering doesn't mean that the process is not painful sometimes that you have to experience with but again i think that's what we're supposed to be doing for our residents is making sure that we're doing things well and using money well and all of that so anyway uh thank you uh for your for your staffs uh going along with everything and hanging in there uh we have a you know it's a good thing so barry did you have a comment yeah just you know we try to do reviews of departments every few years and that's a that is a very good thing this one kind of falls outside of that because they have they're kind of a separate entity and so we didn't do that type of review but if you look in the report there's several opportunities that we hadn't really thought of to tap into grant funding um charging administrative fees and things like that that they provide for like you know over in kelly's shop where it is a grant never nobody ever wants to charge the administrative cost off to a grant because they want the grant to do that but we make sure that we capture administrative costs so there's areas that we'll dig into more coming into budget and chris rose is going to make sure we capture all those costs if we can modify our wage ordinance to where a business that was withholding wages and add a fee onto that not to take from the resident absolutely because they're the ones that cause that so there's opportunities here to provide efficiencies and to recapture some more funding within the office so if if nothing else those are great opportunities that we're going to follow up on as a result of this discussion you made a comment about you know funding uh opportunities these general fund is involved quite a bit here oh yeah obviously that that's part of the the millage part that goes to all residents in the county that's correct okay i mean i i you know i was sitting there thinking that you know gosh the city should be doing that but at the end of the day what they do is they charge and it would go right to the residents and they'd be paying additional now maybe i don't know there's different there's different pieces there's housing pieces like st pete used to have a housing program they formed that over to us i mean so there's some opportunities maybe for partnerships we'd have to follow up on that to see if there's interest but definitely in some of these areas around um you know ada type things like that and where we get grants there's opportunities there i think i like that we'll dig into the report in detail and we'll report back during the budget about what we were able to come up with i like that better than hitting the cities again and then they hit the residents again so yeah that's not what we yeah that would be difficult yeah yeah that's not what i'm interested in either okay um commissioners thank you for your thoughts commissioner flowers uh your extended comments were well received thank you very much for that and all of you for going through the process good stuff um it's 12 10. um they're supposed to have some food here putting it out right now um so we can jump into the um our review of our meeting our agenda and then uh grab some grab some bite a bite to eat after that after we've adjourned so that's okay with everybody that's what we're gonna do right now that's all we're gonna do because we're skipping the uh the parcel we're gonna have that discussion on tuesday it's a pretty short agenda so i should be able to go through it pretty quick so okay go ahead all right item one um so we have a presentation on emergency medical services professional of the year awards um and then we have um proclamation and then we have um recognizing kathy perkins as receiving the chad reed emergency manager of the year award yep so um we pelt off on that but you know this was a good opportunity and well well well deserved um going over to our public hearings uh this is the cra you said you didn't have a problem with the largo cra uh just to put it uh within the activity center this is not the funding piece this is just recognizing that correct tom yeah so this is just designating that is the activity again allowing allowing them to density doesn't address the funding issues that you addressed number five correct well both of them is aligning it into the activity center gives them the county-wide map amendment doesn't address the funding piece um item 11 is ranking of firms this we went out for third party um for risk management services for workers comp um so this is a bid that we received for that we and if you recall a couple years ago uh we we do a joint bid we outsource this um and i brought the sheriff in when we did that uh to provide more timely and a response on our workers compensation um item 12 award a bid to conan graham for madonna boulevard um bridge 14.2 million item 13 is the first amendment uh this is um this is a as you well know this is a for utility work on whitney road at wolford intersection so they have some additional um uncertainty unforeseen conflicts um with the root utility work and so this is an increase due to that item 14 is a joint funding agreement with u.s geological geological survey um this is for uh they construct data gathering systems throughout the county monitors flood stages rainfall etc and stuff item 15 is ranking of firms five firms this is for professional engineering services for utilities uh the five firms are listed they use them on an as needed basis for their various capital projects onto the regular agenda item 16 is a revised hazard mitigation grant application program with florida department of emergency management these are for the traffic control cabinets to mitigate storm impacts so revised grant funding for 9.5 million with a local match of 3 million item 17 is a resolution declaring one county parcel surplus on dan's lake up in hillsborough county and authorizing a conveyance to hillsborough county so why are we giving it away i i knew you were going to ask that and jeremy's on his way up because i don't remember good morning jeremy wild director of utilities so this is a one acre parcel in hillsborough county that's left over from the well fields that we used to operate up in north county we had a well that was required through swift mud that we had to pump water out of the ground to augment wetlands so when we were pumping our drinking water wells we were dewatering wetlands in hillsborough county so swift mud required us to pump water just to hydrate wetlands when we sold our production wells to tampa bay water we still maintained the permit to wet to hydrate the wetlands so there's a one acre parcel in hillsborough county inside their will their well-fueled elap area their environmental lands area that we still own the permit the land the maintenance costs and now the taxes because we lost our tax battle with the florida supreme court so we're actually shedding cost by giving the property away to hillsborough county why not give it to tampa bay water they didn't want it okay are you giving them land or are they accepting they are accepting the the land the well and the permit conditions to rehydrate they're taking the assignment because that's the big thing right and there's another parcel uh very similar also in hillsborough county in the same area that tampa bay water is taking uh they're exact same conditions right and then we lose the tax burden it's the tax burden and and the maintenance cost of the well and the pipes so during the hurricanes we actually had one of the pipes break and we actually sent penalis county utilities crews into hillsborough county and shut down the hillsborough county right of way to fix our pipe and their county it caused residential and other problems so just cleaner to not own assets in someone else's county that we don't need they're looking they're looking at pasco's but um parcels and stuff but yes that's vision yet correct we are not doing anything in pasco county yet we're still evaluating what's the right plan for that whole property thank you thank you okay under item number 18 we're asking authority to file litigation in the referenced case this would be against a contractor that damaged a water line uh so we're seeking to recover those damages um it looks like the confidential memo is made it around the uh table that has staff's recommendation uh in a proposed settlement uh and i'm currently not anticipating any county attorney reports county minister's report we'll discuss um the um we're going to get a all the information from last night we're going to get that to you by tomorrow um and then we'll have a discussion regarding direction for the downtown campus on tuesday at our county minister's report yeah and you had something else that you're bringing back on tuesday too from our conversation you were going to bring that up i thought you can no no no no no no no i'll talk about that in a second no okay it's about the care about me it was something else that yeah i thought you were no just no just that okay well we will we will do care about me but i got to talk to karen about a timeline to get that information okay all right um real quick again we always thank our officers uh corporal thornton deputy winnick and deputy mcsweeney thank you for being here as usual we had six of you here last night um with that raucous group which was you know it's always better to be safe than sorry but they were great it was good to have them here and they were all very respectful as uh we had a great chair for the meeting last night you know that young whippersnapper that young whippersnapper what's that so thank you for that um also i know barry went around and talked to you each a little bit about the memorial naming on county road one thank you for for for listening to that there was just some additional information that staff gave me i needed to talk to a couple of the gold star mothers including the one that is involved with her son um felt very comfortable and confident with uh with what i found out but i wanted to make sure that you all were aware of it as well so uh having said that we will move forward okay on that i'm sorry i thought you're gonna adjourn no no no no i was gonna having said that we'll we'll move on that on may 19th at the meeting commissioner thank you so i wanted to bring up uh data centers and and i've got some thoughts on it i would like to i think data centers um you know they take up an enormous amount of water enormous amount of energy which typically it's passed on to the consumers and um i'd like to talk about maybe options like maybe we could ban them and i understand there's one that's considering on moving in i have put in an inquiry to see if we have any small ones already um we'll be looking to jewel to see if it's even possible if we're allowed to ban them but what brevard county did this this week if we can't bend them i'd like you to consider another option and that would be to replicate what pinnell's county is doing so they are um but brevard is just past this replicate here in brevard's in pinnell's county so what they're doing is they're not banning them because there are currently a hundred small ones in florida um so they're not banning the hype i i'd want to ban those big hyper ones for sure um but they are making sure that the county will ban any tax breaks through economic development for ai data centers or data centers um so they would no longer be allowed for tax uh ad valorem tax um exemptions um and i i think that's a good policy um i i think the amount of i mean right now we're in such a drought that we can't afford to be using water for cooling these data centers um you know i don't know enough about the small ones and how much water they're using on the small ones um but i certainly wouldn't want a giant one these hyper ones that are coming in to come in they are not job producers um so they take up enormous amount of space enormous amount of energy enormous amount of water and they're not job producers and so i don't think that they should be getting any kind of tax benefits um or abatements since they're not real job producers and so that's what brevard county is they're banning any ability for a data center to get um tax exemption or abatement um and i think that at the very minimum i would like to take the same uh action here and protect our our constituents from having to have higher um energy costs and that usage of water when water is so precious here right now um and often i mean this this isn't the first time we've had severe drought um pinellas or tampa bay water does have plans for new water resources but i i think we need to do a better job at conservation and an ordinance like this uh would then protect that water conservation um and keep the affordability for the citizens down because data centers are only going to make it less affordable based on electric bills what and and and water usage so i'd really like this commission to consider and if jewel's team would be willing to take a look at their ordinance or if you guys are interested in a ban if by law we're allowed to um for consideration so i'd love to have thoughts on that thank thank you for bringing this forward i've been tracking the issues and concerns regarding the larger data centers in other states and how it is currently affecting not only their environment but also documented health issues and concerns of persons that live in close proximity even as far as three miles out um and increased numbers of various forms of cancers increase issues and concerns with youth as it relates to some of their medical concerns um because we know that those growth years are really critical for our young people i support um i would love to have a dialogue and discussion about it certainly i support what you're saying as it relates to legally do we have the ability to do any of this at the very least following another county's direction that thus far has not met with a legal challenge against what they're doing we do have some smaller data centers and of course that's visible by the expansion of t-mobile and some other technology companies that have those which is how they're able to provide 5g and increase their internet um speed and accessibility but i'm glad you brought this forward and i certainly support what your requests are as it relates to looking legally at how we can make it happen so we already have somebody interested in putting one on gundy boulevard oh my so i i think it's something if it's something that this commission is going to entertain i think it's something we'd have to expedite i i support what you're saying and just wanted to throw thank you my two cents in well when i visited the naco when i went to naco it was a major issue oh yeah in virginia and and they are sucking power and they are depleting water sources so i i agree we should we should try to add their type of use specifically to our land development ordinances uh are you thinking about limiting it or banning it limit i i think getting not allowing certain uses okay to complete our our sources especially water and for you all that are on um tampa bay water you need to be thinking about that too because they're going to be going out east uh hillsboro and that's the water we need here and they use a lot of water they very did suggest that i bring this up at the multi tri-county yeah yeah i i don't think we want them here they're going to just drive up our power costs and they're going to eat up all our water yeah and i'd be interested in finding out like what we can do with those that are here already versus the one any that might be coming from now on we can certainly take a look we're going to have greater control over the ones that may locate in unincorporated county obviously um but commissioner peters warned me she was going to bring this up i got some information from tristan as to the bills that were you know adopted during the legislature so we just need to really take a look at um the state law that's been come out recently and just some of the other landscape the economic development um tax break i think is something that we could probably easily bring back via ordinance but we'll just want to take a look at the whole package um given some of the new laws and just the emerging issues on the federal level they've kind of left it up to local governments um based on some of the other states that i've been tracking well federal said they want any of them must be five miles away from schools and so so they're recognizing the radiation um and so so the federal federal is doing guidelines as far as distance um but i'd just like to not have them we got three valid did you have any barry um did you have something i'm sorry go ahead yeah no i mean i thank you commissioner peters for bringing this up you know i think um you know putting residents first over you know uh gonna suck up our resources so we definitely got to protect them so i'm supportive so count me as a fourth um if you're doing math um but then i also think you know which i've tried to preliminary start to look at you know looking even taking it one step further i think next session in tallahassee we're going to be preempted with a lot of things in terms of development um so i think if there's other ordinances that we can add on top of that to try to protect ourselves um on other development that's going to be coming down the line um you know talking with our you know county lobbyists and things like that you know they think it's going to be a heavy preemption year next year so we should look at other ordinances to protect ourselves to preempt their preemption um to already have stuff on the books so i don't know if we can turn it maybe into a broader conversation with the definite focus on that i'm 100 supportive yeah unfortunately state trumps local and but but we got tristan who's just doing great work and so i agree with that i think it's a great thing that we should do but uh and that's why it's so important to be active in fact we will absolutely look at it well joel will do the legal research um but just a reminder our land development code is preempted because of senate bill 180 um and you know so we'll look at at the different options we could make it affect at the date that expires a year and a couple months from now right so because i'm going to bring you another one that's going to do the same thing so anyway i just you know but but it highlights the importance of these preemptions um they they put these things in place um it's driven you know we know why it's driven and and then it it ties our hands at a local government level to help our our residents and this is a great example where you know we're going to look at it but yeah but i i don't want to wait i want to vote on it and just put an effective date right we're going to bring you the research and the one i talked about last time barry i'm going to come come with you for that again to do the exact same thing and we can vote on it with an effective date when that expires and and that way it's done and it's on the books when the date is done and we don't have to bring it back so that's what i that's what i would like to see happen we would certainly want to take a look at that from a legal perspective and make sure adopting it prior to the date does not run afoul of the actual statute effective date would that might might make it okay okay anything else for the good of the order okay there's some food over here if you want to grab some and eat or take or or whatever uh this meeting is adjourned we'll see everybody on tuesday you