##VIDEO ID:j3bDujLHDBI## you more about what's going on how are you good to see you you good to see you thank you e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e all right all right it's the uh Board of County commissioners of Bradford County Florida it's February 4th 2025 it is 9:30 and at this time I'm going to ask commissioner Spooner to lead us in a prayer and a flag salute let us pray Heavenly Father we thank you today dear Lord for your love thank you dear Lord for your guidance thank you Lord the Lord for everyone that is here today and bless them in a mighty way the Lord help us to use our wisdom in our and our duties and carrying out the will of our our people the Lord we ask the Lord that you look upon those who have lost loved ones through flood Through Fire Lord through violence Lord help us to be more loving towards one another and bless our County in a mighty way and let us be good stewards of the County's business thank you and we pray this Ines Jesus name amen States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liy and justice for all all right this time we'll be doing uh public comments um if you haven't filled out a card and you want to make a public comment please fill one out and turn it in right quick uh if not uh the first one I have here is uh Charlie Baker and um just whenever y'all come forward for the public comment just uh state your name and your address and then you'll have three minutes so I'm Charles Baker Hampton Florida uh my concern is that speed limit you keep talking about on Hampton Lake Road uh on I know you ain't going to return my question but uh when you appli for a whatever it's called a grant to build a sidewalk out there the speed limit was 45 now all of a sudden you want at 30 so I don't understand why would you apply for a grant with the speed limit being 45 thing is unsafe but now all of a sudden it's unsafe because people speeding well people's always speed down that road and every other Road in this world so I don't think we should make the speed limit 30 m an hour myself anyway thank you thanks Charlie I I will just say one thing just Charlie it because I've been getting a lot of calls a lot of emails from the people on the lake and they want to change it to 35 not not 30 but they they do want to change it to 35 from um from the from 301 and 18 to the Edith Ellen Estates and that's that's the questions and with the um CU there has been quite a few more homes uh built and um so that's that's why I'm not saying we are we ain't but I just ask the sheriff and Mr corn to please look into it and and give us some advice I understand you're concerned about it but also uh you go to these big cities this 45 55 some places M out there in the uh country out there that's 55 sidewalk built for miles and miles nobody's getting killed I know I understand your concern but you know you move that speed limit down we drive it every day and we get a ticket running 45 and a 30 ain't good or running 50 and these new cars technology they drive their yourself nowadays so I just don't understand no big concern about myself but anyway thank right and and to be honest with you Charlie I I really don't go into details what you used to drive and how you used to drive I ain't going to go into that we ain't going to talk about personal things we just talk about what we got now hey I know that I used to go around Hampton Lake on one wheel so I I understand but um I'm not going to tell all of that but but but all all I'm doing is just what the constituents asked me to do and and then we'll do the study and and then however it comes out you know believe me I'm not looking for a battle with anybody okay well I appreciate I just don't want to get 30 35 myself okay thank you Charlie all right James Deo I'm Jim D area I live at 12933 Southwest 83rd Avenue Stark Florida and uh I want to uh thank you for the opportunity to do this I know you guys do a lot of work and lot a lot expected of you and you don't get paid a whole lot and there's never a lot of money to to do the things they ask you to do so I don't get a chance to thank you uh like that but I did want to bring up a couple things today one of them is the intersection at 301 and 225 where the new racetrack is I'm kind of watching that project and I was hoping that along with that they would widen that intersection it's really I think it's uh we need to tighten up for the safety you know if you're at that light on 225 facing trying to get on a 301 if those people in that line don't know to leave room for people coming off 301 and turn into that establishment the cars back up into 301 and uh I believe it's going to be an issue so if that intersection could be reworked or maybe it's already in the plan and I don't know about it but if it's not in your plans I would ask that it get on your radar cuz I think I think we're growing and and you're going to want the extra space so I don't know how you widen it or put a turn lane in or how you handle that but I think it would help down the road and the other thing I would like to comment on is um anything you could do to support the Riding Club efforts I would support it um they've been here a long time we have County boat ramps we have County parks that that you know accommodate our citizens and I think that the riding club would I would vote for anything that would help them out so those two things thank you and the last one I have is uh Mr strong my name is vianda strong post office box 530 L I come to this board a lot I'm a frequent flyer first I want to say that Kudos kudos to someone I'm not sure who I'm giving kudos to but I want to say Kudos someone listened to me maybe I'm patting myself on the back but Kudos I looked over the spending of this County and someone listened the fire department the road department other departments they decided in the last quarter the end of the year in the report not to spin willy-nilly and not to spend all over in a whole lot of different um vendors but when I bought it up previously somebody listened and I want to say Kudos maybe it's kudos to me but kudos to somebody in the county because they listened maybe I need to get a consultant check because somebody listened but kudos to somebody in the county because they listened so Kudos everybody needs to get a a round of applause because the spending changed and you're not spending at a bunch of different vendors you've Consolidated down to several different vendors and you're spending changed so I want to say Kudos that's an Applause people that's a difference on your spending that's a good thing I'm not making fun of it I'm saying that's a good thing that is a good thing your spending habits changed I'm giving you Kudos thank you very much yes that that is a very good thing your spending habits changed thank you that's all the comments I have if there's nobody else that wants to make a comment I'm going to move on to the next item item three approval of the consent agenda um everybody's read over it and ready to make a motion I'm ready yes and um Amanda has made some changes to the letter from the concerned citizens that's in there okay yes ma'am okay so do we need to make a motion with the with the changes in this letter okay yes so I need a motion with the uh with the changes made in the in the letter I'll make that motion change it okay no second okay have a motion from uh commissioner Thompson second from commissioner um Spooner any other questions all in favor by a sign of I I any oppos motion carries 50 next we'll move on to item four and um approval to add and you guys can read all the roads on here for the uh chip sill project to be paid out of the gas tax fund um and I'll turn it over to Mr Jason dobs good morning good morning um this is a list of Roads that's been compiled um by conversations with some of y'all um this is basically to get it approved and get it on the on the CP CIP so that we can start this process there's not currently that amount in there so I'll be working with the clerk's office so we can do it with retaining a reserve back so in case we have an emergency like what happened when they detoured down 225a we know that we need a backup plan for that but uh with working with the clerk's office County manager's office will continue to monitor it and do little by little as we can keeping that Reserve Mr chair um Mr Don appreciate you your good work and um and I know that 10 Northwest 177th um Avenue is on there you know with the U sidewalk and and and so forth um so in the very very near future if you could add on Northwest 59th Avenue and 55th Lane they intersect with it so once they do that work they could um do those two streets that intersect with it yes ma'am okay thank you goe Ry what are we uh what are we receiving per month at an average right now we're looking at receiving about 40,000 a month um there's a good chance that we could see an increase in that with some of the bigger fuel stops coming in into the county that race track out there is it stays busy it it is very busy right any other commission yes if I may Jason on the turnning Lan that the gentleman spoke of earlier do you know anything about that yes ma'am so I actually was going to ask y'all if y'all would like me to answer that question for please he left but but I would like to know yes so there is going to be two 5 foot widenings that go in there they can't construct that until they do the cross drain under 227 so that will help also with that construction going on on 301 when they M through that intersection they M the traffic Loops which is what triggers the traffic signal to work off of magnets they're currently on overhead detection so there's no way to manipulate timing on it so right now it's doing what it's doing which is backing it up but they will be putting those Loops back in as they finish out that lift of asphalt now the progress was kind of slowed down because they swapped was it companies or agencies or what what was it that they actually cut ties with their current contractor okay that was doing their work for racetrack and they've hired a new one and uh I think we'll see better results with that with and they're the ones I mean they have not done the pipe across the road yet no ma'am they have not and once they finish that work then they'll come back and Mill and resurface and and do the widening the two the two they're adding five foot to each lane in that area of the racetrack and just real quick um any up any more updates on 235 um yes ma'am just uh we just recently sent over an email back to fdot we have a shortfall of about $238,000 that they're trying to help after we've cut the 600,000 out of it so they are looking at it to see what they can do to help us with it and and that was going to be my question to me because I knew that on occasion do has stepped in and kind of helped with that but um so hopefully that's yes ma'am we originally had a $900,000 shortfall which is what we've worked toward to kind of get that reduced as much as we could to get their assistance and I think now that we've got it cut down to that amount they'll they'll be able to help us okay thank you yes ma'am anybody else any other questions no I'd like to go ahead and make a motion to approve all the uh roads that are listed by Mr dods here okay I have a motion by commissioner do I'll second second by commissioner Andrews there's no other discussion um all in favor by sign of I I I any oppose motion carries 5 thank you thank you very much Jason all right next uh item five um I guess I'll turn that over to Mr Gnade you did you wanted to discuss item five or would anybody like to serve on that board you have any any volunteers what does that entail and how often do they meet oh off yes sir I will T I have some familiarity with this advisory but I don't want to interfere with y'all's um decision making but I I do not feel as though I can tell you all that this is going to be something that's going to take a lot of time um and um so if the concern of anybody who was interested in these issues is that this would because you're already very busy obviously with your Commission job and other jobs that you have and and family and all but um I really think that um the decision could be made based on your life experience and if you're passionate about these types of issues more than worrying about it being something that really dominates your time period you're so that's just my general remember these meetings from back in the day um when I was uh County Commissioner in another life and um it it was not it was not honorous at all okay Mr chair I would be interested I just the reason of ask me if it if it's something that they do on you know hybrid where or do I have to travel to some great distance that's not that was not my uh recollection of it being I think that electronic participation would be something that would be available for instance um and um but I tell you if it turns out to be something where you're driving across the state to Tallahassee and you come see me because I I will have given you okay bad Direction but this is that is not my recollection of the matter in any way shape or form Mr chair I make make a motion that we nominate Miss sponer for that position okay I'll second okay um motion by commissioner doter second by commissioner Andrews any other questions all in favor by a sign of i i i motion carries 50 thank you all very much thanks thank you Mr all right moving on to item six um Mr uh Lieutenant David weeks good morning good morning appreciate you guys giving us a few minutes this morning to update you um I'm going to introduce this young lady here in just a minute um we'll goad and get started so uh as I mentioned a couple months back we have uh some new interns starting with us from the University of Florida um this is Miss Cassie and um she'll do a little bit of talk talking here in a little bit she's one of two interns that we have um Eli oh here's Eli never mind good this is also Eli um so they started about two weeks ago and they've really hit the ground running um they've already got a few projects identified that they wanting to do um they've been meeting with patients they've uh they've really been active so far so they're going to be a great resource for us um so this is just a few stats from last year this will be from May when the program started up until January of this year um so roughly 220 boxes of Naran we handed out and that was actually you know face-to-face contacts with patients um two large projects I believe I detailed um two of those projects here that was the large deck and ramp Replacements that we had done for uh two of our patients 148 calls for service for CRP related things um so again that calls that required our assist in some form or fashion whether that was with uh insurance needs Transportation assistance substance abuse things like that and then 43 referrals that were received directly from our crews in the field so one of the initiatives that we're doing right now with the American Red Cross um we're calling it the smoke detector initiative we've completed phase one of this um it took place in the immediate downtown Hampton area um we canvased approximately 60 homes um going door too for leaving information talking to the residents and um the goal is to identify um residences who don't have smoke detectors already um after that conversation if they're interested we'll come into the home at a later date install those smoke detectors excuse me and um we'll also just have more conversations about fire safety and any other community resources that we might have all right and I'm actually going to let Cassie and Eli talk about this one this is going to be one of the uh projects that they're working on um I think this will be of great benefit to the to the community so yeah um so a matter of balance is uh basically a national program that we're looking to implement here in Bradford um and we're hoping to par uh to uh work with the senior center and the Ark to um start this in early April um and kind of what it is it's a program that's designed for senior citizens who um are still independently living but they may have an increased risk of falling so uh whether that be that they have a extensive history of Falls or that they have a lot of chronic illnesses and pain that uh increases their risk of falling um so this course is designed to basically educate educate them on um how to prevent Falls to kind of reduce Their Fear and risk of falling and um also help them manage any Falls that might happen if they do ever come um and a cool part about this course too is it's not just education but it's also um very exercise based so um after I believe like the second or third week you start implementing um some taiichi balance exercises uh to kind of just increase their functional mobility um and just encourage exercise promotion and um prescription um so this course is designed to be eight weeks so there's going to be one session um every week for two hours each week um with the same participants from beginning to end um so right now we're kind of just in the recruit Rec in phase of this um so trying to see within our department um which patients we might go to a lot for um frequent Falls um or just within the community if we know of any individuals who uh could benefit from this so um even if any of you guys have uh any loved ones or friends who you think might benefit from this program we'd love to talk to you about it um um yeah and just help kind of increase increase their uh quality of life and just reduce some of the falls that we see in our community she said all right this is another thing that we're starting that we're really excited about um we're going to start offering Community Narcan classes first course is going to be at the Bradford County Public Library um we'll have a few of them this one's obviously during the day on a weekday so I understand that some people might not be able to make it um in this class we're just going to talk about opioids uh talk about you know how they can be abused um overdoses go over Naran how to use it and then participants of the class are actually going to leave with their own Naran kit um we're hoping that this course will you know really get the word out about Naran the importance of it and um I'm happy to report we already have a few people signed up for it so I'm hoping that it really takes off after we you know get some more advertising out there and and people start learning about it um and this is just some of the Partnerships that Cassie and Eli have worked really hard to establish just within the past two weeks of being here um so the first that she mentioned was we're going to start working also with The Arc of Bradford um Mr Williams here he's expressed interest in having us come out um and talk to some of his consumers on fall prevention and just overall health needs the Bradford Senior Center of course that's going to be where we uh pilot this a matter of balance course um we're also going to offer some Narcan awareness courses there as well the Brer County Schools um we've had some very healthy um conversations with Miss Candace uh regarding getting um some of our programs into the schools we're going to probably focus on Middle School and High School um in the initial phases and that'll be focused around substance abuse and then Cassie and Eli will also um focus on some of their their git fit um initiatives and then the Red Cross like I mentioned we're doing the smoke detector install with them right now um they've also expressed interest in uh creating kind of like a health fair is what what they're referring it to they'll also go over disaster preparedness and um any other community health needs that braford County may have and uh this is just the list of some of our updated uh or upcoming sorry events coming up the matter of balance courses we don't have an exact date for it yet however it is planned to start uh April of this year that's just simply because we still have to get the instructor level courses for it and they're only offered at certain times uh next month um so we have our first Naran class February 18th 3:30 to 4:30 that's at the public library and then the second part of our smoke detector insall uh for the city of Hampton is going to be February 22nd and that's going to be uh 10 until noon or however long it takes uh with that that's all we've got if you guys have any questions for myself Cassie or Eli um we can answer him now I I do um with cheer and thank you all so much for your good work and um it's wonderful to have you here as interns in the good work that Mr weeks and his leadership as you are expanding your partnership um in the future um maybe consider the ly Hub um they have a a hub program too um and the RJ uh School site as another one and U Mr MC week you mentioned about um canvasing the Hampton area for the smoke detectors and may be leaving some information at their help center so if there may be some people that stop in that might need it they could have that information there but I appreciate so much the good work that um that you're doing absolutely thank you if I may um do we when we started this of course we we assumed that it would cut down on our transports do we have any idea I mean how effective it has been yes ma'am so I can um I can get you some numbers but I can tell you just from one um one case that comes to mind immediately was uh the large wheel tear gramp that we uh highlighted probably a couple months ago at this point that particular patient had called 911 uh 12 times in a month period for uh non-emergent calls they essentially needed help from their from their house to the car for doctor's appointments um since that ramp was built we haven't had to respond back out to that address for uh those lift assists and um you know those 12 times that we responded we either had this into fire engine um an ambulance to supervisor something like that um but I can definitely get some data for you guys if you'd like to see it I think it would be interesting for everyone to kind of see that yes ma'am and two um any idea when the classes that inside the school will start no ma'am so we're still working with uh Miss Candace I think she's still going around to the individual teachers just trying to get a a general time frame of when those will start um but correct me if I'm wrong I'm I'm thinking within the next month is kind of what was was talked about good so soon hopefully very soon and and as Miss sper said Thank You For Work y'all do yes ma'am thank you Mr chair Mr chairman if if I may I was going to ask a question very similar to commissioner Andrews um Lieutenant weeks you mentioned that you had 148 calls for service yes sir it would be interesting to know how many of those 148 would have been 911 calls had your program not in placey yes sir yeah we can uh we can definitely work on getting you a little nice infographic or something maybe be an issue thank you and just one other little thing if I might um so you have your entrance here um I don't know if you had any connection with the sheriff's um with their program the ones that are incarcerated for their um substance abuse um that's connected with the Meridian program yes ma'am we've had a few conversations with um Brooke I can't pronounce her last name lupinacci I believe it is she's been um getting into the jails a little bit unfortunately we're not where I'd like to be with Meridian in terms of Partnerships they've gone through a lot of uh employee turnover it's kind of caused a you know an issue getting some of the the program set up that we want to such as the uh the overdose response team and stuff like that um I talked to her actually this morning in a in another meeting and they think they have a clinician identified for the Stark site now so uh hopefully that's true if they do we can uh we can start moving forward with a lot of this stuff okay all right thank you all right also want to say David thank you very much I know you've helped me with um issue so yes sir I do appreciate that and and I believe it was Cassie and Eli yes and thank you all so much I appreciate yall y all doing this thank you all right thank you getting disconnected there that is something that we planned on it it seems uh unbelievable that this has been less than a year that he's been doing this program um you know started in May 1st of 2024 and we haven't even hit one year mark yet but that was our plan is to bring those type of Statistics that y'all are asking for to our uh one-year update so that way we have a full Year's data um you know to be able to to display that for you all but that is uh that is our plan on on May 1st around that time in May um first meeting in May to present you with a an annual update and presentation but uh Lieutenant weeks was awarded the uh 2024 Chiefs exemplary service award um just a few few weeks ago at our annual Awards uh ceremony and uh something well well deserved he's done a great job in in less than a year in what he's been able to build with that program has been great I'm certainly incredibly proud of it and very proud to have Cassie and Eli on board with with us as well so all right thank you thank you thank you all right moving on to item seven uh the clerk's report we don't have uh really anything to report this week but okay we have compiled a last last meeting we had some inquiries about the jail maintenance set aside so everybody has a folder on their desk that shows all the agreements deposit transfers in the transfers back out so you have that history in front of you now and that's all broken down on one sheet basically uh one tab back so but the rest of us M mainly the agreement okay I appreciate you doing that thank you okay moving on to the sheriff's report okay well good morning board always good to come see uh two quick things the first one an update on a project that went back quite some time uh we were able recently to wrap up the cleanout of the Samson Canal where it goes from Samson Lake down down to three pipes that was a project it was um a culmination Mr Paul still sold and water board uh Mr DOD and our our public works department U my staff there in Emergency Management uh County manager's office a lot of people come together we looked at this we identified a solution that had never been found before which was a much more coste effective way of getting that cleaned out the concern for years that's been brought to Emergency Management as well as the board was that um that overgrowth of vegetation at the canal was reducing the effectiveness of three pipes and being able to drop lake levels uh before a storm so Mr still actually found this company that used an alternative method um it took a little while we had to go through know four or five different agencies for review um as far as permitting goes make sure all of them were good so once all that was signed off on we then also had to work around duck season because this company isn't allowed to do certain environmental activities during during those hunting seasons um so that led to here in January and being able to get out there and actually complete that project so we got some before and after photos for you so on the left there you'll see what this is from the lake looking into the canal what the growth looked like and then a uh an after photo taken from about the same spot and we have one more slide just from a different angle there kind of show you the difference that made so we're going to be watching that closely I know Mr Steele and the Soul waterboard they've already been taking some measurements on how what kind of effect we're going to get out of that we're going to be watching the gauges anytime we open and close the gates to see what kind of difference that made um and hopefully be able to give some report back to you in you know uh the near future about the effectiveness of it but overall um you know like we talked about when we first started this project that uh it was needed for a lot of other reasons this has been one we've sought for many many years um wanting to make improvements to the gates this was always an issue brought up by potential granters of um you know if there's growth Upstream that it doesn't matter what you do to the gates it's never going to allow them to be effective so we'll definitely monitor that and see how that can help us with future opportunities um any questions on that just a comment if I may chairman yes um just thank you for staying on top of that um it was a mess when we went out there it looks wonderful now and um another thing is that we got this project done um what I would consider extremely um at a good price it was the total amount was 8,000 8,000 soul and water board contributed two towards that so the the board paid $6,000 it's a very large area that they clean approximately three and a half acres that were cleaned out so thank you very much for staying on on top of that and um so glad to get it done is it just thank you it looks great makes a difference so the only other update I had for you on Emergency Management um that I just thought was really worth uh public mention uh certifications and Emergency Management work very differently than other Public Safety you know Corrections fire law enforcement EMT paramedic you go to Academy you go through a testing process you're awarded your certification in Emergency Management you actually apply for that certification after you have time in the job you have to show years of verifiable experience you have to have uh supervisor letter of recommendation you have to make contributions to the profession via public speaking disaster experience um it's a pretty extensive packet it's it's put together it's submitted to the Florida emergency preparedness Association who has a committee review it and then ultimately the board of director signs off on it so one of our goals a few years ago um was to actually get all of our Emergency Management staff certified I don't know that that's ever been um done in Bradford County have everyone in the Emergency Management division certified at one time so we we kicked that Initiative off a few years ago again one of the biggest drivers is is you got to check all these boxes before you can do it um so I'm really proud to come to you today to tell you that as of last week with the annual meeting uh for Florida emergency par Association no a tendler works for me he received this Florida associate emergency manager certification um Michael heer received that same one about a year ago uh so at this time that that just a big accomplishment on our our division I wanted to let you know about that I was super proud um we have now everyone within our Emergency Management division as certified emergency managers in the State of Florida so uh you know when you see those guys Noah and Michael just just make sure um you know tell them great job they are the uh gears behind it that that keep everything going I know I'm always the one that comes and tells you about everything but I would be lost without those two guys and all the hard work they do so I just wanted to give them a a public uh acknowledgement of their hard work let yall have any other questions for me I had nothing else um for the sheriff reporter for management one of them's here right now he is thank you all right anything else no thank you so much you do awesome job we really do appreciate it thank you appreciate y thank you all right uh number nine County managers report yes sir thank you Mr chairman um you know in the last two and a half years we've really focused on economic development throughout the county and the region and one of the uh most recent things that we've initiated is the uh we applied for and were was awarded the cpta grant the community planning technical assistance grant for $75 or wow that was a big one we wish that that was a fraud in slip there wasn't it Mr chairman I appreciate it thank you $75,000 Grant from the state and one of the deliverables was a introduction video for Bradford County that was recently completed when I say recently I mean yesterday and this will be the first public display of the video and then after this meeting it will go live on our website and all our social media platforms um Miss Amber Shepard couldn't be here this morning but she's the one uh running the grant along with help from Miss Pam whittle with the chamber Pam's here today thank you for being here Pam so at this time I want to play the video for everyone and uh it'll be the the world debut is that what we got for $75 that bargain right a blank screen welcome to Bradford County Florida where business is growing yeah Noah have the it gu oh well never mind r what going tell him we want our $75 back um may I ask a question while we waiting Umar sitting down in the audience but while we're out there and um Mr D and um Mr K know every year I ask if we can get some pictures um that we can present to the Florida Association of counties for a calendar each year these different Counties have their pictures something significant about their communities and and it's in it's in the annual calendar so this year I don't know if it's strawberry or something some downtown event or um some activity that we were having if we could get some pictures that we can submit um this year for the annual calendar for the next year put my down thank you thank you now which calendar is that this is our Florida Association of a perfect blend of accessibility this is the city one CU I know last year somebody put one out that and I guess it was themed like weather and they showed a lot of shots with lightning what where where did that one come from that was that was for association association County sometimes they'll have a scene about the winter the weather U maybe a special event they've had in the community um but each month there's a featur county and I'd like Bic County to be in that calendar calendar well and that's what I that's what I meant if we knew what the theme was then we could definitely make sure that we've got the uh the appropriate picture for it well there's not a a just one theme it may be different events that are happening and some people May focus on their particular thing that they specialize in we got some beautiful lakes um we have our downtown we have all of our festivals and events happening the Riding Club is that show it sure all right so it doesn't look like we're going to be able to play it and I'll see about getting our $75 back but we uh we we'll go ahead and put it up on the on the website and Facebook and all the other different social media Outlets that that we we have through the EDC but um I know you'll like it it's very very impressive and very well done so you'll have to take my word for it until you see it for yourself okay and maybe in our next meeting we'll have we can have yeah we absolutely we can yep okay that's all I have that that's it yep okay may I ask a question yes ma'am um I don't ask this very often but do you have any update on the bike trail on the I'm sorry on the bike trail the bike trail well maybe it's the I mean like the construction of the overpass and everything yes yes there's no update it's it's still moving forward and construction is supposed to begin chairman help me out here supposed to it's supposed to be complete by the end of 2026 right okay so and and I think it was going out for bid um May May in May yes of this year so um and also we made a request to uh Mr Barney Bennett to please when he has time to come before the board do a presentation so we can see what all they're doing okay all right um okay that's all you had I'll move on to the uh County attorney report can yes good morning uh hello everybody um I have nothing to report okay all right uh commissioner comments I'll start with commissioner da yeah I just want to make a comment um on the writing club uh you know I just find it interesting that when the fair Association presented to us about keeping you know it all under the fair Association they mentioned several different like items or different events that they were going to have down there you know at the fairgrounds to continue to raise money you know for that Association seems to me that if the writing Club you know wants to be there and they're willing to pay you know whatever amount I mean without being crazy because I don't think they paid a whole lot before but I mean every dollar would count towards the fair Association so I just don't understand why they can't continue to ride out there and you know if it's an annual fee if it's a monthly fee you know whatever it is because they take care of themselves they police themselves they pick up their own trash and there's really not a whole lot required you know from the association or from the county and it just to me would make sense that they would allow for them and again it's not our board but why they wouldn't allow them to to do something out there and still be able to bring in you know if it's a dollar it's a dollar more than they're bringing in right now you know so anyway I just want to bring that up and go ahead as far as the um the speed limits uh um you know I I agree with Mr Baker I you know I think this is a Law Enforcement issue and I think that you know we need to get the sheriff involved and get the patrols involved and you know just do whatever it can to be a deterrent out there rather than you know going and trying to lower the speed limit but that's my my thoughts on that I know you live out there I know you hear from a lot of people but you know again I think that just just like Mr Baker was saying I mean I get people all the time you know when I tell them I live in Stark they say oh that's a speed trap well Senator Bradley you can attest to going over 17 at doctor's Inlet right there if you're going over the speed limit there there's typically a a State Trooper or uh a County deputy there so it's it's all a matter of where you are and how fast or you know or how recklessly you're driving you know and I I I just think that uh we should leave that up to law enforcement and uh just let them enforce the speed limit that's out there so that's all I have to say about that thank you right thanks um thank you and just to ask um a part of what commissioner dhy was asking about the the writing Club have we asked the fairgrounds why they can't um continue there do you know Mr carnan I had a brief conversation with Bob Milner um recently and I I left with the very murky understanding of the circumstances that that caused them to to leave um sentially he told me that the the fair Association needed that property for some function um and that they were they were asked to leave and and they did um I don't know you know in my in my opinion that's fair Association business and uh you know if the board wanted to try and influence his decision making then that would be the way to go okay I'm just bringing that up as a as a commissioner comment and as a public comment too so I'm not saying again we don't have any influence on that board correct but at the same time you know if if if their whole objective was to continue to try to bring in Revenue to keep that under the fair Association then again you know why aren't they trying a little bit harder I'm sorry thank you no that's okay I'm going just raise just to ask the question if we had some understanding of why they couldn't and if we just maybe we could just um out of courtesy ask them if they would take a second look at it um anyhow um I also wanted to um share with the board um that um for the Martin Luther King celebration the board was presented uh from the concerned citizen of braford County um this 25 2025 um plaque for sponsorship and support um of that group and so it's called the Martin Luther King um drum major service award um for the generosity and in humbly and inspiring and thank you all for what you've done so just let you everyone see the beautiful plaque that was received um during that time and then the other thing I just wanted to um emplore the board and trying to move forward with the help of Mr dots um looking at a CommunityWide cleanup and putting it on a schedule where each municipality might have a month it be their cleanup month so that we can begin to um establish among our community that we have pride in our community and we don't want trash on our road sides and we want to keep the commity clean so I I'm just asking if we can kind of move forward with our beautification of braford County because our community deserved that and um and I already ask um Pam about the calendar but if you all are aware of any pictures that we can use um and maybe something featuring paramedics or Emergency Management whatever but so that br county is also recognized um during the annual uh calendar event so those are some of the things that I have thanks thank you commissioner Thompson I was uh when you told to Mr Bob did did uh that land was donated wasn't it to the county actually if you Che I I talked to you yeah commissioner I I I don't want to go on record because I really don't have a clear understanding of I don't either I know I talk to him too and I don't I don't understand the whole picture behind it I mean right but we need we need to look into that I mean CU there's a lot of people that you know went down there and and there was no problem whatsoever maybe and they brought people over into Bradford County when they had you know big shows I mean people went and eat maybe if if Bob is willing he would come a board meeting and and maybe give us a you know an overview or an explanation of what the details are I know I couldn't get it the other day uh but we need we need to get and look into that and don't leave it on the back burner yes sir okay I have a few things um and to follow up on that um a lot of the writing Club has um spoke with me about that and the desire to have it back um totally unclear why they and they said that the building part is still there they just tore down the arena is does anybody know if that's true is that right that's true um they even went as far as to say that they would be willing to build that bag there's a lot of families out there that really appreciate this and I think that um as a board um everyone seems on the same consensus about this and I think that we need to take maybe a little stronger stance on it I think that we need to if they are not willing to put it back and allow them to come back out and ride then maybe we should look for property somewhere where we might can help them get it estab reestablished because it means a lot to a lot of our our citizens and so um like Mr Thompson said I don't think that we need to forget about this this is something that um is very important to our citizens and I think that we need to work with them on getting this accomplished the next thing um I'm I'm of the consensus that um and it's not my district Mr Ric and I'm I'm I'm just making a comment but um speed limits I I don't see why the board would be involved with that I do understand that we tried to be the voice of our people but at the same time um I think that's taken on um an area of responsibility that probably should lie with the sheriff or I I don't know I'm I'm not sure how when the first road signs and Jason you might can tell me whenever an area is built up I mean is it do that comes out and puts the road signs up the initial when it and is that based on population or and um another thing um people going to speed they're going to speed I think the best thing and and like I said I'm I'm just making comment like it were in my district I'm definitely not trying to to go over in your area of responsibility but um maybe try to enforce it more so then then try to change it um I just think that the board is not the agency that needs to be Chang in it um the community cleanup I think is a wonderful idea and I used to have a motto whenever we did functions if you get the kids involved the parents will come and I think it's important as a teaching tool to utilize that too um maybe reach out to our our schools and and get a cleanup day set up and to go through go through the city go through our our districts and and try to clean up I think that's an excellent idea one other thing and I wasn't here for the meeting um the meeting before um but we talked about um the money that we had given to the city for the infrastructure out to the um the bypass and um I I do understand us wanting to be um included in how things are going to be done and or the process and I think that that the city is coming at some time to make a presentation correct um one thing that I would like because um perhaps it's because I've I've only been here four years but with the airport I have a hard understanding of why we are um why the diesel lanes and and the roads inside or are a a priority for us to ask for Appropriations I had asked if Keystone was going to do that and I thought they were um but what I'd really appreciate um I know that inside the airport we don't own anything we at all as far as the airport is concerned that is all owned by the city of keyone and I know that the racetrack that is in there um I think that they've terminated their lease um so I W I was listening into a one of their meetings and they talked about that there was reasons that they could no longer have that so my my lack of understanding I guess is is there something going to be built in there and I I I would just love it if possible if we could have the city of Keystone to come and kind of give us their plan for the airport so that we better understand I mean what what all is going on do you think you could speak to them and ask him to come yeah I don't think that would be a problem at all but it would be the Keystone Heights Airport Authority not the city of Keystone Heights because that's the governing body for the airport the city of Keystone Heights owns the property right but the the the body that governs is the Keystone Heights Airport Authority okay so as far as because us going on and doing doing improvements to their property that's what I was um looking at as far as does the city I mean so the city has nothing to do with the airport not the day-to-day operations no ma' so it was the Keystone Heights Airport Authority that put in the Appropriations request okay they did that specifically themselves and then Clay County the city of Keystone Heights and Bradford County all wrote letters of support for that for that request is there a plan for construction and everything in the airport is is that what maybe we we don't know yes uh to answer your question directly there is um they have a 5-year plan a seven-year plan and a 10-year plan the most pressing need is the construction of the connection Road between the new access road that we built and the old access road so that that Economic Development Corridor is what we're calling it would open up all that Frontage for economic development be Mr Kirkland that would come and and addressing her question Mr Kirkland is the chairman of the board yes and for the total amount that we were going to spend on those roads it it was 3.2 for the Dell Lanes and then roads inside is that what it was so the original Deo grant that we received was 2.3 million and then of course as you remember 2.3 2.3 um as you remember time went by and it didn't it didn't come as it should have what we finally ended up doing was convincing Deo to allow us to change the scope so that we could go ahead and spend the $2.3 million rather than lose it uh so that's what we did we built the the new road that's out there now and as soon as the airport Authority um has the fence work they have to move the fence reconfigure the fence so that we can tie it into 100 and while that will not include deceleration and turn Lanes it will give the airport a second point of Ingress and egress for emergency purposes and then if we if we successfully get the appropriation for the dell and the turn Lanes then we the state would come in and uh and and do all that work okay I would just love if they could do a presentation so that it kind of Clues us into what what's really going and I'm I'm sure they'd be happy to do that I can I can probably get it on the next next agenda and I think that's it okay thank you all right um last comment um today if y'all don't know today is Mr Jason's uh six years he's been with the county from today so Jason you've been doing an excellent job we cannot thank you enough for um it it would be cool if we' have been making a list from the time you got here till now as to what all the projects have been completed but we just thank you so much for all your hard work and like I said celebrating six years being with the county today so thank you very much Jason all right and last um I just want to say um the ribbon cutting Ser celebration at the uh station 10 living quarters was a a great success I thank everyone uh Pam Widow Chief County Manager I mean uh the road department for getting the paving in but it was it was just it was a real big success um there was only a couple hinders and uh I'll mention them in a minute Mr Corner gay kind of already hit on it one time but um but I just want to tell you one thing just in case the board didn't realize that this Vision actually started back in 2014 uh with conversations with the Keystone Heights volunteers and the north central Florida Regional planning Council Council sending over maps and and telling us that that uh area had the most potential for growth and that uh and it would be a good location for a fire station so I thought that was pretty cool and and uh also here's the the blunder the Keystone Heights volunteer fire department I can say this in my sleep and I don't know why I messed this up but they gave us over $1.2 Million worth of equipment and $75 in cash it was 75,000 and I said $75 uh I was very proud of the $75 they gave but um it was 75,000 I do apologize I've asked Mark to please um make sure it got printed in the telegraph is 75,000 so um and believe me I've heard about it all weekends so every time I run into a firefighter they offer me another $75 so it might turn out to be a money-making Adventure I don't know but but anyway I just wanted to make sure that was cleared up cuz you know cuz they without without the Keystone Heights volunteer our department even having these conversations back in 2014 that station would never be there uh and then also as you all all know Vince you know donated all the the labor and uh materials for the building so um but but it just it's pretty cool because today this fire station is complete and sitting in the fastest growing area in the county I mean that just just I just want to say that that just goes to show how God tells us there is wisdom in wise counsel and uh I feel like we had some very wise people working on this project from the start and um again I just you know can't thank everybody enough for for being a part of it and um and uh as you all know the uh Cabinet Shop CNC Custom Cabinets gave us all the cabinets or actually assembled all the cabinets and put them in and then uh um uh Florida Southern Plywood from Jacksonville Florida gave us all the uh cabinets for that building so uh but anyway it was it was just a a great project and um and it's if you haven't seen it you ought to go down there and take a look at it it it is awesome it really is um so great fire station I just wanted to make sure the biggest thing was to clear up the the $75 and at 75,000 so uh it's easy to do Mr chairman and and if I may add one thing yes uh there's one other person that we need to recognize and that's our fire marshal Chris cookie he's in the room with us and he was the project manager for this entire build this this project and he did an amazing job throughout the entire time you know he stayed in contact with with Evan Douglas and Vincent Essen and he would put out a almost weekly update on the progress that was being made and just did an amazing job throughout the whole thing and for that thank you very much Chris appreciate it all right thank you all right well if there's nothing else to come before the board uh I'm going to close out this meeting um for everyone that's here for the fire uh assessment um I apologize we're running just a little late so we'll probably take like a 10-minute break and uh start back at uh about 10:50 so thank you all this meeting is adjourned --------- ##VIDEO ID:B0dXPPz5p3k## e and at this time we're going to open up the meeting um of the fire assessment workshop and uh before we do I thank everyone for being here today and um uh if you would just please be very respectful of each other and um and also uh Chief Carter is going to do a presentation to get it started and then at the end we will answer any questions y'all have uh if we can't answer them we'll get back with you but um and please when somebody's answer asking a uh a question please let give them time to speak um because if we start talking over one another we won't hear what's going on so I I just asked that and at this time uh I'm going to ask uh our um what I got to catch my brother I'm going to ask uh commer Andrews to lead us in prayer and a flag salute let us bow dear heavenly father Lord we thank you for this day God we thank you for the ability to be here Lord and to do this work God we just ask that you will be with us lead guide and direct us in every decision that is made and Lord just let it be will uh be it it good with you lord your will be done in this place God help us to help this County God that we love all so so very much and do what's right for them in your name we pray and give all the glory amen amen amen Al to the of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible liy and justice for all all right this time um Chief Carter is going to come forward with the presentation all right well good morning and I'm going to be turning all different directions so I apologize if I got my back to any of you um yeah as as we talked about obviously we're discussing the fire assessment this morning and I think that it's important for us to have a good understanding of um of not only you know what what that entails but kind of where we've come from and how we've gotten to this position um obviously it's it's been a long discussion right this is not something that's happened within the last 5 years we've been discussing this uh well back since 2001 as recent 2017 we did a study to completed a study for another fire suspen as well so it's been a long long time coming of of uh what these numbers look like but let's just go ahead and get into it so how did we get here currently from 2020 uh up into the past five years so on meeting of uh August 20th 2020 the sheriff's fire department budget proposal came before the board at that meeting there was consensus from the board Express to br bring back the fire department underneath the board of County Commissioners also at that meeting the sheriff had expressed concerns with funding as a matter of fact Sheriff Smith added that the men and women currently responding to calls need to know whether or not the board is going to fund the fire department and what they can expect in the future we're still in that situation at a meeting on September 8th 2020 there was a special meeting called there were a few things on that agenda one of which was to approve the fiscal year 2021 fire rescue operations and action plan there was a vote to create a fire rescue Department that was passed 5 to appoint Allan parish as a director that passed 5 and then to approve a combined fire rescue budget of nearly six million which also passed 5 at that meeting Miss rhen had pointed out that the unassigned fund balance that was used to fund that uh the department at the time is not a reliable Revenue Source the unassigned fund balance is used to help balance the budget at the end of each fiscal year the board will need to consider a reliable Revenue source to fund fire operations in fiscal year 2122 after that Mr uh Parish direct uh director Paris addressed the board and said that the plan before the commission is the best opportunity moving forward it has been well vetted the plan is being looked at as a long-term solution not a short-term patch the county has done a tremendous job of investing in people I'm sorry in equipment and infrastructure the missing piece is people in order to have a quality Department you have to invest in people in that fiscal year 2021 fire rescue operations and action plan it included one director or chief one fire division Chief one EMS division Chief one operations Captain one training Captain two daily roaming lieutenants five ambulances and three engines and this is the uh organizational chart that was approved in that operation uh operational plan on March 17th of 2022 there was a countywide hiring freeze we had five vacancies in our department and so at that meeting uh it was it was there was a decision that was made to eliminate that fifth ambulance and that was you know the options were either to staff that fifth Ambulance with overtime uh to hire people to fill those positions or to eliminate El eliminate that ambulance and that ambulance was eliminated on 317 to 22 and has not been placed back in service since on June 6th of 2022 it was moved by Vice chair Andrews and seced by commissioner Thompson to appoint me as chief of fire rescue and that motion carried 5 I didn't know what y'all were setting me up for at that time but thank you for that you're welcome this is our current organizational chart as you can see on here that one ambulance has been eliminated we've also changed one of the chief's positions down to a captain's position we only have two chiefs in our entire department myself as the chief of fire and rescue and our division Chief Dylan Rogers we went from 59 full-time employees down to 53 so when people say that we've expanded and we've just grown and grown and grown and that I'm building an empire over there that's incorrect we've actually decreased since this was originally approved in 2020 let's talk about NFPA 1710 and what that looks like these are National guidelines and these are not things that we're held to by law but these are national standards that have been vetted over many many years uh that they guide our responses and our uh Matrix and our benchmarks um that we use across the country and I know that this is Bradford County and we're not ever going to meet NFPA standards I understand that but I think that we should strive to get to that point but I just want to paint a picture of how far far apart we are from those standards currently so NFPA requires that on a 2,000 squ foot single family residence you should have 16 firefighters on that call to manage that house fire we can give you seven for a strip mall they recommend that you should have 27 firefighters on that call we can give you seven and for a first due response they say that you should be on scene within 4 minutes our average response time across the county is 9 minutes and 18 seconds so that just I want that to paint a picture of how far apart we are from those nfba standards I get asked often and some of the questions that I've receiv received from the board what happened to our volunteers I can tell you that the volunteer requirements drastically changed and for a long time in this County we were blessed with an incredible volunteer system I was a beneficiary of that I started at 15 years old as a volunteer with hilber Springs Fire Department so my division Chief Dylan Rogers and many of the in sitting in this room today started as volunteer firefighters and we're fortunate enough to be able to work here in this County still but I can tell you that the volunteer requirements changed drastically not to mention the decline in volunteerism across all organizations to become a volunteer firefighter in the State of Florida you it's 206 hours that are required for you to maintain that standard not to mention $1,000 just in course work and book not including the equipment that's associated with that $1,000 either on on behalf of the department or that's responsibility of the indiv individual themselves I get asked about pickup trucks all the time too why are we driving around these nice fancy four-door pickup trucks we'll explain go into detail on that as well this is my truck I drive a 2021 F-150 that truck was completely funded through a state uh EMS matching Grant and the upfitting was completed inhouse by lieutenant brandrick cost of taxpayers was the count was the grant match at $7,595 Chief Rogers drives a 2023 F-150 that we purchased using un unused Grant match funds was budgeted upfitting was completed inh house which by the way saves about $10,000 if we were to Outsource that upfitting is about a $10,000 job cost of taxpayers for this vehicle was $45,000 our operations Captain Captain Moy he drives a 2021 F1 50 which we traded a 2019 two wheel drive that was transferred from the clerk's office after the IT department for the county was uh dissolved they transferred they had a two wheel drive F-150 uh we were able to trade that in they actually gave us uh a significant amount of money almost as much as we originally purchased it for which the original purchase for that was done through cares act funding uh upfitting again was completed in house total cost of taxpayers was $9,888 our fire fire marshal drives 2011 F-150 that was transferred from the Sheriff's Office upfitting completed inh House cost a $650 to put the wrap on it training Captain he drives a 2024 Ford Expedition that was purchased through the opioid abatement settlement funds 0 to the C taxpayers and same thing for our community paramedic same vehicle no cost to braford County taxpayers all done all purchased through op batement funds are ems lieutenant drives to 2019 F-150 this is one one of our daily roaming supervisors this was purchased through 2020 cares act funding the vehicle and upfitting was done through that program Zar to County taxpayers and our fire Lieutenant drives a 2016 F550 and this truck was a bit of a Frankenstein we took a a 2016 brush truck that was out at Samson City that had 9,000 miles on it and very been used very minimally um it was also one that I didn't want to send into the woods and get beat up up so it was a very nice truck we took that and we took an old Squad that was purchased through a grant from Hilburn Springs uh from 2006 and we took the body and when I say the body I mean this part back here and this was the brush truck so we took the brush bed off of the brush truck and put the old 2006 Squad body on there and that is what they're driving currently and that allows them to carry 450 gallons of water to be able to respond to carry EXT extrication equipment um and all ALS equipment as well people ask why do we have four-door trucks this is just a portion of the gear that all of us carry on our on our apparatus and that includes the Chiefs as well we're all certified firefighters we're all certified paramedics so at any given time we can stop we can we can render Aid to someone uh we can manage a call with just just one of us um you know if if need be and this is the these are the numbers of vehicles that we've transferred over to Public Works just the public works department since 2020 talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of savings to taxpayers that if these vehicles had not been transferred over to Public Works they would have had to purchase out of County funds or done without let's talk about ISO everybody asks about ISO what that means and does it affect anything so when we look at ISO we look at our public protection classification is what ISO uses to determine insurance rates for the county one is the best rate you can get and 10 is considered no protection our current rating here in Bradford County is a 5 5x or 10 and I'll explain what that means on this next slide so class five rating says that you're five miles from a fire station and 1,000 feet from a fire hydrant if you meet both of those benchmarks you earn that class five rating which is the best rating that we can give you on your insurance currently a 5x means that you're 5 miles from the fire station but you have no fire hydrant within 1,000 ft so that's when you earn the class 5x rating you have still the the benefit of being the five miles from the station so you get a little bit of a reduction on your insurance but you don't have that fire hydrant within 1,000 feet and then a class 10 again which is the highest rating means that you're you don't have a fire station within 5 miles and you do not have a hydrant within 1,000 ft consider no fire protection so when we talk about stations and this this is including the Brooker station that's proposed um but when we talk about stations this is our current operation as we have it right now up top we have lah our station 50 hilber Springs at 40 Samson city is 90 Brooker 80 the rest is 20 and speedville is 10 so what does that look like when we start talking about closing stations what that looks like is now you there was a gap here where there was no gap before so all the people in this area now just went to a class 10 everybody who just went outside of this five mile circle and these are five mile circles Sor I didn't clarify that these are five mile circles so everybody who goes outside of this five miles just went to a class 10 automatically so what does that look like when we close hurn Springs we've just now lost everybody in this circle right here that was covered before now goes to a class 10 and then let's just say that the Brooker station never opens everybody out here remains a class 10 so the goal is to have the circles that overlap and and this is good coverage this is good coverage for our people this is good coverage for response and insurance ratings as well but what does that look like in real world world numbers this was obain obtained from a local insurance agent for wood frame $400,000 Square U I'm sorry $400,000 dwelling with a $1,000 deductible and a 2% hurricane deductible with a property uh protection class rating of five their annual premium would be $6,795 that same house we close one of those stations and they go outside that Circle that same house goes to a class 10 their now annual premium goes to 8,745 38 that's real world numbers that were attain obtained yesterday that was an actual quote $1,947 32 increase or 28.6% let's talk about our 2024 call volume or 1,223 fire related calls total calls for service that we manag 7, , 536 to include all medical calls as well that's an average of 21 per day our average response time as we said earlier was 9 Minutes 18 seconds our average call duration so from the time we get on scene to the time we clear is 1 hour and 32 minutes average scene time is 19 minutes and 40 seconds and then our average trans transport time is 32 minutes and 7 Seconds that's how long our paramedics average are with a patient is 32 minutes and 7 Seconds we had 32 structure fires with one civilian fatality 22 vehicle fires we had 63 brush fires with 422 total Acres burned 259 motor vehicle collisions and out of those motor vehicle collisions we had 595 patients we at 71 trauma alerts and 74 cardiac arrests and of those 74 we attempted resuscitation on 57 we got Ros which means we got pulses back we got their heart beating again on 29 out of those 74 State average is what we call the Ros rate State average is 24% your fire rescue department is 39% let's look at truck utilization Samson city was our busiest engine at 1,154 calls for service busiest ambulance was here in Stark 2,122 calls for service next busiest was uh and they and they both track right in line with uh with between uh lah and and and everything else to follow so station 50 lah was our next busiest 150 uh engine calls 1,347 EMS calls in St 20 thessa and this includes the speedville fire station as well was 872 calls for service last year and medic 2 ran 1,299 but let's talk about why we're actually here and that's fire assessment so I'm hoping this will clarify some things for for some people in the audience and and for you all up here as well fire assessment when we talk about the residential rate is charged per dwelling unit so if you look on your property uh card it's charged per dwelling unit what does that mean that's a dwelling unit this is I don't know if you can read it up there a little tough to read this is the actual property card out of our property appraisers website or this property if you look right here under building characteristics it shows one single family resident okay extra features it's got some sheds and stuff like that the only only thing that will be assessed on a residential property is what's under building characteristics so single family residents will only be charged one fee this is another example of a dwelling unit this is the property card for that residence again under building characteristics you can see where it shows it's a mobile home it's got one building under building characteristics will be charged one residential rate it's got an aluminum utility shed under extra features and out buildings that will not be charged and what about multiple dwellings on the same p on the same piece of property on one parcel so this is one parcel right here and as you can see there's one two three four homes on this property that all look in pretty decent shape right they are in good shape I've got pictures of them this is one of those property one of those homes second one that's the third one and here's the fourth and these are used as rental properties this is for sale on Zillow as a rental property now when you look at this property on on our tax collector's website I'm sorry our property praisers website it has under building characteristics it has four dwelling units they'll be charged four of the residential rates so if it's $100 let's say they'll be charged $400 for that property because they have four dwellings on that property rightfully so they're renting it out it's being used as a as a revenue source for them and if it catches on fire they probably expect us to come put it out extra features and outb buildings are not assessed as I mentioned earlier this is on that same property with the four homes that I just showed you earlier but this is coded as an extra feature in an out building as you can see it's this uh garage class three right here it's not going to be assessed so that will not be charged a building like this will not be charged your chicken coop will will not be charged your horse barn will not be charged now the caveat to this is if you have a a built out apartment inside of that horse barn with water and somebody's living in there rent it out from you and it's classified in the property of Appraiser's website as a dwelling unit then you will receive a charge on it this is a perfect example of a beautiful home right here in Bradford County that's also for sale I should get a a something from all these realtors for putting all their stuff on here we know who your brother is yeah uh again beautiful home two 2500 foot home here in braford county that has multiple out buildings as you can see everybody agree with that this is their property card building characteristics shows one single family resident which which will be the only thing that they're charged for they will not receive charges or their other out buildings and special features let's talk about vacant parcels and we'll get to a exemptions here in just a second this is a vacant parcel that's for sale right now 11 acres if this is not classified as a it will receive a charge for the um for the vacant land rate whatever whatever the board settles on for that there will be a charge assessed for vacant non-agricultural piece of property but if if it is zoned a it's exempt meaning if it's zoned agricultural they receive no charge talk about vacant Parcels with the same owner with multiple Parcels so this is a perfect example if we have a two 20 acre blocks right here that's owned by the same person but it's spit split up into two separate 20 acre Parcels so again if this is not zoned agricultural They will receive a charge for the West 20 acres as well as the East 20 acres They will receive a vacant land charge however if it's zoned a it's exempt let's talk about non-residential commercial sorry Stuart I know this used to be your your shop here but we had to use it it was it was on commercial for sale so um let's talk about this building okay metal building the auto garage um let's look at their property card and see what that looks like so when we take a look at that we see here when when we're dealing with uh commercial property or non non-residential property you look at the building characteristics again and you go over to the actual square footage so remember that square that the non-residential rate is charged as at a price per square foot and so this will be build uh and assess uh at 291 Square fet Times whatever amount the board decides on this is another commercial property just south of town again very large piece of property um you know multiple out buildings but when we look at their property card we look at their actual square footage of the building characteristics 10,845 that's what they will be built on they will be assessed on the 10,845 Square ft they will not be assessed on any other extra features or out buildings talk about our exemptions that we have right now our proposal is for churches nonprofit organizations and for government owned buildings to be exempt also 100% disabled veterans if someone is at or below the poverty threshold we're going to exempt them and then again as we already discussed if it's owned agricultural it's exempt by Statute this is the 2025 poverty poverty guidelines for the 48 uh contiguous states and it shows you that if there's one person in your household the poverty level is you have to annual income has to be less than $5,650 we're going to gauge that uh using the Indigent gation form that we already have um you know in the in the county office so that's already a process that we have have in place we're going to use that same form has to be notorized and uh repeated every year there will be a grievance process so inevitably there's going to be properties Mr rck has one for instance that has it's classified as two dwelling units on that property but the second dwelling unit that's on that property has been essentially gutted it has no walls it has no power has no windows and so it's going to he's going going to receive a charge for that if we don't catch it before the assessment right with his we know it's a it's an issue and and people can do this on their own they can go into the Property Appraiser's website and figure this out um but he has that that essentially now what used to be dwelling unit that is now a shed and so the process is he would email fire assessment at Bradford county.gov this is a working email you can email it today or you could call the number that's listed up there on the screen which is a work in phone number you can call it today and somebody's going to answer you and the process will be that we go out and we take a look at it and we compare that with the trash uh the garbage roll and all those things that um you know that that are based off of um you know how much if there's if there's electricity to the building if there's uh if there's Windows if there's doors if it's a livable structure those type things uh myself and my fire marshal we're going to go out there and we're going to do those things and and if it's something that should not be charged if it is truly a shed now we're going to take that off your tax roll so there is that grievance process that people can file a grievance and say look I think I'm being charged so so you know if you if you're charging $100 and you you are getting two of those charges for again a house and a shed we think that's inappropriate and we that's what we're saying is we're trying to work with people and trying to make this a comfortable thing and then these were the last numbers that were proposed by the uh by the Consultant Group that came in um and really what's been talked about I think is the 50% rate and that puts it at $167 annually for residential uh 11 Cent per square foot for non-residential and for vacant Parcels is $47 again without any of the exemptions if you break that down monthly let's take that 167 divide that by 12 you're talking about $13.92 per month but I like to think about it in reality and that's a Double Quarter Pounder with cheese a large fry and a large cat for McDonald's a month that you're missing out on and with that I'll entertain any questions you may have Mr chair yes um chief on the the five the 5x and the 10 on the iso rating does the 5x does that require a tanker truck uh if you don't have a hydrant then right yeah so the 5x does not require a tanker truck we could achieve even if uh let's say that a a house was outside of that th ft from a fire St or I'm sorry th000 feet from a fire hydrant but with they're within the 5 miles from a fire station they have what's called a water shuttle certification that you can achieve through ISO um and that is accomplished by you have to supply it's 250 gallons per minute for up to two hours um and you have to demonstrate that to ISO they come out they do an evaluation and they say hey let's look at this and actually we did that when we first took over the fire department we had ISO come out and do a water shuttle evaluation we failed that evaluation because the spot they picked was at the far Southwest end of the county in Brooker so again we uh we failed that evaluation but if we are able to obtain that water shuttle certification then even if you're outside of that thousand feet of a fire hydrant but you're still within the F mile radius of a fire station you'll be able to receive the five rating and we plan on doing that again once we are able to staff the Brooker station and and get some response out there thank you can we can we go back to the map sure and I understand sorry the iso and it's wonderful to be a part of all that but right now um like in our area out in Brooker we're nowhere close I'm very sorry cany could I have a bot of your water please sure 75 around here thank you everything 751 or $7 got you no SL today chairman and go to the one where we take off Hilburn Springs and I think it was um there you go just saying to me um this is what would cover our County we don't have the and I know you have the slide with the number of calls right somebody ask my questions can we go back to that to the slide that has the number of calls because you're you're number one was Samson city right yes ma'am thank you what what was the next we're taking passing the hat before y'all leave now um what was the next one uh next one was ly and the next one the rest and the next one well that was for if you're looking at the left side of the screen that's the the fire apparatus on the left side EMS units on the right hand side okay yeah and I think that's what we have to remember too is that we moved our fire crew the way that we split up Thea is we moved our fire crew down to the speedville area but we left our medic unit we left our ambulance in thessa and what that does is it allows for that unit that's down there in speedville has the same capabilities as that ambulance does they just can't transport you to the hospital right so they can get there they can treat you and stabilize you while they're waiting on an ambulance to get there and then we left our ambulance in the thessa area with the hopes that we're able to staff that with fully certified firefighter paramedics to be able to say hey you know what if a brush fire comes out there we can jump in the brush truck somebody else take the ambulance we'll meet there on scene um same thing it's the house fire they can jump in the you know jump in the engine one of them takes the engine one of them takes the rescue and they meet there on scene but right now as it stands what we've got in speedville are fire personnel and we've got our EMS Personnel stationed in the thessa area and I think we I don't want to get I don't want to get too far into um mix mixing the two up right but I think that we have because we're again we're talking about the fire assessment today but we have the opportunity to benefit both areas by splitting that coverage up because right now we have four at thessa we're sending two to speedville and then going to leave the two EMS Personnel in thessa that make sense yes and then our for hurn Springs our coverage out there is we have one of our daily supervisors who is there um the Battalion 2 truck that you saw that carries the water the 450 gallons is stationed at our hurn spring site so it's one person that's out there that's able to cover that that area and give the homeowners there the benefit of the lower ISO rating um you know and and in what you're talking about saving versus what it's going to cost the taxpayers I think is the the juice isn't worth the squeeze but I think that you know you're talking about for for hbn Springs the average utility bill out there is less than $300 a month for uh for Thea it's around $600 a month that you're talking for um for those buildings so is it worth we own the property um you know and the insurance rates I don't have those in front of for the for the two buildings but um you know you're talking about a $600 utility bill and a $200 utility bill or $300 utility bill is that worth increasing somebody's properties insurance by 30% if they're able to get coverage there's a lot ofl there a lot of insurance companies that won't right for a class tent and I think that's what I'm saying I don't know that the juice juice is worth the squeeze of shutting those stations down not to mention with Thea and I believe Hil Springs deed is the same way if we close those fire stations it goes back to the original owners well and and my thing is um I I hope that there'll be there'll be a day where we could afford to have everything that that we have and and more because I don't I do know the need is great but when we start looking at at doing the assessment I think we have to look at the cost and we have to look at whether or not there are things that we can do to cut the cost to make a good decision ision on what the fire assessment CU of course we want it to be as low as possible sure um we all know there's a need everyone in the county knows that there is but we want it to be uh that we want our citizens to be able to afford it and we want good coverage but what I was saying is that the Strategic PL places of the fire station I think is the first thing that we need to look at um I would love for my insurance to be lower too I'm in that other percent that you were talking about and I and it never will be but I think that the first thing we look at is what's the absolute bottom of what we've got to have and look at the placement and um take and just consider that and I think we're there based on based on call volumes and everything else I think we're there um you know when we look at Brooker for instance you know Brooker doesn't have the call volume to support a fire station it does have the response time to support a fire station though right because absolutely it's 15 to 20 minutes before you get help out there which is unacceptable in my book but it doesn't have the call volume so you have to look at all of those things when you can't just put up a heat map this is where all your car calls are let's have a fire station there and I think that we've got to have you know that's what we have to look at as a kind of a holistic view of uh of what that looks like but I I think we have you know very well-placed fire stations as it stands and we were fortunate enough to get those you know at at no cost to the county essentially now I mean obviously I know I'm sure there was some investment back back then but um you know I think that it's it's important to to look at the fact that if we lose those stations and they close down in 10 years from now they're going somebody's going to be standing here going what in the world why do we let those stations go and that's what I'm trying to look at is not look at two years down the road but look at 10 years down the road and the growth that we'll have and that's what we're trying to do is not necessarily we're not trying to grow anything as I just showed you on that screen we've actually shrunk since we started this fire rescue Department combined fire rescue Department we've shun shrunk by six personnel and I think that's important to remember because again it's this plan was well vetted this plan was looked at very intensely you know before it was put into place um and even since then we've been able to not grow our resources but spread our resources a little bit with the opening of station 10 we didn't grow anything we spread out that station we spread out that coverage same thing with Springs we were able to spread out there to H Springs it was something that the county already owned the building the property we were able to utilize that station put it into play and give those res residents the benefit of having that lower insurance rate and I think if if I'm a taxpayer looking at it you know I if I'm paying a fire assessment now and you're closing fire stations that's going backwards to me if you're getting less service my homeowners insurance rates are going to increase but I'm now paying for a fire assessment is totally backwards in my opinion so number uh so for instance shutting Hillburn Springs down I mean it would wind up costing the citizens out there more money on their insurance 100% yeah and I've been encouraged by by many people in the insurance business in this town that if you have questions about ISO and if you think it's not relevant please give them a call I know I told to Scott the other day and uh I didn't know that um that helped that much yeah yeah like I said that's an actual quote that I got yesterday so that's that's real numbers and you have one man out there what kind of vehicles is out there just that one we have where'd it go a vehicle used to have an old Rescue Unit that stayed out there yeah we've got this uh so again this is the the daily fire supervisor he's he's in this truck right here which is a squad truck it's got 450 gallons of water I think four 450 400 somewhere in there um gallons of water on it and they're able to if they get to a structure fire they're able to pull a line and get a knockdown on it or at least keep it from spreading anywhere else if they go to a brush fire they're able to get a quick knockdown on that prevent it from spreading anywhere else and those are the things we look at not just you know how far apart these stations are but but where's your backup coming from also because you got to remember that in each one of these fire engines carries two people right we're not we're not at Jacksonville where there's four people per truck we carry two people per truck so if you're going to a structure fire one person jumps in the engine they take the engine the second person jumps in the tanker tanker and they take the tanker because there's no hydrants right in in the county there's not very many reliable hydrants so um you know we split our resources as much as we possibly can and I think we do a lot with a little and you don't hear about it because I think our men and women that are out there do a really good job of mitigating the problems before it ever gets to your level and I think they bust their tails to do a great job to make sure that y'all don't hear about it but there there are issues out there but we we try and manage those issues in house and duct tap those issues before it ever gets to your level good Chief um just for my clarification on the cost the resta you there was 12290 but that those were Medical response calls did they in fact respond out of the Resto or was it out of the out of the uh speed fill um group um I think it was 1290 1299 is what I wrote in my notes on the rest so um yes ma'am 12299 you're correct now that's for the EMS unit that's for the ambulance for the ambulance yep and they respond out of Thea okay and how many the actual file calls so again 872 times is what the the engine responded to now that doesn't mean that all those 872 were fire calls they do respond to Medical calls as well so for instance if an ambulance is transporting to Gainsville and we've got a truck coming from Stark or coming from lah that's going down to Thea that engine will go again they have the same capabilities they'll go and stabilize the patient while they wait on the ambulance to get there if you call n on1 somebody's showing up you don't care what truck's parked outside somebody showing up there to help you and stabilize you they can do everything that an ambulance can do except for take you to the hospital so do we have any definitive data on the number of calls for structured fire yes ma'am yep that number was uh believe it was 32 32 but in your packet there you have a a folder in front of you okay um there's the actual actual there's a couple things in there talks about the NFPA 1710 um also talks about um the statutory requirements as it relates to volunteer firefighters um and then there's also a call breakdown it shows you exactly what type of call it was whether it was a vehicle fire whether it was a a fire in a mobile home whether it was a uh uh explosion whether it was a you know brush fire anything like that that you want to see is in that in that booklet and I can pull whatever numbers you want to want to see I just like to get the whole presentation that you present presentation here I can send you a copy of it yeah sure so um but um the other part of the my question was um how often um persons would need to respond and I heard what you say about the iso rating and I know when I was with the city that was one of the big things you know making sure that we met those ratings but I'm finding on a personal basis it doesn't matter the iso rating the insurance tripled despite being uh less than two miles from the fire station and the fire hydrant within 100 fet right uh didn't help so U and I what you're saying you got a contact but I'm I'm guess I'm my question is how much is it truly helping the residents with well I mean I I would dare to say that your rates probably would have quadrupled if you know if you didn't have that protection um but again the evidence is right there uh on that on that uh quote that was obtained I mean this was again I obtained this quote yesterday on a real life property is just as if I were going to buy it um and 28.6 almost 30% increase going from a class 5 to a class 10 and ideally you would want to have stations where you didn't have more than five miles to have someone to respond but when you truly look at um hurn and thessa it it there's it's not manned by you know your your folks so but we maintain the two structures because at any time if you went by one of the station it's not going to be anyone there no ma'am that's that's a correct they are manned yeah they're man they're staffed um maybe they just don't have vehicles there um but anyhow I'm the the point is if if we can look at whether or not that we truly needed to keep the two stations with the minimum number of persons there right um than you know taking a look at it sure and and I personally have done a lot of looking into that and and I would I would say yes we do um but again that's that's my professional opinion and then your extreme parts of the community like the Keystone area and ly and Samson City you know um or Brooker you truly do need people at those extreme areas and we have you guys right here in the middle of the city along with our fire um City Fire Department that that helps within this geographical location but how um how we might thoroughly look at um whether it's really feasible to have the other two that are minimally staffed and I agree with you I think that you know when you when you look back at at kind of what happened and how we've gotten here you know we inherited everything that we have from the volunteer fire departments and so we essentially inherited their buildings um their locations you know we didn't pick those locations we didn't we didn't pick any of that it was um now at one time I'm sure somebody sat down and said okay these are perfect spots to put a fire station and that's how it was mapped out and that's you know when we took it over in 2020 we looked at it and we said okay we're going to put one fire crew at Samson City to help with the middle of the county and get out to Brooker we're going to put one in the North End and then we're going to put one in the far south end and that was how it was that was how it was laid out we bounced back and forth doing two three man engines and just putting them you know at two locations rather than three but again for the insurance ratings and for the betterment of the community we said let's spread those out and get them at three different locations and it's worked out well um you know it is a long time when you're when you're two firefighters fighting a house fire and you're waiting on your backup to get there it's it's a significant amount of time and so those are the type things that we look at but um you know I I do think it's been well veted I think they've been been very much looked into um and I'm I'm happy with where the St locations are at and I I certainly would hate to see anything go away um for the people in this community and not to mention when we talk about you know the the fire assessment General we were talking about a fire assessment when it was all volunteer so the fact that it's a paid Department the fact that we have this many stations or whatnot it really I don't want to say that it's it's a moot point but it is it's certainly there's a need that's been that's been shown for a fire assessment well before it was a PID Department um again it was talked about when it was a volunteer department it was talked about when it was under the Sheriff's Office and it's being talked about again today and I think that's what we have to focus on is look at look at history and go it's not because we took this over and we combined it with the mems and all these things and we have you know three stations or whatnot it's because it's a needed thing it's the right thing to do for the community there's no question that we need the fire assessment there's not that's not a question um but the feasibility of what all we have right right uh is there any portion of what we have we can do without I would say we don't want to um impede the the safety or affect that it any way but is there anything that we have that we don't have to have especially when we looking at the fees that we're going to we haven't determined that yet sure but we're it's going to impact you know all of the the resident or the majority of them rather yes ma'am so but I'm not questioning whether we need sure that but what we have is there anything that we can consider and again my position would be absolutely not I think we have good coverage for this community and and what's right for our citizens especially if they're going to be paying for a service and and also to add to what you said that was it was $75 assessment they were trying to get on right before1 actually yeah right before 2001 and that was when we had a a volunteer fire department yes so so and today if we did uh go with what you're talking about it'd be $167 per resident $11 I mean 11 Cent per nonresidential and uh $47 for vacant so you know and that's for for fulltime our Fighters so um and please make no mistake I want to make sure that that um you know I give the volunteer departments a proper respect because they carried this County along for a long time I have a lot of respect for all those men and women um again I grew up as one and so I I have a ton of respect for those men and women so please don't ever think and I hope no one out there thinks that um I would ever disrespect the volunteers or say that you know it's it's just it's unfortunately you know the volunteerism in general has just declined and the regulations and and guidelines um and statutory requirements have increased so much that it's just not feasible well and I think that too um that's why Brooker did not have a fire station they had a wonderful Volunteer Fire firefighters out there I talk Mr Tony yesterday yes and so when we talk about if if Brooker never happens I don't think that we should ever consider that I'm with you because it like you said when you were up there you were talking about takes a a 9 Minute response on an average when you come into Bricker it's going to take you at least 20 minutes and if you go down 18 is going to take you another 10 10 minutes to get down there so um we're looking at the thought of it never opening should not even enter our mind it needs to be there for those citizens yes ma'am right and I agree I I feel like we're moving forward as fast as we can to try and get that going um if if there's no other questions from the board I got you cover okay one more i m okay one more and then one more I'll let you go cheap thank you um you said the budget back in 2020 was 5,975 th000 or so yes ma'am but now it's almost double yes ma'am um so believe our budget was just right around 10 million this year um and so with that you know that includes all of our grants and all those things as well but that also uh includes the minimum wage uh Medica Aid minimum wage mandate that happened in 2022 in October 2022 they mandated that we pay all of our employees at $5 an hour and that was a big hit that was you know that was a big hit for the Department uh and for the I think it was a great thing for recruiting it kept us uh competitive with surrounding departments but it also um was obviously a big a big ticket item for the county to to bite off on but it put us in really good position to be able to still maintain um you know good employees and and keep good employees here okay so that that was just my question what made it double that was a significant jump was the the Mandate the Medicaid mandate um back in 2022 okay and let me ask one question before I turn it over to the to the audience um were you going to be able to pull up the properties if they wanted to see exactly what theirs would be oh yeah I've got internet right here we can go on the Property Appraiser's website right now and I can walk you through your property if you'd like to I tell you what if while we're doing this if you want to pull up that one you was talking about online so that people can see and then also while he's pulling that up I'll start asking question questions from yall whatever youall want if you do want your piece property pulled up and we can answer questions right now would' be more than happy to do that M Rachel had a question yes go ahead I just wanted to ask Chief Carter because uh We've briefly talked about this is it counterproductive or is it hurting us to have based on our current operations the number of Staffing that we have because of so is there an interest actually in maybe increasing our staffing to help reduce overtime could there potentially be that cost savings yes ma'am and that's something I was going to bring before the board at at a different date um I didn't think it was appropriate to bring up you know the the whole uh presentation in in the fire assessment Workshop but yeah I mean when you look at our when you look at our staffing right if somebody's out in the clerk's office say um or in the road department or wherever that you know that tractor is shut down for the day or somebody's just not feeling that position at the clerk's office that day for us we're at minimum Staffing so if somebody if we have one person missing off an engine that day we have to call somebody in in order to to fill that position otherwise we shut that truck down so what happens is because we're you know we have 16 positions per day and we have enough Personnel to fill those 16 positions per day um and so what happens is when somebody's out we have to call somebody else in from another shift to come and work overtime and so yes it it it shows that you know we we have a lot of overtime because of that and what there there's something that NFPA puts out it's called the relief factor and what that tells you is based on how many vacation days you have based on how many sick days you have um if you have 16 positions per day you're supposed to have X number of employees um you know to cover those 16 positions and so what I'll be be bringing before the board to reduce the amount of overtime that we're paying out is to um hire three additional staff now let's say that there's a not per day but that's three additional staff so one per day and what that'll do is if somebody's sick that day it allows that one person to be paid at their regular rate to go fill that position rather than calling somebody in on overtime to come in and fill that position so it drastically reduces the amount of overtime that's paid out for vacation days sick days and those type things but yes that'll be something that we discuss in a little bit further detail and I'm sorry I I didn't mean to bring it up today that wasn't your no I think it's a good mention I figured it was a good at least explain from Staffing from where it was to where it is is and and maybe that it might be advantageous to you know the financial component to maybe go back to the Staffing that maybe we need to be able to handle that over time absolutely when I met with the clerk's office originally about it I said please don't throw anything at me I'm going to ask for more Staffing to reduce overtime so um but those won't be like a mandated position so instead of if that per if that third person is out that day they just are out that day and we don't fill that position but could those staff be a part-time staff we do that right now we have parttime employees to offset the overtime not the extended day right right because that's a whole different um item but the actual overtime that's worked because if I'm paying um someone that's that's making $35 an hour um you know over time then then we're looking at a huge amount compared to somebody that I can pay you hour for hour and we're on the same page that's what we're talking about we're saying hire these people but we'd have to bring them on full-time because again the part-time we have a list of about 16 part-timers right now and they're just it's unreliable to get them to come to work and because they're work in other departments where if they work at another department you know and they get an opportunity for overtime there to make time and a half they're going to do that rather than come here to make $16 an hour right so um that's why we have to hire those at a full-time as a full-time employee rather than part-time employees to to truly do what you're talking but that's exactly what we're talking about is instead of giving overtime we're going to be using that full-time position to fill that overtime at their base rate I can show it to you I'll I can lay it out better on a ex Excel spreadsheet okay Mr Corner did you have something you wanted to say okay okay all right um okay did you want to pull that one up or or we can just move on it doesn't matter totally up to you I'm happy to do it but anyway we got a question from the audience um Mr Baker right you got a I can hear you volunteers earlier you know they work it was the greatest people we ever had in BR County volunteered at time and everything and don't no disrespect for firemen and all that take got their Union and all that but uh anthon had a great fire department now we don't have one I think he was on the seat I'm not sure if Kenny or who else was on the seat run them off took everything we had and hand in away we had they there they was on they go call they had page they wore they got called they'd be there but then they got run off but like me you could have trained them for that $1,000 I think he said $1,000 could have trained 200 something hours education I believe they would have loved have done that but nobody offered to pay paay their way they was going to have to pay for it but a man out of his own pocket volunteer I think he would have took the opportunity to take that ,000 and took the class and but it still been on volunteer and we had free freehe what I would call freeh and not have to have so many real firemen and real paramedics but that's just my opin op of it you know they didn't have to have no Chief no boss man they were grown men they knew what they was doing but anyway and it was young guys too though like you said out young they didn't need no boss man to grab him by the hand and want to do but anyway just my opinion of it thank I agree with you I think that you know had those Investments been made back then we'd been in a different situation now but just to clarify each one of those Volunteer Fire Stations there were 10 in the county each one of them had a chief in a assistant chief and a lieutenant at each station well as a volunteer they weren't they weren't staff there they but they were yeah they were they had their their chain of command at each one of those stations Terry McCarthy Mike Mike Brown many others Percy Sullivan Adam Hall Adam Hall was Chief and yeah yeah and Scott Davis you know Scott things work better for trying to do a little cheaper if I ain't mistaken but I could be wrong but anyway I pay a lot of taxes like the rest of y'all and and I just want to say one thing when before it closed my son was actually one of the Chiefs at Hampton volunteer for our department so I tried my best I went down there and helped them remodel that station build all those racks for the hoses um I did not want to see that station close either but also and some of our meetings even Mr Percy Sullivan who's who's passed on and his son Rusty San they did an excellent job in thessa but they came to our meetings and even flat right there told us hey we cannot get the volunteers we can't get people to volunteer and they said we're we're getting too old to do this job you know I I'll go back Charlie I'll pull the minutes and and hand them to you but um but yeah go ahead just speak all you want I'm TI I won't be back no more don't worry about okay I just paid 167 okay well all I'm trying to tell you isite down on the thing in 10 years now this that there would be a300 or $400 write it down you watch who I'm telling right right right right all right any any other questions yes go ahead will actually give youate you know I don't I don't know about that honestly I'm sure it would probably make it more appealing for you know to to bring somebody down into a lower classification rating um you know I can tell you that uh when we apply for federal grants through FEMA and things like that one of the first questions on there like if we put in for a fire truck through through the afg grant through FEMA one of the first questions on there does this uh does this fir truck help to bring you into compliance with NFPA 1710 and so a lot of those Federal grant programs use NFPA 1710 as their guideline um and that's kind of their their their gauge and same thing for the safer grant for Staffing they say you know would would funding these positions bring you more in compliance with n fbaa 1710 the goal from the Federal National standpoint is to get everybody closer to those uh NFPA guidelines lot ofp have all these commerciales coming is that I believe with the international fire Association there is as more of these investors start taking the buildings and starting to build more houses more commercial comp issues have to comp and that has been discussed over the years uh as far as you know we look at it you know from an economic development standpoint too you know who's going to protect my inventory you know who's going to again if you're looking at say it's uh you know more density in a subdivision you know again you know how are you going to get protection to those areas who's going to protect those areas um I I I just want to say and and I think Mr Baker is Right 10 years from now it will be more and 10 years from now anybody that sits on this board will make more money than they make today and anybody in that clerk's office that budget will go up you know in the Sheriff's Office the budget's going to go up so I agree with what he's saying but again in 10 years you know certainly the needs going to be there and so therefore you know certainly it it it could end up being more I I just want to say something else too and I know we've talked about this I've talked to Mr corn about this you know and and and and just you know going off of Mr Baker as far as the volunteers and and you said it yourself I don't care whether it's the schools whether it's a hospital or wherever it's hard to find people to volunteer people just don't want to step out there they just don't whether they don't have the time they don't have the desire you know whatever it is I talked to you about the part-time fire department you know we're in an area where we have St John's County alacha County Duvall County we have a lot of big counties Clay County big counties around us where you would think that well hey you know they come over here and just work part-time and fill those needs but as the chief was saying you get into situations to where you don't have those part-time people available because of one they're either going to stay where they are and make the overtime or two they're going to be in a situation to where if there's a disaster they're going to need everybody that they can to be on staff just like we'll need everybody that we can have to be on staff and and and something else that resonates with me too is you know you look at cities across this country Public Safety is Paramount and I think what happens is when when when when things don't go people's way whether they vote for it or they don't vote for it the first person I don't want to wear your badge but I don't want to wear the badge of not being able to provide for Public Safety yeah and I think that's where we are now is because no matter you know people say oh it's never going to happen it's never going to happen I mean we had two incidents last week that you never thought would have happened and they happened you know because that's you know in then that's why you are there to respond so again I I just I wanted to say that because again I I just don't want to be if we're ever in a situation to where you know something does happen that people are sitting out there and the first person they're going to blame or the first people they're going to blame is the five people that are sitting up here and and I I don't take my role lightly right I and I have to play Balancing Act of keeping the board happy being good stewards of the County's money and also supporting the men and women that are doing the job out there so I'm in an incredibly tough situation sometimes you know where I'm I feel like I'm you know if if the kids kids just want to eat ice cream for dinner every day and dad's got to tell them no I mean I feel like I'm in that situation sometimes but we've got a lot of really good men and women women that work for our department I mean we've got we can truly say the best paramedics in the State of Florida and I think that our fire Personnel are coming up to that par as well and I think that you know for me um I wake up every day I go to sleep every night knowing that I'm responsible every time that 911 phone rings and dispatch that's on me and that's the stuff that that you all don't have to be burdened with yes you're responsible for it but I'm truly responsible for those men and women the work that they do and every time that that 911 phone rings in dispatch and so when you say it's a you wouldn't want to wear the wear the badge it is it is a heavy badge to wear sometimes but I love that I love being in that role um and I I feel like I try and do a good job of being a good Steward of for the Count's money because I'm I'm a taxpayer here as well I was born and raised here and so I want to do what's right for this community but I also care about protecting the people in this community and that's really where my heart is and that's that's you know first and foremost on my mind yes I obviously I'm going to be conscious of our money I'm going to be um again a good Steward of our money but but my job and my role um and my first priority will always be taking care of the people in this community and and it shows because I I tell you I never get any complaints about the service or the quality of the people that go out to on the rescue or the fire I never get any of those complaints the only complaints I get is why is it going to cost money and can I tell you why that you don't get those complaints I'm sorry to interrupt but but you don't get those complaints because again the men and women out there are managing those issues right when it's when one person's on a fire truck in thessa and the other one's on a fire truck in lah but two of them are gone because they're on an ambulance together and they meet up and now it's two fire trucks on a scene but there's only two people there to fight fire they manage those issues and those are things you never see you never hear about and you never will because we won't let it happen M we do a really good job of not failing and that's what we're going to continue to do and also for the people that riding that ambulance for 30 to 45 minutes um I want the best that there is working on me while I'm trying to get to the hospital so you know that's I appreciate that too and I always hear hear good things and and we're always getting uh emails or something with people saying how the how great our service is um you know so good anyway so I mean and if we were getting those complaints then this might be a totally different issue but but we're not yes agreed are youing these I mean obviously can busot resal Square th this actually is a legal issue um it's what an assessment is how that's defined in our laws that we all you that really in not just Florida but it's pretty typical in other states and local governments around the country and that is that the value is commensurate with what is received the service the cost of what is received and um taxes are different than assessment taxes are based on you know obviously people who have more expensive houses pay higher taxes right so if they raise the uh millage rate then that will have different impacts based on the value of your property but house is a house is a house when it comes to um response what it costs to get people to show up at your doorstep whenever there's a problem and um so that's if you went down the road of doing it based on square footage then you would get into legal problems well businesses are are are a little different just because of the nature of how they thew yeah the law says you got to do it this way that's right I don't think it says that that in particular but I I would have to go back and I didn't write this I'm just telling you what I know having dealt in this area of Law and being an expert in are of law for aot long long time um that how you deal with assessments that's why you get an ex you get somebody to come up and do the report and they determine how much is the value of what the piece of property is receiving okay and and and then that dictates how much the thing costs okay whereas when you do taxes it's just strictly based on um adval or which is based on what the property appraiser says a house is worth they just two different a analysis I don't want to I mean I I don't want to say 1,00% if you if you showed me and I was a judge some report that was prepared by that could be defensible some body suit which is what you you need to prepare these things in a manner so that you're not paying lawyers to defend your your um your um you know what you've prepared uh to to raise the money you want to use that money that's raised to pay firefighters into into buy equipment you don't want to use it to pay lawyers right so you need to make sure so one of the things we do to protect the Integrity of the system is you hire a professional to go and look at what is the Val of what the chief in his and his department is providing right and then how do we how do we put that value uh the value on each of the pieces of property um where people live and families live uh around around the uh the county uh and so any any difference between one house and another would be so minis school that it's not even worth um doing well of course every fire is different different right and also it you know what know 11 yeah I I'm simply answering the question that you posed as to why you find a situation where houses um are being have different values but their their amount is the same that's the I'm answering that question uh I can't speak to the $11 a square foot or whatever whether that's reasonable or not um whether the costs are reasonable or not I I don't that's not my job what I'm telling you is from a 50,000 ft perspective the law is pretty clear that the the what you're describing as what you think would be a fair way to do it and maybe it is a fair way to do it is to do it through paying for it through adorm taxes well that's not what's before them they're not saying we're going to raise aborm taxes to pay for this cost they're saying we're going to do it by assessment and when you do it by assessment there's a whole new set of rules that you have to follow that are different than what you do for adorm taxes that's that's the extent of of my comments and just to follow up on that this does give you the breakdown and these are all obviously available through public record um this does give you the breakdown of what percentage the residential versus uh non-residential versus vacant and what that amount will generate sorry we'll we'll stand by for just a second for the noises outside um the other thing I did want to address is the the reason that they do uh residen I'm sorry non-residential commercial based on square footage is because there's such a vast variation versus you know from a Walmart to a Mr rx's cabinet shop right there's there's a huge variation in square footage there so the only way to capture that would be doing it based off square footage whereas with a home sure you're going to have you know some you have some houses that have five bedrooms and some that have three but that is not but but that's the diff there's a big difference between that and a Walmart and um my law office that you know and what would be what it cost to service right the things that happen in a Walmart um you know with Emergen you know people probably they probably have an event every day sure at an average Walmart of some kind they do not have an everyday event at a house thank goodness and we're going to send you know sorry to interrupt you Mr Bradley no no no I just I I I I wanted to expound on on why it's proper under the law right not because these five or that individual or the people they hired to prepare the report think this should be that the law dictates all the things we're talking about but the reason why the law the law is grounded in reason however and we're trying to articulate those that reasoning and I can tell you for for a house for the most part whether it's a th Square ft or 3,000 square ft we're going to send the same response for for Mr Bradley's law office or a Walmart we're going to send a very different response to those two structures and so that's why the homes are assessed pretty much at a standard one set rate and there's been people who've challenged that over the years uh and the courts have looked at it they've heard the arguments of people who say well that's not a good way to do it and they've heard arguments of people who say that is a good way to do it and they've concluded no that's reasonable that's rational we're going to we're going to approve that way of doing things that is consistent with the law that's why this isn't a tax because what people do when they sue on these things they say this is actually a tax so you got to call it tax a tax and you got to do it you gotta collect it differently and all that kind of stuff but anyway I'd digress and I think it's important to understand though a wonderful I agree it it led to this discussion we're doing an assessment assessment is under certain rules could no ma'am that's that's not correct because we're statutorily capped at 10 ms right now we cannot increase the millage rate yeah and I had a question about franchise fees as well which are a totally separate issue uh apart from the fire assessment also um they they I think get sometimes the lines get blurred a little bit but they're they're two totally separate issues two totally SE separate collection rates or collection methodologies um and we're here today to talk about the fire assessment okay you yes ma'am goe and because they're cap on a i me to because this is a thank you for bringing this this is a wonderful discussion because we're getting to the heart of the matter agreed um if they you know I made my point about it's up to the five in any County Commission to decide whether you want to fund this all throughout VOR or supplement with um with assessments they're capped which means you know in order to to to pay that Delta to to pay for the entire cost of the of the of the Endeavor um you have they have no choice but to to cut another core service and they're you know that and that would be the choice at that point Miss B you've had your hand up for a while yeah my my recommendation and my question is why do we have to have an assess why can't we have a a sales where everybody in the county everybody that uses pay it everybody people that come into the county people that leave the county everybody pay and it has a sunset in 2050 and we collect that Sal that make sure it's after I retire please and we get a comprehensive plan on what we're going to use it in and we start collecting it we get a plan together I talked to you guys about the better Jacksonville plan they did it I mean we're not Jacksonville but everybody pays it it it's a halfelf or a whole we don't have to put it on as a as a assessment but everybody that uses everybody you put that H at God and you start colle and everybody that from youed about add it abouta it's on every you collect everybody across the board Mr strong Jacksonville city of Jacksonville is a charter County as well as other ones are and so I'm going to turn it over to the deputy Clerk and she can explain we we can't just add half cent sales taxes do you understand that do you understand that we can't just do that arbitrarily AC okay let let me get Mrs uh rhen to um excuse me to answer I was just GNA in response to miss Strong's uh response with the half cent sales tax the county has maxed out all of its non-discretionary sales tax we no longer have any available non-discretionary sales tax the only uh taxes that we have available to um Implement would have to be dedicated to a specific source so whether that be the jail or a hospital we do have available tax uh amounts that we could allocate but it has to be specific and then of course when um the completion of that project is done then we have to do away with the tax um the only other tax that is there is called an emergency fire surcharge tax that is not an option and here's why it is a cost neutral tax meaning that anything we generate from that we have to reduce what we receive in advalorium taxes so it's not a generating tax whatsoever in fact only one County in the whole state of Florida utilizes that and they are actively trying to get out of it because it is so poorly written and managed it is not written well at all there's not a lot of um indication of how you can utilize it from the Department of Revenue believe me we have checked into it the issues that go along with it are based on if you implement it or you assess it at a rate if you are too high in how you assess that you have to issue rebates at the end of the year because we can't again we have to be able to turn around and reduce our millage rate um it's a very complicated tax and there's no it's cost neutral there's no um actual benefit to it but as far as the sales tax all the non-discretionary Sal tax have been maxed out yeah I Al also add that you know the rate that's been discussed is the 50% rate there's still another 50% of the fire department that has to be funded you know and right now it's coming from general fund so I really think you know at some point and again this is not we're not talking about this right now obviously but but down the road I think it would be important for this board to look at how to diversify your your Revenue sources right now your your only Revenue source is going to be this fire assessment if it goes through I I think it would be wise to look at you know a franchise fee or something like that in the future again just to say if if you want to stop coming out of the general fund to fund the fire department what are some other ways we can generate Revenue right and I think that that's a way of kind of diversifying that and again I'm not suggesting that we we impose a fire assessment and a franchise fee at the same time or anything like that I'm talking years down the road again after I retire y'all can deal with that but uh you know just something to consider so yes and and also with all the new building going in bretford County that's going to be a lot more Revenue coming in and impact fees are the other things you know on discussion as well so yes I think you you question earlier impact fees are non-recurring so just just so you all know that they're non-recurring yes issues Walmarts restaurant ISS seems like they're being charged a lot maybe they're not well just add up the square footage and then you can times it by 11 Cent and that's what you'll come up with I mean we can give you an example well there actually there is if uh the the 100,000 ft Warehouse that belongs to the county if that were privately held that owner would pay what's the math $111,000 a year so this is the one that we showed earlier this is the the example that we showed this was Florida tractor reps just south of town um and again on their property record card it shows that their actual square footage which they're going to be assessed on it's 10,845 and so if we uh multiply that by 11 Cent comes up to $1,100 a year is what they will pay compared to your 67 yes ma'am I'm sorry I don't no no no I was doing the same thing I was adding it up on the calcul yeah you had a question I think everybody needs to keep in mind this is our starting point I've worked here for over 20 years I'm actually the longest 10 years Bradford County Emergency Service employee I remember I was here the days of the chief or sorry volunteers I remember these two chiefs of mountain were Volunteers in fact I've lived in Bradford alas Lake and cl County as an adult I've rented and I've owned and I've seen my tax ratings also the difference my insurance is very on essentially is $14 a month if you break down 67 for the year and it's going to save the average homeowner about $1,900 a year which is $16 a month so you're trading saving $160 in Insurance per month for a $14 payment per month like the sav like I'm I'm sorry I'm not even to sure what we're needing like and I haven't always understood why my chief put the resources where he did but I had go off when he put up that map with the radius the five M radius and it drops the best coverage to the most with what he has I would love to see coverage down to Brooker this when we first merged in the fire department was still under the sheriff we had a pretty good house firor I was in an ambulance that day I was stopped ins I had a 25 minute response time my firefighters were coming from Samson City I think they got there and had water on the fire in 10 minutes my supervisor was out on the road doing her job she got there I think in 15 minutes she identified that we had two patients she was able to triage them she gave me information within one minute of being on scene that helped me choose right treatment plan for my patient it saved her life that patient was my friend I want covered I want hon covered I want I want all the areas covered I've been here for 20 years I have friends and loved ones all over this County this is our starting point and I think we just need to keep that in mind well and please understand if if you don't understand anything else that you leave today we feel the same way you do I wish that we had them all over our County the job y'all do is just just it's wonderful um I've been in the back of an ambulance in Elway County and they talked about y'all so that's that's unquestionable and please don't think that when we make suggestions or we look at the thought of maybe shutting down one that it's taken anything away from y'all or the need that we have because we do understand that taking away from the people I love absolutely but we have to try to figure out a lot of factors that go into it um do I think what we have right now is really good yes I do absolutely so please don't take take it the wrong way um we care about every single one of you all because we know that if we call you you're going to do the best for us and that's what we want but um we've got to kind of we have to take all of the factors and look at the whole thing because all of the people in the county are looking at us and when we put that $167 on them they're not going to break it down into 12 payments you know they they're going to be upset about it um because we have maxed out on on our millage rate we've maxed out on our tax on our um yes discretionary tax and it's unfortunate but it's it's where we are is this rural County that's why we're trying desperately hard to bring businesses in to make this area grow so that we are able to to take care of a fire department that we don't have to do that and instead of the costs going up it would be wonderful if we could bring it back down so please don't misunderstand our questioning it's it's not that we don't care I promise you okay oh and yes yes sir um I just want I know we're going to have continue to have a series of discussions and workshops so it is to allow the citizens as well as us to ask all of those questions but it's our duty as as a board to look critically at every aspect of our budget so that we will be good stewards of your resources and so we have to ask those hard questions um whether it's reasonable that we can do it and for me Chief um in the next series to focus a little bit more on the data of the far response numbers I know that we had the medical numbers in here and I know when we did our um resolution or whatever we don't consider the the medical aspects of it is the far response the F data so if we can have more of that that would be more helpful to me maybe nobody else but for me so those numbers make sense that and those numbers and response time has a cost associated with it whenever the fire guys have to go out or the fire lady the fire team has to go out so but I know that the data that we looked at today had mostly um the medical numbers in terms of response and then the other thing is it's not just for the people's concern it's not to to devalue what our fire department is doing they're doing a fantastic job a great job and all of the uh areas that we have um provided to the community is important but we have to look at how we can trim if that's possible or how we can come up with some other source of in income or revenue for it and we can't do more because we're maxed at 10 we're at 10 mills now and so and I hear what you say about the hamburger and the soda per month but some people in this community that's a luxury that some of them are trying to decide between whether they buy their medicine or pay that portion of the rent so those of us who whose income is allowed that without hardship for some people it it is a hardship yeah well and the good thing is for those people that that do struggle with that we have a process in place where they can come you know show that struggle and uh and and possibly get that exemption so there is that process in place for those people who truly can't afford it this is the um the handout that you have in your packet so if you if you open your folder um it lists out exactly what you're asking for so it tells you exactly what kind of fire it was whether it was a structure fire that's good but we just this was on that desk when we got here we didn't see it before yes ma'am y so you'll have a chance to be able to go through that and look at it um and that was what I tried to to display in the in the Run numbers that I gave the the Thousand you know or so calls were fire related the others were were EMS related um and so again Everything Is Broken Out In Here here and it specifically says there's EMS uh Emergency Medical Services incident U and that's broken out in there as well so you can very clearly see what's EMS and what's fire and that's all laid out for you Chief why don't you pull that slide back up so she can take another look at it right so the 1,223 were fire related calls so those are specifically related to car crashes um structure fires brush fires uh vehicle fires things of that nature and that's when I went through and broke down um you know all the different types now total incidents that includes the EMS calls we had 7,536 uh but again it went through and we'll skip through here but spoke about how many structure fires and and so it's in this presentation and you certainly have it in your packet there as well um and would love to entertain you know any questions or any clarification you'd like on any of that stuff as and and thank you for your presentation yes ma'am do you want yes ma'am sure also for 36 years so I've seen a lot of things going on volunteers I definitely know all about those I've worked with them we had a great volunteer department but we were the same way everybody else no volunteers we only had about four active on so we understand you know how we've lost our fire station but if you live in Brooker and you're sitting out there and have no fire protection and I mean we have nothing we have fire hydrants and we have a water system we have no way of protection other than S city which we do appreciate so I just wanted to say that the 167 I understand I'd like to see the $84 because we live out there in a small little town that has hardly any income a lot of people retired so I would like that to be considered I do appreciate you Commissioners working on all of this and trying to get a reasonable amount but I did want to say nobody likes assessments nobody likes anything like that or taxes but we do understand in Brooker I don't make the decisions out there I do work for a board um and we appreciate Diane she's been there so faithful and brought us all the information Ben has been tremendous help we hope to see this fire department come to Brer so we do appreciate all of your help here in the county and we're not against the assessment Ander I'll do everything I can to promote it because a fire station I live in the city limit of I do not live 10 miles out to in Springs where they have nothing so I just wanted to share that with you we do appreciate your hard work yes ma'am thank you very much and and we are definitely going to be working hard to try and get that station in Brooker as soon as possible sooner than later for sure and and I can tell you that the the residents in Brooker that are in that five mile radius around that station are going to benefit more than anybody else in this County because they're going to go from a class 10 currently to a class five the day that that fire station opens that's going to be hu because you have hydrant so you're going to go not to a 5x you're going to go to a class 5 as soon as that fire station opens so that's going to be a huge benefit for the people in that region so what you're saying is even if we did go with the 167 the citizens of Brooker will save more than that on their ISO from going from a I'm not ins fan but based on the numbers I've seen on the numbers that's what that's what I'm looking at yes and you had one question right yes this is um Ellis you all keep talking about4 no ma'am tax yes ma'am idea and you know and I'm doing the math in my head trying to figure out my bill and and I'm not against I mean I I we need this we need this and we should be pay we apparently Haven so need to and we need the fire station when you those circles like around is that inside the circle or outside the circle oh let's take a look inside that's the city it's the city I'm sorry and you were asking for you can see part of it is is outside CES I'm guessing right you're you're talking about in this in this area right here well inside of Stark inside of Stark well that's that's covered by the city of star fire department city they're covered by the city of start already I believe you're class four is that correct five class five class five City yep already all the department that are here except yes ma'am well brooker's on there but it's not it's not built right correct correct is the only one that's going to experience a change unless we withdraw correct yes ma'am and as you can see I mean with without Brooker that's a big that's a big gap out here you know that's a big gap in coverage sure sure but uh what you want when you look at these type Maps is you want those circles to overlap and like I said as we move through this presentation and you see those circles start to spread out and they don't connect anymore and it turns away from a VIN diagram and it just circles on a map that's that's what we don't want to see right that's where more people are being affected and so this is I mean this is what you currently have right now with the addition of of Brooker and I think this is really good coverage for our County yes ma'am yep correct well a lot of people in L would be a five because they're within th000 feet from a Hider and then are you a 5x should be a 5x no you should be a five five is better than 5x yeah right correct yep yep five right yeah you you should be a five right now best the best insurance rate you can possibly get with our current cover okay well if there's if there's no other questions um I felt like we've we've covered this really good today and chief Carter I do appreciate for your presentation uh our next meeting will be March 18th at 5:30 right here so that'll be a night meeting so I encourage everyone if you got questions please come to that meeting bring your questions we will do our best to answer them and uh and tell your neighbors and friends if they got questions come to the meeting or call Ben or and uh and we will get the questions answered what I will uh what I'll offer is obviously this is meant for the agreements process but this email is operational right now so if anybody has questions about the fire assessment that they would like answered at this next Workshop send them that to that email and we'll get those questions you know hopefully addressed before this next workshop and I would ask the board just for a little bit of direction um before the next Workshop as well as to what you would like to see I'd hate to come in and do this presentation again and put you all to sleep with uh with watching this one more time so what would you like to see at this next Workshop Chief I don't think you're putting us to sleep at all I think you're just putting the information out there and I think if people come to the meeting that have not heard this before I think it would be worth doing the presentation again right the only thing I'd like to see is um get a couple examples of commercial buildings pull it up like okay like you showed me and then you know and do it by the um the 11 Cent a square foot okay so it' be 167 per household $11 per square foot and uh uh $47 for vacant property and and pull some of those examples up and then that way people can actually see um and then we get a little more information I'm hoping he's taking notes behind me so so I remember all this stuff and maybe even like Miss ellex that said you know maybe even break it down into that quarterly sure that's a great idea can see it that way right and if possible with the different charges like the 25 the 50 you know um how much would still be left to fund um if we adopted that that is the assessment how much would still come from from um at Lauren that we have to to do that with understood okay and again I thank everyone for being here excellent questions thank you all so much and um can I say one more thing yes and any kind of call savings I know you've worked in it many many years anything that you guys I mean it can come from y'all where you think we might can save money we don't want to shut down a fire station trust me but we want to bring the price down as much as we can we might not can but that's what we're looking at and um and it had been mentioned at another meeting about the possibility that's why it got brought up today it's we don't we don't want to do that okay sure well I I say sure I'm not running Mee yes come on Kevin you got another 75 bucks uh yes yes 75 um I I just I want to bring this to y'all I'm on the I am the chairman for our Safety Committee within Bradford County fire rescue my name name is Kevin mble for those of you who don't know me and Miss Andrews made a very good point with her last statement about how can we save cost savings and as I think everybody feels in this room shutting down a facility is not really a viable option but I want to point out to you as Miss rhen had mentioned about hiring some more full-time employes to cut down on our overtime I also want to make the point just for you to Ponder on between now and the next Workshop is the cost it is to the county for injuries and chief Carter put up there that we get seven firefighters for a house fire and just my 33 years of experience in the fire department that that's a very unsafe practice we need more as the National Standard said 16 if I remember correctly the the National Standard is 16 for standard house fire and so we're doing as we've all discussed we're doing much more with much less than other places are and I I personally see those injuries whether it be a burn minor burn or uh strained back because we're overworking our employees and by having more employees fulltime more people that we can put on a fire scene in a shorter period of time that's going to be an extensive cost savings to the county in in cost of workers comp and injuries this is something I wanted to put out there it wasn't really brought up it's but it's tied to the assessment in a way you guys know you're there you you see it from the inside you know what you could cut and what you can't and and comments like that is very important for us to know and chief if you if there is another presentation and more data and information that if you can get it get it to us it'll be helpful so just to study it absorb it but you know for young and tender eyes it's sometimes a little hard to see it when we just get it just sure sure absolutely and that and that was the point we wanted to give it to you today to be able to you know I wanted to give this first initial presentation for you to kind of be able to digest that information and then to come back at the next uh workshop with some more questions but all right Mr Mr chairman if I may just to clarify the workshop yes we have the next budget Workshop is March the 4th okay the next fire assessment Workshop is March the 18th March the 18th at 5:30 yes sir and stantech will be here for that yes okay did I say March 4th no you said I said 18 you said 18 I I got back up over here okay and what was that day they're watching out for me they know I'm full of making mistakes so all right well thank you if that's it no more all right well thank you