It's 9.30, and I'm going to officially call the Tuesday, August 25th meeting of the Board of County Commissioners in Seminole County to order. If you would, I would like to invite Pastor Bob Melhorn from the Integrity Church up, and he is going to do our invocation as well as lead us in the pledge. Thank you, Pastor. Good morning, everyone. It is a pleasure to see you. Let's pray. Holy One, you are the creator of all things, and we never cease to marvel that we dwell in a land where we can elect our leaders to shape the future of our community. We would ask that, though sometimes we get frustrated with the workings of democracy, with the controversies, with the conflict, help us to remember how fortunate, how blessed we are, how we are the envy of the world. You are a god of abundance, but it seems to us that in our commission meetings, month after month, the issues are always financial. It seems that the costs of everything are continually rising, and the resources are limited, and we ask our leaders to negotiate a narrow path between providing services and restricting spending, and all this with an amendment looming on the ballot in November. And so we would pray for wisdom for our leaders, and we would ask you to remind us that you are indeed a generous God, a God of provision, and you have never failed us. I ask your blessing upon our county commissioners, our county manager, our county attorney, all who are in the employ of Seminole County, and all who make Seminole County their home. All this in Jesus' name, amen. I pledge you to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Pastor, thank you for being here this morning. I want to also express my appreciation for you, including our team, in your prayer. They are the ones that deliver for our citizens every day. We just get to come here and make executive decisions. They do the hard work. So thank you for that. All right, we are going to move to awards, presentations, and proclamations. And I'd be remiss if I didn't say that we have one of the most athletic counties, I think, in the country. So there's quite a few of them this morning. But we are going to start with proclaiming the month of September 2026 as National Recovery Month in Seminole County. And this will be read by Commissioner Constantine. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I will move the proclamation of Seminole County Board of County Commissioners, proclaiming the month of September 2026 as National Recovery Month. Whereas Seminole County is committed to ensuring the safety and security of all residents and visitors of Seminole County. And whereas more than 48 million Americans have experienced substance abuse disorders in the past year. And whereas substance use disorders affect individuals of every age, race, ethnicity, socioeconomic background, and community, impacting not only those living with the disease, but also their families, friends, neighbors, and coworkers. And whereas recovery is strengthened through compassion, understanding, community support, and the elimination of stigma, empowering individuals to seek help and thrive in recovery. And whereas prevention, treatment, recovery, support, services, and harm reduction strategies, including access to Nauoxone, save lives and provide pathways to hope, healing, and long-term recovery. And whereas Seminole County is committed to increasing community awareness of the dangers of illegal substance use. And whereas Seminole County community health division works collaboratively with health care providers, first responders, behavioral health professionals, recovery organizations, schools, faith-based organizations, community partners, and individuals with lived experiences to promote recovery and connect residents with vital resources. And whereas National Recovery Month provides an opportunity to celebrate the resilience and achievements of individuals in recovery, honor the dedicated professionals, peers, families, and volunteers who support them, and reaffirm our commitment to ensure that recovery is possible for everyone. Now, therefore, be it proclaimed that Seminole County Board of County Commissioners hereby proclaims the month of September 2026 as National Recovery Month in Seminole County, Florida, and encourages all residents to recognize the importance of prevention, treatment, recovery, support services, and community partnerships while working together to reduce the stigma and ensure that every individual has the opportunity to pursue hope, healing, and recovery. Adopted on August 25, 2026. Second. We have a motion and three seconds. Is there further discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor? Aye. Passes unanimously. Thank you. All right. And I think we have Mr. Margolis here to accept the proclamation. If you'd like to come up and say a few words, we would be happy to have you. We'll do all of our pictures at the end, so we're not coming and going from the dais, but we would love to hear from you. Thank you for the work you do in our community. Hello, everyone. I appreciate very much the support that Seminole County Board of Commissioners and the other organizations within Seminole County have given recovery connections over the past few years to help us with the job of helping individuals with recovery support concerns and issues. And I think it's been something that over time has been successful with our partners from the Sheriff's Department, from Advent Health, and the other organizations that we do business with. So thank you very much for the proclamation and for the ongoing support. And that's all I have. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Thank you. All right. The next proclamation is proclaiming September 11, 2026, as Patriot Day in Seminole County. And this will be read by Commissioner Lockhart. Commissioners, I move the following proclamation of the Seminole County Board of County Commissioners proclaiming September 11, 2026, as Patriot Day in Seminole County. Whereas the citizens of Seminole County join communities throughout our nation, in solemnly observing Patriot Day and commemorating the 25th anniversary of September 11, 2001, honoring the lives lost and the heroes who answered the call to serve. And whereas the events of September 11, 2001 forever changed our nation and remain a lasting reminder of the courage, compassion, and resilience demonstrated in the face of tragedy. And whereas on that tragic day, firefighters, law enforcement officers, emergency medical personnel, military members, and civilians demonstrated extraordinary courage and selflessness, placing the safety of others before their own. And whereas we honor the more than 400 first responders who made the ultimate sacrifice, as well as the countless responders, volunteers, and citizens who risked their lives to help others. And whereas the legacy of September 11 continues to be felt by survivors, first responders, military personnel, families, and communities across our nation whose sacrifices remain an enduring part of our history. And whereas Patriot Day provides an opportunity to remember those who lost their lives, honor the sacrifices of their families, and express our gratitude to those who protect and serve our communities each day. And whereas the 25th anniversary provides an opportunity to reflect upon the enduring values of freedom, service, unity, and resilience that strengthen our nation and our community. Now, therefore, be it proclaimed that the Seminole County Board of County Commissioners hereby recognizes September 11, 2026, as Patriot Day in Seminole County, Florida. Be it further proclaimed that the Seminole County Board of County Commissioners encourages all residents to pause on September 11th in remembrance of those who were lost, honor those who served and sacrificed, and reaffirm the importance of coming together in times of adversity. Adopt it this 25th day of August, 2026. Second. We have a motion and four seconds. Any further discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Hearing none, it passes unanimously. And I think we have Chief Kinley. Chief Kinley, we welcome you to the podium to say a few words. Matt Kinley, for the record, Fire Chief, Seminole County Fire Department. Thank you for this recognition today as we continue to honor the 2,977 people who lost their lives that day, along specifically with the 343 firefighters. All in public safety ran towards that danger as others were running away to provide every bit of help that they could. Along with that, to continue to recognize our public safety personnel in uniform that continue to this day in this community to respond to people's worst moment in their lives and are often the first ones that they talk to, the first ones that they see, and perfect form of government. But you dial 911, we respond, we solve your problem, and then we leave you alone. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for reminding us of those numbers. All right. Well, the next thing we have on the agenda is certainly a celebration worth celebrating. It is our student-athlete resolutions, recognizing our athletic, I shouldn't say our, your athletic accomplishments. Let's be clear about that. Your athletic accomplishments and those of your coaches. The first one is Hagerty High School softball team, and this will be read by Commissioner Dilawri. Thank you, Madam Chair. A moment ago you said, and you're right when you said this, how we're extremely proud of our student-athletes and that they're recognized nationally, and they are. And I will tell you, it used to be where, you know, the three states you always had to worry about performing in was California, Texas, and Florida. Those are the three big states because of the weather and the size of them. Well, now it's Seminole County. And I will tell you, to say that we are proud of you all in all the different schools is, we can't echo it enough. I saw these young ladies play last year when they came runner-up. The weather was a factor. The late delay was a factor. And then they came back the following year, this year, to win all. And to say that we are proud doesn't really go far enough. You all are true leaders, not just your sport, but in your school and in the community. So with that, Madam Chair, it is my distinct honor to read this resolution. Resolution of the Seminole County Board of County Commissioners recognizing the 2026 Hagerty High School softball team as state champions. Whereas the Board of County Commissioners of Seminole County recognizes the importance of girls' athletics and developing leadership, confidence, teamwork, perseverance, while celebrating the accomplishments of these student-athletes who represent their school and community with pride and distinction. And we're as seminal as where Hagerty High School Husky softball team captured the Florida High School Athletic Association Class A7 state championship in 2026, demonstrating exceptional athletic ability, competitive excellence, commitment to achieving the highest standard of success. And we're as finishing as the 2025 Florida State AA Class 7A state championship runner-up. Huskies returned in 2026 with determination and resilience, overcoming the disappointment of falling short the previous season and completing their championship journey with a 2-0 victory over Weston High School at Boomba Soldiers Creek Park in Longwood, Florida, located in Seminole County. And whereas the Huskies championship performance was highlighted by an outstanding pitching, defense, teamwork, excellence, execution, reflecting in the preparation and dedication and commitment to displaying throughout the season by student-athletes and coaching staff. And whereas under the leadership and guidance of head coach Tom Kearling and Hagerty High School softball program has established a culture of excellence built on discipline, accountability, sportsmanship, and continued development of student-athletes on both on and off the field. And whereas recent retired athletic director Jay Getty helped establish a tradition of excellence within Hagerty High School athletics. And the athletic director Jacob Calhoun now continues the legacy by supporting student-athletes and the athletic program for striving success in both on and off the field. And whereas Hagerty High School Huskies softball team achieved both great pride to Hagerty High School and Seminole County by serving as an inspiration to the young athletes and reinforcing the value of perseverance, teamwork, dedication, and commitment to excellence. Now therefore be resolved by the Board of County Commissioners of Seminole County that the Board recognizes the commitment that Hagerty High School Huskies softball team for winning the 2026 Florida State AA Class 7A State Softball State Championship and extends a sincere congratulations to the athletics, athletes, coaches, and families, administration, and supporters whose dedication and hard work continues to be an outstanding achievement, adopted this 25th day of August 2026. Second. We have a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Hearing none, it passes unanimously. And if the athletes would sit down and let the coaches be recognized for a second, that would be awesome. You're welcome. You're welcome. Congratulations, ladies and coaches. All right. The next one will be read by Commissioner Constantine, the Lake Howell High School Boys Volleyball Team. As Commissioner DeLore said, this is becoming an every-meeting event. And today, because we wouldn't want to go all the way through the holidays, we have four teams. And it's just amazing that Seminole County just continues to kick butt time and time again. I would move the resolution of the Seminole County Board of County Commissioners recognizing the 2026 Lake Howell High School Boys Volleyball Team as state champions. Whereas Seminole County proudly recognizes the outstanding achievements of the student-athletes and the positive representation they bring to the community through excellence and competition. And whereas Lake Howell High School Silverhawks Boys Volleyball Team achieved an historic milestone by winning the Florida High School Athletic Association Class 2A State Boys Volleyball Championship in 2026, marking back-to-back state championships. And whereas the Silverhawks finish the season with a 17-game winning streak going 27-5 overall, defeating Archbishop McCarthy three sets to one in the semifinals, the Silverhawks secured their championship in a thrilling contest against top seed Belen Jesuit, sweeping all three sets 27-25, 26-24, 31-29. And whereas the Lake Howell Boys Volleyball Team overcame adversity and demonstrated resilience, determination, and composure under pressure, exemplifying the highest ideals of sportsmanship and competitive experience. And whereas the team's success reflects the leadership of head coach Scott Lehman, whose commitment to excellence, character, and development, and community pride has played a pivotal role in the program's historic achievement. And whereas the championship reflects the dedication of the coaching staff, the student-athletes, the families, the school administrators, and supporters whose collective effort contributed to the remarkable success. And whereas the achievement has brought significant recognition to Seminole County and serves as an inspiration to youth throughout the community to pursue excellence in both on and off the court. Now, therefore, be it resolved that we, the Board of County Commissioners of Seminole County, Florida, do hereby congratulate the Lake Howell High School Boys Volleyball Team for winning the 2026 Florida High School Athletic Association Class 2A State Championship and extends its sincere congratulations to the players, coaches, families, and supporters for the historic accomplishment adopted this 25th day, August 2026. Second. We have a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Hearing none opposed, it passes unanimously. Congratulations, gentlemen, if you would be seated. And coach, just stand for a minute and accept your recognition. Congratulations, gentlemen. All right, and the next item that we'll be looking at is the Seminole High School Girls Water Polo Team. And this will be read by myself, Commissioner Hur, who happens to be a Seminole mom. Go Knowles. Go Knowles. I read the following resolution of the Seminole County Board of County Commissioners recognizing the 2026 Seminole High School Girls Water Polo Team as state champions, whereas the Board of County Commissioners of Seminole recognizes the importance of girls athletics in fostering leadership, confidence, teamwork, perseverance, and character while celebrating the accomplishments of student athletes who represent their schools and community with pride and distinction. And whereas the Seminole High School Girls Water Polo Team captured the 2026 Florida High School Athletic Association Class 1A state championship, completing, hold for it, an undefeated 31-0 season and further establishing itself as one of Florida's premier high school water polo programs. And whereas the Seminole High School Girls Water Polo Team secured the state title with an 8-4 victory over West Orange High School on April 25, 2026 at Bell and Jesuit Preparatory School in Miami, Florida, earning its second state championship in three years, following an undefeated championship season in 2024, while also advancing its fourth consecutive FHSAA State Final Four. And whereas under the leadership and guidance of head coach Ryan Akerson, who was named the 2026 FHSAA State Coach of the Year, the Seminole High School of the Year, the Seminole High School Girls Water Polo Program has built a championship culture centered on excellence, accountability, perseverance, and the continued development of student athletics, both in competition and in the classroom. And whereas Vivian Swain, who was named the 2026 FHSAA State Player of the Year, exemplified the outstanding talent, leadership, and dedication that have become hallmarks of the Seminole High High School Girls Water Polo Program. And whereas the Seminole High School Girls Water Polo Team's historic accomplishments have brought tremendous pride to Seminole High School and Seminole County, inspiring future generations of student athletes while reinforcing the values of hard work, resilience, teamwork, and commitment to excellence. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Board of County Commissioners of Seminole County, Florida, that the Board hereby recognizes and commends the Seminole High School Girls Water Polo Team for winning the 2026 FHSAA Class 1A State Championship and extends its sincere appreciation and congratulations to the student athletes, coaches, families, administrators, and supporters whose dedication and hard work contributed to this outstanding achievement. Adopted this 25th day of August 2026. Second. Motion and many seconds. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Hearing none, it passes unanimously. Please stand. Congratulations, lady and coach. If you would stay standing just for a minute. I did this a little bit differently than the others. I'll round up with this. I will tell you that one of the things that we look for in the business environment when we are recruiting people to come into organizations is athletics and their past. One of the ones I personally look for is anything related to being in a pool. It requires you to get up at the crack of dawn, probably be there late at night. They're all nodding and laughing. It requires your parents to have done the same, and it requires a perseverance that's unlike a lot of other sports. And that's not to say that we don't also look for band members, so just remember that you'll be competing with them for jobs as well. I would say this. If you would, audience, please join me in a standing ovation for our student-athletes in Seminole County. Did I forget one? Yeah. We have one more team. Oh, my goodness. We have too many teams winning state championships. We have too many teams. We have teams. Save the best for last, right? Save the best for last. Go Bears. So I will hand it to the coach who's saying, hey, hold up. All right, and we have the Winter Springs high school softball team to be read by Commissioner Zimbauer, who shall never be forgotten. Well, we tend to leave the best for last. To echo my fellow commissioners, you know, this is just another sign of what makes Seminole County such a great place to live, work, and play. We've now worked our way completely through the county, recognizing our youth sports around this in Seminole County. It's not the first time. You know, we've had teams from Alamont Springs in here, Winter Springs before, many other places in the community, Lake Mary a couple times. But it just goes to show the commitment that our leaders have taken, our coaches that give their time to help support these children, and, of course, the families that make the ultimate sacrifice for these children to be able to do what they can do. It builds character, and they are the future leaders of our community. So my hat's off to them with great pleasure. And this resolution of Seminole County Board of County Commissioners recognizes the 2026 Winter Springs High School softball team as state champions, whereas the Board of County Commissioners of Seminole County recognizes the impact of girls' athletics and building confidence, leadership, teamwork, and character while honoring the dedication and achievements of student-athletes who bring recognition to pride to their schools and community. And whereas the Winter Springs High School Bears softball team captured the Florida High School Athletic Association Class 5A state championship in 2026, earning back-to-back state championships and continuing a tradition of excellence within one of Seminole County's premier softball programs. And whereas the Bears completed their championship season with a dominant 6-0 victory over Niceville High School at Boombaar Soldiers Creek Park in Longwood, Florida, showcasing outstanding pitching, defense teamwork, and determination throughout the state tournament. And whereas the Winter Springs High School softball programs' continued success reflects the dedication, preparation, and commitment of its student-athletes, coaches, families, and school community who have worked together to achieve excellence at the highest level of competition. And whereas under the leadership and guidance of head coach Farrah Gordon, the Winter Springs softball program has developed a championship culture centered on accountability, perseverance, sportsmanship, and the growth of student-athletes both on and off the field. Whereas Athletic Director Scott Gomrad provided leadership and support that have helped foster a culture of achievement and success within Winter Springs High School athletics. And whereas the Winter Springs High School Bears softball team's historic accomplishment has brought tremendous pride to Winter Springs High School and Seminole County, serving as an inspiration to future generations of athletes, exemplifying the values of dedication, teamwork, and determination. Now, therefore, be it resolved by the Board of County Commissioners of Seminole County, Florida, that the Board hereby recognize and commends the Winter Springs High School Bears softball team for winning the 2026 FHSAA Class 5A Softball State Championship and extends a sincere congratulations to the student-athletes, coaches, families, administration, and supporters who dedication and hard work contributed to this outstanding achievement, adopted this 25th day, August 2026. Second. We have a motion and a lot of seconds. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed, hearing on it passes unanimously. If you would please stand and be recognized. Congratulations, congratulations. And coaches, just give us a minute to be recognized on your behalf. I must say the principal regrets she could not be present today. She intended to be here. He. He. I'm sorry. May I add something to the team's accolades? Over the course of seven playoff games, they set a national record scoring 73 runs and giving up zero for the entire playoff run. These young ladies and coaches want to congratulate them. Thank you again. All right. That is remarkable. All right, commissioners, if you would join me on the floor for pictures, unless there's anybody else that's here that's at work. Came over the room. And I'll just say, this has nothing to do with the next presenter, but the meeting's going downhill from there. Just so you know. And with that, we'll bring up Mr. McIntyre to talk about economics. But this is the county investment advisor report. I feel the same way. I watch all this. 83 runs and no runs. Cool. I guess you're just remarkable. Crazy. All of your athletes. I'm over 60, so I've always got eyesight challenges here. It helps a little bit. So we're not on the verge of a Fed meeting. We've got three weeks before. There is a Jackson Hole Fed symposium on Friday, and I think the market's going to react to that because we're wondering about credibility at this point. Because inflation is still high, and the Fed has decided that they're going to target inflation, but they haven't done anything yet. So we're listening to the words. And in the meantime, oil and gas prices are creeping higher. You know why that is. The market is not real thrilled with that. There is some signs emerging of labor market weakness. The labor market's kind of been all over the place. My personal opinion is that the labor market is not strong, and I think a lot of that is changes that are happening involving technology. We believe the Fed is going to be on hold at least until December. My expectation is that the Fed is not going to raise rates. The market expects the Fed will raise rates. I think that, and I've said it before, the new Fed chair was hired with the predisposition to cut rates. So the idea of hurting the economy deliberately by raising rates, which is what the Fed does. They try to, in essence, cripple demand. So in doing so, they're lower prices. It's not just a question of raising rates, and suddenly inflation moves lower. Demand has to move lower, too. Then, of course, if you guys have been following the newspapers, we just hit $40 trillion very quickly in terms of the national debt. And what that means is that debt service costs right now are above $1 trillion a year. They're expected to be above $2 trillion by 2036, so within 10 years. And I think that that theme is going to continue to show up in the newspapers. I think that the media is aware of it, and the market's aware of it, too. So long-term rates are higher than they've been in a long time. The 30 years is as high as it's been in three decades. Again, bad news. Let's talk about softball, volleyball, water volleyball, all good. Economy, not so much. This is just a quick look at GDP. That red line is quarter-over-quarter annualized. That's what shows up. The thing really to point out is that last quarter, second quarter, 1.5% economic growth, a lot of that had to do with a negative drag from trade and a negative drag from inventories, both of which I think are going to be actually go the other way in the third quarter. I think third quarter growth is going to appear fairly strong for what that's worth. This is, as I was talking about before, these are non-farm payrolls. Last three months, you can actually see the downward trend pretty significantly, and the month of July was a negative payroll growth month. This is CPI. This is the Consumer Price Index. This is headline inflation. You can see that it actually has moved lower over the past two months. A lot of that has to do with lower gas prices, lower energy prices in general. We know that that's actually reversed itself in August. We can see it at the gas pump. So that was just sort of a head fake. The Fed knows it. This is the two-year Treasury note yield going back one year. That line at the bottom is the day that the war started, so you can see the impact of energy prices on bond yields. This is the latest Bloomberg survey. I know it's a little bit difficult to see. I'll point out some of the highlights. These are 85 economists that get to weigh in every month. They're U.S. economists. They're some of the best and the brightest. Although the market expects the Fed is going to raise rates, the economists do not. They expect the Fed is going to be on hold. You can see that with the – currently the overnight rate target by the Fed is 350 to 375. So this is the upper band staying at 375 until next year. And then these economists believe the next move will be a rate cut. I do as well. I believe the economy is not as strong as would otherwise indicate. These – you know the drill here – the top tier there are the overnight liquidity options. And right now the lion's share of the Seminole County's monies is in Florida prime. That is managed by Federated and AAA M rated, a good place to be. U.S. Treasury yields have actually come down a little bit since the last time we were here. So you were able to buy your purchases at some of the higher yields. I don't know if that's – I can't say that's anything other than fortunate. But looking at the recent transactions, there was a one-year term done at 430. There were two FHLB callable trades done at 440 and 460. I expect even though those go out to two-year and three-year, I expect they'll be called early. But as we've discussed, I believe that putting on a 440 and a 460 relative to 375 even for six months is going to make sense. So every little nickel we can pick up on the tracks contributes to income. One of the overlying themes when we're investing is that there's a significant amount of income that comes into your coffers. During the Great Recession, rates were at zero. For two years during the pandemic, rates were at zero. Now rates are generally between 3.5% and 4.5% depending on where you're investing. And that generates a lot of interest income. And what we're trying to do here is safely hold on to as much of that as we can for as long as we can. Upcoming maturities. I've spoken to the clerk's office. That maturity that comes on Monday is needed. So we're going to go ahead and let that fall into Florida prime. There will be some $35 million actually matures at the end of September. The needs for that are significantly less. I think we're going to have the opportunity to invest that when we talk at the next meeting. So in essence, what I'm telling you is that we need the liquidity. When we invested last time, those rates were good. They've added to the overall yield. Portfolio yield has generally been moving higher. So we went from a 395 to a 396. With these moves, it will settle in August, 397. Most of that gets weighed down by what's fully liquid, which is well below 4%. But we need that liquidity. So there's the benchmark. Seminole County has been doing well, especially given the fact that it's a safe portfolio. But I'm going to come back up here. I'm going to ask for your motion. Commissioner Zimbal. I'll move to implement the recommendations of our financial advisor based on the report he submitted to us today. And I recommend the clerk implement said board recommendations. Second. We have a first and a second. Any discussion, commissioners? Seeing none, all those in favor? Aye. Opposed? It passes unanimously. Thank you, Scott, for being here. Thank you all. We are going to take a break for 10.15. We'll be back at 10.30. I think we have some setup to do with regard to the second portion of the meeting. So we'll see you back at 10.30. Take your seats. That would be fabulous. I'll call the meeting back to order. Thank you all for being patient with us while we got set up. So we're ready to move on to the consent agenda. I'll look for additions, deletions, or modifications. County manager? Thank you, chairman and commissioners. Just one addition to the agenda that was sent to your offices and published on Friday is 19A. It's a mitigation grant, I mean, mitigation credits that we have to buy for Rosenwald. So that's the only addition. So staff recommends approval of the county manager's consent agenda. Commissioners? I have nothing. I would actually like to pull item 20 for discussion, and that's the only item. So with that, I'll look for public comment. So I'll go to county attorney to read the rules of public comment. Thank you, chairman. Good morning. Florida law provides that members of the public shall be given a reasonable opportunity to be heard on propositions before the board of county commissioners, except when the board is acting on emergency or ministerial matters or conducting a meeting exempt from the requirements of the Sunshine Law. Individuals shall be permitted three minutes each for public comment or six minutes when the individual is an official representative of a formal association or group. The chairman may modify the maximum time for public comment at her sole discretion when appropriate. Public comments on quasi-judicial or other public hearing items will occur during the board's consideration of those items this afternoon. Public comments on pending procurement matters or on non-agenda items shall not be permitted at this time. Members of the public desiring to make public comment must fill out a speaker form and present the form to staff. Forms are available in the lobby. Chairman. Thank you very much, and I have four forms that are being passed down the dais. All are in support of item 8 and 9. All right. Dominique, if you would call the first speaker. First speaker is Charlene Santos on item 6. Ms. Santos, you'll have three minutes. Name and address for the record. Good morning. My name is Charlene, C-H-A-R-L-I-N-E. Last name Santos, S-A-N-T-O-S. I live at 713 Holbrook Circle, Lake Mary, Florida. I'm here to speak on agenda item number 6, the request to authorize the sheriff's office to submit an application to the U.S. Department of Justice for the fiscal year 2026 Bridging Immigration Related Deficits Experience Nationwide Program, round 2, and this is to authorize the sheriff to execute future documents related to that grant. While I am fully support of the sheriff's office, and I support bringing federal dollars back to Seminole County when those dollars benefit our residents, I also believe that it's important that we fully understand the conditions attached to those dollars. The document attached to today's agenda do not provide the details of the application, of the grant application. What we have been given is essentially a certification document. And before this is approved, residents deserve some basic answers. First, how much money is Seminole County applying for, and what will the grant pay for? This federal program supports several activities, personnel, operations, equipment, and technology, as well as facilities, including the construction, expansion, and modernization of temporary detention facilities. Secondly, what additional responsibilities or commitments will our sheriff's office take on by accepting the grant? How could those responsibilities affect our neighborhoods, our communities, and the trust residents have in local law enforcement? And finally, could accepting the grant create future costs for Seminole County taxpayers once the federal funds ends, especially at a time when residents are feeling squeezed? These are reasonable questions. I'm not suggesting that we turn down the federal funding. I am asking that we understand the full agreement before we authorize it. Transparency starts by laying out the basics and also the details. Before we sign, residents deserve to know exactly what we're signing up for. Thanks. Thank you. Next speaker. Next is Emery Green, Jr. on item 9. Green name and address for the record. Please and thank you. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning, Commissioners, Chairman, County Manager. I'm here to speak in support of visionary planning, strong advocacy, and most importantly, action. This is a simple phrase I believe applies to the proposed indoor events complex along Lake Mary Boulevard. Advocacy without action is just a dream. Dreaming is necessary because we must believe in what our community can become. But dreams only create impact when leaders are willing to turn vision into action. We have the perfect example right here in Sanford. The Sanford Riverwalk was not an overnight success. Its vision was first laid out in the 1980s by then Mayor Betty Smith. Decades later, after planning, advocacy partnerships, and strategic investment, that vision became a five-mile reality. The completed Riverwalk represented approximately $43 million in investment. And what did that investment create? It became a destination that strengthened connections and expanded recreational opportunities. The Sanford Riverwalk is a lasting asset that reflects the county's motto, Florida's natural choice. Today, Seminole County has another opportunity to think beyond tomorrow and plan for the next generation. The proposed indoor events complex is more than a building. It's an economic development strategy designed to deliver lasting benefits. As recently reported by the Orlando Sentinel, county tourism officials and hosts that are concerned that visitor growth has become stagnant in the recent years. The proposed complex could help revise and reverse that trend, and it will enable Seminole County to attract more tournaments and experiential events, including sports, arts, entertainment, and more. Those visitors stay in hotels, dining, and restaurants, shopping local stores, experience our community supporting jobs, generating tourism-related revenue in Seminole County and throughout Central Florida. As you know, the Boomba Sports Complex has been ranked number one amongst America's best youth sports complexes. That tells us something important. We already have a built reputation. So now we need the indoor infrastructure to expand the opportunity beyond baseball and beyond limitations of Florida's weather. So, I encourage you to think about Seminole County and the needs 20, 30, and beyond. It's important to let us ask, what will our community gain tomorrow if we have the courage to act today? Let's support the proposed indoor sports complex, invest in our future, strengthen sports tourism, create economic opportunity, and demonstrate once again that in Seminole County, visionary planning is followed by advocacy, and advocacy is followed by action. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you, Mr. Green. Thank you. We have one more speaker. Yes, ma'am. Elliot Griffin on item 14. Mr. Griffin, name and address for the record. Hi, I'm Elliot Griffin. I live at 148 Cherry Creek Circle in Winter Springs. Good morning, commissioners and staff. I'm speaking in strong support of agenda item 14. It's the FTP Resilient Florida Grant proposal. My family and I live on the cross-Seminole Trail. It's great. We use it every day. We've also seen how it can really flood during hurricanes. Securing this grant is a crucial step towards fixing chronic flood zones in Seminole County, including where I live in Winter Springs. I'd like to thank the county public works for the recent clearing out of culverts and swales along the trail. With this maintenance done, we can now see that the aging stormwater infrastructure is inadequate. The evidence is unmistakable. There's washed out berms, flooded private property, eroded trail, and the trail is really a gem. So there's multiple reasons to address this. We've also observed culverts beneath the 417, which are buried under feet of sediment from erosion. And with the 417 widening project underway, this can only worsen in the future. Any ponds that are built to code will overflow and hurricane loads, sending water into that inadequate and aged infrastructure and towards private property. To solve this, we need true interagency coordination. I urge the board to bring hydraulic and water resource engineers together from all jurisdictions and third-party firms. Several large culverts are missing from the 2025 Ardura model setup and should be discussed along with flooding observations. I believe that when engineers sit in a room with accurate data, real solutions will come forth, including evaluating how paving over parcels like Jetta Point Park will worsen downhill flooding. Any potential development on that parcel faces serious site constraints. Massive runoff from the 417, small and limited access through an assisted living facility and a county trailhead, an active bald eagle's nest, and a very small frontage, which is also a 417 on-ramp. Alternatively, a passive park that's built using existing facilities of the cross-Seminal trails could absorb stormwater and recharge our aquifer in a sustainable manner. With regard to tax revenue, please consider that parks increase home value while flooding decreases home value. So please approve this grant application today, prioritize comprehensive modeling in the Howell Creek Basin Study, and lead the regional effort to fix our stormwater infrastructure. Thank you. Thank you, L.A. Thank you very much. Does that complete our public speakers? Thank you. Commissioners, any comments? All right. I'll look for a motion for the consent agenda. I'll move. Madam Chair, I'll move the agreement of the Constitutional Officers' Consent Agenda 5 and 6, and the County Managers' Consent Agenda 7 through 21, including 19-A, but not including 20. That's a second. We have a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Hearing none. Thank you. All right. I pulled item 20 for your consideration. I have worked with the Department of Economic Development and evoke advertising. I believe that that contract should have a cap on the monetization, so there's a share of revenue, and I would propose that the cap be placed at $100,000, and I hope that every bit of it gets earned, because that means we take in $900,000. And I would welcome a re-discussion at the point that we hit that limit so that we consider what we do in the future. This is the beginning stage of a contract like this, and it's just wise for us to put something in it to force the following discussion. Commissioner DeLauro? Madam Chair, I think your recommendations are spot on. I compliment you for making them. I'd like to make a motion to approve with your comments to adjust into the contracting agreement as presented with your comments. I have a motion. Is there a second? Second. Is there a further discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Hearing none. Passes unanimously. And a thank you to evoke advertising. Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, as we're getting ready for 22 in the work session, I just wanted to point out 21 was concerning the UCF Research Business Incubator Partnership Agreement. It has just been, since we're talking about accolades today, it has just been named the number one business incubator in the state by Time Magazine. Yeah. I would also, so everybody's aware, City of Winter Springs no longer funds that incubator, makes no contributions as of one year ago. And it's moving to Seminole State in Heathrow? Correct. So, it's another asset we're losing for my district, unfortunately. But they're staying in the county. Understood. They're staying in the county. Understood. In a more centralized location. All right. So, I'm going to pull this meeting back together. We have a work session on item number 22, Amendment 3, Budget and Tax. And I see Mr. Jecks standing at the ready. Madam Chairman and Commissioners, I'll actually start off, if you will. Just a few opening comments. So, good morning, Chairman and Commissioners, and to everyone watching us. As you may recall, we met with the board on July 14th to discuss Amendment 3 and the potential financial impacts to Seminole County government. At that meeting, the Office of Management and Budget presented our initial estimates and outlined the steps we are taking to prepare this organization should voters approve the amendment in November. Today, we move from talking about the dollars to talking about services. Before we do that, I want to put the numbers you are about to hear into perspective. Seminole County's total budget is approximately $1.3 billion. At first glance, a potential $119 million reduction may appear to be relatively a small percentage of that total. But county revenues are not interchangeable. And we have mentioned this at prior meetings. And I think, Chairman, you had mentioned the old ice cube tray and that we cannot move from fund to fund. Much of our budget consists of revenues that are legally restricted for specific purposes. Give an example, like tourist development tax dollars cannot simply be redirected to repair a road or pay a firefighter. Water and sewer revenues cannot be used to operate a library. The three funds supported by property taxes have approximately $562 million in total revenues. Under the full implementation of Amendment 3, we estimate those funds would lose the approximately $119 million in reoccurring revenue. That is the challenge we are preparing for. Earlier this month, I brought our leadership team together and asked each department to work through a very difficult exercise. If your available funding were permanently reduced by approximately 20%, what would that mean for the services that we provide to our residents and business owners? Today, you will hear the results of that work from our Parks and Recreation Department, Public Works, Environmental Services, and Community Services. At our next meeting on September the 15th, we will continue this discussion with our public safety agencies. I want to emphasize that you will hear today our staff recommendations and planning scenarios. No decisions have been made. If Amendment 3 is approved by voters, we will come back to this board to continue these discussions. Ultimately, decisions about reducing or eliminating county services will be a policy decision made by this board through the budget process and interactions with our citizens. There is one other point I want to make before we begin. Seminole County government is largely a service organization. We don't manufacture a product. We don't make anything. What we do is provide services, and these services are provided through and delivered by people. They are the employees who maintain our roads and our stormwater systems. They are librarians, park employees, animal service officers, firefighters, paramedics, and hundreds of other public servants who come to work every day to serve this community. That means a permanent revenue reduction of this magnitude will affect our workforce. There is simply no way around it. And the impact would extend beyond our county employees. As you will hear today, some potential reductions involve services we provide through private vendors, through the private sector, whether that is mowing county right-of-ways, maintaining facilities, providing specialized services, or purchasing materials for our operations. When we reduce those expenditures, the impact does not stop at the county's doors. Those dollars support jobs and businesses throughout Seminole County and Central Florida. So as we go through these presentations, I would encourage us to look beyond the individual budget numbers. And the question we are wanting to answer is much simpler. If Amendment 3 passes, what will be different for the people who live, work, and do business in Seminole County? That is what today's presentations are designed to show. With that, I will now turn it over to our Budget Director, Tim Jecks, who will walk us through the county revenues, and then we will begin with our Parks and Recreation Department. Chairman? Thank you, Mr. Jecks. Thank you, Mr. County Manager and Chairman. So what's on the ballot in November is a constitutional amendment number 3 that will provide a bigger homestead exemption from the current $50,000 up to $150,000 in 2027 and $250,000 in 2028. There will also be a cap on non-homesteading properties, which would drop from 10% to 5%. When this first was brought up, there was the idea that public safety budgets would be held harmless, but they will be affected. That was not in the final bill. There was also discussion of a trust fund to offset lost revenues. That is not included. And finally, there's an idea that the lost revenue is a small percentage of the county's budget, which is a bit of a misunderstanding. So we estimate that the total impact of Amendment 3 will be $119 million in lost revenues. Seminole County has a $1.3 billion budget, so that will be about 9% of the total budget. However, within the county's budget, we have $562 million in property tax-funded revenues. Then we have $593 million in revenues that are legally restricted, $32 million in interfund transfers, and $108 million in fund balances, which are not true revenue inflows. County revenues are allocated into 101 different funding buckets that are used to maintain legal compliance and accountability. Property tax funds are shown on the left in green, totaling $562 million. On the right, you see restricted revenues totaling $593 million, which cannot be used on property tax-funded activities. Water and sewer bills must be used to maintain the county's water and sewer system. Under solid waste, landfill fees must be used to pay for operations of the landfill and central transfer station. The infrastructure penny tax can only be used for capital infrastructure. It cannot be used to pay for sheriff deputies or firefighter salaries. Tourism funds make up a small percentage of the county's budget, and they are restricted by state statute to promote tourist activities. MSBUs are self-assessments by taxpayers for a specific purpose, like lake management. E-911 funds are fees paid on your cell phone bill, which can only be used to maintain the 911 system. Health insurance revenues must be used to pay for medical claim activities. Internal service funds are for property liability and workers' comp insurance. And special revenues include grant agreements, which must be spent based on contractual requirements. The impact of Amendment 3 and the $119 million in lost revenues will come from the $562 million in property tax budgets in green. This chart shows the impact of Amendment 3 by our three property tax funds. You see in bold the total revenue inflows of $562 million. In the general fund, the $85 million loss of revenue is about 20% of the total budget. In the fire fund, the $33 million loss of revenue is 24%. That's higher because the fire fund relies more heavily on property taxes. And then the total $119 million loss of revenues is approximately 21% of the total budget impact. This chart shows where your property tax dollars are currently allocated. $0.41 cents of every dollar goes towards law enforcement, corrections, and the jail. $0.31 cents goes to fire, EMS, dispatch, and emergency management. 11% goes to transportation, roads, bridges, traffic, drainage, and mass transit. 5% goes to recreation for parks, libraries, trails, and natural lands. $0.03 cents of every dollar goes to BCC programs, including county administration, planning, facilities, and information technology. $0.03 cents goes to our constitutional officers, the property appraiser, clerk of court, and supervisor of elections. $0.01 cent goes to human services, and $0.05 cents goes to unfunded mandates. The outer wheel of this chart shows the budgets for your property tax-funded services. Public safety starts on the left. Sheriff law enforcement is $119 million. Jail is $74 million. Court security is $11 million. Moving up, we have fire personnel for $92 million. Fire operations is $21 million. Fire capital is $29 million. Then we have dispatch, emergency management, and animal services for $5 million each. In the center, you see the $562 million in revenues. And in red, you see the impact of Amendment 3. If unfunded mandates and public safety budgets do not share in the reductions, the lost revenues will be greater than the total budget for community services, general government services, constitutional officers, parks, transportation, and one-third of the public works operating budget. Unfunded mandates are proclamations from the state of law requiring local governments to expend funds based on Florida statutes. Since the 1980s, there have been over 300 mandates which have shifted costs from the state to the county. When you include our jail, property taxes pay for $110 million of these unfunded mandates. This slide summarizes the challenge we're facing. Of the $562 million in property tax revenues, 72% is allocated to public safety, 5% to unfunded mandates. The impact of Amendment 3 would be 21%. That totals 98% of current revenues, leaving 2% for all other services. Amendment 3 goes to the voters on November 3rd. If it passes, Phase 1 would be immediate service changes happening prior to the revenue impacts. Phase 2 starts fiscal year 28. That's next October. We'll have the $70 million impact of the $150,000 exemption. And then finally, Phase 3 for fiscal 29, we'll have the full $250,000 exemption implemented, which will have $119 million impact. That concludes my part of the presentation. Thank you very much. Commissioners, any comments? I do. Commissioner Zimbaugh. Tim, I just want to make sure if we go to slide, because it's 13 or maybe it's 12, the one where we're just there with the pie chart. I want to make sure I'm tracking this properly. I look at the sheriff law enforcement portion of this at $119 million. That's all in. Is that correct? That's the certified transfer budget that the sheriff has requested. Right. That's his personnel, all his other expenses, all in the sheriff's ass, correct? That's correct. Okay. In comparison, if I look at the fire personnel, the fire personnel alone is $92 million. Then I bring in the fire operations at $21 million. Then I bring in the capital on fire at $29 million. That would pretty much take care of all of our fire, those three categories, correct? That's correct. Okay. And we can agree that is much higher than what the sheriff's budget transfer is, correct? Excluding the jail, the sheriff law enforcement. So the jail's our responsibility. Yes. We pay him to do that. Otherwise, we would have to do that. Yes. Correct? That's correct. Okay. So I'm just looking at the things we're responsible for in these categories you've broken out. My point is, it would appear that our fire service costs are much higher than our law enforcement costs. Is that a fair? They are higher, yes. Okay. Thank you. That's all I have. Commissioner Constantine. Thank you very much. It's just adding to, and they're not numbered, so I'm going to say to the 500, where it says $562 million property tax revenue, and then you put 72% public safety, 5% unfunded mandates, 21% taken off from Amendment 3. But one that you didn't include in that one is the 3% or the three cents, the constitutional officers, which we really have no control over either. So when you take that off, we're actually, it leaves minus 1% for all other services. So that means no matter what happens, all other services potentially could go, and we'd have to cut 1% from everybody else. Thank you. Probably a nice add to the slides at some point. That's probably a nice add to the slides at some point. Yeah, I think it would be. Because that is relevant. If you go back to the pie chart, I do have a comment on that. I do think it's important to point out to our team that while we're representing this as the red is all of those areas only, clearly that's not the intention. That is just the mathematical representation to make sure that we are educating the public around the notion that this isn't a simple lift. And that certainly does the job. But I just want to put that out there on the record that this will be spread out throughout the entire operation to include all areas. There's no other way to do it if it happens. All right. We ready to move on, commissioners? Yes, ma'am. Thank you, Chairman. With that, we'll turn it over to Mr. Durr for Parks and Recreation. Mr. Durr? I'm waiting for my setup, ma'am. I thought you might be waiting for me, so I thought I'd weigh in there. So I'm going to cover budgets for each of the departments. The property tax-funded budget for our Parks and Recreation services total $30.3 million. This includes 177 full-time positions. The 20% income reduction would equate to about $6.1 million. And the $30 million makes up approximately 5% of our property tax revenues. Thank you, Mr. Jex. So in order to keep with the theme of trying to put all of these into simple buckets, we've tried to sprinkle that throughout this presentation. So one thing to think about within the Parks and Recreation umbrella, we've got four main services. The extension services, our library services, which are countywide, our recreation division, and our trails and parks, which make up the rest of our outdoor open space and the operations and maintenance of those areas, as well as a small administration office to help support those within the county. Now, specifically by the numbers, we have staff based at 17 different locations throughout the county. We manage over 7,700 acres of county-owned parks and natural lands. We have six regional parks staffed seven days a week. They're open for more than 80 hours during the week. Five library branches staffed at seven days a week, which are open for 56 hours a week. 26 unstaffed parks and trailheads, one golf course in operation, the museum, 11 natural lands open for public use, our UF IFAS extension services operation, the Ed and Ibergine Yarbrough Nature Center. And then we maintain 51 miles of paved trails, 85 miles of unpaved and wilderness trails, 60 different county facilities regarding the grounds maintenance, and 50 miles of county roadway medians maintained. Now, those are all maintained by people, and people with different backgrounds about as varied as their different roles and responsibilities within the county. So from our frontline service, customer service folks that are staffing at our libraries and our parks, the maintenance folks that are out and doing everything from picking sunflower seeds out of our artificial turf every week to mowing the grass, to folks with advanced degrees who are delivering services from everything from educational opportunities within the county to health opportunities within the county, all the way down to special licenses and certifications to make sure that we're doing and maintaining our best practices across the board. Now, some of those numbers last year alone include from our extension services offices, working with over 7,200 children through our 4-H program, our library services, which hosted over 1.3 million in-person visits to our library branches, and over 3.5 million visitors to our primary parks, our trails, and so forth. That includes also 355 acres of habitat restored here in Seminole County to help preserve Florida's natural choice. Again, a wide variety of services offered within this umbrella. We're also very privileged to be part of the county's economic impact strategy through our youth sports tournaments. These numbers that were generated in the last year, the 92 events that are listed all took place at county facilities, generating over $55 million worth of economic impact to our business community. As we continue to work with our tourism partners, those numbers are trending higher for 2026. So, that's some of the good news. And if you wanted to hear more information about the positive impacts of our community, we've got the 2025 Community Impact Report, which is available on the county's website, that goes into great detail about our involvement and our staff's involvement with our business partners, and the volunteers, and the scores of other nonprofits and other groups that we work with within the community to make this all possible. Now, with the question of how do we then approach a reduction of a potentially up to 20% or above in reduction of services. So, heading forward, asking this question, we would look at certain things such as we would need to suspend exactly where we're at. Our recommendation, excuse me, would be to suspend our current program of the Seminole Forever Natural Lands Program based on where we're currently at within that project. We would also reevaluate current park projects that, regardless of funding, could have a positive or a negative impact on the overall general fund of the county. So, that includes everything from staffing needs to maintenance needs as new projects come online. Other services that are out there that are a portion of and funded through the general fund include the operation of the law library, museum. We would have to reestablish and reevaluate how we contract our maintenance. Those aren't just switches that you can flip on and off. By the end of next fiscal year, we will have to have new contracts in place because, as you'll see, we rely a lot on the local business community to help with our maintenance needs. So, those things would need to be evaluated and reduction of services and levels of service put forth in proposals to the Board of County Commissioners. We would need to look at how we address our programs across all divisions. This includes programs that are serving both the public, private, and homeschooled students. We have that both with our libraries and with our natural lands program where we have scores of students both after school that use our libraries for those services, folks that are in homeschools that use us as resources, as well as the scores of field trips that participate in our natural lands program at the nature center as part of their school curriculums. Again, we wouldn't want to just flip a switch at the new fiscal year. We would need to evaluate exactly how we would address those reductions in levels of service. And last but not least, we would need to freeze vacant positions under further evaluation. And that is because, as we start to look at each of the four divisions within our department, we really rely on staff as our primary expenditure going forward. So, as I look at extension services, of that yearly budget, almost 70% of that goes towards our staffing of those programs. Smaller percentages are included, and I'll show you those on the screen. I won't go through every single one of them, but in this case, as an example, about 12% of their budget goes towards goods and services that need to be bought in order to facilitate the delivery of those services. So, these are things that we're buying out in the community and so forth. And then about 18% of those, the nebulous internal charges of keeping the lights on, equipment, everything that goes into essentially operating and delivering those services throughout the community. So, what could be, by addressing the largest expenditure within our extension services budget, what could be reductions of service and what are those that we would need to evaluate? Well, that includes our consumer and family sciences and that health and wellness education and school programs. It goes both towards our school students as well as adults within the community. Our youth services such as our 4-H program, our FFA and financial literacy programs that we're involved with working with school children. Our horticulture, try that again, horticulture and sustainable agriculture programs. We assist in the farm tour on an annual basis as well as providing assistance to homeowners as they continue to look at what is possible for them through our chickens program and so forth and helping to educate what's available to them as well as our involvement with the Florida Friendly Yards education program that's a part of our, both our water quality protection program as well as the continued education involved through our fertilizer ordinance. So, you see, there's a lot of different services that are offered with an umbrella of the extension services division that would need to be evaluated. Next is our libraries. Our libraries is the largest single division within Parks and Recreation. As you can see, by this particular chart, it makes up almost two-thirds of our budget are the people who maintain those libraries, maintain our collection and provide services to our public. Only about 10% are the things that we buy on an annual basis of materials that go into our library programs. The kinds of programs and the kinds of services that are offered at our libraries that would be affected with, obviously, with fewer staff, we've got less availability of the building as well as the programs in which they offer. So we would need to evaluate what reducing operating hours would look like. When I talk about being open seven days a week and 56 hours, that means we're open for more than eight hours a day, which simply means during the week, we're staffing the libraries in two shifts. If that's our primary resource, then we'd have to address how we would downshift, if you will, including looking at different days of operation and maybe targeting those that are maybe the less frequented. In terms of what that impact would be to the community is you just have availability of less and fewer library resources. So we have public computers that folks rely on, including our public Wi-Fi and the printing. Our staff is every day helping people apply for jobs and apply for training online. Our meeting in educational spaces would be obviously less available as well as just less available of physical materials throughout the community. Lastly, our librarians also put on youth and adult literacy programs. As I said, the job application assistance and other educational and community programs, both with partners, other education within our community, as well as single offerings that we have within our libraries. Again, that would be the potential impact that we would be looking at by reducing our primary resource. This is where we start to get into parks, our recreation division. This is our six regional facilities that we talked about where our youth economic impact events are held. So we're talking about the Boomba Sports Complex, Boomba Soldiers Creek Park, Lake Sylvan Park, Red Bug Lake Park, Softball Complex, and St. Lando. This is where you see about 55% of those resources are dedicated to our staff. With this particular division, we start to introduce some of our contract staff. So the operating services line of about almost 9%, those are contract staff members. Those are the folks that put on our tennis programs, our tennis coaches, our umpires, those that are participating in our programs. Those are contract staff. So now we're talking about almost 63% of our budget going towards people in our community to facilitate those programs. This is where we also introduce the impact potentially to our business community. The operating repair and maintenance line of about 7.5%. That is where we have contracts with local businesses. While our staff is busy keeping the playing courts in shape and safe, as well as mowing the grass in our sports fields, we have other contractors coming in and taking care of the common areas and some of the other more utilitarian aspects to just managing the property. So at this point, we're looking at regarding both our staff, our outsourced staff and our outsourced maintenance over 70% of our budget is devoted to. So again, two of our facilities are open for 81 hours a week. Excuse me, four of our facilities are open for 81 hours a week. The other two, specifically the Boomba Sports Complex, including that, is open 94 hours a week in order to facilitate both local play as well as the operation of weekend tournaments and summer tournaments. Downshifting in available staffing. Obviously, as you can tell, there are multiple overlapping shifts in terms of maintenance and keeping this facility operational. So having to evaluate how we shift down or downshift the availability of these facilities. That includes the program delivery that's done at each of these facilities as well. We have not just tourism events, but we have recreational programs that are run at each of those facilities. So again, evaluating how those levels of service would be reduced as well as a big cost to us is the maintenance of those facilities. We have certain levels of service that we currently apply for, both regarding our in-house staff and maintenance, as well as those that we contract with out in the business community. All of those would need to be re-evaluated to look for cost savings across the board. The last division is our Parks and Trails division. This is where all of our unstaffed parks, our natural lands, and our trails are maintained. This equation is a little bit different. The majority of our operating budget goes straight to our business community. These are local business partners that provide maintenance services across the board. So almost 50%, 56% of this budget is to our local businesses that help us maintain these assets within the community. 28% of that goes to our personal services. So again, both are both to people that are employed by local businesses as well as to our staff. That is the majority of our operations in order to continue to deliver these services. So again, highlighting the overall services delivered through the Parks and Trails division, we would need to evaluate across the board just how we operate and maintain all of our unstaffed parks. We would have to look at reduced maintenance across neighborhood parks and trailheads, our natural lands and nature center, our passive parks, our trails, our roadway medians and county property. And last but certainly not least, we have our natural lands program that is nestled within this program that has our eco camps. They operate the nature center as well as offer other educational programs such as guided hikes and nature lessons throughout their program throughout the year. So looking forward, looking ahead, I should probably say, not looking forward, but looking ahead, what could be the ongoing service impacts as we look at potential future reductions as well? Again, the realization we're having to come back with is the Seminole Forever Natural Lands Program, which is funded entirely out of the general fund, is that a viable program if the funding is not sustainable? We would be evaluating and reevaluating our delivery of our youth and community educational programs at the library. Our capital projects would primarily be based on need of existing facilities and having gone through the Great Recession and the unfortunate position we found ourselves in of running facilities to failure. We would be staring that in the face and it would be much more of a stark reality going forward. We would be looking at freezing our staffing levels and looking at evaluating further reductions as needed within the general fund. Obviously, we'd be looking at lowering our service levels of maintenance for our community assets. And last but not least, evaluating the viability of certain lands moving forward based on reduced funding. Now, I absolutely refuse to end any presentation on a down note. So, in this case, and I prefer to look at the, and just as my privilege of representing everyone who works within the Parks and Recreation Department as representatives of the county, the benefits of the Parks Department, I think we've been able to establish that we really enjoy being able to serve our public and contributing greatly to the quality of life for our residents, such as the opportunity for healthy lifestyles, low-cost educational opportunities from the very youngest to the very oldest, low-cost transportation with our trail system, and protecting Florida's natural choice through our environmental program. But an integral part, and by being it a part, oh, let me try that again. But lastly, we really appreciate the fact that we are part of Seminole County's economic engine of keeping high property values for our residents, of direct spending through employment of our staff and our business partners in our community in helping to drive a greater economic impact to local businesses and future prosperity of us and our residents within Seminole County. And with that, I'll be happy to answer any questions you might have. Thank you very much. Commissioners, any questions? Commissioner Dilawri? Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for the presentation, Mr. Dilawri. Can you talk to us about the accreditation and what that really means to us, what that costs, and how many other entities, if in the state or surrounding areas are accredited? And then I have another follow-up question about that. Absolutely. So our Parks and Recreation Department is nationally accredited through a board. It is all completely based on best practices within the industry. Those are modified on a period of five years, and we were first accredited back in the 2000s, just before the economic downturn, and every five years we've been reaccredited since. At that particular time, we were one of only three counties to become nationally accredited within the state of Florida. We're currently, based on my last knowledge, about one of eight counties to be nationally accredited, and we've been accredited no longer than all but two of the other counties within the state. What that essentially means is that not only do we meet on a management basis in how we maintain our fiscal responsibility as well as the responsibility we have to the natural environment and providing services, quality services, to our public. This, we have to not just be able to write a wonderful memo, but also be able to prove that we are indeed walking the walk. So every five years, we are re-evaluated across the board to the very latest and strictest of best practices from across the country. Thank you, Rick. And again, this is really the first time that we've actually been involved in actually looking at your total presentation. Have you looked at outsourcing anything additional, like selling property and actually outsourcing large groups of your operation? So in terms of community assets, we would need to look at that on a much deeper basis, of course. We are blessed to have a number of community assets spread from the most developed areas in the county to the most rural parts of the county. All of those, we would evaluate and bring those back for future consideration. Any new assets or new acquisitions is why I said, obviously, all of those would need to be re-evaluated as well. In terms of our ability to outsource additional staffing at this point, obviously, we would look at that deeper. A number of that had already been done through the economic downturn. The large budget that you saw within one of our divisions alone, part of that was as a result of the economic downturn and our ability to outsource a lot of sort of the regular maintenance, the blow-and-go, if you will, of cutting grass and making sure that things are in working order. The reality of our staffing levels at this particular time, however, for our county staff is we don't have a lot of redundant staffing, meaning that at any of our facilities, if we have one person call out sick while somebody else is on vacation, I'll look at more of a dynamic staffing model. We're now pulling staff from other facilities to help cover. We've just been in the mode of doing so. There's nothing wrong with that. It really drives the best value to the county as well. It's just that we're thin to begin with. So outsourcing any of those other things, we'd be looking for opportunities. It's just the realities of there's not a lot of different ways to spend that dollar. Thank you. Any of my questions, Madam Chair? Thank you. Commissioner Constantine, I think you had your hand up. Thank you very much. Discounting, which we cannot, provide the value to our local businesses that you and all the other programs that we're going to talk to today benefit. So you think we're tightening our belts to look at all the businesses. Tim, by your own numbers, this 20% reduction that you're talking about has to assume that everything in general revenue through ad valorem will have to be reduced 20% also, which means public safety and fire department would have to be reduced by 20% if my numbers are correct or your numbers are correct. Is that, so, am I correct on that? That's correct. So I want to bring out the fact that we're only looking at 20% reduction here because we're also talking about if we do this, if Amendment 3 passes, that we're talking about 20% across the board to all ad valorem. So if we don't do that, which means if we don't reduce the sheriff's budget, the fire department's budget, the unfunded mandates budget, and the constitutional officer's budget by 20% also, all these programs are at zero. Am I wrong? No, you're correct. If everyone is in share in the reduction. So us talking about this. I would add, I think that is wrong. I think it's a negative number. Correct. A third of the budget on public works in order to get to zero. No, you're right. It's 1%, 19 million, something like that. I agree, but I was just trying to... Right. But I don't think... We can't... We can't work our way out of this by cutting every... Now we're talking about 21%. Correct. Correct. So the fact of the matter is we're doing an exercise here that really assumes that we can cut public safety and fire. And that needs to be included in the discussion because I don't think that people understand when we're talking about 20% that they know that that means that everything gets cut 20%, not just public works, not just, you know, parks and recreation. So in essence, if, you know, you think about that and if we couldn't cut them by 21%, and I'll use 21%, okay. If we couldn't cut them by 21%, and I'm talking about police and fire, then you're gone. Just gone. You know, let's not talk about 20% reduction. Let's talk about you're out of the building, everybody's out of the building, all of you folks are out of the building. I'm just being honest. And yet we don't think we're going there. No, we are not because their people are smart enough not to do that. We're smart enough not to do that. Commissioner Zanabauer. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm not sure I followed Commissioner Constantine. I think it was pretty clear, or at least I thought, this was not as originally floated by the governor, that first responders were out of this picture. It's clear they are on the table to be cut under the current initiative that's going to go on the ballot. 21%? We're all clear on that? I think that's, maybe that's what the commissioner was trying to say, but it was pretty clear in the early presentation that we've tried to make the public aware of that. So, here's what I'll, a couple questions. In the parks, since we're on the parks, recreation, are there any bond issues or contractual agreements of property that we've either been given or purchased that require us to do certain things that cannot be omitted? In other words, are there any capital improvements or O&M that we are contractually bound to do either through a bond initiative on any natural lands or otherwise or a parcel that's been given to the county for natural lands? Are there any of that that exists? The short answer would be yes. Yes. And all of that would need to be pulled out and obviously we need to examine each one of those cases. So, as we dig deeper, there's cuts that we may be discussing that actually can't be cut on certain properties because of the way that the county came by those properties. and so forth. So, I would very much like to know that. One thing I note and I'm not advocating that we do this but the delivery method of the services in this division. One's a fee-based. I've heard nothing about a fee-based schedule. Again, I'm not advocating for that but I think if we're going to decide and make decisions that should be part of the discussion. I'm not necessarily in favor of that but I think that should be full discussion. Commissioner Zimbauer, I think the county manager is... Absolutely. Thank you, Chairman. And Commissioner, you're right on track and that is part of when we looked at if Amendment 3 goes forward that would be part of our first phase to bring back and that is to the point of this board if it's something that critical service that the board needs and wants to continue with along with of course residents and business owners another revenue source would have to come we'd have to come up with a fee or something regarding to keep that service available. So, those options would be presented if this goes forward. Great. You know, the thing that makes this so difficult for this county is when I came on this board back in 2018 there had not been enough decisions made to turn this ship after the depression of 2008 and 2009 the big crash. So, this county was already working with not enough employees not enough capital assets tens of millions of dollars of deferred improvements to the capital assets that taxpayers had already paid for over the previous 30 years. We're just now in the last couple years getting back to a level of service with our employees taking care of those deferred improvements to those capital assets that left deferred for 10, 20 years and here we are. I make no argument that there are probably entities out there in this state that spend like drunken sailors. This is not one of them. In an organization whether it's a business or otherwise you can only cut your way out of overhead so far. You either have to increase revenue and I would say we're pretty darn efficient at this county. Are there some things we could go without and our citizens may not lose their complete mind over? Probably a few but not to the magnitude of the percentages that we're talking here. And so I would also like to see a breakdown over the last say 10 to 15 years of the state mandates and the costs associated with that because I think there is a fair conversation that this really needs to start at the state level since they have so much money in their budget and they've been paying down all their outstanding debts but yet pushing over to us and cities mandates that we are funding here locally and understand what those are. That would be very helpful to have that monetized for this discussion as we move further. But thank you. I know this is tough work. We appreciate you all doing this what makes matters even more complicated for I guess our staff. We started a discussion about efficiency before efficiency was a thing. I think two or three years ago we started this discussion in our annual retreat and charging our staff with going back and bringing forward any efficiencies they could find within their divisions and bring that back to the commission and we've had that discussion each and every year and then we cut and we cut and we cut reality is you can't provide services if you don't have the personnel and the funding to do it and I think that's ultimately what the questions are going to come down to for our voters and so it's going to be a tough decision when they go to the polls to make their decision so it is our job to educate them and thank you all very much for doing the hard work and unfortunately spending a lot of taxpayers' dollars digging into this to bring this forward but it's rightfully done to educate our public so thank you. Thank you Madam Chair. I'd just like to provide a little bit of clarity in terms of I think on either slide 15 or page 553 of the book there is a reference to unfunded mandates it's sitting at 5% of the 562 million so we have a number roughly 28 million by my count. Are you looking for detail behind the 28 million? I'm looking for detail and specifically what those are. Okay. We can provide that and get that history. So Commissioner Zimbauer so are you looking for in each one of these categories for the slide that he has on the screen the breakdown by dollar amount? I'll make it easy line item detail for all unfunded mandates that would be helpful for me. Alright. Any further discussion? Alright. County Manager. Thank you Chair and Commissioners. Thank you Mr. Durer. Next we'll have Public Works and Mr. Lurie. Property tax funded budgets for our transportation services total 58.6 million dollars this includes 164 full time positions a 20% proportionate share reduction equates to 11.7 million dollars. Tim could you pull the mic closer? Excuse me. Thank you. The 58 million dollars makes up approximately 11% of our property tax revenues. Perfect. Good morning. Thank you Chairman and members of the Commission as well as County Manager. I'm Tawny O'Laurie. I'm the Director of Public Works here at Seminole County. Before we begin I was putting this presentation together. Transportation is the backbone of our community. It's the back not of Seminole County it's of every community out there. And as we travel on city roads or county roads or state roads it all works together. Right? We have and we provide choices so our signal timing needs to work together. Our turn lanes from our road to a city road needs to work together. So as we go through this presentation and we talk about potential service reductions it's not just going to affect our roads but it is going to have an impact on all of our transportation system whatever that may be whether you're taking sunrail and you know those lights and all the signals coming down it all works together and we spent a lot of money to ensure that we move people effectively. And so as we go through the service I just want sort of us to keep that in mind because we're going to affect all of transportation with any kind of reduction. I was here in July and we talked a lot about some of the information we're going to see today I do want to just comment real quickly on something that Commissioner Zimbauer talked about just getting back to you know pre-recession at Public Works we have about 150 people we are not back to pre-recession numbers at this point so all of the services that we provide those are with numbers you know that we haven't while we continue to put infrastructure out there we really haven't grown so we're really really as you said working very effectively and we don't have a lot of fat we are into the bone as we talk about service reduction so I just wanted to make sure so at the county we provide the maintenance of all of our county road and stormwater system maintenance and you hear a lot about system because all of this works together and it's really important as I indicated in July we maintain over 1900 lane miles of road that's over 2700 road weights that we touch we repair over a thousand potholes a year we maintain over 900 sidewalks as well as maintaining over 130,000 feet of ditches and canals our traffic management system has 419 signals we maintain as we indicated in July city signals state signals and county signals we also maintain over 32,000 signs and 450 miles of infrastructure fiber infrastructure thank you Tim Tim is my my vanna we also provide all the inspection and maintenance of our bridges all of the trails that Rick just got done and have those bridges we inspect those and maintain those our capital improvement program and our construction management that is that's funded by our one cent sales tax but remember the people that manage all of that are from our property taxes so if we have reduction we won't be able to manage as much as we have in the past we also as people come in too and I know you all get so many calls and we do too of all the right-of-way permitting we manage all of that and really remember for post especially right now post hurricane disaster response public works is first out on the scene right we are clearing the roads for our emergency response we are making we are assessing flooding we are closing roads if there's flooding and so we are first out on the scene for that post hurricane response and then while public works doesn't manage all of the mass transit services that is provided here in the county it is certainly a transportation service and we do have three systems that we fund here in the county to move people which is what we need to do so as we talk about service so this is sort of the glum part of the presentation as Rick had as we talk about the service reductions of 20% and again remember it's into the bone there is no fat here we would propose to immediately freeze positions if this passes in November now that's going to have an effect just because this won't go into effect until 2028 freezing positions have an effect because we won't be able to provide the level of service that our residents and visitors are used to cutting that 20% would mean about 26 FTEs and like Rick and like what was talked about during Rick's presentation we also have outside vendors who perform services for us this will have an impact to them also our suppliers you know we buy we buy a lot of fiber we buy you know traffic signals we buy you know sand for for our sandbags so all of that has an impact so it's not just here in Seminole County and and our people so the next part of the presentation is really to talk about the reduction of services and what the 20% would mean and as you said it was not a fun day when we talked about this a few days this is not what we want to do this is not what we want to present but this will be the consequences of a 20% cut so in terms of our flood control stormwater system we would have to have less frequent cleaning of our ditch and culverts okay and as you know when you don't have the clearing and the cleaning that just has a lot of clogging means more flooding so we just wouldn't have necessarily the personnel or the supplies to be able to do it we would also have to provide less frequent cleaning and clearing of our retention ponds and our canal maintenance that would mean more sediment going into our system which would means it would just create more impacts of flood and Kim is coming up after me but really a lot more sediments that are getting into our system which means more pollutants going into our lakes and so that's just another effect of these cuts not being able to keep up with our infrastructure right now we provide we pride ourselves on if we get a call for a pothole repair over a thousand you know repaired a year we respond within 24 to 48 hours we would have to you know lengthen that response to a week or more and we would really have to prioritize that on safety you know those potholes would have to get big enough for us to be able because we've got to just won't have as much personnel to be able to respond to that we're looking at doubling the time of mowing we do six cycles of mowing our slopes a year and nine on flat surfaces nine cycles so you're talking you know only the slopes getting mowed three times a year and the flat four or five times a year and that's mainly done by outside services so that's not necessarily our folks so again the impacts outside of Seminole County we would also eliminate supplemental so we do our personnel do go out to places if we get complaints or if there's a public safety nuisance we will go out there and do supplemental mowing we would eliminate that we would reduce the ability to repair our curb and gutter and of course with our gutter again that's a system right the water has to flow through the gutters to get into the storm great to get into our ponds and so when you have that kind of cracking and not being able to repair it that whole flow is impeded we would propose to eliminate street sweeping and so that again would mean more debris into our stormwater system which impacts Kim and she's going because they do get credits with the BMAP and all of that and of course the cleanliness of our roadways won't look as great as they do today we would also limit tree trimming and removal and just really prioritize based on safety risks we just removed quite a large oak tree in the last couple weeks and we were worried for the safety of pedestrians and so we would prioritize that we would also reduce the annual roadway striping by half so this year we're on track to stripe about 50 miles we also do 300 plus arrows and other symbols so we would reduce all that by half and that's a lot with all of the rain and the night and things like that it's just reduced visibility as well as our pedestrians so we would of course prioritize that for our pedestrian safety we would also limit our guardrail and handrail repairs again we would have longer re-response times we would put everything of course log it in and this really prioritize on public safety right now we do about two million dollars a year on sidewalk repair one million comes out of our penny another million comes out of our general revenue we would just do half a million so Florida's beautiful people use our sidewalks but we would have to really prioritize that repair in terms so that's sort of the roadway in our flood or our stormwater system now moving on to our traffic signals we talked about this I think in July as well as just earlier we do maintain and a lot of signals for our cities and the state we do get dollars to do that we would have to reduce our traffic signal maintenance and what does that mean if there's a problem with a signal maintenance we would it would go on flash which is never a good thing with moving people around this county until we could get out there to repair it one of the things that we said that we would do also was evaluate all our traffic signals and see if there are any ones that are sort of on those secondary roads and turn those back into four-way stops because we will not have the personnel to be able to maintain all those signals we would also reduce the traffic signal retiming I talk a lot about that that's a big benefit for us to be able to sort of time those lights it moves traffic through the area very effectively during peak hour we would have to reduce that and rely more on our partners metro plan FDOT which doesn't necessarily mean that Seminole County retiming will be their priority as it is ours in terms of our traffic management system so we do a lot and we use outside consultant services when we see that we do have a problem during peak hour we do a lot of traffic studies and to see if we have to increase the length of a turn lane or if we need a turn lane we would reduce that a lot so that just means any complaints that we see as a problem during peak hour we would just have to put that on put it as a prioritized list as well as our traffic data collection you know all those little tubes we put out there to see how our level of service is and our roadways we would reduce that as well which is outside vendors in terms of street lights we would limit the lighting to critical locations maybe reduce the amount of time the street lights are on and may remove some of those street lights based on an evaluation as I mentioned earlier we have about 32,000 signs in this county we have them all GIS when they go down we make new ones we replace them and that's part of our traffic management system so people know what our speed limits are what our you know no u-turns things like that we would wouldn't be as as able to respond as quickly as we do today and this county has spent you know 450 miles of fiber in a county that's a lot of fiber we have spent a lot of money through the first you know the one penny sales tax putting all of those signals into fiber we would look to reduce that maintenance which means that we wouldn't be able to communicate necessarily with our traffic signals if they go down and all of our county infrastructure like our buildings and stuff is also all on the fiber system so that would have an impact to our day-to-day operations we also provide a lot of support services the survey we have in our roads and stormwater section really provides services throughout the county not just for public works we would look to reduce those services which means if anybody needs survey and they would probably have to contract them through outside contractors we would also eliminate our community service worker program which means the reduction of the ability to pick up trash and litter which is significant for a lot of reasons because that greater you know bigger pieces of debris you know becoming projectiles during storms as well as getting into our stormwater system and causing clogs and not being able to move that water and then finally I know and I've mentioned this before our engineering really provides a lot of services to your offices in terms of if a resident comes in and has some questions or has a problem we really send our engineers out to assess it and to see what can be done as long as well as our roads and stormwater folks and we would just not have the ability to respond as quickly as we do today and then finally I wanted for this portion is to really end on the hurricane disaster all of these reductions as you can see will have a impact on our ability to respond if we don't have the staffing that we have today to be able to get out there and remove that debris you know old timers we like to call it cut and push we cut the debris and we push it out of the way for Chief Kinley and our sheriff's department to be able to get to those people in need after a storm and this would be reduced moving on to our mass transit so as you know we do still have about three million dollars worth fixed routes that are going into Orange County we would assess that and look to either eliminate that or reduce it paratransit is about eight point seven million that's really a federal sort of mandate we would try to look and see what we could do to see how we could reduce that as well Sunrail is about eleven point three million dollar bill and I know we've heard a lot of people say we'll just give it back to the state and that is of course a policy decision but remember by agreement any reductions to Sunrail means it comes out of Seminole County's work program and so any improvements that DOT has in the work program whether it's resurfacing whether it's capacity that would be reduced by the amount that that DOT would be paying for Sunrail so again it's a reduction of transportation services in Seminole County finally for Scout 20% reduction would mean to either eliminate service or reduce the number of vehicles which mean the wait times would increase right now the July average was about 42 minutes so that would more than likely increase for that wait time and finally I just wanted to end on this slide I showed this slide to you in July and you know we move a lot of people in vehicles a day in Seminole County whether that's on county roadways on city roadways state roadways all of the service impacts that we just discussed will have an impact on the ability to move that many people through our county effectively and efficiently so with that I I will try to leave on a high note so we did have a department meeting last Thursday a department wide to go over this presentation because we didn't want this presentation to be the first that our our folks and and I feel is our best asset is our people and we had of the 150 people about 130 people there at our extension services and they asked a lot of good questions and Chris Patton was there with all of the material and there wasn't one piece of material left that Chris brought and they wanted to know what this means because they wanted to educate the residents and the people they interact with on a daily basis of what that would mean for them and so I'm just so proud of the public works department because they really truly care about this community and they really want to do the best job and they want the residents to know what this could look like so with that if there's any questions I'd be more than happy to take them thank you very much Chris Zimbala I've got a couple for you all and then for the county attorney in this regards and I respect your input and everything that you and your staff have put together and you've been in this business for quite some time not only in this county are you trying to ask my age no I'm not I was trained by three very fine women not to go down that path but but you've worked for a much larger organization in public service than Seminole County correct yes how many times in all the years that you've been in this role have you received a call from somebody that says don't fix the pothole or don't fix the sidewalk has that ever occurred never after a hurricane or storm have you ever received phone calls saying hey don't remove the debris just leave it there for a couple months let it rot a little bit never never happen these are easy questions right thank you well I'm just trying to obviously make a point but going to the county attorney if we do arrive at a point where some of these assets have to not be repaired whether it be sidewalks potholes and so forth what liability if any do the taxpayers have and I ask this question because as the chair knows the chair usually gets notice of lawsuits regarding sidewalks and fences and potholes and so forth is there liability there a cost to the taxpayer I mean commissioner generally speaking when you're making changes and reducing services government services that's a discretionary planning function of the government which the government is immune from that kind of liability the the risk is when we're changing these you know mowing schedules or you know road repair schedules we need to make sure we accurately and promptly reflect our policies our schedules because if we're not meeting those schedules once they've been changed that's where the liability comes in if we say we're going to mow every three three months and we don't and then there's an accident based on a visibility issue that exposes the county however so so if we're going to reduce services we need to make sure that all of our policies all of our schedules are updated to reflect the reduction in schedules and reduction in services but just changing those policies standing alone is a discretionary government function for which the county is immune maybe my question wasn't quite spelled out well enough well that was a really great answer it was it was fantastic so if we decide we're not fixing sidewalks because there's no money there to do it and somebody trips or falls breaks an ankle breaks in whatever do we have any responsibility there because we didn't fix it I mean of course this is a lawyer answer every case is different but you know if we're put on notice that a sidewalk is hazardous and then somebody falls and hurts themselves we definitely have liability there but again you go back to on what schedule is the county supposed to be inspecting and repairing their sidewalks so I would go back to making sure that however often we intend to do it however often we can afford to do it that our policies reflect that great well thank you very much I appreciate the answers from both and just just to flush those out so the public is fully aware you know what some of the stuff really means I mean it's the things that aren't said sometimes that need to worry about versus the things that are said but good work I appreciate you know the deep dives you've done and in working through that you know I reflect back like 2018 or 2019 we had discussion and Commissioner Lockhart and I were fairly new here we had started getting complaints as new commissioners about the infrequency of mowing the medians and the sides the roads because of the 29 2009 2008 downturn the county made a decision to only do it I guess twice a year instead of the six times a year or three times a year versus six and I think we're finally just recently in the last couple of years gotten back to the previous schedule that would you know which you know we had complaints about rodents and mice and things running around out of these things in people's yards and just complain it doesn't look worth a hoot when they're going to their home or their office so forth so thank you all very much for for that good information Commissioner Jalari thank you Madam Chair so let's go back a little further back in the early 2000s policy of the county back then used to be you'd call in a pothole by 9 a.m. it was fixed by 5 p.m. that was the policy and county staff did a phenomenal job in doing that and then around 07 08 that had a change and then each budget session since then it's changed quite a bit also going back then there was a large discussion in 07 I think it was where we talked about stormwater fees because the seven cities have stormwater fees and the county staff the county does not have a stormwater fee we pay for stormwater out of our general fund and out of the one set sales tax and I'm not going to go into details but you can all watch the tapes we actually talked about a stormwater fee and it was packed and what I mean by packed we literally had to set up chairs chairs and monitors outside in tents because people were being bussed in from all around the county and we did not move forward with that but it's always been an issue out there because the county does not have a stormwater fee and the seven cities do so we pay for it out of our general fund I just want to make sure that that's out there because I don't want to go there I've already lived through it a couple times I was one of the ones in the parking lot that couldn't get a seat in there I understand that we won't go into those details but I do have a couple questions and that is when it comes to stormwater and TMDLs are we required to maintain our TMDLs total maximum daily loads of pollutants at a certain level and is that required by state and federal yeah so I think for Kim and if we're going to address that later on yeah that's part of but you didn't talk about stormwater that's why I'm bringing it to you and then the next question I have is when you talk about road maintenance how would that be addressing on emergency vehicles response times and how would that affect us yeah that's a good question because um so like I said we would have to set standards as going with county man uh county attorney on what is public safety and so that's later on okay and then the next question I have is when it comes to road maintenance and lack thereof how does that affect the economic viability of a business of people getting to or from those businesses it it's the backbone transportation as I said yeah but that will be that will be reviewed and evaluated at a later date yeah okay thank you madam chair yes going back to the ice cube tray um want to ask you if you all have fully evaluated all of the projects that are maintenance and various and sundry other things that you are doing in public works that are currently being spent out of the general fund that could be shifted to the sales tax understanding that the sales tax is for capital and isn't supposed to be used for ordinary maintenance or can't be used for ordinary maintenance um have have you evaluated any opportunities of shifting from general fund to the sales tax so I I think this county and just coming in here you have already done that okay so for example the resurfacing program is out of the sales tax not out of the general fund um the sidewalk repairs that we talked about a portion of that is from the sales tax um so a lot of what we have already you have already implemented is part of that the routine maintenance is what comes out of the general fund so we've already really you've got um a lot of that already shifted now you know when you talk about lean mean fighting I mean this is what you guys have already operated under you know and and efficiently and effectively but then for cuts it's it's really right into the bone okay I wanted to make sure we got that on the record because I think um there is a lot of misconception about which revenues can be used for what types of services and someone might say well all of these sidewalk repairs just do them out of the penny sales tax and it's it has been made very clear to us as a board um and I'm not sure that all of our citizens fully grasp what revenues can be spent on which expenditures and so if it if we're extending the the life of a capital asset we can use penny sales tax is that correct correct but if it's routine maintenance we cannot is that correct that's correct okay I just that's a that's a big distinction in these conversations I think it's important that we continue to educate on that piece thank you well and I'll pick up from there and say I think another big distinction is that we actually are very aggressive about operating within the rules of governance we don't go into the warnings track just by the nature of all five of us um and so something that keeps resonating with me about this is is the fact that the impact of this on a county that operates efficiently and operates very very clearly within the rules and boundaries of the governance is is probably most harmed amen and so one of the questions that I have for either miss or or or you mr. Gray you've both been in other counties how do we compare from a staffing perspective what is your evaluation again nothing like being on the spot no I'm putting you on the spot because I think the point is really important to the seminal county residents that we have done what we can do there's always room for improvement we look for it every year to Commissioner Zimbauer's point but I mean I'm out there I deal with I look at censuses for a living so I can answer this question myself but you two are experts and you see it as it relates to the operations of a county and I'll go first and I'll let Ms. Elori for her experience and as you said I've been I think at every county in central Florida so I know a lot about how they're funded this county I was very amazed when I came when I did my really audit and sat down with mr. Jackson we went through each of the funds on how we provide services what this county has done remarkable at is actually moved every things that they possibly can out of property tax revenue into what we call a special revenue that is restricted that can only be used for that that source and if you look at our general fund and we and I would welcome anyone who wants to sit down discuss we're very transparent we will open up everything we will show them and and actually maybe even learn something from others that want to come and share that and we did a lot of that last year as you know when we went through our budget process but really if you look at our general fund and the way our property taxes are allocated it is clearly at bare bones it is mostly public safety it's sheriff and the fire department emergency management and again we have looked at air a lot of other special revenue opportunities that are restricted that could be used for services that we provide with our residents and business owners other counties in Central Florida going through the same thing they've I mean I've I personally as a manager have done that exercise especially as we've talked about the downturn of the economy in 2008 9 10 we all had to go through that exercise do you remember during 2007 8 we also had a mandatory rollback of millage rates from the state legislature and that we had to go through that process so it's almost every probably I'd say five to ten years we go through this process and we really look at it but this county of all the counties that I have worked in has actually done a really remarkable job about really putting property tax dollars to direct services that really enhance the quality of life and emergency response here in the county county thank you anything to add you can say no no I would say you know as commissioners in bowers so aptly I've been around for a long time time no but Seminole County has always been known for that fiscally responsible and really operating as a business and it's known throughout the region for that and as somebody mentioned mentioned when you have a government operating like that these kind of cuts are devastating because you don't have that fact you just you don't and so you just have to start cutting services and that's not what we want to do at all because we want to maintain the infrastructure that was built utilizing tax dollars as well so i would like to get a few things from a clarifying factor here on the record you did mention that you would turn traffic signals into four-way stops in order to stop maintaining them meaning the traffic signal would continue to blink uh well down a traffic signal that we've already paid for yeah we could well we could they could blink or we just shut it off bag it right bag it um so that that could be done now that that's a we don't want to do that i mean it was the traffic signal was warranted these wouldn't be on your major arterials obviously more on the side streets two lane to two lane type of thing so what i think is interesting about this discussion there the there's also there was also talk about street lights and other assets that have already been purchased with taxpayer money is that while we don't want to do that and we may not do that and we would try i would tell you i would personally try to figure out every way that we didn't have to do that um that is that could be expected in neighboring communities so yeah so it is on the table i think from an educational perspective it's it's good to put it out there i don't want anybody to panic about that happening here um but what i would say is very realistic is that our look at mass transit needs to continue whether this passes or not i think we're all aligned on that um i think that's one way to get ready for whatever happens whether this passes or not something else will um and we're already ahead of that as well any other comments with regard to this i would just say that following up on that is that the public needs to understand the five of us sitting here i think we have a core value that money doesn't grow on trees we're not wasting taxpayers dollars and and we're probably one of the first one of us to raise the red flag if we see something that doesn't make sense from a financial feasibility or efficiency standpoint um you know and i'm as guilty as anybody else before i was in government and got to look behind the curtain you know government's always fat and happy and taking too many of my tax dollars um but you know you've heard me say it my first budget session that i went through uh at this county when i looked at everything i said y'all are so fiscally conservative you're about to go out of business or no longer be able to supply the services you need to supply to these residents and that was the truth and finally we've slowly come back to a reasonable level of service um but you know i would invite any citizen to come walk with me through this this building and and see somebody goofing off or a group of employees sitting around doing anything not not doing anything because it's just not happening um if anything they're running around with their hair on fire because they got too much to do and not enough staff to get it done um and i think that's a core principle we all hold up here on this dais um and like i said there's always one of us usually raises it when we when we see something we say something so um and to your point we will be penalized if this is if this passes very much like when we put the officers in the schools and we were one of the first if not the first in the state to do that and then the state subsidized other counties to do it we had already paid for it we weren't going to get any money from the county or from the state but our residents have have time and again with the proper information prove it to us they make the right decisions and that's this part of this exercise is to make sure they get as much information as we possibly can so thank you again thank you all right i think we're ready to move on to water quality and mosquito control thank you mosquito control through ai up next is water quality mosquito control with kim orenberg the total watershed management budget coming from property taxes is 3.1 million dollars 20 reduction would be about 600 000 and their budget includes 21 full-time positions this 3.1 million dollars makes up about one half a percent of our total property tax revenues okay thank you tim i'll say we'll start with our water quality once again we all know the seminal county motto is florida's natural choice which is so true because we have such an abundance of amazing natural resources that we enjoy and want to protect so we'll start with some quick stats we have over 200 named lakes including our three great lakes lakes jessup harney and monroe our major rivers include the st john's which makes up the county's eastern and northern borders and is where all the county's surface water eventually drains to and here's a fun fact it's one of only 14 rivers in the nation that's been designated an american heritage river then there's the big and little wakaiva rivers which are designated as national wild and scenic rivers as well as state aquatic preserves and outstanding florida waters and finally the big and little econ loctachi or econ rivers which are which are also outstanding florida waters and now to our springs everyone's familiar with the wakiwa spring our first magnitude outstanding florida florida spring but we have several others that range in size and magnitude including san lando palm clifton starbuck and little ginger ale altogether there's about 22 000 acres or 10 percent of the county that's made up of surface water so with all of these great natural resources we have several programs that help us maintain and protect them our lake management program monitors and manages both public and private water bodies we have a comprehensive water chemistry and biological monitoring program we conduct investigations into illegal dumping and pollution discharges we have an extensive public education and outreach program which includes our public service announcements and our water atlas our shoreline protection program was initiated just a few years ago to help further safeguard our water bodies and we also conduct a large and small scale restoration and capital projects like the one we just completed recently on the little wakaiva so as you saw from the budget numbers it's not a large program but we have 10 full-time staff scientists and technicians and two part-time interns we manage 26 lakes or chains of lakes through the county's msbu program which as mentioned before our self-taxing districts our county our staff collects an average of 9 000 water chemistry samples a year conducts over 400 lake and 200 shoreline inspections as well as over 200 educational events and 100 resident requested environmental investigations each year the program is primarily focused on the unincorporated areas but our staff is always willing to help citizens residents and citizens regardless of where they live most of the program's activities actually positively impact the cities anyway because water doesn't know jurisdictional boundaries and this is why we was established over the years interlocal agreements with our city and regional partners to work cooperatively cooperatively together on protecting our water resources the water quality program was started in the late 90s as a result of state and federal unfunded mandates and regulatory requirements including the federal clean water act the state's impaired waters rule water quality criteria and basin management action plans which identify regional strategies to protect and restore our water bodies and as you can see from this the colors on this map about two-thirds of the county falls into an impaired watershed in the nearly three decades since the program's inception we have seen significant improvements in our stormwater runoff and in many of our natural systems through education collaboration monitoring and restoration but we still have farther to go so what are the impacts to the program we would likely see reductions in our current service levels including to our monitoring network our education and a more limited ability to assist and provide free technical advice to our residents we may have to scale back the program to make to maintain only minimum regulatory compliance required instead of the holistic cooperative watershed approach we currently have in place ultimately this could result in less protection of our natural systems and could lead to degraded water quality with potentially higher long-term costs to the community in order to meet these water quality standards because the cost of cleanup and restoration is more expensive and difficult than the cost of prevention especially this ties into what tawny was talking about with you know reductions in maintenance as well we may end up having to seek alternative funding sources in order to meet the long-term regulatory compliance and to maintain the established levels of service now on to our mosquito control program and while this is not a state man or federally mandated program it is a state certified program which receives a small amount about 60 000 a year from the state the mission of the program is to protect health the health and well-being of our residents through the control of mosquitoes and mosquito-borne illnesses the current program was created about 20 years ago and established a proactive science-based integrated pest management program that's data-driven and uses the most environmentally friendly products available which are tested continually and rotated to ensure effectiveness listed here are some of the activities within our program we have our surveillance which includes sentinel chickens mosquito traps landing rates and mosquito identification using our new ai assisted system which you may have seen recently on the local news we have source reduction larviciding which is the most efficient way to eliminate mosquito populations before they reach adulthood and targeted fog fogging which is the activity most people are familiar with and an extensive public education program including public service announcements individual residential inspections and educational door hangers that identify breeding habitats so this our mosquito control program unlike the water quality is a county-wide program and includes all seven cities in addition to the incorporated areas our team assists our nearly 500 000 residents and covers the entire two hundred and twenty thousand acres of the county this is all accomplished by a very small mighty and efficient team of only 10 full-time employees when compared to other mosquito programs our current program the cost per resident and per acre are the lowest in the region and as you can see we accomplish quite a bit every year with this team they address over 2 000 customer service requests they fog over 160 000 acres larvicide around 8 500 acres of standing water and respond to an average of 13 disease vector each year i'd say these are pretty impressive statistics for only 10 people all right so what are the potential impacts to the program as with all the other programs we would likely see a reduction in our current service levels the most visible reduction would be to our fogging program due to chemical costs and the cost of extended staff hours needed to complete the missions at the current levels our staff provides fogging services not only to neighborhoods but for special events like the fourth of july as well as to our sports complexes the zoo and to the airport our ability to respond to resident requests could also be reduced budget reductions may result in a shift from the current prevention focused mission or proactive to an outbreak response driven program more reactive this could ultimately lead to increased mosquito populations and a higher risk of mosquito-borne diseases and again alternative funding sources would need to be considered in order to continue the current county-wide service and response levels so um that's all i have but i i conclude my presentation but if um reaching back to what was asked um as far as when uh tawny was speaking the npdes has a minimum maintenance requirements for um for the stormwater systems but again with all of our programs we try to do you know more than the minimum um and and responses um you know that would have a negative impact on those so so we do more than the minimum to keep our water clean yes let's hope we don't get faulted for that agreed then you could be the hero to come in and save our water after it gets ruined let's not do it that way all right commissioners any comments yes um i noticed both kim and tawny and i don't remember if rick said this or not but i've noticed a couple of times the last slide um identified we'll have to find alternative funding can you tell me what you're envisioning as alternative funding and why would we not be seeking that already but as you know so the state sets up how we receive money through and we there's only two ways we governments local governments receive dollars and it's through taxes or fees that's all all what it is there are another what we call non-ad valorem fees that could actually be used instead of ad valorem property taxes and so that is whereas a service when it's assessed right now you know we use our property tax dollars for say for public safety but there are other um options that we could use that could actually be a non-property tax or non what they call non-ad valorem fee that the board then would have to discuss we'd have to do a study to ensure the equity of it and things like that so that's a whole nother behold another process um but this the state they they do allow us to do go go that avenue so that's one other as we always seek is grants and other special revenue opportunities we're already the city managers myself all got together a month six weeks ago to talk about again we continue this dialogue all the time about sharing of services uh things things of that that nature as well so um the state has a book of revenues uh i forget what the it's called the local government revenue uh the green book uh that has because we're only we're restricted to exactly the revenues that the state allows to collect so we would and some of them don't pertain to us at all but i would say you know half of them probably could and that would be another exercise that the that our staff and that we would have to talk to the board about but other uh revenue opportunities that could come into the county it's complicated but and right now it's the the series of going through that is very extensive so it could not happen overnight it would need probably a good six months to hear discussion on how we get to that to the end so a potential for some grants here and there but if i'm just reading between the lines and saying it very plainly it would still be our citizens paying for it but out of a different pocket correct and some citizens who could actually maybe benefit from this property tax amendment three could actually be paying more for this new type of source that we would have to fund okay be more like a user fee correct and i always is i'll get off my soapbox event no the cost is what the cost is right and i'll tell you the private sector a lot of times dictates the cost that we provide to our residents because all of our supplies materials come from the private sector again we don't make anything all we do is deliver services to our residents and business owners so usually the private sector establishes what that is we have to competitively bid that meaning we can't make deals behind the the scene we it's all publicly bid out and that's negotiated out in public and then uh we move forward with that follow up so um i'm assuming we've already looked and highlighted in the green book those uh potential additional fees that would be um appropriate in seminal maybe appropriate is the wrong word allowable in seminal county um at what point after november 3rd should this pass will we start digging into that so that this board has the opportunity right because you're saying you need a six month to a year lead time can do you have it yeah absolutely and as uh mr jicks put out on uh one of his earlier slides so if this past passes and i know i've spoken with with each of you um in fact the chairman i just spoke about this recently is that we would immediately come in january to talk to you're correct this is not something that we're just sitting idle and then just waiting if this happens that's why we're having these hearings uh right now to we're already looking at okay if this happens then what else needs to occur so january we would already we will already start that discussion with the board a public meeting uh discussing for one just think about fire right now fire is funded through um our mst or our property taxes for for fire there is an opportunity where you can do a fire fee but that that fire fee is restricted that can only be for fire operations it cannot be used for for say paramedics or anything medical so that would have to have another fee that attached to it so a lot of these are a combination of fees that would have to come in to make that uh that function whole if you will so but to answer your question immediately we would start uh in january because what my goal would then be by the time we hit our budget work sessions in the summer next summer you will already have a road path and a road mark and a path forward of how you want us to move forward on not only what services you want but how we would fund those services and the and the level of how we fund it all right thank you so i think the simplified answer to that question is the pre-work is already being done at the staff level so that if this thing if we get to a yes in november it starts right immediately of now what do we do right and that includes involving citizens in terms of input and what do you want us to take away what do you want us to keep and how do you want it's going to have to be funded somehow all of those discussions that we've had here already so this part of the reason why we're doing these hearings is to be extremely proactive so at the point that they're ready to bring it back to us it's not the first time we're hearing all this it's to speed to market concept of being ready to act effectively and then to identify um one of the things that the uh i guess exercises we went through as a team the whole all of our managers directors we had probably 60 to 70 people uh going through this what would the experience be for a resident or business owner if this was to pass on a service level and that's what we want to communicate today not how if this does pass how would we fix it and it says but how what would the service level look like if this was was to pass and that's uh first and then if it does pass then you're right um commissioner lockhart and uh and the chair is that we would then have to have a series of budget work sessions on all right if the community and the board wants this service at what level what type of fee would we have to maintain that level at or charge at yes commissioner zinbauer i would just dovetailing into that we are in a much better position in my opinion than many other entities because this board has pushed this staff for multiple years to bring efficiencies forth every single year during budget time in advance so we're constantly looking at those deficiencies as we move forward so it's not something that you know this this staff is like oh my gosh we've never done this before now what do we do they they do that by nature because this board insists that be done so i think to everybody's point we are starting early it is well thought out and and as things go we'll be we'll be prepared to hit the hit the accelerator when it needs to be well it's a little bit of a double-edged sword right we have been very effective and we do this as a regular course of action in every budgeting cycle and that's been expected for years and years we're coming out of a time frame when there was a what i would call hyper conservatism that actually let current assets go too long untended and now now we're faced with can we cut further and we don't want to go back to where we were correct and that so we've been there and know the outcome of that so we are really ahead of the game and to know that action has to happen and that's exactly the the path that we're on was that raising a hand or pointing it no you you're pointing your own but i do i do have to leave a little early before lunch because i've got a commitment i can't miss from a process technical perspective should these additional fees or assessments be a direction that this board goes will those show up on residents property tax bills like their garbage currently does or would how would we collect them there's multiple ways some of them are required to do that and some of them are not so um it just depends on which one which scenario we would move forward with another opportunity for education because i think sometimes um because we we stack uh different things msbus on the property tax bill people look at you know oh my gosh my taxes went up and it wasn't their ad warum taxes it was the services that they're paying for but they're paying for it on their tax bill so i just wanted i'm thinking ahead to the phone calls that are coming yes okay i think one of the challenges that we had when we were looking at the millage rate is that you there's no apples to apples comparison out there is that others move things in and out of those buckets very readily right i would offer to you if the you look in some of our neighboring communities they're very adept at this so there's probably lessons to be learned on all of the other line items that are applicable with that can we close this portion of the discussion and move on to the next yes ma'am yes ma'am let's do it all right allison we're pretty worn out so bring us home our final department presentation is for community services led by director allison thal thank you tim thank you the property tax funded budgets for community service is seven million dollars this includes 54 full-time positions a 20 percent proportionate share reduction would equate to 1.4 million dollars thank you commissioners oh i'm sorry one more slide sorry the seven million dollar budget makes up approximately one percent of our property tax revenues it's the little tiny blue one and allison pull that mic up will do sorry tim i'm excited to get this over with for everybody i feel like i'm the icing on the cake of a very three-tiered depression cake but i'll be brief so thank you commissioners allison thal i'm the director for the department of community services and community services encompasses as you know a wide range of services aimed at improving the well-being of individuals families and communities our funding specifically addresses direct services including low-income rental and utility assistance locating housing for families at risk of becoming homeless as well as funding our local non-profit organizations for services such as child care after school programming meals for at-risk seniors attainable housing initiatives and the support of our county homeless shelters including the rescue outreach mission safe house recovery house and boystown so in anticipation of the unknown and in the spirit of being proactive we too have identified a few immediate cost-saving measures that could be implemented in fiscal year 2027. these include freezing four of our current currently vacant positions suspending our attainable housing trust fund awards and deferring our homeless support spending which are funds that we earmark specifically for emergency hotelling of families and deposit assistance for families who were actively working with now for the purpose of this presentation i'm going to share the very personal impact of the anticipated reduced funding in total over the two upcoming fiscal years meaning fiscal year 2028 and 2029 as you're already aware our community assistance division does provide the direct service by way of individual assistance programs for past due rent and utility assistance as well as our homeless individual grant our individual assistance programs currently funded at just over 578 000 a year these funds are used exclusively to provide past due rent and utility assistance to low-income individuals and families we currently serve roughly 227 households or about 491 individuals each year with these funds by fiscal year 2029 with reduced funding more than 83 of these households will now face homelessness our homeless individual grant programs currently funded at over a little a little over 193 000 a year we currently actually locate and assist over 300 homeless or borderline homeless families and individuals with finding and or keeping safe and secure housing without our current funding level over 100 individuals including children will either become or remain homeless additionally community services administers the annual community services assistance or csa grants we're typically awarded 842 000 a year to place back into the community to serve our residents as you can see from the list on the screen we assist a full cross-representation of the residents of our county with our grant funds from senior citizens to our working families to teens right down to our most vulnerable children the homeless shelters you see listed each specialize in sheltering unique demographic populations so the impact of the reduced or eliminated csa funding will ultimately directly affect an estimated 750 individuals children and family collectively those hit hardest are going to be the homebound seniors who will no longer receive meals families who will not be able to secure food for their families or children children losing after school programs child victims of sexual assault and parents who have lost their employment because they can no longer obtain affordable child care the four shelters alone will potentially need to turn away almost 500 individuals including 120 children and return them to the streets so similar to the community assistance division the department's community health division specializes in the delivery of support services largely to our senior citizens and our seriously mentally ill residents almost 800 individuals will lose direct engagement with staff for assistance addressing needs such as access to medical care prescription assistance housing fall prevention food insecurity transportation a significant number of our seniors will remain socially isolated and just about all of our community outreach events for seniors will likely be eliminated and over 500 seriously and persistently mentally ill individuals are going to lose access to transportation to medical appointments and crisis medical services furthermore the funding that we will now no longer be able to provide to the health department will result in over 2500 individual services including dental health and diabetes education essentially potentially being eliminated critical medical services like infectious disease testing physical exams immunizations about 1200 direct contact services again are going to be jeopardized so as for attainable housing the last of our substantially supported general fund programs we would really have no choice but to recommend eliminating any funding assistance to our development partners for infrastructure and construction costs on any future attainable housing project although this may not stop the development of affordable housing it will likely contribute to the reduction of the current rate of construction simply compounding the ongoing lack of affordable housing in seminole county this concludes my presentation madam chair yes sir why didn't she just say worst case scenario any other comments i'll turn it back to you county yes minor technicality so i in your comments you mentioned the four shelters but on the slide they aren't reflected as shelters they say that they they provide services and i've had this conversation with a couple of folks in the community at um rescue outreach mission does a phenomenal job and they are only emergency shelter but there are probably a hundred or more folks housed at those other three probably 150 or more housed i mean they they provide food and shelter and support services also so i just want to continue to have that conversation and make sure it's reflected um in the slides is that um yeah thank you allison for being the icing thank you uh the chairman and the board and all of our our team i know this is a difficult exercise we all went through but again we want to talk about reality and this is just not like i think you had mentioned chair before chairman before about this is not we're not saying the sky is falling however we want to be very proactive and prepare um and as you all have directed to me get our residents and business owners involved and being very transparent um and just saying that you know reality is what it is and so with that that's um all of the departments we were going to have you uh present to you today on the september 15th which is our next board meeting we will kick it off with public safety we have invited the sheriff as well as chief kinley the fire department mr alan harris with emergency management um which really is the bulk of our of our property tax dollars and where they are allocated to so i appreciate uh you the time that you all had with us this this morning and again we'll get to wherever we need to get to so i would just close the morning session by saying to all of you that did all of this hard work including all the people that are sitting at their desks watching this we will make really good decisions on your behalf not to worry and that is why we're being as proactive as we're being so that we're not crushed with last minute decisions that could potentially happen we'll take a very effective path to this including all of the involvement of the teams i applaud every member here that's brought their team into the meetings to have those discussions and regardless of whether this passes or not we need to keep having those discussions as we have in the past anything we can do to become more efficient and effective will will benefit our citizens in the long run and we've always done that and we'll just keep doing that so i thank you to all of you and i'll see you all at 1 30. meeting at 1 30. yay and we're all raiding commissioner zimbauer's candy jar while he's not here just to show you how adult we are you just didn't get caught on the camera but lee constantine is caught red-handed down there got a new thing i am calling the meeting to order sir good god help us all right so uh i will first look for proof of publication move to approve second all right we have a motion in the second all those in favor aye opposed hearing none it passes unanimously public hearing legislative our first hearing today and i appreciate our team helping the port authority come in the afternoon so the first on the session is the seminole county port authority budget presentation and we have with us andrew van gale to present andrew welcome to the podium thank you thank you commissioners staff i'm here today with our chairman matthew criswell very dedicated long-term chairman and board member so couldn't be more pleased having him along today we're going to talk about our fiscal year 26 27 budget and you know we know you guys have an uphill battle coming soon possibly and we're keenly aware that you know the landscape is going to be very important for the port authority and agencies like ours to you know look to the future and step up and be part of uh you know solutions to what's happening out here so we're cognizant of that and knowing that we're almost rounding the corner on a lot of our major projects and onto the maintenance scheme to where you know we predict a good steady healthy revenue stream to help help with those uh penny legislative changes so with that i'm andrew van gale uh we're here to present the budget for uh 26 27 and the board authority approved this in june so we're here today to recommend approval and inclusion into your budget as an enterprise fund so for a few numbers i'll make a brief today we've done a few things this year we conducted a facility condition assessment with withers ravenal to kind of assess all our facilities and kind of assess our capital needs and maintenance needs for the future and we're really pleased to say that the outcome was was really exceptional very good to almost excellent of a lot of our facilities meaning we can kind of start budgeting to maintaining and and keeping up the high level of service and and uh you know our condition of our facilities we have for the future to be competitive in the industrial market because it is very competitive out there um third year of our rental rate increase out of a five-year plan we're almost there we've substantially increased our rental rates and our numbers show that within the next couple years from this when we started this should be additional one million dollars a year in the revenue so we're really almost there we're probably 70 percent there so doing good on that our redevelopment site we've completed two major construction projects these new buildings they're fully leased occupied and the the third one now is in permitting here and almost ready to go so that will be really a nice uh addition to the fort should be about 350 000 a year extra on that so on to that our occupancy is still strong just about 90 percent all year long so we're holding steady there and so what this budget does today you've all got a chance to look at it the total budget is six million eight hundred thirty five thousand five hundred twenty nine dollars operational revenue is increasing to three million nine thousand two hundred thirteen dollars our expenditures have gone down to four million two hundred sixty eight thousand thirty dollars and part of that expenditure we have got a 2.7 million dollar capital budget testing complete one last building and some other you know paving and infrastructure needs uh and that uh surplus fund contribution we stayed steady this year uh october will bring you 250 000 dollars this budget contemplates another 250 000 with you know assessment at the end of the year to see what's left for additional and how we you know finish off this next year and uh you know like keeping in mind that you know it's going to be important to to start upping that contribution we understand that just for a little historical perspective from 2001 to 27 uh about 13 million dollars in contributions that's 500 brand a year we average it out so i think uh we hopefully can see that number continuing to grow and stay about the static there and with that we're here to ask for adoption of our budget and for any questions you may have board members i have no questions madam chair i believe you sit on that committee i'd like to get i'd like to get a briefing from you publicly if you wouldn't mind i wouldn't mind i was going to do that at the end if if no one else has any other comments i would tell you that the work that's been done over the past five or six years has been significant in terms of doing an appraisal of all the facilities out there and making sure that we were getting the best return on the asset for our citizens that is not an easy task when you've had long time renters that have become accustomed to very small rate increases and so andrew wisely brought in a step plan and the board did approve it and we did our our occupancy rate was a hundred percent for for a while and we're now at ninety percent but the step plan has continued to raise revenue despite the loss in occupancy rate i personally think 100 occupancy rate is an indication of an issue and we've addressed the issue the two buildings are up and rented and we've been telling you for a long time we're coming they're coming they're coming they're now here and the third one is in the works i would also tell you that we have done and you didn't bring this up and i commend you for that but i'm going to um we have done an amazing amount of work at the marina and so the things that were happening out there that were not acceptable have been resolved we have a new owner that took a level of patience and persistence led by our chairman that was pretty significant and it took a heck of a lot of legal fees a heck of a lot of legal fees so if you're looking at any line items that's the one you should be asking about but we've come through the other end of that with a really good outcome i will say that we are the attorney that we have representing us has done an amazing job with that i think we'd all say that with the right mix of legal advice and every now and then a little bit of business advice that got us in the right direction so we i think are in the best place that we've been in years with a long-term view of how do we get this thing to be as performing of an asset as it can possibly be into the long term and that was the idea behind the withers ravenal maintenance schedule they did a complete analysis because quite frankly it was all done before with when somebody moved out we knew we had a problem or andrew assessing the place andrew and jennifer figuring it out as they went along we need a succession plan that where we can see what's out there there's a lot of assets out there there's a lot of impact out there with the changing of orange boulevard which i promise is going to happen sometime some way someday probably maybe before i'm gone that asset's pretty significant so now's the time to get it set how's that commissioner delari perfect you recommend we adopt the budget i do recommend you adopt the budget now chairman like to make a motion to approve the fiscal year 2026 27 port authority budget as presented here today with your comments second we have a first and a second any further discussion i would only say that i think that in the last couple years it in fact has turned a corner to a very professional operation and having the one major tenant turnover i think is not only a huge asset for the taxpayers but also with the known issues we had with crime at the restaurant area over there will now be put to rest and i thank the sheriff's office for uh assisting with that as well so good work all the way around thank you thank you there were a few tow truck drivers in that as well yeah right super important all right did we vote no no chairman before you call for the vote can i just um say one thing absolutely christopher chairman of the uh simon county port authority 13 years i've seen a lot change out there i was a contractor out there before that um i just want to say thank you to andrew for for leading the charge there we've had some hiccups out there with the restaurant and the uh the marina but we've got new owners in that have brought just this massive influx of not only capital but just a newfound resilience in it they're ready to to hit the road running uh the new buildings that are going up are going to be a facelift for it we've got new roadways new water uh stormwater drainage out there the place in the last decade has turned around 180 degrees it looks fantastic i also want to say thank you to um the chairwoman for sitting on our board she brings the wealth of knowledge not only business wise but also county and politic wise so we appreciate that and i think we've got another decade or two that are just going to lead the charge out there so stick with us we appreciate it thank you thank you so i can't even keep the straight face we we all know i don't have much insight into politics so but thank you for that compliment and i will thank the chair uh you've done a great job we have a really good strong board um with a little bit more diversification now with some of the new appointees so we're in a good spot so with that no further discussion all those in favor opposed hearing none it passes unanimously thank you for all your work good to see you call us only if you need us yeah you know when i started you were the only one on this board called denari 2006. all right easy don't blow it now andrew don't blow it get out of here bye guys see y'all next time bring bring the check next time all right i think we have an opportunity for public comment but there is none there was none correct okay just want to get that on the record all right county managers uh report and staff presentations yes thank you madam chair we committed to this board about a year ago to follow up once our code enforcement team uh had been put in place on october 1st 2025 to give you an update so it's my pleasure to share with you this update mr brodes is going to kick it off and then our division manager john martin will step in thank you mike all right thank you chairman and commissioners uh again mike rhodes development services director i appreciate the opportunity to talk with you today about where we've been and where we're going with code enforcement as trisha said it was almost a year and a half ago that this board decided to bring code enforcement back underneath the board of county commissioners and make some fundamental changes to how we do our work so today i want to provide you with this update on kind of you know our implementation process what we've been able to accomplish over the last year and then opportunities for continuing improvement again as we know that's what you are looking for i'm going to go over a background here current status and some case highlights your two goals and opportunities particularly some in light of possibilities for amendment three although we won't go too deep into that and then recommendations and next steps as we move into our second year first just to kind of take you back a little trip through time we did a lot of work modernizing your code we went through chapter 53 chapter 95 adopted a new international property maintenance code we amended chapter 120 we amended chapter 168 and we got all of those code amendments done with terrific support and help from kate and the county attorney's office in particular jen nix so thank you jen um there's a lot of work involved um and we and we still have more to do but i just want to tell you they've been terrific partners in in making a lot of these changes and making this process uh work for us even better um in addition to that we had to kind of build the infrastructure and so we got john on board and john developed standard operating procedures and job descriptions and he started recruitment and we're going to introduce you to those folks here in a second we also had to do a lot of case review look at the old cases that were coming back from the sheriff's office and coming from the building department uh to see what we were going to uh what we're inheriting in that regard um and then and we still have this ahead of us we've got some uh work to do with case migration into our new platform coming online with excella in october uh so we have um we've got the infrastructure built john went ahead and got the the folks hired and we commenced operations on october 1st with officers out into the field um as you know the the team is led by john and i want to tell you john's been a terrific leader really since pre-day one um and it's not just me that says so i could tell you at the same time he started with us as our division manager of code enforcement he was also direct elected to be the president of the florida association of code enforcement so he is regarded by his peers as an expert fortunately for us he's finished his term as the president so he's going to have a little bit more bandwidth since that since that's finished up but john together with his team here have over 160 years of experience in code enforcement and law enforcement and um that's pretty unusual for a startup organization of any kind to bring you know that kind of experience on board so uh with that i want to go ahead and turn it over to john and ask him to come on up and walk you through some of the details of what you've been able to accomplish over last year good afternoon hi john i want to assure each one of you that i took care of all the sobbing during the morning session because that broke my heart um i'd like to back up one slide if we could introduce you to your team um instead of using the photograph we're just going to go down the line right here on the very end is steven zanowick steven came to us with 30 years of law enforcement experience from the u.s marshal's office next door to him is miss katina hill she has over 10 years in code enforcement experience in the orange county right next to her is christian castaneda he's your multi-family commercial inspector and christian brings to the table 30 years of housing experience and code enforcement and you have miss julie ebert my blessing from building who was intricate part in helping us with the building case migration to her left is the amazing talented alexis fail our clerk of the magistrate who's done a phenomenal job helping me get acclimated to the way the county does things and help me get the magistrate streamlined right next to her is mr christopher smith he has 25 years in code enforcement and air force experience he was a military police officer and now he leads this team as my right hand tomorrow jackson the tall handsome fellow there is my nuisance abatement and pool officer jay comes to us with over 25 years of experience and miss shawnette williams who helps with our admin processes and some 20 years of experience also i need to pose fun at mr rhodes behind me who we didn't add to this but he is an intricate part of the team with his 31 years of experience so we'll move on to the next slide and this next slide is pretty exciting because when i got here and started digging around and poking for stuff i was like what is that and i found a little block on the bottom of the county webpage that said 70311 so i opened it up and started playing with it and i found out citizens could call in complaints from their phones on here and i said we need to use this so we started using it and then i started using it for its reporting purposes to figure out where do they need to be and if you look at the dots on the on the screen the dots represent completed inspections that have occurred since we started and you can see that there was actually a pendulum swift shift i originally thought we're going to put it into four zones and we're going to put officers in each zone and have one guy handle abatements and now what we ended up with is we have an east side inspector a west side inspector a lot cleaning or i call her my hot spot inspector she does just lawns and junk cars junk lawns throughout the county then i said well i got to have a new my nuisance payment guy i got to have a multi-family guy which we'll go into why that happened here shortly in a few slides and then we needed somebody on the west side and somebody was familiar with the west side and that's shannon henson who's unfortunately not here with us but i think she's on her second honeymoon or something i don't know shannon's amazing and shannon brings 20 years of experience to the team so if we could go on to the next slide okay you'll see on the next slide here that we this is how we originally configured the zones and you'll notice that our cez zones code enforcement zone does not mimic a commission district and that was deliberate because i wanted to make sure that each zone had vast experience one officer may be very strong in housing one officer might have been very strong and commercial one officer may have known this better one didn't know that as well so they were close to each other yet able to serve each other this was how we did it in the beginning and now we've done we've changed it a little bit and it's divided into east and west with these four or the three specialty officers we can go on to the next slide i'm very excited this is one of my happy slides i even laminated this one i love it so much to date your nuisance abatement officer has had 33 homeowners demolished their abandoned nuisance dangerous vacant structures on their own dime yeah that's amazing yes it is that's amazing um it roughly if you looked at what the abatement costs are about it's about eleven thousand dollars per abatement so it comes out to about three hundred sixty three thousand dollars worth of costs that we didn't have to look at taxpayers for so we're very proud of that 62 multifamily properties were inspected by officer castaneda and i helped out as much as i could but not nearly enough i'm sure um to date he has 16 open cases on apartment communities the remainder of those are in compliance 133 junk cars were removed by owners at their dime not ours 178 lawns were either cleaned up and or mowed by property owners and not a cent of taxpayer money was spent to do that so total of 884 i think it's closer to 950 as of today snipe signs have been removed and i know what you're going to say there's 950 more out there waiting and there are and i have a philosophy on how i'm going to handle that with my citation program so we're going to the next step soon as of two nights ago we've now made 13 community meetings um we have had our lot cleaning contractor three clean three lots and we have been paid back by a citizen for one we just put another lady on a payment plan for the second one in addition we've collected 187 thousand dollars in fines and other revenues uh thus far so that slide is something that we're very proud of for for the time frame that we started to where we are today this is a great kicking off point if we go to the next slide the next slide is very important because it shows responsiveness to community concerns and if you look at the very dark green big piece that represents the amount of complaints that came in from citizens either through the app through the um emails or through direct phone line to either julie or the three one one zero zero zero zero number those are where those complaints are derived from on the other side the pale green represents officer initiated cases and please understand officer initiated cases aren't these guys driving around going i need to cite something i need to cite something if you call in a complaint and you say at mike's house he's got high grass and weeds and on the way to mike's house there's three lawns that are as high as mike's they're required to address those three lawns we're not going to target mike because mike was the only person that got complained on we have to be equitable in our enforcement and that's what the team does we don't unless we are invited and on several of those we were invited by communities please come sweep our community it's bad and we've done that but the majority of the time when you see self-initiated think this is an equitable response to a citizen complaint we're not headhunters we're not out there looking for people to pick on i definitely want to put that thought process to rest this slide is one that's also laminated it's on the back page of the first one i laminated but this proves you're right and why do i say that because if you look at this slide we 1626 cases were originated 967 of those came into compliance prior to the need to send a notice of hearing the next number is 659 were notices of hearing sent to people who were like i don't think you're serious i'm going to show you how serious we are here comes your certified mail right of that 659 65 cases had to be presented to a magistrate that means only four percent of the cases required that were cited actually had to be presented to a magistrate what that means in dollars and cents is is that we were able to through what you asked for communication and follow-up deliver voluntary compliance and that's what you said was lacking i remember those words the first time i met you we believe that with the proper communication and follow-up our citizens will do the right thing if they're educated and communicated with you were right give yourselves a round of applause the next slide is a fun slide says case highlights doesn't really have a lot on it but then we're going to flip to this one you may have remembered this case a young lady who was pregnant went to look at an apartment and as she went up the staircase she actually got to ride it to the ground christian chris and myself responded to this as a request of the fire department when we got out there we immediately taped this off and we went in different directions and we went in different directions we saw very similar conditions we then embarked on a complete building by building inspection which resulted in us requiring that complex to replace 88 staircases because there wasn't one on the property it was safe of those next slide please of those 88 staircases today every one of them are replaced with passing final building permit inspections and they are painted that property right now had a lot of fire violations that we were able to get into compliance as well as this life safety issue that we were able to put into compliance ensuring that we don't have another incident like that again on the next slide this lovely beautiful property was a scene of several calls for service in the sheriff's office it's off of st john's and um there was a really beautiful picture on the other side that i chose not to put in this slide show but the house was unsecured it was there's actually no floor system inside of it whatsoever it's when you walk in it's straight dirt um the house the property was for sale the gentleman was trying to get it rezoned and sold and he wasn't having a whole lot of luck and i pretty much told him you've got two choices you demo right well because i cannot have a vacant unsecure structure sitting here where drugs and other you know i can't risk a citizen getting drug in there i can't risk more calls for service to our sheriff's department they have enough to do he saw the light and the next slide shows what happened as of today that's that mess is gone he has passed his final inspection as he demoed the property under permit and again that was done on his dime not ours so the next slide is fun uh we've got a complaint um off of lake mobile where a gentleman was using a vacant count a vacant parcel not owned by himself to uh scrap to make ends meet and he um he analyzed a little setup going there he would drag out his trailer and he'd pick up your metals from your garbage and you bring it back there and strip them clean etc etc the next slide shows you an example of working with someone to help someone get their needs met through other measures and get this property cleaned up i'd like to draw your attention to the next slide if i may this property was as a result of a sheriff's office search warrant on u.s on north u.s highway 1792 there were drugs and human trafficking going on here and when we responded to the property we found multiple rvs containers trailers etc with people living in them um junk cars were plenty and we cited the property for a lot of different violations we worked with the property owner very closely in a very short period of time the next slide shows the result of education follow-through and communication so looking ahead at year two goals and opportunities we want to strengthen the existing programs and part of that is that you currently have vacation rentals and a foreclosure program that we want to look at efficiencies for and we have some ideas that we would like to bring back before you at a later time the foreclosure registration program and the vacation rentals along with that would be the parking ordinance there are a couple of little pieces of the parking ordinance that if changed we would be able to address the parking some of the parking issues that we have within unincorporated seminal county and the sheriff's department has already said please do that john um but it's a tool in our toolbox it's not a very it's not a revenue source by any stretch of the imagination but if i run your car if i tag your car and you move it into the street i need to be able to deal with that and the sheriff's office is far too busy to be bothered with that also by the end of this month your team will have our accredited our state accreditation package submitted by the end of this year i would assume probably december first week of december we should be your very first state accredited code enforcement agency at that i'm going to turn the rest of it over to mr rhodes he's going to evaluate new processes and then talk about our last page any questions for me if you think of any you bring me up i'm just sitting there okay thank you thank you so commissioners um you got a little taste of what we've been able to accomplish there's a lot more to do uh john talked about some of the efficiencies that we'd like to look at improvements that we'd like to make to the registration programs um we also want to talk with you and begin to talk with the county attorney's office about foreclosures and foreclosure initiatives again the state statute provides that after three months of running fines uh the the county municipality that that has the the fines is able to foreclose and while foreclosure is probably not it's it's not the first thing that we're we're looking forward to try to do it's a again as john said a tool in the toolbox it's really the last resort and in most instances we cannot foreclose on homestead properties but there are those cases where we need to be able to foreclose in order to recover the taxpayers investments your investments in in this program and in many ways to kind of get the properties turned over uh so that they're better better performing so uh we want to talk with you more about that over the over the coming year and that's not a i realize that's a a little bit taller mountain to climb but i think it's important to be able to to do that because it's it's it's how you really put teeth in the program um and it's it's not something that we would do again haphazardly but we want to try to find an efficient way of of um doing that um finally uh we are going to be focusing on again learning lessons and we're learning lessons every single day um about how to do a better job for you all um and we're looking forward to feedback this afternoon if you have any for us um we do want to improve the existing registration programs uh they're not performing as well as they should be could be uh we are not getting the kind of information that we we need to be getting in order to make make sure that these expectations that you have for how they operate provide us with the information that we need we want to look at some additional tools for chronic and repeat violations you saw an example last week of what you can do with uh the the irreparable or irreversible kind of a violation uh there's also the opportunity in the in the statute and we included it when we did our uh when we did our revisions to the code to also uh impose fines for repeat violations and we haven't we haven't come across a case like that yet but but it's coming i i think um we also want to be um be able to just kind of take the opportunity again to get some feedback from you all as to what we're doing well what you'd like to see us improve on we are looking forward to moving on to the accela platform so you're going to have something that's more broadly available to you all to your staff as well as provide you with the statistical information that you're looking for the dashboards that you're looking for and we hope to have all that stuff deployed again later in october and and we'll have meaningful data that we'll be able to begin to show you um just on on a live basis going forward here in the next year so with that i'll end my part and shut up and listen commissioners any comments i just want to say thank you to all of you um my district has had a lot of problems and we've heard from residents in my district about how well it looks now compared to what it did a year ago there's still work to be done as many of you are aware but citizen input has been very good in telling us that they're starting to see things much better than they were several years ago so thank you all for all your hard work leadership thank you for leading us in the right direction bringing those policies and procedures in place uh to get this off the ground and working so thank you very much thank you thanks i i actually do have a question or two go ahead you go first major um with regard to the the incident that happened with the stairs at the apartment complex are we doing anything to proactively check these facilities we now have more and more of them as we hear every day so and john can speak to the specifics of it but he did mention in his presentation that he and his team looked at 62 apartment complexes across the county and there are still more to look at but i can tell you these folks are taking a proactive look at those properties in particular because they have not been looked at proactively um and they certainly need to be so i'll so so proactively one time doesn't count as proactively for me so we're getting ahead of our past behaviors and so now take me to proactively yeah absolutely um pursuant to statue multi-family structures higher than two stories are required to be inspected annually um prior to our inceptions that was somebody else's responsibility and as of now it's ours so you have the confidence of knowing that this code enforcement team will be on every multi-family property annually at the minimum it's higher than two stories yes ma'am for every one yes i'm good with either but we it's anything higher than two stories um we're just now getting into the condos we finished all the apartments we're working in the condos right now you're as you well know that's going to take a little longer because you have so many more owners involved and so many more chefs stirring the pot um but they're very still very good about getting compliance so our plan is as we complete the year to start over okay and revisit these on a that's why i assigned christian as the multi-family commercial inspector so that's all his job is we don't want we don't want to re recreate this into the past ever again so thank you absolutely and then uh just perspective on foreclosures i know you said that was a a tall path to go down and i would tell you that it's not homestead property it is not a stretch for me at all because one of the things that i have in my district that's fairly regular is that these are just properties that somebody's sitting on from out of state and they ruin the rest of the neighborhood and and we struggle with that so i think it's actually helps the homeowners that are living in their homes to take care of the neighborhoods if we have to go that far and i doubt we ever will as we've proved on your on your pie chart on your funnel we probably will never have to go that far but having the ability to go that far is important in some instances well it is important to note that we we do have several from the past that we want to talk to the board about in detail at a later time but i believe as the board believes we have to be good stewards so anytime the county expends money we have to look at an option to get that back and we've done well i think alexis and julie have done very well in in sending notices to people that have liens hey you know you still have a lien come talk to us but we need more tools any other comments yes i'm sorry about that it's all right thank you madam chair uh i don't want to get into a list but there are a number of things that should be looked at an annual basis both structural and other disciplines as well i just want to make sure you you are theory right systematically going through that overall list that should be looked at from a safety standpoint i i have a list and i'd love to go over yours with you so that we can make sure we're both on the same page i'm not the local expert whatever you think is appropriate from a legal standpoint that's what's important yes sir thank you then the other comment i have is under your goals and opportunities i like the idea that you're looking at vacation rentals please involve tourism i think tourism is just as important on that one aspect because they could the two of you the two groups should work well together and just to add to that along the same lines the apartment association is out there we want to engage with them they've been important partners in the past um at least in my working so um you know it's a great education opportunity they turn over a lot of their management staff and so um you know the work that we do with those constituencies i'll just say is also important and john's john and his team are are out there proactively engaging them as well because it's not just stairs there's other things to look at as well absolutely oh yeah yes commissioner lockhart just uh refresh my memory how much of the inspection requirement only became um relevant with our adoption of the property maintenance code so my question is we're saying we didn't do all of these things that were required to be done but how many of those are only became effective with our implementation of the property man the property maintenance code so we we had a minimum housing code but it was not being enforced by by anybody and part of it was because it was 30 years old part of it was because the staff that we did have engaged on the sheriff's side were really only looking at that single family residential uh and and primarily complaint based information uh complaint based cases so um i won't say that we adopted new obligations i suppose so much as we we updated we updated the the code standards that we had to make sure that we could look at all of the property in the county rather than what we had been doing just as a matter of practice which was kind of these siloed approaches and so a lot of what john and his team have done have again gotten us out of the silo i'll say collectively um so that we're we're working more proactively with the fire department with the sheriff's department um but i i hesitate to say it's it's new it's it's simply we're doing it the way we should be doing it so so i guess i'll i'll probably need clarification then because there were multiple times that there were situations in my district where um folks would be called out to look at things that were structural or property maintenance related and the response repeatedly was that's not a part of our code we don't enforce that i'm not saying that to you specifically in this current setting but historically the response that i was given as a commissioner was well that's not a part of our code it's not something the county enforces it's not something that the code enforcement at the sheriff's office handles and so we we just would go okay i guess that's not something we do so i'm i guess i'm what i'm struggling with is how either i was given misinformation back then or i was told that it was the implementation of the new property maintenance code that is now allowing you to do some of these things back then you had the the building code was the only code you had to fall back on when there was something that was alleged to be structural in nature so it was very limited as to who could respond and look at what the requirement for the multi-family has always been in place with the international property maintenance code what you did was allow your team to be able to handle everything from the shed the fence the condo the industrial park the storm water drain the fallen tree that that's what you enabled us to do by giving us that is you took everything from that basket and that basket and that one over there and you put it all in one place and now that we've done that we have the efficient means to address those issues and then lay down a timeline to stay preventative moving forward does that make sense does that help a little it does it does um i think it's a it's a testimony to not having things is trifurcated a word um or quadrificated yeah um yes it does i'm for another time but but to your point one of the things that we talked about when we adopted these new standards and adopted the international property maintenance code and created this division was to eliminate you know the the the finger pointing and who's supposed to be doing what and and make it all and make it easy got it so the tools are there now i'll say that and we want we want to keep working on them but the tools are there the responsibility is there uh the team is in place we eliminated the disconnects yeah commissioners to that point yes i think my experience pre going down this round was um well that's a building officials problem to deal with we don't deal with that or that's development services or that's a permitting problem um and under this new it appears you've brought all that together under one umbrella to be able to deal with that some were fire marshal issues um that you know you had to communicate to somebody else in another department that department doesn't know what that's going on i think now there's communication amongst the departments and understanding you all have the tools to go do what is necessary and use those other assets to your ability to bring them into compliance so with that said and i think john you and i've had this discussion a couple times because we've got a couple in my district of course these home-based businesses which are allowable to a certain extent it's probably a legal attorney question i wonder because in my district i have auto repair facilities operating out of people's homes i have boat repair facilities operating out of people's homes what are we doing to make sure that the waste oil the cleaning chemicals the the welding equipment and all the things that are being utilized in that are not presenting a public safety issue or an environmental hazard glad you just like is being done on the commercial side right that we have to adhere to right i'm glad you asked um last week's training and the team probably any one of them could come up here and do this for me right now but under florida statute 559955 the home-based business rule statute that was enacted a few years back allows you to operate a business on your property provided that the business is being the work is being done on your property is number one number two that the employees either reside most of their employees reside there two can come from somewhere else and work there number three the property parking must be that consistent with the rest of the community so if everybody's got no semis and you have four semis we have a not congruent with the rest of the community problem the other issue is then is if that business manufactures something they can't sell it out of the shed they have to sell it out of the principal structure so it kind of really locks them into this little area where they're very limited on what they can do service related industry in a home-based business is actually does not fit 559955 it does not for me to build you a race car in my front yard and sell it to you it would not be allowable under 559955 for me to make you a pen and sell it to you at my front door is perfectly allowable for me to make you cottage food industry jams cakes pies and sell them to you perfectly legal a lot of the things that have been going on in that area out there being that it's rural and it's so far out and people just thought they could they can't and we're doing a lot of re-educating with people and we're getting much cooperation i have to tell you that they're probably the easiest people in the world to work with and a lot of them based on some of the things that they've been doing and the length of time they've been doing it as long as certain caveats are being put into place like what it show me a contract with a waste oil disposal company show me a contract with a battery disposal company along those lines and then when anyone was to drive past the beginning of the you know past that property so provided it looks like every other property in the community we're not going to come down on you right you start junking up my neighborhood and spilling your oil in the street then i have to take exception to that and we have to have that other conversation yeah so it's a it's a big re-education push because of the misconception of five five nine yeah and i often worry about only because i'm in and have been in those type businesses that life safety absolutely when you have four five six seven eight vehicles or more in a confined area and you have unfortunately a fire that sets out is our fire marshal aware of that is our fire department aware that that's what they're responding to more of a commercial setting than a residential setting number one right number two the amount of focus we put on water quality and all those things where is the waste oil going where are the chemicals going absolutely um and and that's always a concern that i have right what's going on in some of those instances we took your concern that you and i talked about very early on and we looked at those properties out there with people doing things similar to those and we looked at how do we protect the environment what are your disposal methods what are you what are you actually doing can you do this is there a way to help you to be able to do this to supplement your income or is this your primary focus well the big caveat with 559 is you have to actually live on the property sure you can't just get a piece of rural boundary property and run a business out of it that's that's a no um so one of the things that we've been doing is looking through each of these businesses on these areas i mean this is county-wide sure the first thing we do is we make sure there's if there is a business that there's a btr right and can there be a btr if they can then we make sure they get it and that's one of the ways that fire would know that there's something other than a residence going on here when they get there um part of the other additional things that we're going to talk to you about in year two would be the rv range because some of these properties have 11 rvs on them you and i both know if i park an rv between your house and mine and my rv burst in the flames you're losing just as much as i am right so one of the things that we'll want to talk to you later on next year about is doing something to improve those problems but with people living in rvs you then have to deal with sewage disposal so we have as you all know we have our hands quite full right um and we're trying to prioritize what needs to be addressed and then that's again that's why this november issue is so critical to all of us because as you can see most of the 3600 inspections and the cases that were conducted to bring them into compliance are most likely a reduction in calls for service to the sheriff's office fire department ems sure environmental water quality right um but please every one of y'all know how to how to get a hold of me all you have to do is message me and i'll stop what i'm doing and run to see you i'll be happy to talk to you when i want to answer any questions don't do that don't tell us you're doing that you don't know that and one final question yes sir have we are we on our way to getting body cams for our gun enforcement officers as you might imagine commissioner we're having to look at um at budget cuts at this time understood and uh well i don't know about that you keep bringing it up too um it's something that we realize is um is a benefit to us across the board there's also a cost a cost to maintaining all the data we have worked with it to look at that right now and um we're still evaluating it at the moment and i'm sure we'll we'll be in a better position to make a better educated decision november 4th fair enough assistant county manager i think wanted to say something i'm sorry i just wanted to say uh it's serendipitous that i got to sit here for darren today because um probably in my 12 years at the county this the establishment of this division is what i'm most proud of and we all have a lot to be proud of when you look at the work they've done and i really wanted to thank this commission it wouldn't have happened had you not made the decision to bring code enforcement in house so thank you and thank you for your support of this team it's a great example of when you put the right people in the seats of the bus or whatever that cliche is what can happen and also to mike and john and jen nix who were in the trenches last summer it was nice to not see them for a little while after all the code updates but we're all very proud thank you well this can't this can't go on set either and that is that we had what we all felt like was a mess boiling under the surface of the water and trisha just had heard enough and said give it to me i'll take it and then walked down the hall like that and then took it and did it and so we appreciate you we know this is not the only thing that that's ever happened with but this certainly has had a significant impact on the community so we're in debt to you as well absolutely yes commissioner constantine thank you and um as all have said not only is the compliance so much better but the response back to the office is so much better i mean i instead of going into a black hole and not knowing what's happening you're getting back to our offices so that we can get back to the citizens and and i really appreciate it i do have a sensitive question and if you'd rather answer it offline i'd be happy to do it but in my district since i don't know how many years but it's been at least 20 i have a habitual offender and um who has amassed liens and fines of over 20 times the value of his property to and i'm going to make it non-specific to habitual violators that you're never going to be able to get the money back is there any other thing that we can do my my response would be we can ask the legislature to change the state statute so that we can um we can have the same kind of authority to foreclose under certain circumstances uh on homestead properties and that's the that's certainly the the predicament that we're in right now and i i don't see that happening based upon my experience dealing with the legislature but um but i do know that from time to time even with those properties um windows open and we always look for those windows to open and so when they do and we can take more action we will the poor and i would say commissioner constantine this may be an opportunity for you to work with fact to put it on the top of one of their priorities for the legislative session the poor citizens and that's a good suggestion but the poor citizens that live around there i mean you feel it's terrible it's terrible what they have to put up with in and the value of their property is diminished immensely and in some instances to zero because you cannot sell it right exactly right and i can promise you every community has has someone like that and i think with the right kind of guardrails built in the legislature can give us the the authority to deal with that but it's it's going to take a lot of a lot of work across the state of florida okay all right if it's any consolation there are developments on top of it and i would stay with my teeth through his leg i was going to ask you thank you the microphone over but don't he just said he was going to stay on top of it all right any other comments commissioners with that thank you all for the presentation and thank you all for the hard work that you've given all year long and it's okay to smile yeah thank y'all all right that takes us to district commissioner reports district two commissioners in the hour uh i don't have a whole lot to report i just want to uh remind folks um you know i always have animal issues in my district um we we have a an hoa that has an overabundance of muscovy ducks that have invaded um their hoa areas and we've forwarded it over to fwc and let fwc deal with it but just a friendly reminder to the public muscovy ducks are non-native floridian bird but they still are protected from cruelty so we do not suggest you do anything to these animals contact fwc for guidance likewise don't feed these ducks because feeding these ducks do nothing but draw more ducks and then you will be overrun with muscovy ducks so just a public service announcement don't feed the muscovy ducks let them come and go and they'll go to the next hoa and they'll fly and walk 10 blocks away to the other hoa but if you've got a couple folks that just like to feed the ducks guess what they're going to be there for a while outside of that everything else is doing well in district two all right i'm going to go backwards because i skipped the county attorney and the county manager do you feel left out i did but i have no report i thought maybe we should get that on the record i do have a couple of things dairy so uh as of september 10th we will celebrate the opening of the nigran carriage collection at the museum of seminole county history and we want to thank the um seminole county historical society for really championing that collection so uh what date again uh september 10th okay and that's been a long time coming so definitely wanted to share that additionally we uh want to highlight that seminole county's marks and conservation strategy has received a 2026 aliceans forgive me if i'm pronouncing that incorrectly woolbrook nato impact award working with the east central florida regional resilience collaborative and stetson university count county data was analyzed using the mark sand conservation strategy to identify important natural areas and opportunities to reduce flooding improve stormwater management and support conservation and just two other pieces of good news our solid waste team earned a national award for the solid waste association of north america for its our recycling program and our communications team received three awards at the recent florida public relations association golden image awards for our citizens academy so that's a not only uh congratulations to them but our departments who participate in that great good stuff awesome awesome i didn't say go hatters when you said that i know i was gonna say go hatters commissioner constantine thank you very much um september on august this 20th the uh seminal chamber had a business awards uh for seminal county at the uh hilton in altamont springs and one thing that was very heartwarming is how many of our businesses are so much involved in the community and involved in in the philanthropic activities with this community so congratulations to all also that day that the uh tourist development council and the tid advisory board had a meeting um um mostly about uh obviously the uh sports uh complex and information on that but also the fact of how successful so many of our programs have been um whether it be through our advertising social media all the way through uh just the increases with the hotels i can tell you that the hotels are also very continue to be very supportive and excited about the excited about the sports complex this morning um at 9 00 a.m virtually there was a statewide council of opioid abatement i was there for the first 15 minutes could not be there for the rest of the time obviously uh tomorrow the florida trust is having one of their annual semi-annual meetings um so i will be attending that the uh seminar chamber again on august 27th we'll be having a business resource at seminole state college in heathrow and i think that's uh always helpful to many of our businesses and citizens the next series on the uh data uh centers for naco will be on the 28th and this one will be on understanding electricity and the use of electricity for data centers september 3rd um at good morning seminole there is going to be uh an update from the zoo and to finish this off and in a very exciting and happy comment uh tomorrow um one of our citizens who had lived in robin hill since 1969 will be 103 years old bob low he's um one of the now continuing to uh dwindle uh world war ii veterans he was a navy master chief petty officer wow in world war ii and um mr epps and so many of his neighbors in uh rolling robin hills will be giving him a party outside uh at 5 30. all are welcome to go if you can and um he you know mr low is is a wonderful person and a happy birthday sir and thank you for your service and just living a good life that was tomorrow night wednesday yes 5 30. tomorrow night at 5 30. that's fabulous does that conclude your report that's mine that's my report all right mr lockhart um while we're doing birthdays i'll do a birthday shout out to my dad today is his 92nd birthday we got to celebrate together last weekend thank you very much he's moving and grooving at 92. um his great great grandmother lived to 105 so there's some good longevity genes there i know i know um wanted to uh let you all know that both links and sunrail board meetings have been canceled uh pretty much for the summer and this month and i think we we reconvene in september maybe we have september meetings on on the schedule um i'm sure uh miss alory can give you some updates on what is happening uh from a staff perspective with those two agencies um that would probably be a good thing to go ahead and schedule not not here now but yeah she's the poor thing she's like oh my gosh i gotta get up there no no at another time individual um updates would probably be really helpful um the uh thank you to chris patton and his team and the folks at scout who brought out a vehicle to uh the american legion and ovito and um there were about i'm going to say 50 or 60 uh folks out there for their coffee time and they had an opportunity to ask lots of questions and hear about how they can utilize scout services one of the things that was asked and i said that i would bring it before the board for future consideration um i feel like everything has to have the caveat depending on what happens in november but for future consideration having there be a direct connect to the lake nona va facility they really saw the the potential opportunity for them to be able to access their medical care at the va which of course is not in seminal county's boundaries but um perhaps there would be some creative way for us to think about that in the future um the medical examiner meeting a couple of weeks ago where last week the item that was up for on the agenda that we kind of had a question about is this for informational purposes or voting purposes it it was not it wasn't voted on but they were asking whether or not there were any objections for it to come back to our individual boards what it's basically doing is changing the language in the contract that's currently in place to reflect how we are actually operating several board meetings ago we realized that we were not operating in accordance with the agreement so we said well do we want to change the agreement to reflect the way we're actually operating or do we want to change the way we're operating to reflect the agreement and we said let's just let's amend the contract to reflect the actual process that's in place so that without objection at the medical examiner board meeting that change is going to come back to this board and all of the boards for consideration and ratification and then go back to the medical examiner board i believe great i see some very perplexed face i do yeah i do because we like the way they're operating because we we went through i think a year or two ago all the county attorneys reviewed the contract to be sure was consistent with what our purpose was um so i don't know what's changed there well so what has changed is is that the the medical examiner never shared with anyone that she was not operating in the way that the contract is written so all of the attorneys were in agreement about what the language said maybe i'm mistaken is it the contract between her and the or between us as the parties us because it has to do with transporting of bodies right and um they were actually doing transporting even though it wasn't in the contract to do it i believe i have that right or is it the other way around is that correct i'm gonna look looking to christian the it wasn't until a few months ago which precipitated the scoring that i gave by the way um that we were able in our public meeting to come to the conclusion that what all of the counties agreed on was not actually what was being implemented by the medical examiner's office christian do you mind you can clarify christian swinds and the assistant county manager so when seminal joined district five there was a different set of rules in the inner local agreement for us to pay a private firm to transport bodies so as opposed to tie up their vehicles the medical examiner was supposed to contract with an outside agency to transport those folks to their facility that's gone on a number of years no one realized until until a meeting a few months back that there was no call to that outside vendor to bring them in instead they were utilizing the district five district five vans to pick up the deceased folks and bring them back so it was a true up to take out that caveat that we were supposed to do something different and make it the same as it was being done okay so so the obvious question is marion county as the point entity on overseeing the medical examiner's board their legal team is on that board their fire division oversees the running of that operation was somebody not following up and watching those as them being the the point organization if you will who provides all the oversight and etc they they just now caught that or did we catch it to bring it to their attention um i think it came to light as a result of my incessant annoying questioning at the board meeting i i hesitate to say that another county wasn't doing their job because i'm not sure how they would have known it was such a random thing to to stumble upon to find that that the piece that really impacted seminole county's inclusion had changed i don't think they would have had any reason to know that the that that piece didn't ever occur does that is that a fair statement i understand what you're saying but they are the administrative arm to that board and they are also the administrative arm and part of the contractual agreement with the medical examiner who is a separate entity so under what i think i'm hearing is no one entity is actually auditing what's happening each entity is going to have to audit themselves through the contracts through the medical examiner's contract with the consortium to determine if everything's being done that's contracted to be done if i'm if i may i'll um there were the invoicing was supposed to apparently come to us directly so i think how the confusion how the confusion is brought to light had to come from a budget session where commissioner lockhart was questioning the purchase of vehicles this is a convoluted thing we had to provide certain vehicles for them to do certain things with their death investigators we were doing that they were requesting vehicles for transport so we're like well hold on we already have vehicles and this kind of discombobulation of which vehicle belongs to who is how it come to light this issue then we said well hold on we're supposed to be paying for the transport then it's like as we looked into it she wasn't billing us you know quite frankly they the bills go to a party of none of us were there so after we looked into this and said we're not getting bills marion wouldn't know we're not getting bills the medical examiner was had kind of veered left and was doing the same way everyone else was doing it so that's how the that's how it was a bit muddled with i don't know there was a check and balance that they could have necessarily have seen directly right and and quite frankly we were we were to agree removed from the actual bills coming in to be able to see it directly ourselves right i'm not sure that this is a bad thing for us no just no no i don't say that at all okay i'm just trying to how it got between the cracks completely understand commissioner delari thank you madam chair uh thank you commissioner lockhart bringing this to our attention obviously when this comes before us i'd like to definitely read see the contract and actually get a briefing from our staff so we can all be up on the same page you obviously have more knowledge than we do because you and commissioner zimba have been further involved as well as i think commissioner her you've been to one one meeting or so no okay she's like lucky lady i know nothing about birthing these babies i thought you were but i'm sorry i stand correct uh but i'd like to be brought up to speed uh with our staff and so i'd like to read the contract absolutely and that contract will make its way back through the county attorney's office and then i'm sure they'll be setting up briefings with and again when i say staff it'll be the attorney's office as well as christian whoever else has been involved in absolutely and hopefully that's the only change in the contract i think there'll be more questions because the only one i've seen words i believe that the same type of thing happened with cremation services how they were handling so the two are it's very much the same it's a transport and a cremation it's one section of the interlocal agreement that's basically striking through everything that was making us different from every everyone else and why it was set up differently all those years ago i don't think any of us can speak to that i can speak to that but do you have to no no i don't have to but thank you let's hold it for when this comes up so that's what happened at the meeting and what will be to come from the medical examiner district 5 and 24. the other item that i wanted to put out for future thoughts and consideration when we start talking about bears again and bear management areas there's been an uptick in bear activity um in my district which is interesting because it's more of the urban core of the county but um the area between i4 and the 417 has seen a quite an uptick in activity and um it no none of i shouldn't say none of very few of the residents in that area have any idea that there are banner bear management areas in other parts of the county or that there are tools that they can utilize to help um limit the human bear interactions or the getting into the trash or those sorts of things because all of our efforts have really been in those bear management areas and yet we've got a lot of bears in the urban area it yeah the urban bear management area in the urban area so i'd like to look at that if um when the next time we start having those conversations could come up and that's the end of my report i would tell you that that is more than likely a result of the success of bear preservation it's i mean i see it firsthand we're having a lot of babies every year and they disband when they grow so they're finding places to go yeah within two or three years they leave mama and they're not going west so maybe some are probably going west but i mean we're having several multiple births a year when we all know them by name well they have good feed and a pop good garbage isn't as good as ours and you shouldn't feed the ducks and you shouldn't feed the deer and you shouldn't feed the bears and you shouldn't feed the turkeys or the sandhill grains what about the birds no no i agree all right commission only the chickens thank you madam chair i'll be brief i know we spoke about this briefing at the beginning of the meeting but i want to congratulate the ucf business incubator program for being number one in the state and i also want to congratulate our staff because they've actually been able to get them to go to uh seminal state uh their building as well and i know a lot of work went into that and so i want to thank ucf seminal state and our staff putting it all together and it's for quite an accomplishment to have such a good incubator program for our businesses and i wanted to thank everyone involved and in my report thank you all right so the district 5 report uh very brief i attended a grand opening in the city of sanford but yesterday for a manufacturing plant and it's pronounced air non formulating solutions on tech drive in sanford a wonderful family-owned business well-paying jobs etc but the best part of it was the story shared by mrs air non that they originally were moving out of brooklyn to new jersey and that's not right don't don't go there to new jersey no hold on hold on for it are they going to come back we'll both be vindicated here and and the permitting process in new jersey took so long and was so difficult and was pretty horrible that the property that they purchased in new jersey appreciated while they were doing all of the work to try to get to build it of course they ended up in florida in seminole county so i thought that was a great story so what we do matters permitting matters doing it well and efficiently matters um and then i'll switch to the chairman's report i did get to welcome the department of children and families executive leadership to the to the annex we were doing a show and tell day on the opioid prevention program that we have here and folks were touring was a good opportunity really well done by our team there is on nine one overlook park improvement ribbon cutting that's happening that's happening that's right on nine four i'll be flying in from chicago that morning early on nine four i have the opportunity to do a final mile ceremony at the cape canaveral cemetery which will take two deceased veterans to the cemetery for final internment and there's no family on hand so we'll be standing in yeah awesome who else is going does anybody else go awesome um we do have a 911 uh on 9 11 we have leadership seminal government day that trisha heads up so well i believe we have an event that day as well to commemorate 9 11 and my final comment is that the canvassing board tomorrow will wrap up the final meeting it will be the audit uh final results as you all know we're transmitted and we can put a period at the end of the sentence for the first election being successfully done by the new supervisor of elections office great and uh even in the last session there were more positive comments from the league of women voters who sat had somebody in the room every time during this cycle as well as the last cycle so um and i will say i will be glad to be done with that sure that concludes my uh chairman's report is there anything else for the good of the order hearing nothing i will adjourn the meeting