--------- Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. You know, you Oh, you're Good morning and welcome to the Semino County Board of County Commission meeting. Today is Tuesday, August 12th, 2025. If you would take a moment and
please silence your cell phones, any other electronic devices that you may have. We will start with the uh invocation by Mr. Shane Cahoot for Metro Life Church and then we will go to the pledge of allegiance. Please rise. Gracious God, we thank you this morning
for the many good gifts that you have given us. But in particular, we thank you for the gift to serve other people. We ask that you would bless the many people in their vocations represented in
this room today. And would each one of them feel your pleasure upon them as they serve? Bless them as they make decisions today. From the decisions that feel incredibly mundane to the ones that feel weighty,
would you grant them wisdom, clarity, and compassion so that the decisions in this room would be just decisions and ones that reflect your righteousness. We lift up before you today Seminal
County, a place that we love. And we ask that every person in our county would flourish. As people go about their day, would truth, beauty, and goodness be
reflected throughout our cities. I ask this in the name of your son, Jesus. Amen. Please join me in the pledge. I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it
stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you, pastor. We sincerely appreciate you being here today to lead us in the invocation. Thank you. Enjoy your day. I want to
take a moment and recognize uh Miss Sarah Baker from the city of Winter Springs. Uh commissioner, welcome. Thank you. Glad you're here with us today. Hope we don't keep you too long. I hope we don't bore you to death. Uh we may get through this more efficiently than you typically do, but
uh that's a whole another discussion. All right, we're going to move into our u our awards and presentations. We're going to switch it up here just a little bit. We got our legislative update, Mr. Oscar Anderson, Kaylee Slatterie from the Southern Group. But before we get into that, I want to announce uh an
award that our uh PIO team has recently received. Uh we want to take a moment to share some good news about the outstanding work being done by our office of communications. Last week, they brought home several top honors at the Florida Public Relations Association Golden Image Awards. In addition to
being recognized for their work to outreach campaigns and graphic design, they were named government team of the year, a statewide honor. These aren't just trophies in a case. They show the value of having an internal fullervice public relations team. We're not
outsourcing our voice. Our team is telling Semino County story directly in each and every day. On behalf of the board, I want to take a moment and thank the communications team for their dedication and results. Thank you all very much for all the hard work you do. And let's grab a photo real quick for
y'all. I think we did. Congratulations. One more picture. There we go. Three, two, and one. Thank you. Thank you.
All right. Now we will go to Mr. Anderson and Miss Lattery from the Southern Group. This will be our legislative update. Welcome. Good morning. Good morning. How y'all doing? Well, we're hoping you're going to tell
us. Um, Kaylee Slatterie, Oscar Anderson from the Southern Group. We just wanted to kick it off and say thank you for just letting us represent you in Tallahassee. We always have a great time whenever you visit, whenever we take you guys out and to meetings, and we are
very happy to be here. So, session, um, this was a little bit of a wacky session. It was 104 out of 60 days. Um, and that's just really the tip of the iceberg with what happened. So,
I don't have it. Thank you. Um, these are just a few session stats. Um, this is actually there were more bills filed this session than the past session, but um, less that passed both chambers and then 246 were
signed into law. I think the governor has vetoed what's that number? 23. Um, we did have a smaller budget this session just because negotiations took a lot longer than I think anybody expected. Um, so we ended the session
with a 115.1 billion budget um with 15.7 billion in reserves. And if you can see the the third paragraph, Dantis actually exercised a lot more of his veto power than we were expecting. Um, and this is actually a record for how much of the
budget he vetoed. But the good news, um, Semino County, our project was fully funded at $1.5 million. That was, um, a huge win for us, for Semino County, for everyone. And then we'll go through a couple just
little pots of money within the budget that were funded. And, um, again, $15.1 billion budget with 15.7 billion in reserve funding. Um the SHIP program was pretty healthy this year. The small county outreach program um and the ready
to work credential program were I believe funded more than they were last year. And then you have the cyber security grant fund too. And continuing with budget, um, notably, Visit Florida was funded at its exact
amount it was last year and that was not cut this year, which was kind of surprising given all of the conversations around TDT and um, DMOS. And then the job grant growth fund was also funded at the same level as last year. And then we've got a couple other
environmental funds that um saw a lot of money being put into them. All right, you take over. That's you. Good morning. Um I guess I get to talk about the bills. Uh so there were obviously a lot of bills passed. This is
a few highlights. We'll answer questions if there's a specific one that's not on our list of things we thought were were relevant. Um obviously I think you've all heard about Senate Bill 180, the emergency preparedness and response bill. When this was filed, I jokingly referred to it as the Death Star. It was an act relating to emergencies.
Everything's an emergency. Um, and it had everything in it. It had election stuff in it. It had everything when it started. Obviously, the very end of session, they put some language in there. It was some repeat language actually from 2023 about land use stuff that I'm sure you all are well aware
about and happy to talk about when we get to questions. Um, bonuses for employees and property appraisers out of Bvard County. I guess the Bvard County Property Appraiser was pushing for this. It's that's the same thing that's allowed for tax collectors right now. They just added property appraisers and their ability to give bonuses. Um it's
kind of a short bill but could be relevant. Uh 1730 the affordable housing bill. This is live local act 3.0. Um the main things that it did as it relates to Simol County are one well generally it expanded the definition of
commercial and mixed use or define them actually instead of being a specific title. Um, and he basically walks like a duck. It is a duck. And then the other thing we did was we did that get did get the exemption in there for the Wakiva Protection area. Um, which was a which was a big thing. So, we were happy to
have that happen. Um, the DAX bill, the our Florida farm bill passed, a big deal. Uh, wanted to talk about that. There were some issues in there from last session that were standalone bills that got put all together in that bill. Um, specifically about agriculture workers and the ability to build housing
for them. And then there there was the prohibition against fluoride use which was the which was the kind of the hot part of that bill in public water systems. Uh local land use regulation. There were a lot of bills that were filed and didn't fail didn't pass. Senate Bill 1118. I think we all
probably talked about that at some point. The only one that passed really was was Senate Bill 1080. And that just really did some new time frames and kind of tightened up the process. Um it didn't have anything over over crazy in there. The one thing they did have that was fairly contentious was the
extraordinary circumstances for impact fees and what that definition we they spent all session arguing over we did to what the definition should be for extraordinary circumstances from a local government perspective with the homebuilders and they ended up just with in order to invoke extraordinary
circumstances you have to have a unanimous consent of the commission. Um so that's that's how you you tap into that from an impact fee perspective. Interestingly, and we hadn't thought I don't think anybody thought about this during session, the the language at the end of Senate Bill 180, and there's a
few counties that are running this now that had raised impact fees and whether that runs a foul of the language that showed up at the end of Senate Bill 180. It's it's become a real conversation around the state. Um, the platting bill, uh, there were a few counties that were really not not seinal, but were given
some some big developer home builders, uh, some real fits on platting, so they basically made it an administrative process. Ironically, it's I think it's the the enactment date was July 1st, which no, nobody could get it in place by then. So, we're all going to be kind of in violation of the law until you
figure out your process. Um there uh key legislation that failed. She made reference to TDT funding. It was a big conversation. It kind of covered two pieces. One, they tried to limit what the amount of time you could you could bond. So, you basically couldn't bond TDT funding. And then the other piece
was there was a house proposal to to kind basically use it to offset property taxes. that was um alive all the way to the end in the tax package. We didn't really know how the TDT thing was going to land. Um we were all constantly engaged in that conversation. I don't think that's going to go away from the
property tax conversation in general. Um term limits on county commissioners, school districts seems all of these issues, by the way, unveiled. I put them up here because I think we're going to see them all again next year. Um for sure. Uh I assume that'll come back up again. Um suits against government suffered immunity. We've heard this for
several years. because they've tried to increase those rates. Um it failed. And then the CRA bill, which was really really controversial this year and there was a lot of effort in there to try to stop that. I don't think that's going to go away either. There's a philosophical issue with that in the House. Um and so
this was really extreme. I don't but I don't know where you find a middle ground. So we'll have to see how that how that plays out this year. the local governments in general are going to be on on defense like crazy this year between property taxes and everything else. So, um the tax package uh you know
had had a little bit of affordable housing stuff in there. Nothing really revolutionary. Obviously repealed the business rent tax permanently which was a big deal for the business community and the realtors. um made the back to schools tax permanent uh which you know every year they had to reauthorize it
and made it permanent which is great and then it continued the uh whatever they call that the go outdoors tax or whatever the hunting fishing camping equipment tax the it did have a study in there for EDR to come back with property tax recommendations and do a study by November 1st. Um so there's we know
there's going to be a lot of conversation over the next I guess four months because the session goes in in January about property taxes. Uh this is the house, you know, the the house created the select committee on property taxes. Um last time I spoke with uh one of the chairs, uh he said that they're
going to have a big meeting in Tallahassee kind of the third week of September. They had originally planned to go all around the state, but they were having scheduling and sunshine challenges with that. So they're going to have a big meeting there. The the counties have given them a bunch of information. I think as of August 1st, the association did on behalf of all the
counties. And so the these were the first proposals. There's even more things than that. Um, one of the pieces that hasn't been talked about a whole lot, but I think will be brought up as sess as we go through this conversation is sort of administrative changes. All the property appraisers, all a lot of
them use different methodologies and things and trying to to kind of simplify some of that. Um, some of the portability issues. Sometimes it's taking like three years for people to get credit for portability when they move to a different county. So, there's some administrative stuff that I think we'll see as well. My guess is there'll
be a handful of bills um that deal with administrative stuff and whatever they can do legislatively as well as a larger um HJR which will be a constitutional amendment um for the ballot uh in November 26. Um you want to talk about other issues?
Sure. Yeah. Um so as he alluded to there's going to be a lot of continuation of of a lot of issues that happened last session. TDT, obviously, property tax, CRA stuff. Um, so everything that was on that slide that failed is probably what we're going
to see again. Term limits, all of the things. Um, I'm going to tread really lightly as I talk about the relationship with the governor, the Senate President, and the House Speaker because I think we all know how that is right now. Um, I don't know if we're going to see, you know, the summer might have given
everyone a little bit of time to kind of back away. Maybe we come to Tallahassee again, holding hands, singing kumbaya. I doubt it. Um, so that we're navigating that relationship is going to be quite tough. You have the the end of the Senate President's term, the House
Speaker's term, and the governor's term. So, all bets are off, nothing to lose. It'll be fun. Um, and then of course, as you've been seeing in the news, and probably will see in the news forever and ever, the Doge efforts and how how
they're going to continue to ramp up Doge in every way possible. Um, in with the Doge camp, we've heard kind of rumblings, and this was actually confirmed on Twitter by our new CFO, Bla1 Engia himself, that he's looking at
doing a local government assessment score, almost like a school district gets a grade. Once you're doed, you might get a grade. That's that's up in the air. That's an option. Look, be on the lookout for that. Um, and then 2026 campaigns. And, you know, we've got the
governor's race. We've got plenty of House and Senate seats. Um midterms are going to be huge. So that will be very relevant in the scheme of Tallahassee this year. Um and then these are our committee weeks are coming up. They start the
first week of October. Session starts on January 13th. Um big deadline for us is that appropriations project request form, but we've got plenty of time obviously and we'll work with staff to get everything done and answered.
All right. Great. Bring them. Any questions? Okay. Great. Thanks. Wow. Seen your lock art. We'll start at your end and move across. Okay. Um so just something that you mentioned piqued my curiosity. You
mentioned about the um property appraisers being able to give bonuses. Are there other constitutional officers that are permitted by law to give bonuses? that it's a I don't know the answer to that. The legislation that the statute they were amending was only for tax collectors. They just added property. I don't really know the answer
to that. I'm happy to look into that. I don't if you would because I'm I think we are not permitted and and I know that some of the conversation with the sheriff about statewide competition has been that some sheriffs are offering signing sheriff's departments are offering signing bonuses.
And so I just I'm curious where everybody all of our constitutionals and we what's the groundwork we can get that. That'd be awesome. Thank you, Mr. Constantine. Thank you very much. Okay, guys. Um,
most lobby firms like yourself represent local government and others. But all of the almost every single bill that you pointed out and every single bill that's coming down the line is
antiloc government and taking away local control. Even though we all know that if you take any poll, everybody trusts local government a lot more than state government, a lot more than federal government. We all understand this is about power and control. But I don't see
any of the big lobby firms coming out against any of this. Um, do we have a strategy? And I'm talking specifically about 180. I'm talking about live local. Um, you know, there are some good aspects of live local, but
giving away um, you know, tax breaks for 120% of uh, of, you know, your your um, average income, which in Semino County would be $90,000. So, you're looking at at basically rate um, is is, you know,
it's nonsustainable. You know, what is the strategy? You you want me to take that? Sure. You need to take it because you were I know I got it. Yeah. Um so so I I talk to Davin all the time at Association of Counties. Um we're we've got to figure
out a fix to 180. Everybody knows that. Um and he's kind of helped task me to try to help. I know he's working hard. Oh, I know. Yeah. Yeah. And that's why I talk to him all the time. So I I don't know what that's going to look like. As I as I indicated, it's the same language that passed in 2023 just for a few counties down in Southwest Florida. And
so that's what everybody's like, "Well, the governor is going to veto it over." I'm like, "No, he's not. He's already approved it from 2023." Like, it would be odd for him to veto it for that reason. There were other parts of the bill he may veto it over, but for that reason, he's already approved it. Um, it's it because of the way that they use
the three federally declared disasters. Um, it hit I think 66 of the 67 counties. So, it really basically statewide. Um, and there's language in the front of the bill that talks about going forward. So you you might get out for one year and then a hurricane shows up and you're back in it for another
year. Um so we got to figure out some workarounds. Uh there are some communities like Santa Rosa County that had their ear update which is you know that standard comprehensive plan update you have to do as a local government and they got caught up in that and this was just their big ear update and and like
the home builders were part of that process. It wasn't like it was a process they did on their own. there were more restrictive things in there because when a community updates its comp plan you change things you move growth around growth patterns around and in some area may be more restrictive some area not and if there's one restrictive thing in there at least the way the department of
commerce seems to be interpreting it then the whole thing gets thrown out what happened with Orange County with vision 2050 there's some other counties that are manatee county is doing some other stuff so there's some we we got to figure out some workarounds around it for sure um and and the definition of of
development permitting that they referred to in 63 is really I mean it's everything. So you make any change to like a variance process that's more restrictive theoretically it could be thrown out under 180. So there we know we have to fix that without question. Um
and we're all we're all just we all got to wrestle with that. The problem with Davin of course is you know he's also got to deal with property tax reform and everything else. So he's got a lot on his plate. Um and so we're going to help him as much as we can. We all know how bad that is. Live local. As long as Senator Pasadoma is there, it's going to
be hard to undo a lot of it. I think I think the local governments were were obviously very frustrated with the process at the beginning, not Seminal County, but a lot of other counties got really kind of cute in how they how they avoided it. And and it's a it's a larger problem, by the way, Senator County, and you'll appreciate this because we don't
have a resolution to conflicts between the development industry and local governments right now. We used to DCA had a process, went back and forth. Everybody sort of got used to that process. when they got rid of DCA, um there's no the only the only avenue developers have is to go to Tallahassee
and change legislation and it's very it's very farreaching and draconian and have nothing to do with your community but impact your community. So, it's a problem and D and I have talked about it now for a year and a half and no one has a real answer other than nobody wants to recreate DCA. We're open to ideas. Well,
since you um did mention a little bit, I just, you know, it was in working with both the Senate and the House in trying to get that exemption for um Wakiva as well as the Everglades. And I want to thank you for um for your help in that. Uh you
know, it's still, you know, you can get little things done. Mhm. But the fact of the matter is even then it's it's it's a very difficult process because none of them seem to understand local government and the
process today is you know again you know their their first act is to take away you know control power whatever you want to call it from local government and I I'm going to throw out a doge because I think that that is just
draconian in its in its thought process, especially when the state government is spending more money on u what do they call it Everglades Alcatraz or Alligator Alcatraz than our our entire general
budget of Seino County and um so you know it's it's frustrating to even consider something like that and and you know I just don't see outrage age from, you know, I see it
from, you know, association counties, leg cities, but I don't see it from those develop those lobbyists that represent local government. And I'd like to see more of that. Just outrage of what they're doing and how they're doing it to local government. It doesn't make
sense and it's not sustainable. Yeah, understood. I'm done. Do you want to respond to that, Commissioner Lockhart? You get your hand before I go to Commissioner Lori. Well, just just a little bit. My um Kusher her is shaking her head. No, no, you don't. No, you don't. No, I'm h I'm happy to address that as
you're coming down. So, all all I would say philosophically um and I cannot believe that I'm I'm about to defend the big lobbying firms because that has never been my role. But I think we rely on um different
approaches to move the needle on different things. And if we're all outraged all the time, then there's no voice that is um able to be in the room that is listened to because outrage typically
makes people tune out. And and I while I understand certainly where you're coming from, I have never had a good result from walking into a legislator's office outraged about anything. It might be the wrong word. It might be
the wrong word, but I just wanted I wanted to just make sure that you know there's there's different Yeah. I wanted to get across to Oscar. Oscar and I have a long history. Well, you got it across to everybody watching. So, I just wanted to make sure that there's some balance to the
approach. And lobby firms get paid a lot of money. And I and I respect what they do. Um, but I it's not all the time. I haven't heard it at all. Commissioner Glor. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Uh first off,
uh Lee, I can appreciate your concern and I also appreciate uh Commissioner Lockhart's uh trying to uh redefine the right definition because I think that's the right way to do it. And maybe the
word to use is level of concern instead of outrage. But I don't know what the right verb or adjective should be, but there is one. But I want to thank you all for the hard work you've done. It's important to have people up there in Tallahassee that not
only understand the system but also understands Semino County and I think you all do a wonderful job at doing that. So thank you. Uh question that I have is you mentioned that this may be next year may be the year where they'll be looking at cities and counties and
giving them a a grade. You said uh what would be the met metrics that uh that they'd be looking at? Is there any any hint or any idea what that metrics would be? And as a follow-up question would be, would they be willing to do that to
themselves? Um, I mean, the great idea would be in reference to the Doge efforts that they they make within the county. So depending on how far along the county is in that process, I imagine this isn't this is just conjecture, but I imagine
the criteria will be how responsibly have you spent taxpayer dollars, how many key words are within your different comp plans, you land, whatever, whatever have
you, any public facing document. Um, and how how well do you comply with, you know, having the threat of an audit and how willing are you to share with the state my databases and, you know, my documents, stuff like that. That's what
I imagine. I just want clarification on it. I guarantee it won't be friendly. Well, that's encouraging, Oscar. I'd rather look at I mean, I just I don't I can't imagine it would be given the current environment up there. Okay. Thank you, Oscar, for your uh and no, they probably won't give
themselves a grade. So, Oscar, thank you for your vote of uh encouragement. Yeah, you're welcome. Yeah, Mr. Her, I absolutely think the idea of dozing the counties is fabulous. Do it, score
it, tell us how we win, we will win. And quite honestly, we ought to do it to all the constitutional officers and everybody that spends taxpayer money. I think it will evolve over time and become better. The first time you ever score anything, there's fault within the program and then you provide feedback
and you learn from it and everybody grows by those things that are measured and reported. I've said that a thousand times. So I can't get on board and whether the state dozes themselves or not, that's a whole separate question and it doesn't matter to me because we still spend our taxpayer money and we
should be accountable. So I'm a fan. Score it. Um, I am less outraged. I am also not the person that spends a lot of time in Tallahassee. Uh, concerned maybe. Here's the the end
result from my perspective is that if we have you up there representing us and the the Association of Counties representing us, we do the best work we can possibly do and then it's incumbent upon us to respond appropriately to whatever it is the state does. They're
not doing things for no reason. They're doing things because somebody caused a problem somewhere in the 67 counties where they did something goofy and now we're reacting to it on a broad brush basis. And sometimes that's required and then it settles back down. I think it's
more our responsibility to respond appropriately and to be proactive about our planning around the things that they're thinking about. I think that's how government works. I would rather spend less time on that on the outrage. I still think we need to do all the work that we're doing in lobbying and I I
applaud the folks that are doing that on our behalf. I think where I come in is that we need to be responsible locally to to accommodate whatever happens. Well, thank you all for for being here. I would just note um if you go to that
first slide, what percentage of reserves the state government is keeping in reserves compared to the overall budget. One more. 115 million. B a billion. I'm sorry. Billion. And the reserves are
15 billion. This year this year total just this year. Exactly. It's not the total number. Unders. Yeah, I got it. It's to total for this budget session. Correct. Got it. Uh, all I would say is, you
know, the Doge efforts, um, financially, I think it's a great idea. Uh, we are the stewards of taxpayers dollars, but I would also say it's a slippery slope depending on who's running the shout in Tallahassee because there may come a time where there's a Doge effort that
says you don't have enough libraries in your community. Uh, you don't have enough social activities in your community. Um, so I think it although some things appear to be good and appropriate, I think we do need to be
responsible for taxpayers dollars and how they're expended, but we we we got to be real careful how we go about this. Um, and we all know there's bad actors, you know, throughout the state and we all do get clumped up with other bad actors. Um, but I will
tell you, echoing some of what Commissioner Constine said, we are under assault from Tallahassee with home rule. Um, we hear it from our citizens. We're forced as the local governing body to have to go to our citizens and explain
why you can't do this or why this can't occur. Our hands are tied. Um it's it's almost one step towards centralized government, which is not what works best for the people. History will tell us that. Um I
realize as a lobbying group, you have your work cut out for you. Um not only do you represent cities and counties like us, but you have other interests as well. And and balancing those interests sometimes can can blur the lines. Uh so my hopes are
that we continue to push back on home rule as much as we possibly can which makes sense for our community. Um and it's unfortunate we want to lop everybody into one you know big bundle of 67 counties but you know we come back later for a carveout but in that
meantime you know we're all paying the price and our citizens are going what are y'all doing about it and we're like okay call call your representatives. Um, and that's that's been occurring much more in the last couple years. Um, I
didn't feel those kind of calls from my constituents early in in this office. Um, but in the last couple years, I get a lot of calls. Why is this going on? You have to call Tallahass. You have to call representatives up there. It's it's not our wheelhouse anymore. They've
taken that ability away from us. Um, so hopefully cooler heads will prevail and when we come back next year that uh some common sense will start to work its way through the legislature and understand what maybe is good for Seminal County, maybe isn't good for what's good for
Escambia County and what's good for Santa Rosa is not good for Seminal. um and how we and I think we have the ability and should be working with those legislators of Tallahassee to help them understand that because they don't and you can't expect them to understand all
67 counties of you know all they're hearing is this bad actor here and then maybe two or three that are doing the same thing. So then the broad brush as Commissioner her put it, we're all doing the same thing when in fact we're not. Um, you know, so good luck on that
adventure. You've got your work cut out for you. Mr. Chairman, if I could just put a little count a little bit of perspective on this. Accountability is good, commissioners. I agree with you. I have no problem in people having it in us having an open book, which by the way,
we do already. Accountability is good and and Doge by another name is not new. Oscar knows this. I mean, when I was there, we were doing we were doing audits of cities and counties. OPAGA has
been doing programs and and other things for years and years and years, even when Mr. Adams was here. So, the fact of the matter is of a of of a doge by another name is not bad. I have no problem with that. What I have a problem is when it's
being used for political purposes and that's what it's being done with. Very good. Anyone else? Thank you all for hearing us today and we appreciate your presentation. Thank you. Enjoy your day. Thank you. Thank you.
All right. We're going to move into our consent agenda. I'm going to ask Miss Kate Lour to read the rules. of public participation. If you have something you want to speak on, uh items 2 through 19, if you'll fill out a speaker form in the lobby, make sure you get it down to the
clerk here. Miss Dominique's got her hand up and we'll make sure you get a opportunity to speak. Miss Lour, thank you, Chairman. Florida law provides that members of the public shall be given a reasonable opportunity to be heard on propositions before the board of county commissioners except
when the board is acting on emergency or ministerial matters or conducting a meeting exempt from the requirements of the sunshine law. Individuals shall be permitted three minutes each for public comment or six minutes when the individual is an official representative of a formal association or group. The
chairman may modify the maximum time for public comment at his sole discretion when appropriate. Public comments on quasi judicial or other public hearing items will occur during the board's consideration of those items this afternoon. Public comments on pending procurement matters or on agend
non-aggenda items shall not be permitted at this time. Members of the public desiring to make public comment must fill out a speaker form and present the form to staff and forms are available in the lobby. Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Lour. Uh county manager, do you have any updates on items 3
through 19 on your consent agenda? Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Commissioners, just one item as item number five. I'd like to pull that. Um, we're just missing the contract. We'll bring that back to the board at the next meeting. Okay. And I'm Everything else is is good.
Poll number five. Yes. Okay. Any commissioner want to pull any consent items separate for discussion? Seeing none, I will look to the board for um I'm sorry. Let me go to public
input. Do we have any speaker forms this morning? No, sir. Look at that. We'll close public input and I will go back to the board for direction. Mr. Chairman, I will move the um consent agenda item number two for the constitutional officers and agend and county managers consent agenda 3 through
19 with the exception of five. Second. Motion to second. Any further discussion? All those in favor? I opposed like sign. Seeing none, carries unanimous. Thank you all very much. We'll now work move into our work session. First up is going to be the freebie
overview and customer experience. Mr. Christian Swinsson, assistant county manager. Welcome. Welcome. Good morning, chairman, commissioners. How are you all this morning? Um Christian Swenson, assistant county manager. I'll just be up here
briefly um just kind of go over what we're we're chatting about today. We'll start with the agenda. We'll go through a purpose. Then I'll turn it over to freebie and introduce them. And then we'll just talk very briefly about what the next steps are because we have another work session coming. So the purpose of the presentation today is
just to really uh give the board an update on our microtransit service and then highlight Freeb and what that service will look like here in Seol County. So with that, I'm going to be introducing two members of Freeb. We have Claudia Miro and Jason Spiegel.
They are both going to be presenting um and they're going to take turns on some different slides and then I'll get up at the end and we'll just talk about the the next work session and stuff. Thank you. And if you just give us your name and address so we have it on the record. Thank you. Thank you, Christian. Good morning, Mr.
Chair, commissioners. Claudia Mero, VP at Freeb at 371 Northeast 61st Street in Miami. Uh very excited to be here today uh to talk about the scout program. It has been a long time coming and first of all I want to say thank you to all of
you and to all of the staff here at Semino County that has worked really hard handinhand with us to really make this possible. Um I do want to talk to you a little bit about freebie here. Obviously the the program is going to be called Scout powered by Freebie. Uh but
I do want you to know a little bit more about us. I know I've met with you and we have been up here uh several times, but Freebie is a homegrown Florida company based in South Florida. We are currently operating in over 50 cities in
the state of Florida, a fleet of over 250 vehicles. We are the largest microtransit provider here in Florida. We're very proud of that. Um as well as Freebie has been operating in all types of communities. We're not just operating in cities and counties. We also partner
with universities, corporate parks, um, so many hotels, a lot of different places, and it doesn't matter how big or how small the cities are, the counties are. We find a way to customize and and make the program make sense for the communities that we serve in. Um, very
flexible and obviously scalable transportation solutions that we bring to all of our clients. Um, as I mentioned earlier, we are in over 50 cities. We're so happy that we were able to start off 13 years ago really pioneers and microtransit. And
I'm here today because I want you to know that we are here to be your partners. We are not a vendor. We are here to be your partners, to be in your community. Many of you have seen me um have seen our CEO, Jason. We are here. We're present. We're visible. We are
committed to making sure that this program is successful and that the customer satisfaction is high. We want to focus not just on taking you from point A to point B, but making sure that you are a repeat rider because you we
focus on that experience. And we believe that if you get into a scout and you have a positive experience that you're going to continue to ride and that's what we want. We want to make sure that we're getting folks where they need to go safely, but also that it's an enjoyable service for them to use. Um
I'm going to go ahead and turn over. Um, and by the way, super excited. We're going to be doing the soft launch next month. So, as we get ready to roll this program out, you can count on reaching out to me, reaching out to Jason. We are here. We'll come as many times as we need to make sure that this is a
successful program. I will turn it over to our CEO, Jason Spiegel, to take you through the rest. Thank you, Claudia, and good morning, everybody. Um, just piggybacking off what she said there. Um, our whole goal here is to exceed your expectations. Um, this is going to launch day one and day
30. It might look a little bit different than it does day one, but we're going to stay very flexible to make sure we are driving the value that this community deserves. We're providing the best service possible here today. And our goal again is to make sure you guys understand what differentiates this platform from all different types of
transportation services out there. And that's what we're going to go over today. So just at a very high level um speaking specifically about scout um this program is going to start with 35 vehicles. Uh there will be five primary zones uh you know divided up here within
the county and then there will be a flex zone which encompasses the entire uh county boundaries excluding the the rural area there. Um, just as a reminder in terms of the hours of operation, uh, Monday through Friday, it's going to operate from 5:00 am to, uh, 900 pm.
Saturday from 6:00 am to 10 p.m. and Sundays from 6:00 a.m. uh, to 8:00 p.m. there. Um, just a little bit look uh, further look into the actual service zones. The five different zones here, they were uh, named after uh, the Great Lakes that we have here within Semino
County. Uh, you have Monroe, uh, Lake Mary, Hal, Brantley, and Econ. So the zones, the names of the actual zones are uh named after the lakes here uh within the within the county. We will be coming back here in two weeks to really kind of do a deep dive on the
on the fair structure, but just as a proposed fair structure here, um we're looking kind of at this matrix looking uh graphic that you see on the right here, but it's going to be very very easy to understand, easy for consumers to understand here. And really, if you are staying in one of those specific
zones, you'll be charged a base fair for the service. Again, the the fair structure will to be be to uh to be determined um in a couple weeks here, but if you were crossing zones, uh you will be charged a specific fair based on how many zones you are crossing to get to your final destination there. Uh
there will be discounted fairs for seniors, students, lowincome individuals, and more. But again, uh we will get really into the weeds here in about two weeks when it comes to the fair structure. How to request a ride? Uh really easy. Uh most popular way will be through the
ride freebie mobile app. So you can download this app in either the Apple uh Apple Store or the Google Play Store. Or for folks who don't have smartphones, don't feel comfortable using them. They'll also have the ability to call into uh the dispatch center to receive that same exact service. And here that
number will actually just be ride. So you dial ride within Semino County, it will connect you right to the dispatch center uh to be able to receive that same exact service there. Um this is the home screen of the mobile app and I and I think it's important to kind of highlight all the different
features uh of this, you know, mobile app and and what it's going to be able to do for the county here. But uh what we like to really kind of uh communicate about the actual service, it's not just about transportation. This is going to be a localized community guide that's going to highlight everything that Seino
County has to offer. Um, all the local businesses, all the events that you guys have going on, all the public service announcements, you guys want to do surveying, we're able to implement that through this mobile app here. And, um, those, you know, carousels that you see on the middle of the page, those are going to be changed daily, weekly,
monthly to promote different things that the county is offering back to the community there. Um, again, easy access to Sunrail, to links, provide that regional connectivity. Uh, but every single local business in the county will have the ability to have free advertising on the app itself. They're
going to have a profile. It's going to talk about their business. They're going to be able to offer deals and discounts to the constituents here. But again, this this service is supposed to provide way more value than just moving somebody from point A to point B. It's how do we drive economic impact and how do we uh
how do how do we help the county reach the goals that it has outside of the mobility service. Uh to use the app, it's super easy. All you do is hit request a ride from the home screen there. Um it drops the pin right where you're at. Um once you set your pickup location, um next you would be entering
your destination where you can either on the top of the search bar there, enter the address that you're going to, enter the location name, or explore everything that the county has to offer. all the arts, the entertainment, the restaurants, the bars, all the parks within the area here. Um, but there will be a full listing there that they'll be
able to choose from to be able to go to their destination. Um, once they choose that, um, they let us know how many passengers with, if they need accessibility, a wheelchair accessible vehicle, if they're going to be um, carrying a bike, if they're a family, we have booster seats within every vehicle that we operate. Um, and then also
you'll be able to see the fair um, on that specific page before you're confirming the ride. After you confirm a ride, you're connected with a driver in real time. You can see that driver on a map coming towards you. You have an ETA of when that uh vehicle will be picking you up, how many stops are before you there. Um but one of the best parts
about the service is you're not going to be waiting out outside in the hot sun. You're going to be at your home, your office, your place of business, waiting for that vehicle to pick you up at your door and take you exactly to where you want to go there. Uh this is an example again how every business here will have again uh free
advertising a a local business uh basically destination page within the actual app itself. It's all about driving positive economic impact helping you guys attract new businesses to the area here events to the area here. Um because you guys have an amazing mobility service one but number two
you're helping promote these uh these businesses these events and everything that's coming along down the pipeline there. the drivers of the service. They're a huge part of what we do. And um these are W2 employees. These are not independent contractors like a Uber, an
Uber or Lift driver. Um these are actual employees of ours. They're the face of the community here. And something we're very happy to say is we put out the job listing about two weeks ago. We have over 500 applicants already here today. So, uh we have a really good pool of uh of driver employees that will be coming
on board here. And again, they become the face of the community almost like a mobile concier. We put them through our freebie uh ambassador training and again as Claudia mentioned it's all about how do we provide the best experience to our riders to the community so that this system thrives.
The fleet of vehicles uh we'll be operating two uh different uh types of vehicles here. The main vehicle that you will see on the left is the uh Volkswagen ID Buzz. Uh this is a brand new vehicle that was just launched at the end of 2024. Uh, it's the new take. Uh, if you guys remember the old love
bus that Volkswagen had back back into the 60s and 70s, this is the new version of that. It's fully electric. Uh, holds six passengers plus the driver there. It's an amazing vehicle. Tons of space on the inside. And they're really considered these micro buses. And then the vehicle on the right is a hybrid
Toyota Sienno uh that is wheelchair accessible there. Um, but again, depending on your accessibility needs, your request, you'll be assigned to a specific vehicle. But these will be the two vehicles we'll be operating here within the county. Uh data uh data is going to be one of
the most important things that we are looking at on a daily, weekly, monthly basis to make efficiencies, tweaks to the program so that make sure we again are driving uh the highest value possible here. And um staff will have access to a live dashboard. They're going to be able to see everything in
real time where all the vehicles are uh where they're at, what they're doing, where all the pickup and drop offs are, all the heat maps. they can pull up any date range they want to look at there. They get access to all the raw data of the actual system itself there. Um, but again, we're going to use this data to help drive long-term decision- making
here. Um, they'll get monthly reports, but again, I think more importantly, the data dashboard that we're going to set up for you guys is going to really help tell the story on how successful this program is going to be. And and lastly, on the marketing side, again, uh this won't be successful
without a joint marketing effort between the county and freebie. Uh we've been doing an amazing job so far um as a team reaching out to all the stakeholders within the community here. Uh meeting with them, making sure they understand the benefits of the program there. Um from our side, we're going to be meeting
with all the local businesses, the the chambers, the community organizations there. Uh obviously, as we launch one of our biggest uh you know uh biggest riders, we're going to be targeting our our current links riders, current public transit riders there. So we have a lot of strategies that we have in place from
there creating a lot of great marketing material both from you know the handout side the digital side um but we feel very very confident that the word starting to spread and as this program launches um it's going to take off like a wildfire. And then speaking of launch uh we'll be
doing some product testing uh with some uh product testers actually here in the next couple weeks on the app side. will be using those same testers during the first couple weeks in September to do some actual in the field testing and then we're going to start soft launching the program um starting September 10th
where we'll be launching one zone every single week because this is a massive uh deployment here and by October 15th we'll be fully deployed and uh users will be able to get to exactly where they need to go within the county here. Um and we're really really excited about that. Um we'll be back here in a couple
weeks to obviously go through all the fair structures. Um but myself, Claudia, we're up here once, twice, multiple times every single week right now. And again, we're committed to making sure that this program uh is as as successful as you guys envision it. Um if not more here, but I'll turn it back over to
Christian who will obviously have a few things left here. All right. Thanks, Jason. So, we're just talking about next steps and Jason Jason covered them there, but just to kind of reiterate them, we'll be back here in two weeks on the 26th to do a deep dive on fairs and have a whole work session
on fairs and then our full launch is October 15th. Um, so with that, I'll I'll turn it back to you, chairman. Thank you very much. Thank you all very much for being here. We'll go to the board. Commissioner, we'll start with you. Thank you. Thank you to uh first of all,
Commissioner Lockhart for launching us down this path. So, uh, it was visionary and and I appreciate that. And to Christian for stepping up and becoming a transportation expert on relatively short order and and to the rest of his team that I'm sure did all the work. He
didn't did he did he got that? He's laughing. Um, so just a few questions. Did Did I hear correctly that the advertising on the app is free? Yes, that's correct. There's there's free placements for every local business, but then there's also premium
placements within the car and on the car for paid advertising. Does it have to be free in the app? No, doesn't have to be free. Um, we've seen it as a benefit to allow that. And again, it's I wouldn't call it free advertising, more of a listing where they actually can obviously list their
profile of their local business, offer deals and discounts, but then there's advertising placements that are not free within the app in the car and on the car. Yeah. I just want to keep it on our radar. I don't love free. This isn't free. This is taxpayer paid. And so just
let's keep that on our radar as an opportunity for making sure that the program's sustainable. Uh particularly when we use terms like we anticipate this to blow up in a good way. Uh it can't blow up past what we were spending with links from my perspective. Um and
so I I just think we have to be cautious about that from the get-go. Who's the longest standing client? Uh, Village of Kiscane. Uh, they were probably one of the first microransit services in the country going back to
2016, I want to call it. And yeah, it started with a fleet of two vehicles. They're up to nine. Obviously, totally different environment than Semino County, but uh, you know, we're we're doing significant ridership there. And just really rough idea, but number of iterations. You look at it every
year. you first launched it changed a little bit and then the follow-up question to that is as we launch how many iterations do you think will go through before we sort of settle in you know for from that program there wasn't much iterations in terms of how it changed there were some things we've
done you know over the last nine years or so where we've implemented different fixed routes throughout the day for some you know again just very peak times didn't work too well we put those into the on demand fleet it actually worked out a lot better there. But we hadn't changed that program too much. I mean,
here I don't think we're going to go through much iterations. I mean, I think we've iterated this a lot in terms of conceptually. Um, we've done a lot of analysis. Um, I think we're landing in a really good place for the launch. Could there be some small tweaks to the program? Absolutely. But I don't think
it's going to be anything significant. I think one of the things that I I really would like everyone to be considerate of is the fact that it's a brand new program that there will be changes and I think there is sort of this legacy thought process at least from the feedback that I'm
hearing in the community that once you establish a route it takes 10 years to change the route. And so that's the you know it's probably an exaggeration but but we are prepared to make sure that this works. We're not going to change it or customize it to individual needs, but
it will serve the greater good and we're ready to be flexible to make sure that it's it's of service. Um, I think that was the point that I was trying to make with that. So, I appreciate everything that you guys are doing. Look forward to doing it. Absolutely. Look forward to writing. I don't know where I'm going, but look forward to writing.
Commissioner Delari, thank you, Mr. Chairman. First of all, thank you for being here. We've had a lot of good discussions. I think this is a great program and I look forward to as it moves forward. Can you pre-schedu pickups? So, currently today, no. Do we have that
capability? Yes. Now, the it's kind of a catch 22. If you allow everybody to preschedu pickups, everybody's going to preschedu and take up obviously the allocated fleet that we have, meaning that the ondemand service would be kind of non-existent there. Um we've tried it
in areas didn't work where you tried to where you do both and so we've either done fully pres-scheduled or fully on demand there. Okay. So on with the on demand what do you anticipate the average pickup would be in terms of wait time. Yeah.
So the based on our goal number one and some of the simulations that we've done uh we're we're seeing at about a 20 to 22 minute average weight time and we're looking for a max of 30 minute wait time. Now, that's all going to be dependent on demand. We think it's going to be demand X and
it's this demand. Obviously, that's where we have to add vehicles to be able to meet that demand without going over the old budget, which is important. We understand that. Um, but I think there's significant savings day one and we have that room to really kind of grow into again as that demand continues to rise to be able to continue to meet that
level of service there. Could you give us not today but when we talk about the actual fair structure what your assumptions are for the fair structure? Yeah, absolutely. And then can you also uh give us what other cities have done in the beginning of their fair structure as well and how
they've changed so we can get an idea? Sure. Yeah, we can bring that back in two weeks. Great. And then with that uh can you also bring back the algorithm on how it actually works so that we could kind of not get into the weeds but try to understand it in terms of like the pickup algorithm on
the back end and some of the kind of functionality. Yeah, sure. We can definitely talk about that at a high level. Great. I appreciate that. Absolutely. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Commissioner Constine. Thank you. Um, I I'm I'm very happy that we're not the first because I do
understand how difficult, you know, anything like this that's new and there's no new ideas in the world, but there's, you know, there's always improvement and this is going to be an exciting opportunity for all the citizens of Semino County. I wanted to
tell everyone, I was going to put this in my report, but I'll say it now. At the last meeting of Ko, we were the hosts and I brought this was one of the presentations and Christian did a incredible job, but uh I've never seen um uh enthusiasm
like I did with the commissioners that were there from the cities and the school board and uh the um and and Semino County uh Semino State. They were just they were all excited. they recognize the opportunities here and uh
I think all of us do. I did want to ask you um however and you know because there has been some some disappointments and there has been some glitches in other areas. Tell me what happened in Monroe County.
It's it's hard to say honestly. Um, one thing I will say is Doge, uh, they felt that this was something that was potentially competing with the private sector there. Um, and Monroe County never had public transportation. They hired an executive
director about 3 years ago to put together a long range plan. He was doing an excellent job of that. His long range plan was to put microtransit on all the different key islands, the major ones there, have connectors between them in terms of fixed routes. Um he got a bunch of grants for the county there. Um and
out of nowhere they asked him and they asked the entire transportation plan that they were putting together there. Um from an actual program perspective, extremely successful terms of ridership, terms of who's using the service, why they're using the service. There was
some things put out there, some false connotations of who was using the service. Um but it was an extremely successful service and the community right now is in outrage. Um it was they didn't give the public any basically uh
time to put any input uh or feedback that they had on the actual service there. Um it was uh it was a decision made out of nowhere and it was really kind of blindly as well. There could be there could be some steps walking back on that because of all the feedback that
they've received, but it was really more of a phil philosophical shift from we want to provide public transportation to we want nothing to do with public transportation. And I and I asked you that not because I wanted to point out a failure, but I wanted to point out the
fact that not only did we learn from this, but that that one of the key aspects to this is that we have to be in it for the long haul. This is not something that, you know, as soon as somebody decides to complain about it that all of a sudden we want
to, you know, go back, walk around it and change the whole thing. Now, clearly there are problems in Monroe County to go from one key to another key and how long it is. And I'm I'm shocked that they could even imagine that they could
make this uh you know uh sustainable. But the fact of the matter is is that you know for our purposes um you know we I think that all of us and I know I am and I know you know and I think from what all the others have said they are we're in this for the long haul. We
think this is great and um I'm I'm you know looking forward to working with you all and uh clearly um you know that that's something that I don't want as as Commissioner Delory pointed out earlier you know that that the citizens have to understand we're going to have problems.
You know there's no question you're going to you're not going to get there 30 minutes every single time especially in the beginning. Um but um that you know we're gonna we're gonna make this thing work and I'm looking forward to it and thank you very much uh to all of our staff to you know and all the
commissioners for you know being the big supporters of this great Commissioner Lockard. No well it's wonderful to have you here. Um I had the privilege of hearing about um your company at a Florida Association of
Counties conference this time last year. So the fact that we are rolling out a year later almost to the month um I think is absolutely astounding. Mhm.
Um quick story because I think it's it's kind of funny. Um, I had just been appointed to Lynx, the Lynx board, uh, by Chairman Sambau, and was looking at our projected cost increases over the
coming years. And I remember sitting with the county manager and panicking slightly that there was no way we could sustain this. And the the meeting at the Florida Association of Counties conference was maybe about, I don't know, a few weeks after that
time. And um and there was a a woman standing at the at the door of one of the breakout sessions and she said, "Can you just come and sit in this breakout session? We we need some more." They were getting ready to start. We need some more people in here. And I said, "Well, what is what is it on?" She said, "Well, it's on microransit." And I said,
"Well, what's microransit?" I have no idea. Sure, I'll sit in the back of the room. I'll respond to some emails. Yeah, I'll I'll And it took about two minutes after Claudia started talking about freebie for me to stop looking and responding at emails and become
incredibly engrossed in what this concept was all about and starting to ask questions and visualize what this could do for us in Semino County in terms of um helping us with our our links funding uh precipice. So
the the story from there took a lot of different people coming together and a lot of very quick action on the part of the county manager and his team to pull together could this really be a reality for us in Semino County because it's not lost on me or any of my colleagues that we're a big county. We were we're a
small county but we are we are larger than the cities that have been um uh mostly being utilized by your service. So, um, so it it was a huge challenge and huge shout out to Christian Swenson, uh, and his team. And I know you have a
couple of I think you have a couple of, um, interns maybe with you here this morning. Would you like to tell us about the interns and the work that they're doing because this is an all hands-on deck process? Yes. Um, we're very grateful for the interns. We have three interns from UCF.
They have uh done a deep dive on all things uh economics and social services in the county. They've looked at areas of uh areas of income. They've looked at areas of need. They've looked at um what wrership is at different uh different
points within the county. Tied that to businesses around. We're currently or they're currently doing boots on the ground and going to meet um both writers and and and assemble the data so we can keep them tuned in as well as uh looking at advertising efforts and things like
that to promote the service within businesses that are key points to target the links riders. So they have been extremely instrumental. They are here um every day working hard for us and we appreciate it. Thank you. Go Knights. Go Knights. Um, I also wanted to point out that um,
we're talking about having ambassadors on the lynx buses to help people because this the point of this is to make sure that our lynx riders are taken care of first that we have we are providing them the alternative. Can can you talk a little bit about what those ambassadors
look like and maybe they're not on the buses, maybe they're at the bus stops, but can we talk about that as well? Yep. So, as you can see, we actually have a so we have created ambassador shirts. So that way people can see them. They don't look like just some random person approaching you. So we have a a
somewhat somewhat loud looking shirt to kind of draw attention to it. But this is we're starting off with approaching people at bus stops because you can get to bus stops a lot faster than being tied up on a bus with one or two people on there and then waiting for the next stop. So So that's what we're looking at doing. That's where we're taking down
the demographics. Not only the interns are doing it, we also have a uh a private ad firm as well that's working with the communications office. The communications office has been absolutely amazing. You saw obviously their awards that have helped design the shirts. They've helped with the logos
and I say helped. They've done the logos of the vehicles, the whole the whole shebang. They've been instrumental. And so between our intern um activities, private ad agency, and then Chris Patton's group is how we're doing the ambassadors. We may ultimately get on the bus. It's we're going to use it as
we start the launch after October. We have that carryover period before links finishes um the routes that we're reducing in January. We're going to use that, monitor it very closely who's on the bus, who's not, and then make sure no one gets left behind. Awesome. Thank you so much. Very very
grateful for everybody's everybody's work. Amazing. Mr. Mr. Chairman, if I could just add just a note that Commissioner Swinson just said, and that's, you know, when we launched this in the fall, we're not uh discontinuing our links routes. We are
working simultaneously through the fall and then in January, most of our links routes will then uh be discontinued and the ones that are performing, which is in the southern part of the county, will'll still keep those couple routes. So, great point. Good.
So, a couple questions. We had spoken at some point during one of the work sessions about maybe having some signage at the current bus stops and at the Sunreil station with QR codes or whatever so that the current riders would be able to quickly identify, hey,
there there is this other option now. Yes, that is still something that's on target for us. So, we most recently, let me back up and just give a little uh give a little history here. We wanted to order the vehicles and then get them coming, but we want didn't want to sound the alarm on the official links date to
to terminate the service for the routes being reduced until we knew exactly when the vehicles were coming. So, we had kind of a a loose arrangement with links to say if we want 3 months overlap. Once we got when the vehicles were coming, we were able to send them a letter to say please condition discontinue service on
January 10th. So with that, Lynx has begun the process and they just started communication with me last week about a tandem process to begin their communication to talk about those reductions. The signage and the things that you're talking about will work as part of that process. So that way it it
all goes seamlessly through there. So those aren't forgotten. They're just coming a little bit later in the in the process along with the termination. Great. Also, and I don't need to know it right here. I don't want your proprietary information, but at your convenience, if you give with my office,
I'd like to understand your hiring process. Yeah, absolutely. As far we can set up a as far as background checks and all that. Absolutely. For security of our obvious residents and those riders. Definitely. Um I was in Palm Beach yesterday and had
the opportunity to ride and and view one of these Volkswagen IDs. Um I will tell you there will be no mistaking them in the community. They're cute little things. um they don't really resemble anything that we really see on the road today. And I think with the flashy paintwork
that's that's on them that uh it'll be easily identifiable um to to our citizens and those riders to be able to see that's the what we want to get on is this the little Volkswagen love bus and go across town and have happy things
happen. Um, I I uh I do want to take a moment and thank staff for all their hard work and and Commissioner Lockheart. Um, Tim, you're you're back there. Uh, thank you for all your hard work and and your work. Um, put on your thinking cap and
remember my first year here going through the links process and I sat down and said, Tim, there's got to be a better way. There's got to be a more efficient way. Um, some of my colleagues at the time were like, "Well, you know, it's a necessary evil. You got to you got to do mass transportation for this
and not see." Yeah, but there's got to be more efficient way. Commissioner Lockhart, thank you for getting it done and getting that pushed forward uh and and getting that momentum. I think um you know, we were all sights where we needed to go. It was just a matter of getting there and
convincing enough people uh this was was the right model. And and like we've said before and I think we even said here today is there's going to be a few hiccups and a few speed bumps when this thing kicks off. Um I would just say that's
expected. Um you know, our public needs to have some patience and some grace as we move through this and adjust it accordingly. Um, and we want to make sure that our our freebie association uh understands that as well that, you know,
we're going to have people that are going to have concerns and we need to have those elevated to to make sure that we're doing what's best to address that. Um, and before anybody from the rural area calls my office and says there's not going to be service in the rural
area, there's still going to be some service in the rural area. But this also handles, remember the rural area is the Black Hammock, which is the 434 corridor. It's still going to handle that under the I think it's the um Lake
Hal um area. So you, my folks and and residents in that area, yes, you can get on one of these and and still go places you want to go. Um, great work. I'm looking forward to this kicking off and and understanding um
where we end up and and updates along the way. Um, I think what we're going to see is this is going to be more popular than we believe. I think it's going to be more popular than folks getting on a Lynx bus. U, it's going to be certainly more efficient. Um, I think at the end
of the day it's it's probably going to be much more user friendly. So, and also recognize Mr. Fred Kinger from UCF that's here. Thank you, Fred. Thank you for supplying us with individuals from your your learning institution that can
be part of this and uh uh the value they bring uh from some of the younger uh minds that some of us old folks struggle with technology sometimes. But we're very thankful for you all being involved. We sincerely appreciate it. Thank you, Chairman. Yes, Commissioner Her.
I think we forgot to to thank Darren and Kate and their teams for doing everything that they did to have this happen in a year. And and I kid you not, Christian has stepped up in a huge way. And I was joking uh to become a transportation expert and then just keep
knocking down the barriers. And this is really a study in how government can get something done, right? But it's the team that we have here that did that. Next stop, RTA. No pressure, Regional Transit Authority.
Oh, so we can start getting our federal help. So, on the list, thank you all very much. We sincerely appreciate it. Thank you guys. Have a safe day. We'll see you in a couple weeks. Yes. Yes.
All right. Does anybody need a break before we go to the next one? Nope. I think you don't need five minutes then. Yeah, let's let's take five minutes real quick. We've got a couple that need to take a break. Heat. Heat.
Oh, hey. Oh, you Hey. Oh. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat.
Heat. Heat. All right, welcome back. Yeah. All right, Miss Brandolini, let's get started. We'll be back in session. Good morning, chairman and commissioners. Christina Brandolini, human resources director, and I am joined this morning by Charles Cook with
Alliant. We are here for our 2026 benefit and wellness discussion. Uh so this morning we are going to give you our annual wellness update. Uh discuss some enhanced benefits and some recommendations for potential cost
reduction, costsaving strategies. Uh we'll give you an overview of the medical and pharmacy claims, the annual wellness update along range strategy and recommendations, the 2026 recommended medical premiums and plan design recommend recommendations,
uh some RFP results for enhanced benefits, uh medical carrier and clinic discussion, and then we will be open for um questions and direction. So I'm going to turn it over to Charles. Thank you. Good morning, chairman,
commissioners. Um, I'd like to with the introduction, our intern, Kelly Rush from UCF is here. No, look at that. Worked on um the PowerPoint that you will see and has done a tremendous job. Her last day as an intern is Friday. Um, so I'm wanted to recognize her. in
front of you. Um, you have this historical information going back to 2018 showing the total claims, the number of employees, the claims net of stop-loss, and then the per employee per month. You are a poster child for what a
wellness program that includes a mandatory annual physical can do for costs over time. If you look from 18 through 23, the stability is pretty astounding. We had a very large jump in
24. Um that is year-to- date 25 pretty consistent. Um we have researched I looked at the last um six years from 19 to now on cancer statistics and what you
saw was an uptick in cases diagnosed in 23 and that higher number has kind of continued. You also have a phenomenon of cancers that weren't caught because of screenings that didn't happen that are diagnosed later. So, we have kept very
close eye on your top claimants, and I hope this stabilization is something we'll see. Actually, July's claims were lower than the last 12-month average, um, which Tim and Christina and I were happy to see. That gives you some context of where we've kind of been.
If you look at the next page, I'm going to go quickly. I have to do it very quickly. This shows your enrollment. The top chart is activives by area and then retirees below. Most of the people are in what's called the mid plan which is a
$500 deductible plan. And then we the pay up is a 250 plan. The low plan's a 1,500 or $1,000 deductible and only 113 in the high deductible health plan. This is just your enrollment breakdown. Um very quickly, one of the good news
things is your stop-loss premium. We were able to reduce that 33% into 2022 and we are not back up to where we were yet in 2021. This is a very volatile market that has evolved a lot. Um I don't know what the future brings but it
we have been successful here. The bottom shows you one full payment and then the next three estimates because this particular contract has a participation feature where if the premium is not if the claims are not above a certain level, you get some of that money back.
So that's not included in the rate structure. This was a good news page for me. This page has a lot happening and um I I won't read it to you. One of the things we wanted to do was look at market norms and benchmark your plans.
So, this has some minor adjustments to deductibles and co-pays to make the plans closer to market and to um balance out a couple of things that were anomalies where a copay might be better in one plan versus another. So, these
are minor changes. The deductibles have not changed. And then from the benefits, we go to probably the most important slide here with a lot of numbers. You all have paid, if you look on the left, um 100%
for wellness for the mid plan, the low plan, and the HSA. And you only had to pay more if you're employee only for the 250 deductible plan. And so our recommendation was to go to what's called a core buyup, meaning that the
county would fund the same amount of the thousand deductible plan, which is a market norm deductible plan across all tiers, and then if somebody wanted to buy up to the 500 or 250, they paid that difference. Working with Tim and
Christina, we are this is an evolutionary step. This is not a core buyup by definition. It's a step in that direction. Most of our clients have this philosophy where if you hire someone, you know, this is what I'm going to pay across the tiers and then people can buy
up for that. So this if you look at the bottom, you will see now that you have 100% employee contri or 100% coverage for low 1,1650 HSA and then there's a small differential when you go up to the
500 250 deductible plan. It's greater on families, FYI. So, this is the philosophy. We've modeled a couple of different options. If I looked at it from the outside, I would say, why do you have a 250 deductible plan? That's ancient. Get rid
of it. That plan has a population and the and the the population of that plan are driving high costs. Moving them to another plan is simply not going to change their their um cost or what's underlying that. So we want to keep the contributions to where they're paying an
appropriate share. The wellness is not changing. Thrive for five annual physical the associated blood work. That's the barrier to entry and then you get three more points through a number of different options. Um, one of
that we're looking at an alternative is is BMI because there's been a lot of thought around how valuable that is or appropriate that is based on your body type. Um, Commissioner Delari just had me do math in my head saying that your height and weight or height and waist
should be a measure, but we're talking with Brandy Fox who is here next to our intern who is our wellness um on-site person um with Sigma. Otherwise, it stays the same. In terms of communication,
um we Christina and team, this is a history of how they communicated this year to be sure everybody knew. Um you know, the debt, the end time is 7:31 to be eligible to have all your points and then you get the payroll deduction incentive the following year. that cycle
will remain the same through 731 of 26 with the same goals essentially. So that's the um this is the communication and we're always looking to be sure we communicate with everyone. I'll show you one interesting slide on communication about wellness in a second.
Now here it is. um Alliance wellness team did an analysis for Simol County to structure a multi-year plan on wellness that is agnostic to Sigma. We want it to be long term just like your data is now all in
analytics agnostic to your to your carrier partner. This shows us who your employees are. So they are going to receive information very differently um depending on the demographic. We want to have our future communication campaigns focus on reaching all of your different
employee groups. Going forward, we will continue momentum into next year. Um really try to instill a culture of wellness. I don't know that I don't know that I'm not on site to know that's here. Anecdotally, I would say there could be improvements there
where this is something the countyy's about. It's interesting that the challenges um while someone can get a point with a challenge they build a lot of community but amongst your employees and that contributes and then in two and a half years we don't even know what
might be available in terms of testing or technology or what's going to be here. So alliance team is staying way ahead of the curve on this as we look forward to the future. Um we did a RFP for a PBM. There you go.
a request for proposal for a pharmaceutical benefit manager. You all are now what's called carved in meaning signis PBM express scripts is it's one unit. So as Florida passed a transparency law for non-arista
employers of which you're one and we renegotiated your contract last year based on that and you've seen improvements in your rebates. We are working to take a step forward in transparency. We went through this process. Highlighted in blue are Sigma,
the incumbent and Navatus. Those were the two finalists interviewed and given the opportunity for best and final. And the savings is between six and $750,000. Um so it's you know it's not
insignificant but the spread between Sigma at the 600 plus thousand and Navatus we believe is small enough that we would recommend staying with Sigma on PBM for the integration that is there.
Um, I will tell you as I briefed each of you, um, I think we want to, this would also give Sigma a time to, um, play a little bit better in the sandbox as we move with a potential outside partner. So, that's our recommendation here. But this processor resulted in
over $600,000 in savings. Next, we have prescription care management. Their contract came is coming to an end. We got an extension for a couple of months and we did a request for information. We didn't have a full data analysis but we went to the
three listed but plus PCM. PCM, Scripa and Leverage um responded. We had finalist interviews with Scripa and Leverage. Uh Scripa from a cost standpoint is slightly less expensive on the admin portion than PCM, but they all
guarantee that you're going to overcome their fee. and Scripus projected savings was less than what we've had with PCM for the last 12 months and their process is not matching what we are currently comfortable with. Leverage was actually
more expensive on the cost part and couldn't accommodate something that we believe is important. Now the way it works now is the outreach is to the doctor, the doctor says yes or no. Then the outreach is to the member, the member says yes or no. Neither of these
options offered that for the member. So the doctor could change the member medication without getting permission from the from the um from the could change the medication without getting permission from the member. So given the savings that we've seen with PCM, given
the process that is in place, we would recommend staying with PCM. Their price did go down um 20% per member per month. Yeah, 10% per member per month. So, I think both of these processes achieved a
good outcome. In terms of the non-medical coverages, Lincoln has been your dental carrier and there have just been challenges. I would say this was the HSA of um the the group this time. We did an
RFP, tremendous response to this. The recommendation, and I'm just want to show you one thing, and I'm not going to go through it. Every one of these lines of coverage had multiple respondents. Our scorecard process through Leah Robleski who is on our team was
phenomenon. So all of these recommendations came through a process to this. So reliance for dental um voluntary benefits you have kind of antiquated separated stuff now. So we would move the cancer specified disease critical illness to Sunlife,
add access and hospital with Sunlife and add prepaid legal with Metife. So those are the recommendations on the non-medical. The scorecards are there for you to see of the finalists. And then um a couple of briefings we've
talked about clinics. Um their clinics have evolved a lot over the last 10 years. a lot because of the ability for tele medicine across state lines which doesn't apply to you but that's applies to a lot of employers. So to give you a
big framework there's a model where you would pay a certain amount per member per month with a limit and it would cover primary care lab diagnostics and gen some generic drugs. That's an option. We have not gone down getting a
proposal for that but we've analyzed what the cost of that might be. There are a couple of options out there now. Um, or or Seminal County Public Schools has an Orlando Health Clinic at a location within the county that
potentially you could access and it would be done as an in-et network doctor. So, a claim there's no additional per member per month. And then we at this market have two federal qualified health centers as clients. One on the east coast, one here, True
Health. and we are now working with clients who are interested in a clinic type model to partner with them. Um Janelle Dunn is the CEO and has worked closely with us. So there are options around that model. I think this mod I think the clinic idea is becoming more
um prevalent because of the hospital systems buying primary care physicians and people being looped into this big thing and having access issues. So we these would be area you want to access you want people to have primary care physicians something like this the one on the right especially true health it's
there now it's part of your network the the this is a slide really I wanted for the briefings I wanted to you know we're ending three years with Sigma and no experience is perfect we work at our
team to be sure that every issue is addressed We have calls with the team to be sure every you know we're on top of everything but B you came from Florida Blue Etn United are there other big players there are third party administrators
I just wanted that's out there I think the biggest thing we're looking at here is the PBM evolution as transparency becomes more and more important and Sigma's ability to grow in that world as well as integrate in that world I think something critical
to look at at the beginning of 2026. I would not at this point say RFP. Um the dissatisfaction, there's not really a dissatisfaction level with Sigma. I think it's just a balance like with every carrier if they're spending your money and you want them to be good
monitors of your money without making it disruptive for employees. With that, I'll turn it back over to Christine, but I welcome any questions. We'll get to them. Let's Okay. Let Christina finish up and we'll go to questions for the board. Thank you, Charles.
Uh I just wanted to um go back through the um the recommendations um and the requested uh actions. We know this is uh a lot of information. Um we are asking to approve and authorize uh staff to make recommended plan design changes. Um
those were uh the changes to some of those um co-pays and such. um as well as um the recommended regular and wellness employee premium contributions for plan year 2026. Uh approve and authorize uh staff to
move forward with the Thrive for with excuse me Thrive with five wellness program um with uh the potential change to the BMI. Um authorize staff to bring recommendation for the prescription benefit manager for approval at the
August 26, 2026 board meeting. And lastly, authorize staff to bring recommended providers for the ancillary employee paid benefits for approval uh to the August 26, 2025 board meeting. Okay,
any questions? Brandolini have a comment if I may. Commissioner Delari, thank you. Charles, thank you. Christina, thank you. Thought it was well presented. Had a lot of questions in my office. You addressed all of them. So thank you for that. Uh I think
education is obviously the key on anything we do. We've been discussing this on many years and uh I want to make sure that as we move forward that we're educating the spouses whoever is a significant person in the family that
addresses the uh medical insurance because those are the people whoever they are uh with each family member will be making those decisions depending upon how the structure is. Uh we did talk a little bit about HSA in my office and uh I think it'd be advantageous for us to
normalize the family and individual uh uh benefit so to speak and normalizing it so that it's equal representative. You know right now the county is paying 500 for each one. The family should be getting a additional in my opinion
whoever the family is because of the savings that it provides us. Uh I like your comments that you've made about teleahalth. I think that's very important and I know that's going to be uh uh more involved in the future and I look forward to seeing. We also talked
about the BMI and uh there's other ways of doing that. Uh I know the medical industry can discuss that in more detail than I could ever do that. So look forward to hearing whatever decision or information you can bring back to us. But those are my comments. Thank you. Um I'd like to respond to your comments.
Sure. Sure. Um the HSA recommendation in small print that I didn't go over is to change and now it's 500 employee or family to be 500 for employee and a thousand for family. Um the deductible on the
family is basically double. So this would this would make it more market norm if you will. Additionally, the education is so key because if you choose the HSA, your payroll deductions for your family chairs are significantly less. And educating people about how
easy it would be to put that money in the HSA pre-tax. The HSA and its deductible become less scary. Now, I'm going to say the thing that I may regret as I'm driving back. Um, we do a lot of commina's team does a ton of
communications. Our office does a ton of enroll meetings and that the attendance is extremely low. And I I hate the word mandatory, but this is so important and you're spending so much money on it. And people even when they're educated, they don't think
about it till they're sick. And I would encourage some way to have participation in the meetings. I mean, we can do raffles, we can do prizes, whatever. But that's key. So Charles, on that note, if I may, uh what's the percentage of participation
of our employees in the enrollment meetings? Yeah. No, in the education piece of it, the wellness. Oh, the wellness is 95%. But what's the education part of it? Because we just you just talked about that. Okay. I'm talking about live education. So, a couple of things. We we can and
we'll do video. We'll do anything for the spouse to access via click. Um, but in terms of understanding your benefits, especially the HSA, having people in the room is important. And so as a percentage of we just have
low participation. Is that fair? I'd have to look at the exact number and um and we'll check on the definitely the BMI. We've been talking about that. Um, but education's key.
Commissioner Lockard. So, back in the day, um, when we had open enrollment meetings, this room was packed with employees and there were tables from the different vendors along the back wall. And I guess you could probably debate whether or not that was a good or bad
thing. Um, but um, but there was a lot of participation. It was also a time when the culture of this organization, and this is not I am not saying anything against the current administration because they're doing a wonderful job. There was a there was a gap between the
prior culture and and Mr. Gray's arrival that really took away anything that required required employee education. We used to be and I'm speaking now as a former employee.
We had required continual education every year that we had to complete if minimum if we wanted to even be eligible for um our cost of living increase. There's been a huge paradigm shift in this organization over the years from a
lot of required employee engagement which benefited the entire organization to to the pendulum has swung completely the opposite direction. So, I would be in support of and I know Commissioner Constantine has said to me before, you are the stick, I am the carrot. And
maybe I am, but I think there could be a happy medium of carrot stick involved in this um bringing people to to this education because they will be saving themselves a tremendous amount of money. They will be
saving the organization a tremendous amount of money. Um, it just and and learning really h how to care for themselves and their entire families so much more holistically. Commissioner Delar's word. Notice how I'm picking on I'm going to find a word that it makes each commissioner um that rings might
ring familiar, but I think I'm completely on board with whatever we need to do in order to to improve engagement. Anything else? Well, I have comments in general. Commissioner her. So, um
I think it's vacasillated into a new universe in terms of education and mandatory is good. I support mandatory. I don't think mandatory has to be live. I think it can be you watch an educational session. I think it can be
live. It doesn't have to be live. I think you guys go and figure that out. Um, and I hearken back to your cool slide about what people want and boomers want live. We want to reach out and ring somebody's neck and but millennials
don't. They don't want to be in a room talking about benefits and they will probably come to the room and not listen. Hey now. Yeah. Having raised a couple of them. So, but they may actually engage in a video that gives a few questions at the end and then they tee up and win a
raffle. So you do with that what you want. I think the uh core buyup concept is a really good concept. I think it's very gracious that we're evolving to it. I think we need to evolve to it. Um the
I think that we are not necessarily training our folks to actually look at the financial mechanism of the plans and because we've insulated them from that. So I don't think we need to change anything for this recommendation but just know that that needs to iterate
over time. Um my personal opinion is and and I please Sigma don't make me regret saying this but the value of the difference for this year on the carveout is not worth
moving it. They need to keep coming to the table with the right answers on the PBM or we need to not be doing business with Express Scripts, which ties us to Sigma. They know this. This is not anything new. I'm doing it on all of my
cases and they are iterating their responses to all of us. So, that's good news, but they need to keep up the good work that they've done. Um, I don't think the $250 plan is paying for itself. I so I Charles and I in my briefing had a uh fairly decent
discussion around this but right now it's not and we can move the move folks into another plan. It won't help but they're not self-supporting now anyway. So iterating to the really true core buyup is good. I love the decision on
PCM. they at the time we put them in were the only ones that called the physician first and it is their unique differentiator and it's it is interesting that no one's migrated to that. I'm kind of surprised by that but that's a that was a a good find. Um the
conversations around clinics there are still a lot of clinic models out there that are exceptionally expensive that don't carry their weight in terms of cost containment. that m that market has migrated as well and there's some out there that actually don't cost a fortune and will actually help the employees.
So, that's a long-term conversation as well. But overall, I think you guys did great work. Um, and great work on the wellness program. I will confess that I actually did qualify for the wellness incentive, but that was because of a lastm minute effort because
I was getting the reminders, but perhaps didn't read them as deeply as I needed to, and I went on autopilot and qualified for the Semol County Public Schools one, which I educate on regularly. And so, we caught it in time because of
a mailer that came to the house where I looked and I'm like, "Let me check." Oo, and I was helped by the signar rep. And here you got to go do a few more things. Thank you, Brandy. I would like to um
one comment on the 250 plan not supporting itself. That that could be a long conversation, but before we went to this evolution of core buyup, we did make some rate adjustments to at least make the four plans more actuarily
accurate in terms of the rates. So it it pushes it up a little bit. Again, evolution. Commissioner Lockhart, then Commissioner Constine. So while equality among the plans is very
important in terms of payment uh employee contribution, I want to make sure that just from an overall perspective that families really we want families on our plan. we need children on the plan and and having come from the school district situation where we could
not we could not get families on the plan because it was just unaffordable for them. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy that we couldn't get the families and we couldn't afford it and then it was just this horrible cycle we were in. So I want to make sure that we don't do anything that puts us in a
place where we are um fighting at cross purposes regarding families being on the plan. I think what Tim do has done when you look at 25 and 26 is very focused on that. But the focus is to make that in a
available in a core plan. We're not going to run people off, but if you do want to have a richer plan than you pay for it. Okay. Okay. I don't know do you enough of these to know if I'm supposed to respond to with comments, but No, thank you. Yeah,
we're not shy. We'll tell you. Yeah. You don't want dead air hanging out there around this place. Commissioner Constantine, thank you. So, I will self admit that I'm one of the guys that you would you said most people don't even consider this unless they're sick and don't look
at this. I I I plead guilty. Um but I understand that you know I mean obviously every year we have this and uh brought up re re-evaluated and um and uh you know make changes this year. The
biggest change from what I can see in in talking with Christina is the um the middle is going to be charged $25 a month. Is that correct? That's correct on the single and there's a similarish
so that that has 600 and some odd people and the low hasund and some odd people clearly the middle is the biggest um with almost half of all of the uh employees using it. So with the with the
difference between the high, the middle and the low not being as you was said that much, do you not think that a lot of people being that the low is going to cause zero that there is going to be a major shift to the low?
I from a consultant standpoint, I think the $25 is too low. I think it's going to be too easy to stay where they are. um based on what I've seen and but again culturally
Christina and Tim really wanted to make this a smoother road. So I I I don't think we'll have a a large shift. It's it becomes more important if you have family coverage the differential. Okay. And again I I you know I'm I'm not
the expert. I would look to uh Commissioner uh her um because this is her line of of employment. And I would say when companies like when any company shifts their thing and one is had has
had traditionally a zero amount as far as uh employee um uh participation and it goes to 25. But another one that may not be as good but is available is
at zero. Do you see a lot of shift there? So the way we're doing it, I don't think you're going to I agree with our consultant. I don't think we're going to see a lot of shift. I would also tell you that we have a couple of odd phenomenas in the underlying plan offering. Number one, you typically
don't have zero to the employee for three plans. That's just odd. It's usually one, maybe two. If you have an HSA in play, maybe that's a zero and then the other plan. So that third plan being zero really
does need to move. The second component to that that are offering that is odd is that I we don't have $250 deductibles out there in the atmosphere anymore. And so
really we should try to start moving and we talked about this years ago, years ago. But we went through a period of time where we stopped educating and we stopped actually talking about this even though it's a major expenditure. And so
now we're talking about it. I think this is a very smooth way to migrate us to market standards, particularly in a time when we're trying to be as conservative as we can be on spending. They still have the freedom to choose. It's still
affordable to stay where you are. This is a monthly number. This gets divided by two paychecks and then you have it pre-taxed, but it's $300 plus a year and we're giving out nice payraises. Okay. So, I just wanted, you know, I I
understand, but I'm just trying to, you know, I'm trying I'm trying to figure it out because this is the largest one and as um you know, I I I from what Commissioner Lockard had indicated, I'm trying to put it all together. So, this is really the mid plan is really important for the
families mostly or am I wrong on that? In terms of the enrollment, um I thought I had everything at the my fingertips, but I don't have the number of family enrollment there. I think it's pretty commensurate across all plans. Okay.
Um and that's only changing by $25 as well. So that's not even changing to the same percentage as the family. So the family's even more insulated by the change. Okay. I don't think you'll see families move
either. So, you know, so the consensus here from both the expert and the expert is that that $25 you're not going to see a major shift of those 680 going to the the the the low which is only 100. I don't think so. But I think with with
good education, if we could get to almost mandatory, we will have migration to the HSA if people sit and look at what this means in their paycheck. But I'm glad you brought this up because what I didn't say when I was referring to this slide with the plan design changes, there is a million2,000
projected savings in these plan design changes. So we did want to look holistically at you know the responsibility of the county. These are minor changes that will will result in big savings. Um we don't know the shift. So the the employee these are such small
increments in employee. We don't see there will be a huge uptick in employee contributions but there will be some. All right. Thank you Mr. Chairman. Commissioner Glory. Thank you Charles. One thing we didn't talk about is the retirees because there is a number of retirees that are on
this. I think it's like 67 or 65 something like that and most of them are in the buyout plan. Can we have some discussion on that? We have 49 of the 63 are in the buyout plan. Okay. So,
how does that affect them? Because I know they're going to be paying more for the buyout plan now because the additional 25 bucks. Is that because of the are they choosing to do that because it must be because of their high medical claims then. Correct. Statistical. I mean that the 250 plan is
is burdened by the most retirees. That's a expensive group of people. Um I don't have isolation into exactly that, but that's probably just this is what I've always had. 250 is normal to me. That's what I'm doing.
Okay. So, the the education goes out to them as well. Correct. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Okay. Thank you, Commissioner. Her question on the retirees. How many are over and under 65? Okay. These are retirees under 65 in the
Sigma plan, right? Not on Medicare, Medicaid, but we don't force people to get Medicare. Wait a minute. Okay. I want to be sure I'm right. These are It could It could be both. Um, so I'd have to give you the breakdown. We do um
there is uh less of a cost if you're over 65 and um and also taking Medicare. So, we give um we give the the discount for for that for the cost of Medicare Part B. Um Yes. Um, so I'd have to give you the exact I'll give you the exact breakdown. Can you give us some data on that then?
Sure, absolutely. Thanks. So I a takeaway for next year is that we need to figure out if there's a option for the retirees that are Medicare age to move to a Medicare plan which actually will benefit them. It will cost a lot less money.
It it is more the norm for if you you have if you still have retirey coverage which is almost non-existent, right? It's only for people under 65 on this plan and then you have however you subsidize it a Medicare plan whether
surround ABD everything but absolutely forgive me for not having that in my memory but that would be a good thing to Yeah. The state mandates us to offer exact plans and at the current rates, but it doesn't stop us from educating them to take something better. And at
one point, we had a program here also went by the wayside because it was education. We weren't doing that. Sorry, it was just you did bring up it was the dark ages. That's what we'll refer to it as. We're in we're in a new age of enlightenment. Mhm.
Um, I don't have a lot to go into, but I will say talking about tele medicine, if you get on Trump's new mobile cellular plan, you get free tele medicine. Just an FYI. Okay. True. It's true. Uh,
yeah, it's true. Um, anyway, I think there's been a lot of things said, a lot of things in detail. I won't go into them because it's too late in this process to shift gears and and um
ch change opinions. Um I think going into next year, I think for me, I would like to see this process start a little earlier and sooner as we digest this, but I think this really should be included as part of a overall
compensation discussion to our employees. uh and how we model this as part of the compensation uh packages that we do give our employees and there and there's a lot of creative ways that this can be done for the employees to
pick and choose you know perhaps what they need to do. I am not a fan of mandating anything for employees uh other than to show up to work, do your job, and do those kind of things. Incentivizing, I'm okay with. Um if there's an incentive there for reduction
in cost or other things that they can get, I don't know that we have a lot of employees interested in having a raffle prize for a 43in flat screen TV or something of that like, but maybe maybe that's lost on me. Um, but I would like to see us do a deeper dive and earlier
work in this. And I appreciate you all doing the uh number routine that I ask you to to work on several of these policies uh or several of these programs to help me understand what we might want to look at, you know, moving forward. So, good work. I appreciate it
sincerely. Thank you. Any other questions? I think we're they asked for action. I'd be happy to make a motion that we uh do all of the actions that are up on the screen. Second. I think we've got I think we're all on that same page, are
we not? Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Got direction. We need a vote. We need a vote. There's a motion in second. All those in favor? I oppose. Like sign. Seeing none, carries unanimously. Thank you.
All right. We will stand in recess till 1:30. Thank you all. Part: 2
Good afternoon and welcome back to the board of county commission meeting here in Semino County. Today's date is August 12th, 2025. We are reconvening at approximately 1:30 in the afternoon. Our first item up will be put on by Miss Christina Brandolini,
human resources director, recognizing employee service awards. Uh, I would also ask that each and every one of you check your phones, make sure they are silenced. Any other electronic devices, please silence those. Miss Brandolini. Good afternoon, chairman and
commissioners. This afternoon, we have the pleasure of recognizing several employees for their service to Seminal County. First, we have Steven Lerner with emergency management who will lead us off recognizing Heather Howinitz with 20 years of service.
Thank you. Uh Steven Learner, division manager, emergency management. I'm filling in for Alan Harris. Uh it's our pleasure to celebrate this amazing milestone for Heather. Uh I first met Heather when she was on the other end of the phone line at the help desk. Um and
she's continued to be incredibly helpful to us and emergency management. Uh served in many different departments as well. uh also had an opportunity to work with her in the 10 years uh managing federal and state grants and working through some of those challenges uh with
the state as well. Uh so thank we hope to continue to have you on our team for another 20 years. Uh you're an amazing employee and Tommy's here as well which is her uh direct supervisor from emergency telecommunications. So thank you Heather. Yeah.
And if you all be patient, as soon as we are done, we'll get up and we'll have pictures with the patient. Thank you. Next, we have Kim Orinberg, environmental services director, and she will first be recognizing Fred Renee, senior, solid waste operator with 20 years.
Good afternoon. Perfect timing. So, uh, Fred Renee Senior, he started his career with Seminal County in April of 2005 and is a solid waste operator, too. He is someone who we rely on for his strong work ethic and how serious he takes his
job duties. He is quick to help his fellow workers and is always willing to do what is necessary to get the job done efficiently and sa and safely. And he always gives 110%. He's the first one loaded and the last one to leave at the end of the day. And
in his time off, Fred is a diehard Yankees fan. He enjoys working out every day. And the Yep. floor. um as well as a seminal um yeah seinal anyway um and loves to spend time with his grandchildren and we thank him for
his 20 years here with Seol County. So thank you very much. And next we have Jose Gonzalez. Jose started his career at Seol County in May of 2005. He grew up in Puerto Rico, joined the army at a young age and learned English while serving our
country. Jose has worked in the household hazardous waste area for the last 16 years as a technician and then promoted to the program's coordinator, then moved over to the small quantity generator program. He is a very personable well like and well-liked
among his peers and is always happy to lend a hand. Jose is also notorious for his sweet tooth and loves candy even though candy doesn't necessarily like him back but if you ever need you know something you can always bribe him with some candy. He's a valued employee in the solid waste division and we thank
him for his 20 years of service. Next we have Chad Wilsky, fleet and facilities director and he will first be recognizing Diane O'Quinn, accounting specialist with 20 years in of service. Good afternoon.
Diane O'Quinn uh currently serves as an accounting specialist with our fleet uh maintenance um team and uh she spent the whole entire time with maintenance in 20 years. So when she began her career in 2005 uh she was hand her responsibilities
handling processing invoices managing fuel orders ensuring the fuel island remained in operational and compliant inspection requires requirements. Over the years, uh, I Diane has grown her role and, uh, she now deals with payroll, assist with budgeting, contract
management, and she has a deep understanding of county operations. And you will always see Diane and the EOC during um, storms and procuring things that we need to serve our community. So thank you Diane for all your welcome Rolando Neves.
So Rolando currently serves as a senior facilities um maintenance technician and um obviously he's been with facilities for 20 years. Rolando is known for his strong work ethic and versat versatility. um he can do almost anything and he does uh but drywall is
his specialty and he treats it like an art and he's worked on nearly every building in the county in some sort of fashion. Uh he's our also our go-to person for equipment needs and problem solving and Rolando cons consistently delivers high quality work and
innovative solutions. So thank you Rolando. Sorry, no HVAC people yet today. Next, Rick Durk, parks and recreation director, will recognize Stephanie Perez, sports specialist with 20 years of service. Good afternoon. Stephanie started as a
part-time floater between parks, the Central Branch Library, and the museum back in 2005. Uh by 2015, Stephanie became a full-time employee. She completed the previous employee academy when it was an eighth month program. That was a that was quite the the the hall right there. Uh but during that
time, she was able to shadow several park managers and supervisors and also the department director. There she got an inside look at the beginnings of a facility that would become known as the Bumba Sports Complex. Stephanie's been recognized previously by the BCC after saving the life of one of our park
patrons using CPR at San Lando's basketball court, where she currently provide service to our residents. Thank you, Stephanie, for continued service and congratulations on your 20th anniversary. Next is Norma Medina Ortiz,
also celebrating her 20th anniversary. Norma started in 2005 at the central branch after earning her master's degree in library and information sciences from Rutgers University. In 2018, she took on management of the north and east branches. And earlier this year, she was assigned to manage the east branch
exclusively. Throughout her career, Norma has been involved in several initiatives impacting the library system in the community, including implementing adult library programs, establishing digital connection digital collections and mentoring new librarians. She participated in the library master plan
process and as part of the leadership team, which was recently recognized as Florida Library Association's library of the year. Additionally, she's managed and expanded Spanish language collections and facilitated many community partnerships on behalf of SNL County. Norma is also a graduate of the
Sun Sun Sunshine, let me try that again, Sunshine State Library Leadership Institute and an active member of the Florida Library Association where she volunteers on the professional development committee. Thank you, Norma, for your continued service and congratulations on the 20th anniversary.
Next, we have Tony Nelson, county engineer, who will be recognizing Heidi Miller, contract and project coordinator with 25 years of service. Good afternoon. Um, Haida Mill began her career with the public works department
engineering division in June 2000 as a senior staff assistant. In 2002, she was promoted to support specialist for the acclaimed seminal county trails team followed by a promotion to accounting specialist in 2012 where she served for
5 years. In 2017, Heidi was promoted to co the co her current role as contract project coordinator. With more than two decades of dedicated service, Heidi brings extensive institutional knowledge and 16
years of FDOT lab compliance expertise. She has helped the engineering division attain full lab certification four times and serve as the resident compliance specialist on lab projects. Heidi plays
a key role in contract management as a member of the construction team. Heidi, we thank you for your 25 years of service to Semino County and to the public works team. She also enjoy audio book traveling and spending time with
her granddaughters. Thank you, Heidi. Owen Reagan, parks and recreation division manager, will be recognizing Matt Phillips, program manager with 25 years of service. I don't think that's parks and recreation. Oh, I'm sorry. Roads. Roads.
I meant public works. I'm so sorry. I meant public works. I work still on my mind. I'm sorry. Now you're in charge of parks, Rowan. Sorry. Whatever it takes. Whatever it takes.
It's my honor to recognize Matt. Um he's he's uh celebrating 25 years with Semol County. He he joined us from Orange County where he worked for nine years and he started as a crew chief in the year 2000.
He was promoted to team leader in 2002, senior team leader in 2004. Matt has been in his current role as program manager once since 2015. He also serves as my therapist because
he's across the hall from he oversees the road district teams, our warehouse, and he's our equipment person. He has a wealth of knowledge and experience in many areas and is well respected and appreciated uh throughout the organization.
He's been a Geneva resident since 1998 and enjoys family time, the outdoors, and numerous hobbies and interests. And Matt, I can't thank you enough. You're one of the smartest people I know, and I appreciate you. Next, we have Chief Matt Kinley with the
fire department who will be recognizing Michael Summers, Lieutenant with 25 years of service. Good afternoon. Lieutenant Michael Summers is a proud graduate of Lyman High School and a former member of the Winter Springs Fire Department. Shortly after graduating, he attended Semol
State College to earn his credentials needed to join the Semino County Fire Department. He later returned to complete two college degrees. Throughout his career, Lieutenant Summers has served in numerous roles and capacities within the department uh including as a member of the honor guard and the burn team. He was promoted to the rank of
lieutenant in on August 24th, 2014 and has been proudly serving assigned to Fern Park Fire Station 22 for over a decade. Uh Mike, thank you for everything you've done and will do for the citizens of Simol County. Thanks. And that concludes our presentation. So,
uh we can do pictures. Sure. We'll have everybody down uh or come up individually. You got it. Heat. Heat. Hello. Hello. Yeah. Heat.
Hello. So great to see the employees that make the county run each and every day and make our jobs much easier than they otherwise would be. So, it's good to see those folks get the recognition and the many years they've spent here. We're
going to move on to our public hearing agenda. Um, I will go to the county attorney, Miss Kate Lour, for the rules of public engagement. If you are here to speak on any of the public hearing items, make sure you get a yellow form in the lobby. fill that out. Bring it up
to Miss Dominique here, the clerk, so that we know if you're here to speak on an item, we'll call you up when the time is right. More. Thank you, chairman. While the board welcomes comments from all persons with an interest in these proceedings, Florida law requires that the board's
decision in quasi judicial actions be supported by competent substantial evidence presented to the board during the hearings on the applications. Competent substantial evidence is such evidence as a reasonable mind would accept is adequate to support a conclusion. There must be a factual
basis in the record to support opinion testimony from both expert and non-expert witnesses. Persons presenting testimony may may rely on factual information that they present, information presented by county staff, information the applicant presented, or
on factual information included in the county staff report to support their testimony. All persons who present written materials to the board for consideration must ensure that a copy of such materials is provided to the clerk for inclusion in the board's record of the proceedings and the official
minutes. Mr. Chairman, thank you, Mr. Tor. Uh, and we'll move for proof of publication, please. So, second motion second. All those in favor? I oppose like sign. Seeing none, carries unanimous. Um, exparte disclosures. We'll start to
my right and work our way across. None to report. None to report. None to report. None to report. No expert. Okay. Our first item up will be number 23, the Midway Loop Trail Reszone. This will be presented by Caitlyn Apgar. We
will hear from staff. We'll ask questions uh of staff of anything that we have. We will then move to the applicant uh if they desire to make a statement, which happens to be the county. Uh beyond that, we will go to public input. Once we've had public
input, we'll ask the applicant if they wish to give a rebuttal, which again would be the county. Uh and then we will move for board action. So with that, Miss Abgar. Good afternoon. Caitlyn Abgar, Planning and Development Services. The applicant is requesting the approval for a reszone
from A1 Agriculture to PLI public lands and institutions for proposed trail and other future recreational facilities on approximately 106.96 acres located on the west side of Bristen Avenue north of State Road 46.
The parcel currently has a future land use designation of lowdensity residential and a zoning classification of A1 agriculture. The intent of the lowdensity residential land use designation is to provide appropriate locations for standard detached single family residences and allows for limited
public uses including publicly owned parks and recreational areas. The request for the reszone is to permit the proposed trail and recreation amenities, which is currently not a permitted use in the existing A1 zoning designation. The parcel currently exists as a storm
water retention pond and was historically utilized as a borrow pit. The applicant proposes to develop the subject site as a public trail that is approximately 4,947 feet in length. The site would also contain exercise equipment, a plaza with
trees, and a pier. The subject site is currently located within the city of Sanford's utility service area. At this time, the trail project, as proposed, does not require any utility services. Additional amenities constructed in the future may require utility connection and will be
appropriately reviewed at that juncture. There is an existing sidewalk along Bristen Avenue that will prov provide pedestrian access to the subject property. The proposed trail project will modify some of the existing sidewalk to be incorporated into the proposed trail.
The trail also proposes connection into Rosland Park at a future phase. There are also future recreational amenities proposed and the applicant from parks and recreation is present to answer any questions about future phases. The proposed PLI zoning designation has
been evaluated with compat compatibility with the land development code of seminal county in accordance with chapter 30 part 8. The proposed zoning is compatible with the PLI zoned property property to the south that currently operates as a school and the surrounding residentially zoned property
as the trail aims to serve those neighborhoods to the north, east, and west. Publicly owned parks and recreational areas are considered considered special exception uses in the lowdensity residential land use designation. However, are permitted by right if included in a zoning district compatible
with the LDR land use designation. PLI is an allowable zoning classification in the LDR land use designation for the comprehensive plan. Pursuant to Seminal County Land Development Code section 30.3.5.1, the applicant previously conducted
adequate community meetings and outreach initiatives. Thus, the requirement for an additional community meeting was waved per the planning manager um planning division manager. The applicant conducted a community meeting on August 22nd, 2024. Details of this meeting have been provided in the
agenda package. The planning and zoning commission met on July 2nd, 2025 and voted unanimously to recommend the board of county commissioners adopt the ordinance enacting the reszone. The PNZ board minutes from this meeting are included in the agenda package as well.
Staff requests the board of county commissioners adopt the ordinance enacting a reszone from A1 agriculture to PLI public lands and institutions for proposed trail and future recreational amenities on approximately 106.96 acres located on the west side of Bristen
Avenue north of State Road 46. I'll stand by for any questions. Thank you, Miss Hapcar. Any questions for staff at this juncture? Nope. Uh Mr. Durr, is there anybody from your office that wishes to add anything or do we have questions for Mr. Mr. Durr or Mr. Heock.
Good. You're good. Seeing nothing, we will go to public comment. If we have anybody for public comment, how many do we have? No speakers, Mr. Chairman. Just that one written comment that's being passed around. Okay. I'll pass this to my fellow
commissioner if you'll be kind enough to read that after you've read it. So, we have that on the record, please. This comment is made on 8125 by Benjamin Chiselier. Uh 2520 East 21st Street, Sanford,
Florida 32771 and he is looking forward to such a great asset to the area. Great. Thank you. Put that to the clerk. Is there anyone else here from the public wishes to speak on this item? Seeing not ma'am,
I just have a question. Okay. This is not a question and answer section, but we'll try to get you some answers from our folks. Okay, if you'll bring that down. Folks, if you're here for any of the other hearings this afternoon, please
get your form turned in ASAP. We'll try to make this as efficient as possible. We're not going to wait until we're well into the hearing to accept the comments. Yes, ma'am. Your name and address for the record, please. My name is Dorothy Miller and my address is 119 Anderson Avenue in Washington
Oaks. And my concern or my question is how will that uh affect my address in Washington? I didn't see that on the little picture print out. I didn't see the listing of the street number per se. I'm just interested and want to know how
is uh the Midway Loop Trail Reson going to affect me at 119 Henderson Avenue. Were you aware of the community meeting? I was. I was. Could I make that? You weren't able to make it? No. Okay. Can we have someone with staff meet with this resident and help uh
answer her questions? That'd be very helpful. Thank you. Folks right behind them take care of you, ma'am. Thank you very much. Anyone else here from the public to speak on this item? An abundance of caution. Seeing none, we'll close the public hearing. This is uh Commissioner
Her, District 5's uh project, we will go to the district commissioner. Commissioner Her, it is uh with baited breath that I make the following motion. Uh based on staff's findings and the testimony and evidence received at the hearing, the board of county commissioners finds the
request meets the identified portions of the seminal county land development code and moves to adopt the ordinance enacting a reszone from A1 agriculture to PLI public lands and institutions for proposed trail and future recreational
amenities on approximately 106.96 acres located on the west side of Bristen Avenue north of State Road 46. Second motion second. Any further discussion? All those in favor? I oppose like sign. Carries unanimous.
Thank you all very much for being here on that topic. Awesome. Awesome job. Bringing it home. All right. Next item up is item number 24 is a Maya sushi and habachi special exception. This will be presented by
Miss Hillary Peyton. Good afternoon. Hillary Peyton, Planning and Development. This item is a request for a special exception for Miyagi Sushi and Habachi to allow a restaurant within a thousand feet of a school to obtain an alcohol license in the eour plan development on 9.51 acres located on the
south side of Westlake Mary Boulevard east of Sun Drive. The applicant currently operates a bonafide restaurant and would like to serve beer and wine for on-site consumption. The restaurant located within an existing shopping center is 544 feet
from UCP Seminal Early Learning Center, which does not meet the 1,000 ft separation from schools as is required by the land development code. The restaurant is 2,000 square ft in size and seats 56 patrons with no outdoor seating. The hours of operation
are currently Monday through Thursday from 11:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. Friday and Saturday from 11:00 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. and Sunday from noon to 9:30 p.m. The land development code states that certain criteria must be met in order for the BO County Commissioners to
approve a special exception request. Staff finds that the request meets the four criteria. On June 8th, 2025, the applicant conducted a community meeting in compliance with the land development code. Details of the community meeting have been provided in the agenda
package. The planning and zoning commission met on July 2nd, 2025 and voted unanimously to recommend that the board of county commissioners approve the special exception. The minutes are provided in the agenda package as well. Staff recommends that the board of county commissioners approve the special
exception with the conditions as stated in the development order to allow an a restaurant within 1,000 ft of a school to obtain an alcohol license in the PD zoning district. This concludes my presentation. Bill for any questions. Thank you, Miss Peyton. Any questions for staff? Seeing none, is the applicant here and
wish to make any statements or presentation? Sir, please come down. State your name and address for the record. My name is Wen Zen from 6876 Lucas Street, Orlando, Florida 32819. I'm the owner of the business Miagi
Sushi and Habachi. Apparently I haven't made all this stuff uh previously a very um as I mentioned it from the previous this is just a restaurant so it's very common to serve a two cop alcohol for beer and wine and
sasaki just to match the sushi so all my stuff while training we will not harmful any of the community especially the community uh neesto actually on the same project they have Four CLB full legal license. We only
have two CP. So I think the approval will be very common. Thank you. Thank you. All right, sir. If you'll just have a seat. Do we have anyone from the public to speak on this matter? No, sir. Seeing none, I want to make sure there's
nobody here to speak on this item. Seeing none, we'll close public input and we will go to board discussion and action. This is Commissioner Lockhart's district. Commissioner. Yeah. Um, if you could go back to the slide that showed the um, outline of the putt. There you
go. So, the reason this is within 1,000 ft is my understanding is because of the driveway that goes all the way to Lake Mary Boulevard. Is that right? That's correct. So, if the other out parcels came all the way in, we wouldn't even be having this conversation right now. Is that right? Yes. Um, we also included the distance
from the business to the business and it's over 1,000 ft. Okay. But because of that little driveway that the property owns, it's from property line to property line based on our definition. One of the things that we talked about in in my briefing is a couple of things. One is this entire if you all are
familiar with this um shopping center. There are a lot of different restaurants in there that are already serving that have full bars. Um but because each of these different units are being handled separately, they're they will all have to each come in separately. So, there was some
conversation about would it make more sense to just go in and um make it an allowable use for that entire parcel. I asked the attorney that and she said, "Well, we'd be reopening the whole PD and that may not be the route that you want to take." Looking for something to
make this a little more efficient moving forward. We also talked about in the future changing the way that we calculate and measure um these so that um business owners wouldn't have to come in when there's an obvious separation. So things for future discussion if if
you want to weigh in. Um Miss Borer, I can. Um Nissa Borer, deputy county attorney for the record. We are looking at in our LDC amendments that are coming making the measurement how we measure consistent across the board for these
from the property to the school or to the church, the religious facility, making it the same type of measurement um across the board. So that's something that we'll be bringing to you for your consideration in the future with the broader LDC amendments that are coming
and in line with our discussion earlier that would be a less restrictive change not a more restrictive change. Is that correct? That's what we're hoping. Okay, Mr. Chair, Mr. Chairman, if I can interject one of if we're looking at that and if 180 will allow us to look at
that. Um the other thing I would just uh think about so many private and charter schools are coming up right now and I think the level uh for the state is 500 ft not 1,000 ft. So ours is more restrictive that we might want to look
at that just thinking about that as a difference between public schools and all other types of schools because many of them are in shopping centers and strip centers and other things. So, it might be something that we want to look at also. Yes, Commissioner. Thank you. Our plan
is to bring back what our requirements are versus what the state requires and let you look at that because that's, I believe, changed over the years, too. Probably since these distance requirements, separation requirements have been put in place. So, we will bring that information back to you with the LDC amendments.
Thank you. That'll be great because we actually had this conversation on a project called the good poor uh some time ago and I'll be looking forward to those cleanups and changes um I guess as soon as y'all can. It'll be great. Anything else from the board
before Commissioner Lockhart? Okay, Commissioner proceed. Okay. Um, commissioners, I move to approve the special exception with the condition stated in the development order to allow the restaurant within 1,000 square feet of a school to obtain an alcohol license in the PD district on 9.51 acres located
on the south side of West Lake Mary Boulevard east of Sundry. Second motion and second. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor? I opposed like sign. Seeing none, carries unanimous. Thank you, Miss Peyton. Next, we're moving to our legislative
public hearings. And I'll be in for Saki soon. He didn't. This will be presented by Mr. Timothy Jex, uh, management and budget director. Mr. J. Thank you, Chairman. For the record, I'm Timothy Jex with the Office of
Management and Budget. Item number 25 is an ordinance to amend county code to allow for the levy of an additional 5-cent local option fuel tax. This item was advertised in the Orlando Sentinel on Friday, August 1st. The agenda for this presentation includes background information, how the
funds will be used, will provide surrounding county comparisons, discuss specifics on the proposed amendment, the fiscal impact on citizens, next steps, and requested action. Under Florida statute 336.025, counties are allowed by law to levy a
5-cent local option fuel tax on every gallon of motor fuel sold. This tax would not apply to diesel fuel. There are currently 10 cents per gallon being levied on fuel in Semino County. The first two rows show 3 cents a gallon authorized by the state and distributed
to the county. The next show the next row shows our current 6 cent local option gas tax. Those 9 cents combined support maintenance of our local roads, drainage, and traffic systems. The final penny on this list is our 9th cent fuel
tax, which is dedicated for mass transit costs. None of these funds currently go towards any capital projects or expenditures that are eligible for infrastructure sales tax funding, and the total 10 cents generate $15.3 million currently.
If approved, the new 5-cent fuel tax must be used for transportation costs, specifically costs defined in the CIE section of the county's comprehensive plan. This can include the construction of new roads, the resurfacing of paved roads, or operation and maintenance of
public transportation facilities. Funds cannot be used on routine road maintenance. Looking at our surrounding counties, Oyola, Sarasota, and Valuchia currently levy the additional 5 cents. And if you look at average gas prices, you see that
there's not a significant correlation between the levy and the price per gallon that consumers pay at the pump. This is partially due to the fact that in 2025 the 5 cents represents 1.6% of the current price per gallon and this levy is more easily absorbed in the market price compared to when the tax
was originally introduced in the state by the state in 1985. With this item, we're proposing to levy an additional 5-cent local option fuel tax. It requires supermajority vote by the BCC and would generate approximately $ 8.8 8 million countywide, which is
distributed by an FDOR formula to the board and the cities based on the last 5 years of transportation expenditures. The BCC is estimated to receive $5.5 million annually, and the FY26 proposed budget includes $4.1 million based on
nine months of collections starting January 1st, 2026. If we look at residents, uh, an average resident who drives 1,000 miles per month and uses 48 gallons of fuel, this additional 5 cents would cost approximately $2 per month or 2 cents
for every 10 miles driven. If approved, the ordinance is due to the FDO by October 1st in order for collections to begin on January 1st. And that concludes my presentation. Any questions for staff at this point?
I do have one question. Uh, at what time or date is the current collected tax set? Is it 1991, 1992? The current 6 cent. Correct. I'm sorry. I'd have to look to be certain, but it was, I believe, levied in the 90s when we started living.
Great. Thank you. All right. We will go to u public input. Madame clerk, if you'll call off, how many do we have? Three speakers. Okay. Uh, let's just go ahead and call all three and whoever gets to the podium first, we'll let them have at it.
George Celery, Richard Ceden, and Win Adams. Mr. Celery, Mr. Adams, and Mr. Creed. Okay, Mr. Adams, you beat them all there, so let's go. Okay, good. My name is Wyn Adams. I live at 646 Fellowship Drive, Fern Park,
Florida, 32730-2792. I'm also a former Simol County Commissioner. Um my concern is uh when I you read uh item number 25, it talks about that this
will be effective for 50 years. And my question is why don't we have something some wording in there that say this issue could be revisited every five years to determine as to whether
it's still needed or it has to go up. So that is my concern about this 50 years instead of five years re-review and things of that nature. And it's also my understanding that some
of this will be used for uh um payment of uh our Sun Rail obligation and uh my concern about of course about Sun Rail is what are we doing to increase wrership?
Thank you very much. Thank you Mr. Adams. Next up, Mr. Celery. Good. Good afternoon. George Celery, 5231 Shoreline Circle, Sanford 32771.
Let's see if we can get this up on the screen. Um, I don't know if we can get it any better than that. This is your slide from earlier. And I just want to make mention that, you know, this brings in $5.5 million. The sales tax brings in
over $55 million. Um, and that's a 10-year. So look, if it increases a little bit, 600 million county share, not including cities. So right now, Orange County and Valuchia County have no sales tax. I just want to make sure everyone knows that for accurate comparisons because they would have
billions of dollars towards that or hundreds of millions depending on the split in the bottom corner of the one there. U Mr. J had pointed out the AAA slide in the comparison. If you want to flip to the
next one. Um, this is updated every single day on AAA's website. And really, if it shows you C seminal, we're the red one right there, surrounded by white. I didn't put Bard in because they're less than the white. But again, it's I think the way our county is situated and it's
so small. That's kind of what we're stuck with. Um, so right now, even the ones with a 5-cent increase are higher than us. So, we're going to be and again today it's a little bit lower. I think Valuchia is at $2.99 in today's. Okay.
And then let's go to the last one. Um, and what I want to talk about there was again in the statute and this is the statute in your ordinance. It says supermajority vote or you could do this by voter referendum if you wanted to put this out
like you did with the sales tax and let voters vote on it. Um the one that um Commissioner Zimbau mentioned or chairman Zenau mentioned the statutory site uh the local option 1 through six cents is 30 years by statute. I can't
find any statutory site in 336 or 206 that says 50 years. And I'm just wondering where that number comes from. And given if you really look at it a new brand new 16y old driver I know I got 65. It should be 66, but I couldn't put that.
But that is a long time. And so, can we shorten this up a little? Can we do something a little bit different here? Um, especially when you look at this 50-year mark. um and maybe revi look back at it every five years or I know a
a future sit uh county commission can come in and change all this but at the same time at least from your standpoint put in there 50 years but reviewable every 5 years by the county commission or something of that regard. Thank you very much. Thank you.
Next be Mr. Creden. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and fellow commissioners. My name is Richard Ceden. I am the president of the Geneva Citiz Association. I live at 1172 Apache Drive, Geneva, Florida.
The county has done almost nothing in this proposed budget to meaningfully cut spending. Attrition is not heavy lifting by any stretch of the imagination. Mr. Cedon, we're here to talk about this tax, not the budget. Excuse me. We're here to talk about this.
I'm against all the taxes and I understand, but today's topic is the local option fuel tax, not the budget that's already been reviewed and will be reviewed. But this money goes into the budget though. Well, it's it all kind of try to keep it
on the topic of the gas tax, please. Right. I'm not I'm not speaking on the gas tax. I'm speaking on all three of the taxes. The gas tax, the utility tax, and the millage tax in general opposition to them. Okay. Duly noted. Move on with the gas
tax portion, please. So, I can't finish my comment then. Sure. Go ahead. Okay. All right. But I'm not mentioning the gas tax now. That's part of the three. Got it. Okay. Good. Okay. Again, uh from the beginning, it take a second. The county
has done almost nothing in this proposed budget to meaningfully cut spending. Attrition is not heavy lifting by any stretch of the imagination. How about tableabling the five points relocation and reducing garbage collection to one day a week. Those
would save big bucks and all we citizens would need is an extra garbage can. You need to learn to budget spending according to expected revenues. You and I do that personally to stay out of debt as prison. Yes, you will have to lay off
people and that hurts, but it is necessary. When money is short in our households, we may have to stop eating out to save money. Maybe clean our own houses and cancel the maid too. Cut down from three cars to only two. We are
totally spoiled. The county is similarly spoiled. If you use reserves to make up the difference this year and do some hard budget cutting and still have a big deficit next year, then a tax increase could be warranted. Not now. The problem
is you have done none of the heavy lifting and want to kick the can into our wallets and do it now to boot. If this is not the rainy day to use our reserves, what will ever be that rainy day? The county does not want to make the necessary hard decisions to cut
spending and we do not want to give you extra money to continue business as usual. When and where do these trains collide on election day? Thank you. Thank you. Anybody else?
No, sir. All right, we will close public input. Any questions for staff? Okay, Mr. Can you address the 50 years? Sure. The statute does not require any sunset de sunset date for this 5 cents.
We worked with the attorney's office um and decided to put in a 50-year date. It can be reviewed and repealed by the board at any time. And um our thought was we have a structural deficit that the general fund has to fund transportation costs. It's been happening for a number of years. Um so
that this would help offset that cost. Thank you. And would that mean by default it's reviewed each and every budget season? It would be. So it would be done every year. Yes. Okay. Commissioner Constantine. Thank you. Um I just want to address a
few other things. Uh, number one, the if if you sat through the presentation earlier today about the microtransit, which I think some of the people that mentioned about Sunrail did, they would hear that when they want to go into Orange County, we are dropping them off
at the Sunrail stations and therefore I think we are promoting the use more of Sunrail. the 50 years from my understanding and we just confirmed that is that we can change it and I have every 13 budgets I have gone
through at this county we have looked at that and just talked about whether we wanted to increase it decrease it and everything so we can do that every single year I love Mr. Cedon Mr. Creed. This county's general budget has been
imp in increased by 1.3% this year. 1.3. That means that it is less than the cost of living. It is less than inflation. If you have comments about that, I
respect it. And I would tell you that this county has worked very hard. the general revenue of this county to bring it only at 1.3%. That's everything this commission controls. I will also tell you that your constitutional officers have increased
an average by 9%. So if somebody wants to look at cutting, that may be the place to start look at cutting. This county commission has cut to 1.3%. Which of the $10 million that we have received increase this year, we're only
taking two. The other plus 20 that is being asked for, almost 20 being asked for is coming from the constitutional officers. Garbage is a user fee, not a general revenue fee. So we you know that is
something that is already being paid for by the citizens that use it and if you know if they felt that and we feel that they could do that that is something else as we go through another contract which is coming up soon and has been discussed by the way and Mr. Celery, I
am looking forward because I am looking at other alternatives in the budget for the future as I think every one of these commissioners are as we go to the advorum and I am welcoming you and asking you to as did the Americans for Prosperity called me yesterday said they
wanted to work with me on the budget and I said fine I'll be happy to because we will take every and any idea to reduce this because this this advalorum has not been increased for 17 years and as I've said before. I don't think there's a person in this audience that has not had
an increase in their salary in 17 years. Um, I also wanted to say about cutting employees. We did that once back in 2007. I wasn't here. Commissioner was a work was working here. Commissioner was here. That not
only was painful, but that cut into the real services of this county and we are just catching up to that. But I will also say one statistic that many people don't understand or know about is that we have the lowest percentage of employees to citizens in the state.
Think about that guys. The lowest percentage of employees to citizens I know for a fact in the region and I I'm I think it may even be the state in looking at some of the statistics. Mr. Chairman. Yes, sir.
I move the approval of the 5 cent gas local option fuel tax. It is a user fee, not not a tax per se. Second. Motion second. Any further discussion? Commissioner Lockhart. I I do have a couple of questions. Um,
no, that's okay. I I So, I have had citizens reach out to me and ask um how will electric people who drive electric vehicles contribute to this? and I shared with them that I believe that that was something that the state had not given us the ability to say grace over. Can you speak to how electric
vehicles may or may not be able to contribute to this fund? My understanding is this tax is only on motor fuel. So, this would not impact uh electric vehicles um that are using that are buying gas to power the vehicle. So, if we wanted to look at having this be a
fairer and more equitable uh distribution, that would be something we would have to look to the legislature for. Is that correct? That's correct. They are working on that. I have heard that. I have heard that. But for the people who said, "I will only support this if electric vehicle drivers have skin in the game." We we
are not at a place where we can make that decision today. That's Yeah. Okay. Um how much will this benefit our city partners? Do have we done the math on that? So the total countywide revenue estimate was 8.8 million. Um our our projection is that the county would receive 5.5 and
the cities would receive the remaining 3.3 million distributed among the the seven in various ways according to how much is sold in their respective city based on last 5 years of transportation related expenditures. That's that's the formula from the do.
Got it. Thank you. And then have we discussed this with the cities? I I can answer that one if you want. Yes. Um I have been in communication with the cities. Actually we kicked it off beginning of this year when this board started discussing uh the possibility of this possible uh increase
for our local option gas tax. Uh we were looking to do interlocals with the the cities as well to look at transportation needs especially links expenditures that fund you know that go through the whole whole county. Cities uh has requested to wait until to see if this board was
willing to move forward with that. Once you all make your decision, I'll be reaching back out to the cities and discussing uh what the next steps are with them. Okay. But but to Mr. Jex's point, if there is no interlocals made with any of the seven cities, it goes through a distribution formula that the state will
decide how it gets distributed. Okay. Based on transportation expenses. And and I do want to again highlight I I think this has been said but I think it's really important that as we do look at the overall budget for decades our
general fund has supplemented our transportation budget. We have left dollars on the table if you will for the actual tool that the legislature has provided to us to pay for transportation by not implementing all of it and have supplemented from our general fund. And
so what that means is that other people uh other tax taxable homes, property owners um have been supplementing and footing the bill for transportation costs that they might not otherwise have to pay um by writing this ship and
having the things that have the rational nexus that go with one another pay for the items from which they're being um taxed just makes a lot more sense. And that is something that for years this board for whatever reason neglected to do. And um and I think we are as comm as
chairman Zenau has mentioned in the past that our perceived conservatism over the years has really put us into quite a hole right now. I also want to point out that in our prior conversations, we we would not be looking at other sources of increased revenue were our
constitutional officers making the same 1.3% increase in their budget that we are. Um, so continuing to say that because um, as much as we think of our constitutional officers as our partners, um, I think we are going to have to start suggesting that citizens who have
concerns over this budget and any tax increases start calling them because we are merely the conduit for their budget. And um, and I think that over time we need to be a little more um, what was the word? What was the word from this morning?
Shared sacrifice. I call it uh, aggressive. No. What was this morning's word? Outrage. Outrage. Outrage. Right. That was the word from this morning. Um I think we need to be a little a little more aggressive about those conversations. Commissioner Glory.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Back in March, as well as a trim notice, I expressed my concerns about this and I'll be voting accordingly and I will not be supporting it. Okay. Anything else? Commissioner her.
So, I think part of the public comment that we didn't address is the notion that we're doing three things at the same time. And the way we came to the conclusion that that was the fairest way to do this is exactly what Commissioner
Lockhart just mentioned. And that is the appropriate payment from the appropriate source to fund the appropriate county service. And so it wasn't that we were adding these on the smaller ones above what we needed. It was that we
solved for the minimum that we needed based on the constitutional officers and our needs all wrapped up and then allocated it back to the degree that we could to the appropriate users.
So doing all three at once is the best way to make sure that property owners don't bear the entire burden of the need. And I do think I think two commissioners have already said this, but we will look at this every year and
we look at spending every year and and I asked the question directly because there also is this misunderstanding and I certainly until I sat up here had the misunderstanding that if we say grace over somebody's budget, constitutional officers all come into here and it kind
of appears as though we get to say no. And quite honestly, it may appear as though we get to say no, but a no can result in an appeal to the state by those and it comes back mid year with the request that we don't win and we
can't fund. And now we're eating away the entire reserve. And that if you eat away the entire reserve, and George knows this, that means that you're digging out of a bigger hole in the future, which means that the chain that the increase may not be this level. and
I'm not willing to do that. In addition to the fact that I think that that we in this community live in a very safe environment and we appreciate that safe environment and I would like to keep it that way. And it's no secret the biggest
ask in this budget is coming from our public safety. And I'm not willing to sacrifice public safety for a small tax on gas that is often paid by folks that do not live here because we pay it when
we travel and a impact to utility that bears less burden to our taxpayers that are paying property tax and a property tax that actually will support public safety and keep our property values
where they are or higher. That's my intention to vote. And Mr. Chairman, since everybody else has said one more thing, I'll just say one thing. Oh, the chairman hasn't said a thing yet, but you go right ahead. You then please do. No, go ahead.
Um, I I wanted to repeat that just like the sales tax and I I think commissioner just said it. Just like the sales tax, this is going to be paid by about 30% of outside employees and our outside citizens. And you know there is an assumption also that the advalorum has
already been approved. The advalorum hasn't been approved yet. We are all working and including the staff to do everything we can to continue to work through that and try to minimize the increase. So to say that this was done after we have already done it has been
said has not happened yet. The advalorum has not been approved yet. So all all good points, perspectives from my fellow commissioners. So I won't endeavor upon repeating that, but I'm going to just take you a different angle. It's been 30 years.
The fuel efficiency in automobiles has increased by approximately 35% in the last 30 years. That means less fuel sold. That means less income. Number one. Number two, with the advent of EVs,
of which one of my fellow commissioners uh happens to own and enjoys driving them, that's great. That's less income through the gas tax because we're not buying fuel. Now, we can all argue those are great things, great things for the environment, great things for society,
but it does take an impact. A quick review of the statewide collections over the last 10 to 15 years. The gas tax in collections have been have been reducing steadily uh across across the board. Not just this county but the entire state as
a whole. These are about times of getting back to drawing a direct nexus to the revenue stream to the expense stream and that's what this will accomplish. Number one. Number two, there were some statements made about spendown reserves. Uh Mr. Creed, we have
spent down reserve since I arrived here uh at fighting tooth and nail with my fellow commissioners. They'll they'll vouch for that because I'm very adamant and very vocal about that. Um now we're down to a point where the reserves are in such a position that not knowing what
is going to happen with FEMA dollars flowing during a disaster, we may find ourselves in a pretty bad place. Uh so reserves have been at my insistence and and and at very good dialogue with my fellow commissioners. We're now back to where
it should be, which is what the government accounting experts claim they should be. Uh which is about what 3 to four months worth of overhead. Mr. Js, is that where we're at? Two months about 17%. Yeah. So we're in line there. When I
arrived here, it was 26% was the reserves in this county. um and not including the carry forwards which was probably another four or 5%. So those have gone away uh under this commission's perview. So I I would tell
you to ask the question which is more conservative waiting to the last minute to raise an increase or raising it long before it's due and necessary. I would argue the conservative thing to do is when it's
appropriate. So, this county has been conservative not only with this option tax for near 30 plus years, but as well as the other taxes that Mr. Cedon was referring to during our regular budget. I would agree that we have some
struggles in the budget as far as our constitutionals. They have different needs than what we have. public service does come first and like Commissioner her, I'm not willing to put public safety at risk for this county, uh, our residents, my children, my
grandchildren, uh, for the future of what really is best for this community, what this community has not only demanded, quite honestly, deserve, uh, the quality of life that that they've enjoyed and will continue to enjoy as this moves forward. So with that said uh
I will call the question. All those in favor I opposed. Nay. 41 passes unanimously. 41. 41. Sorry. Super majority. All right. Our next item up is
number 26. Consider an ordinance amending chapter 245 of the Semino County Code relating to public service tax. Mr. Jacks, you're up again. Item number 26 is an ordinance to amend county code related to the public service tax levied in the unincorporated
area of Semino County. This item was advertised in the Orlando Sentinel on Friday, August 1st. The agenda for this presentation includes background information, how the funds will be used, providing surrounding county comparisons, discussing the specifics on the proposed amendment, the fiscal impact on
taxpayers, next steps, and requested action. Under Florida statute 166.23, 231 counties are allowed by law to levy attacks on public services including electricity, water service, natural gas, and propane. The county currently levies
4% on these services in the unincorporated area. This amendment is separate from and does not affect the rates currently levied by the cities. The current public service tax levy generates $9 million in our general fund. These revenues are not legally
restricted to a specific function and this increase would be used to support existing general funded services including public safety, transportation, and parks. This tax does not support the county's water utility system and the cities control their own tax rate percentages.
Looking at surrounding agency comparisons, the chart on the left shows what our surrounding counties are levying. All counties levy 10% except Acyola who is at 8%. On the right side, you see that six of the seven counties in Semino County also, excuse me, six of
the seven cities in Semino County levy 10% and the city of Altoont levies 8%. With this item, we're proposing to increase the existing public service tax levy from 4% to 10%. It requires a majority vote by the BCC to approve. The
increase would generate approximately $13 million annually. The FY26 proposed budget includes $9.8 8 million based on nine months of collections starting January 1st, 2026. And the increase would help offset the cost burden of existing services to current general
fund taxpayers. Here we look at an average household with a usage of 1,600 kilowatt hours per month and a bill of $200. Note that the first 300 kilwatt hours are exempt from the tax. So, the increase from 4 to 10% would cost approximately $9 per month
per household or $3 per person. If approved, the ordinance is due to the Florida Department of Revenue by September 3rd in order for collections to begin on January 1st, 2026. That concludes my presentation. Thank you, Mr. JS. Any questions for Mr.
JS? Seeing none, we will go to public input. Miss Dominique, do we have some speakers on this matter? Yes, sir. We have George Celery and Win Adams. So, we have Mr. Adams, Mr. Celery.
No one else? No, sir. Okay. Commissioners, uh, Win Adams, 646 Fellowship Drive, Fern Park, Florida 32730-2792. My question is why is this only applying
to the unincorporated seminal county? We'll get you an answer for that in a minute. Great. Thank you, Mr. Celery. Celery 5231 Shoreline Circle, Sanford,
Florida 32771. Commissioner, I just was really quick trying to fact check the one on the gasoline tax revenue going down, but I couldn't except that millions and millions and millions of new Florida residents have moved here with cars. So, I'll get that information to see if it's
gone down for the last 15 years, and I will also have some stuff on the budget in September for everybody to look at. Hopefully, it'll help. Um, this is from your proposal and stuff. I just wanted you to take a look. um re reduces burden on property taxpayers and I'm not sure
how with the millage increase going up a half a mill um and remember we have a very large historic almost FPNL increase looks like they've negotiated an agreement that no one knows what the final amount is but right now that's a
lot of money possibly coming our way so this is what I wanted to show you this is from your budget document that came out and so I wanted Want to make sure that you look at this fiscal year 24 9.9 million for 4%. That same 4% grew to 9.3
and it's expected to grow to 9.6 at 4%. Your bottom line there, read this says this does not include the 13.1 million that you'll get for this additional 6%. So that one there is really 22.7 million
that you'll be getting. I think my math is pretty correct on that, but you know, I'm just going by adding the 13.1 that's right there on the slide from your budget prep document. Um, going to the next one really quick. Um, I wanted to
touch base on this. The first 300 kilowatt hours exempt from the tax. Okay, that is not in your ordinance. State law allows it. If you go to the next slide, state law allows this to go to um and even though it says municipality at the top, it's your same
Florida statute because that's for charter counties. Also, it says you can exempt that first 500 kilowatt hours. It is not in your ordinance. Your 300's not in your ordinance. Your 500's not in your ordinance. I encourage you to put it in the ordinance so that those people
who are the least fortunate or on really tight fixed incomes, mobile homes, modular homes, one single story, can't afford it, they're on a fixed income. At least the first 500 kilowatts would be exempt from this. So again, I checked my
bill. I couldn't see where 300 kilwatt hours was exempt, but I think it needs to be in your ordinance. So if you do anything, don't do anything else. At least put that in the ordinance and protect those that really need protection. All right. Thank you very much. Thank you, M. Cry.
All right. We will close public input. Um we have a pending question. Staff could answer that for Mr. Adams if you would real quick. And for the general public, explain why it's only the unincorporated area. Yeah. Each uh government in in the
county is responsible for their own levy. So it's under Florida statute. The county controls the unincorporated area and each individual cities control their own levies. So the cities do pay that percentage. I showed the chart that showed they're already paying the 10% and then 8% announce a month. Right. Okay. Want to make sure we got
that on the record. Any further questions for staff? All right. We'll go to board action. Thank you, Mr. JS. As Mr. Chair, yes, Commissioner Consting, I don't believe that any of my fellow
commissioners live in the incorporated cities. If I'm wrong, I do. You do. Okay. You do, Geneva? No, I'm um So, I'm an uninorporator. Yeah. Okay. So, as Mr. Adams has asked I
think then three of us are paying this uh and have been paying this already because the cities all levy it um to the highest except for Altoont which is at eight instead of 10%. Um so you know as as Mr. J said that um it is um you know
it is something that only the unincorporated have not been spending. Um, and uh, I don't want to jump the gun again. So, if other people have questions, I'll let them questions. Commissioner her, I do think we need an answer as to the
initial exemption piece of it. Does it need to be in the ordinance? The way I'm reading the ordinance is the ordinance's amendment to a prior ordinance? Yes. The existing ordinance that's in the code, it just wasn't modified, uh, provides for the 300 kilowatt exemption.
Um the the county is permitted to exempt up to 500 kilowatts, but um the current rate was 300 in your code and we left that unchanged. And would that exemption only apply to those who need an exemption or does that apply across the population? It applies to residences.
All residences. Residential use. Residential use. Right. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think I think Commissioner Constantine point something out that that's pretty important. Each of us is a resident and taxpayer in
this county. We are not somehow exempt from the conversations that are being had today. The the skin that is in the game is ours as well. Um, so I think it's important to know that um we are we are not
somehow up on a high horse, not uh down in the trenches with with all of the other it was interesting that uh couldn't help but chuckle when Mr. Cedon mentioned, you know, well, you might have to go from three cars down to two or, you know, you might have to let the housekeeper go. I mean, that's that's a
whole another world that I think some folks may be living in in Semol County. I I am um I am squarely in in the middle upper middle class of this community and don't have three cars. So I don't have one to get rid of. Um so I think maybe
some of us realize how impactful really how impactful this is to our everyday citizens and we do not take it lightly. um take it very seriously, but we also have a responsibility to keep the quality of life and to keep the safety um in place. I I had a call from a
resident um recently and they said, um I live in Semol County for a reason and I've benefited from having the lowest taxes in the region for quite some time. If if you're telling me that in order for Semol County to stay the county that
it is from a crime rate and quality of life perspective that you need to increase taxes and still be the lowest in the region. I would much rather do that and be able to stay living in Semino County and enjoying being a county citizen than
have us start to devolve into what other neighboring counties may um experience with their quality of life. So that it spoke volumes to me because because that person is actually the president of one of our Republican clubs in town and I was not expecting that to be the
narrative from that individual. Um because the narrative of course among some is that you know all taxes are evil, taxes theft. I mean I we we hear the narrative regularly. The problem is until there is an alternative to provide the services that our citizens need,
like the fire department showing up when you have a heart attack or the sheriff showing up when there is some type of altercation or any of the number of things that we do when a storm comes and we need to protect our citizens. All of those things, all of those services are
delivered because citizens in this community contribute toward those services. So if if there are other suggestions for ways to deliver those services, I know every single one of us would be open to having those conversations. But right now th that's
the tool in our toolbox. And um I uh I can't I just can't let it go. Um former Commissioner Adams uh came up to me at a recent event and asked me if we could please put air conditioning at the Sunreil stations and and that would be
lovely, but you know what? It's that gas tax that would help pay for that. So if we want things like country comfort creatures of creature comforts creature comforts of air conditioning sunrail stations, the money has to come from somewhere and
we are not for the record air conditioning sunil stations. We do not have the money to do that. But I think it it was an example to me of the disconnect of the awareness of what citizens understand that it takes to run
this community, not just on behalf of the board of county commissioners and the services that we provide, but the services that the constitutional officers like the sheriff provide as well. Um, I needed to get that out. Chairman, can I just add one little tiny thing to that?
all of that and the jail that we have in this community that locks up criminals is our responsibility. It falls under the sheriff's budget, but it's not a state-run organization. It's comes out of this budget and all of the expenses
that go along with that fall under this budget. So, we don't ever mention that very often and we say, you know, public safety is taken up more and more and more of the budget. In some communities, the jail fund falls under the county portion of the budget. So that
percentage is a little distorted for us in Semino County, but the expenses associated with housing people even in that scenario are continuing to increase. And from my perspective, if somebody deserves to be in a jail, they need to be in a jail. They don't need to
be on the street. So, yet another area that kind of happens all in the background that we fund that we need to continue to fund, but we don't talk about that one. I just thought I'd make sure we thought about it. And you've got the medical examiner's expense. Yes. Which is a whole another one uh that the
county has the burden of of funding and and frankly because of some of the decisions that have made at the state level have been shifted to us that otherwise we previously were not funding. uh same from the federals. But you know to Commissioner uh Lockheart's
point, we are all taxpayers of this county. Um and you know in my instance, my business operates here. Well, guess what? My business does not get a break on the tax property tax because I can't homestead commercial property. I also
don't get a break for all my vehicles in my business that operate on gasoline or u use that tax. Uh, so I'm very sensitive to that. How it impacts my business, how it impacts my employees, how it impacts my neighbors. Um, so we all understand it and I would tell you
this is not something that was looked at in a vacuum. As I spoke about uh during our regular budget session, staff was putting this on our radar three years ago that this day was coming and there was going to be tough decision that had to be made. You're either cutting
services or you're going to have to increase revenue. Well, during that three-year period of time, as I look back, it actually was accelerated by other mandates that were then shifted to the county over that three-year period of time that we didn't know about 3
years ago. So here we are uh still being able to provide high quality of and level of service uh to our citizens uh low crime rates all the things that that give us a good quality of life and we would still be the cheapest in the
region from a tax cost standpoint. Uh we owe that to our citizens. I've had many of the same calls that Commissioner Lockhart has had. I recently spoke to uh one of the Republican groups this past week. Um it was surprised uh during that
discussion once they clearly understand it and you can see the budget and like Commissioner Constine says, it's an open book. If somebody's got a magic wand that can show us where the money can come from after all the cuts we've already done, not only this year, but over the previous couple years, and
we've told our staff in January, go find the cuts. And then we did it again in March, then we move forward to July, and again, the county commission's portion of that budget is going up by 1.3%. 1.3.
I don't know of an employee that works anywhere that isn't getting at least a three or 4% increase just cost of living. If you look at at some of these taxes when they were put in place and run the the cost of living increase on it, quite frankly, they should probably
be three times what they actually are being considered to be done today to serve the same purpose they did when they were put in place. Um so from that perspective, um I'll be supporting this request from staff. Anyone else?
All right, I'll look for board action. Commissioners, I'll move the uh ordinance as stated. How about that? Second. Motion and second. Any further discussion? All those in favor? I oppose like sign. Nay.
Four to one. All right. Let's take a quick 10-minute break and we'll come back for the county attorney's report. Will you be ready then, madam? I'm ready now. Okay. Ready when you guys are.
All right. Thank you. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Hallelujah. She's a good girl. She Folks, we're back in session. The time is now 3:06. And next up is the county attorney's
report. Miss Lour. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have one item I need direction on from the board. Um, this is this is a result of a conversation I had recently with the sheriff's chief counsel. He had wanted to discuss with
me a challenge that the sheriff's office has had recently enforcing the county's sexual offender sexual predator ordinance. Um there was a an individual designated as a sexual offender who was seeking permission to live within 1,00 ft of a playground which is restricted
by the county code. Um and the the argument was made um well let me back up. Sheriff's Department interpreted the definition of playground to include a community swimming pool because the playground definition includes the
phrase an established or dedicated outdoor area for recreation and play. So, in the sheriff's office interpretation, they thought that would include a community swimming pool. Um, the circuit court judge disagreed with the sheriff's office and allowed this person who was a registered sexual
offender to have this residence within 1,000 ft of this community pool. So, the request came in, does the board want to clarify their ordinance to include community pools, bodies of water in their ordinance in the definition of playground?
My answer is yes. That's the question. How fast can you bring it back to us? My first question. Yes. And who is the judge? Rex Seedler. Fascinating. As I understand the ruling was because the ordinance specifically did not say
pool or community pool. Yeah. The definition of playground just it's a general an established or dedicated outdoor area for recreation and play. And then it says including by way of example but not limitation soccer fields, baseball diamonds, football
fields, and locations with outdoor equipment such as by way of example and not limitation, swimming sets, climbing apparatus, and slides. So the sheriff's office looked at a dedicated outdoor area for recreation and play to include a swimming pool. Um,
which I think is reasonable, but as the legislative body, if you would like to clarify that, we can do that very easily. Let's clarify. My comment would be we need to clarify it, but we don't need to clarify it specific to a pool. So there could be other situations where
there are community gathering areas where children go and play, where there isn't equipment, where there isn't all the stuff that's not in there that could we could end up right back here again. So we need to think about it from the perspective of where do children gather
to hang out alone which I think is the intention of the ordinance without being too restrictive. I don't think it's just a pool. Yeah. I I think pool should be delineated as one of the examples. Agreed. And um but I think we've got to be careful
leaving it so broad as to anywhere children may assemble because you could have neighborhood children assemble on a street corner outside the front pl of somebody who is not supposed to be around children uh and then violate you know their rights what what
they may have. Uh, I I think the state legislative intent was for known gathering areas, which is typically playgrounds, school areas, those kinds of things. I certainly would would not want to put somebody in a position that
they're going to be charged just because children decided to, you know, play on a vacant field next to their home because it was the only vacant property in the neighborhood they could play soccer on. So, that's not the intention of my request. The intention of my request is to let the lawyers write the ordinance.
Oh yeah. With the idea that we are protecting the children in the anywhere we can. Great. That's the intention of the request. I'm in. I'm not writing the law from the das. The mistake was to put examples, you know. Or not enough examples, you know. Well, no, to put examples. I
think the intent of the law was clear and then they said such as, and that was the mistake. So I hear the direction of the board to bring something back and we will look at examples maybe how other communities have defined it the state and um try to address this
situation and can you coordinate with sheriff's council to make sure they're absolutely collaborating the only request only additional request I'm sure we've heard it from up here just bring it back as soon as possible. Yeah. Commissioner Lockhart, we've had other um situations regarding
implementation of our code where there's been some um need for clarification on the part of the sheriff's office. Can you ask him what other uh council what other clarification they may desire in other areas as well? And maybe we can do
them. I don't want to hold this one up, but let's go ahead and get any other things that they need clarification on done as well, so we can get those in one wrapped up. Okay. There were other things I think animal services was the other area that comes to mind for me.
All right. Doggy dogs. That's all I had. Chairman, that's all you have. Okay. County manager report. Do you have anything before we go to the big presentation? Uh, yes. Just one great news item that I want to announce if he's here. Mr. Rick
Dur, stand up. He is getting at the end of this month, he is going to be inducted as the state president of the Florida Recreation and Parks Association for the next year. So very proud of Rick and all of his professionalism and when
uh when we have a staff person running, you know, in a state role such as that really impacts us and it shows the leadership that Rick Dur and his team has done. So thank you, Rick. Good work. Now on to Johnny. All right, Mr. Johnny Edwards. This is
going to be our utilities master plan number four. All right. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and commissioners. I greatly appreciate the opportunity to uh present to you today. I'm Johnny Edwards, the utilities director, and presenting with me is Mr. Steve Riley of Jacobs.
Uh the purpose of today's uh presentation is to update the board uh on our capital uh our our draft capital improvement plan master plan updates. Uh the board understanding the uh value and investing in having reliable utility
services has invested in assessments um of key assets and we wanted for to present some of the findings and recommendations and help explain how those will plug into our eventual capital improvement plan draft when we present it to the board. Um and then
talk about um our 20-year schedule um in in the master plan for CIP. Uh today's agenda just wanted to touch briefly on some of the previous work sessions that we've had to remind the board about what we t talked about um and then get into the evaluations the finding of of the
various evaluations and then close out with the uh proposed master plan schedule for completing the work sessions. Um in our first work session last September, we talked about demand projections. Um looked at the history of this master plan development. uh looked
at the utility areas and talked about the main water users uh discussed the benefits of conservation and our holistic water policy programs uh and compared the water demand projections to anticipated changes in regulations. In our second work session in November, uh
we talked about some of the trends of uh aquafer withdrawal from our 26 water supply wells and looked particularly at the northeast northwest uh consumptive use permit where uh we uh risk exceeding our cup allocation. Um, and in addition,
there are new uh restrictions in in the near future from the Central Florida Water Initiative that we anticipate when we go to renew our consumptive use permit with the water management district in a few years. Um, and our compliance plan to meet these new restrictions includes expanding the use
of our reclaimed water system, uh, more conservation efforts and looking at alternate uh, sources of water supply. Uh in the third work session we talked about our treatment plants and transmission means uh we're not in a rapid state of growth. Uh so we focus
more on renewal and rehabilitation of our assets. Uh we aren't looking at water treatment plant capacity expansions assuming that we can realize uh the benefits of our reclaimed water expansion and conservation efforts. Um the water treatment plant RNR would
focus primarily on ozone and SCADA and Steve will get in more into that. uh in a little bit but our water reclamation facilities and again we're talking about wastewater uh we need RNR there and t to talk about capacity expans expansions
during the course of the 20-year CIP um and we also mentioned at our prior prior work session that we were conducting assessments to look at again the key several key assets first one I want to talk about is the Greenwood Lakes water reclamation facility in the spring of 23
uh we renewed the permit and had a uh capacity assessment at that time um in support of the permit renewal in the fall of 23 with a large development. It forced us to take a much closer look at the Greenwood Lakes uh water reclamation
facility um and what the large increase in wastewater flows from this development might cause for this plant. Uh so we had an much more in-depth capacity analysis and facility assessment for the plant. Um, and the results, which I'll get into more detail
in just a second, indicates that the plant does not meet class one reliability standards. Uh, these are FD standards for any wastewater uh plant that is used to, um, in in our case u provide public access reuse reclaimed
water. Um, and we also looked at different options for expanding the facility. I don't expect anybody to be able to read this table with the fonts there, but um this is a a summary table in the report. Um and and it looked at class one reliability standards. And
just to focus on a few rows, the second row um talks about our elevated u pre-treatment structure. These are the headworks of the plant. Uh it's um there is not a class one reliability standard for the headworks, but we know it needs work. Um and we've plugged this into our
proposed budget uh for next year to start working on design to replace or rehabilit rehabilitate the structure. Um several lines down there's a no uh that um related to secondary clarifiers and it pretty explicitly states we have two
uh we need a third clarifier in order to meet these reliability standards. As it stands now, um the flow coming into the plant is at such a level that we can't take one offline to maintain it or rehabilitate it um without a third. And
last line uh on the table to the right is a belt filter press. This is how we dry the sludge uh for transport, for final disposal. Uh we have one. If it goes down, we have to start exploring other means like tankering, putting sludge in tankers to take to our Yankee
Lake plant. Um on the right is a map of the facility. To the bottom left of that map just shows the clarifiers that I mentioned previously. Um the table to the left is actually from a different report. Um it's still in draft form as you can see with the stamp there, but I thought there were some important
numbers to point out. Um in the right hand column um you see the numbers kind of hover around 80%. These are uh annual average daily flow and and and a maximum of three month um average daily flow. Um
so these are average numbers of what's coming into the plant relative to the plant's rated capacity. We're at about 80%. Um engineers might recommend that we need to start planning uh at this point for expanding the plant. Um, and if you go down another row, you see
101%. Um, this is the maximum daily flow that we experienced during Hurricane Milton. Um, you know, more flow than the plant can really handle in a maximum day. Um, so a couple months ago, we asked the board
uh for permission and applied for state revolving funds with 50% forgiveness to help us address some of these items. uh the class one reliability um standards with new headworks that we just talked about. Uh we included a request for $31.6 million. Um the 2 milliongal
equalization tank that would enable us to handle that surge, that 101% during a storm. We can take the storm flow, put it into the tank, and uh feed it into the plant as the plant can handle it to keep that flow down during the peak of
the storm. uh a new generator. The plant needs a new generator at the plant for emergency backup power. And we also included in the request conveyance improvements um to alleviate essentially upstream bottlenecks as well as to give us the flexibility to transfer flow from
Greenwood Lakes to our other wastewater treatment plant at Yankee Lake. So how does that flow get from 80% to 101%? It's not just people staying home during the rain, flushing toilets, and taking showers. it's uh infiltration and inflow uh groundwater infiltration,
storm water inflow. Uh this results from cracks and leaks um in in the pipe joints and and manhole joints primarily. Um but there's also missing cleanout caps and unpermitted storm water connections um intuitively ini is higher when the water table is higher during
the wet season. Um and peaks during and following significant rain events. Well, what's what's the problem with that? Um it increases the risk of sanitary sewer overflows, sewage spills, uh usually at a pump station that gets overwhelmed by this surge uh resulting from INI, uh but
can also cause problems at the treatment plants. Um so we had an INI evaluation conducted. We started one uh last summer. We're doing another one this summer. the the results of the one last summer and and we initiated this in response to uh 2023 regulation, a new
regulation from the state department of environmental protection requiring that we evaluate at least 25% of the gravity sewer system every 5 years. Um so as part of our study uh we installed or had a consultant install 50 flow meters uh and they evaluated measured ini in about
a third of our system. um just picked a couple uh tables and this is a a 900 again this is still a draft report. It's a 900page report backed with graphs and tables and figures. I picked a few um just to illustrate one. We have 1.8
million uh linear feet of gravity main in our system and nearly 9,000 manholes. That's a lot of area of exposure uh for INI. Um their results and I'll just summarize this briefly. Um during uh dry conditions, we had a few areas of
concern with groundwater infiltration. Um but then when we had significant uh storm events like Hurricane Melton, another um specific event that they looked at, um the numbers jumped up pretty dramatically as to how much storm
water inflow gets into our sewer. Uh the recommendations, this is a summary table. Again, it's a draft from the report, but it just um provides some quantities. um of linear feet of pipe where we might need to look at additional flow monitoring or have additional investigation. We talk about
find and fix programs. Um we do CCTV and smoke testing to identify the problems. Where are the leaks and how do we address them? And these are some cost estimates um in the report um that we would turn over to the master planner and say, "Hey, as you're developing the CIP and looking out long range, these
are the types of numbers that you need to feed into the CIP so that we can address these problems." And with that, I'll turn it over to Steve. Thank you, Johnny. Good afternoon, chairman and members of the board. I'm Steve Riley, a project
manager with Jacobs Engineering located at 200 South Orange Avenue in Orlando. Um, switching the topic over to drinking water. Earlier this year, uh, Jacobs was asked to conduct an independent review for the county of your advanced water
treatment plants. Uh, these include the Yankee Lake surface water plant, the Markham Regional Plant, Country Club, and Southeast Regional Plant. The three water plants mentioned all use ozone uh for advanced treatment and the Yankee
Lake plant uses other um uh processes to treat surface water for use in reclaimed water augmentation. Uh we did a condition assessment of the four water plants and a review of the operations. Um during the condition
assessment we looked at the buildings, electrical systems, the treatment processes, the chemical systems, pumping, SCADA, uh which Johnny mentioned, which is basically the automated control system that controls the processes and reports back to your
central control system. We also looked at the water supply wells. Uh quickly to review each plant, and you'll see a recurring theme here. Uh the SCADA system while its overall architecture is sound, the individual controllers within
the system are very old. Uh they're obsolete. They have limited functionality and unfortunately they're provided by a proprietary vendor who can the only one allowed to service these units. you have uh there's only two
authorized suppliers in the entire southeast US and the replacement of these um components was recommended in a previous master plan work session and also recommended a few years back in the SCADA master plan you had prepared. Um
the operations and maintenance review was found to be well all of these uh plants are in the 13 to 15 year old age range right now. So some of their equipment, especially the heavier rotating machinery type equipment, is in
need of RNR work and in some ca in some cases replacement. At this particular plant, we identified a need for about $9 million in RNR work over the next 20 years, which is also the planning period for the master plan.
the Markham Regional Plant, which is a larger plant, similar issues with SCADA upgrades needed. ON&M needed or or RNR needed um for aging facilities and about $19 million of improvements in the next 20 years. The Southeast Regional Plant,
which is your largest water plant and also serves as the control center for all your facilities, needs SCADA upgrades and about $10 million in improvements. And the Yankee Lake plant, which is the plant that draws surface water and
provides it for reclaimed water augmentation, it has suffered from underutilization in its past 13 or 14 years of service. Uh the demand just hasn't been there. But in the master plan, as we presented previously, there is a plan to expand the reclaim water
system, get the demand up, hopefully get that plant to a place where it can operate continuously, which is going to be better for operations and the lifetime of the equipment. Uh, SCADA there also needs replacement. Um, there's also some enhancement treatment
enhancement recommendations that have recently been prepared by another consultant for you. The RNR needs are estimated to be about eight million dollars over the next 20 years. In separate from the condition assessment, we also reviewed the
operations of these four facilities. We looked at process control, regulatory compliance, maintenance management, health and safety management, and staffing adequacy. The findings of our study were that all
four facilities are in compliance with Florida Department of Environmental Protection regulations. The plants are all operated well with no major operational deficiencies or issues observed. Maintenance is a challenge. Um you the
county is un under um staffed in terms of both maintenance personnel and operations personnel. the folks you have on staff are doing an outstanding job, but frankly um they're often required to uh come and do corrective maintenance to
fix something that's broken. They don't have the enough staff members to get in there and do predictive maintenance ahead of time. Uh there are about another six or so mechanics that are needed and the total water department is underst staffed to a level of about 20
positions to get to full full staffing ability. Um the operations assessment noted the SCADA problems which leads to operational inefficiencies. And when we look at the total financial needs for RNR work over the 20-year
period, we're looking at about $46 million. All right. So, I just wanted to close real quick with a look ahead. Um again today we talked about the three previous work sessions. Today is the asset assessment. Uh we plan to come back in
November with the draft uh CIP uh to present to the board and wrap it up in December uh in the BCC meeting in December. That would be our final uh master plan report. Um and with that our presentation is concluded and open it up
to the board. Thank you very much. We appreciate you and Jacobs both being here to give us this overview. Um, we'll start at uh, Commissioner Lockheart's end and work our way across. Johnny and I had a great briefing uh,
prior to this presentation and um, I'm I'm excited to get to the place where we're able to start making some decisions so that you know what direction you're headed in moving forward. And I think we're on the right track. I mean obviously um we have we have needs in order to keep the systems
running and keep them pumping out safe water for our citizens and um looking forward to making some of those decisions. So, we know that that will happen for many, many years to come. Maybe even 50, maybe even. I don't know. Like planning ahead.
It's this weird concept. It's really weird. Commissioner Constine. Well, clearly this is one thing that the citizens never think about. They turn on their water and they wonder, they don't ever wonder where it came from. They flush their toilets. They don't know
where it goes. Um but it's probably the most important um uh service that uh can be provided by um uh the county short of public safety. So um providing clean portable water to
drink and cleaning um the rest. So, um I'm just as as Commissioner Lockheart said, I'm looking forward to this continuing work sessions and uh and look forward to some really positive things for long-term planning coming about. Great. Commissioner,
thank you, Mr. Ch. First of all, Johnny and Steve, thank you very much for the presentation. Uh do have a couple quick questions. Uh I know you've dug a little bit deeper into INI right now. You said we've started working on it. We've done a little bit of it last year. I think
that's what I heard. Uh do we have the policies in place on what is the percentages of uh ini for the maximum daily flow that is allowable or should we or we going to be getting that at the master plan process?
Um so I talked to staff about standards for INI. You know, we've we've looked to the EPA and they have a couple different recommendations in in different units. Um and and that is something that as as we work with staff and actually program management um helping our staff develop
key performance indicators um and comparing ourselves through the American Waterworks Association uh benchmarking consortium uh compare our results uh to other uh utilities but um looking at a standard uh that is measurable um and to
hold ourselves accountable for INI that is something that we're working on. Will we be getting that at the completion of the master plan in December? I don't know. That is not something that we had planned for the master plan, but that is something that's more of a a
staff uh process SOP. Um something that we would look at, you know, wanting to hold ourselves and, you know, maintain maintain our assets. All right. What about uh I know at one point, maybe it's not in the master plan, we talked about doing an audit on some of our existing sanitary customers
to make sure that what they've committed to on demand is actually the demand that they're actually flowing. Are we going to be looking at that as well? Um, so we would look at I would say more specifically maybe the portable
customers but um just because that's where the meters are and and we can actually compare what you know they but it's just equally as important on the senator side as well. Yes sir. Okay. So we can look at that. Okay. And then this question probably for Steve I know Steve you talked about
one of our plants most of our plants have ozone but one has uh non it's non ozone. One way to do it is chloromine and those systems are more uh labor intensive uh to actually maintain. Uh
we'll be looking at actually any type of conversions of those systems so that we can reduce our on and m and our water that's going to be needed to flush those systems. you are um fortunate enough to have high quality groundwater that can let you
enable you to use the free chlorine and especially the investment that you made in your ozone systems a decade or so ago uh turned out to be a very good move because that avoids the need uh you can use free chlorine correct and not have to use chloromine which as
you mentioned commissioner um chloromine involves combining chlorine with nitrogen it provides provides a very persistent disinfectant disinfectant in the water system. However, when that um chloromine degrades, it frees up
nitrogen, small levels of nitrogen in the water, that can lead to bacteria growth. So, um I think the best idea moving forward would be to stay with your free chlorine and your ozone. Oh, I understand that. But that you mentioned there was one plant that didn't have it. Are you gonna be looking
at that for the future to reduce our on&m? Um the water I think are you speaking of the Lynwood plant perhaps? Um it it it uses free chlorine. It does not have ozone but it's able to um maintain
regulatory compliance with the free chlorine. So I would say it best to stay with that. Okay. Thank you much. End of my statements. Commissioner her. Just by the by the untrained eye,
the majority of our assets are older than 2000. They're 25 years old plus, back to dates that predate me, which is pretty damn old. Um, and so I'm looking forward to the plan coming
forward, and I'm looking forward to us figuring out how to get this funded because we we cannot leave the community. um with this big gap that we've had. And so that's my perspective.
Let's talk about staffing next. Um is the staffing are they vacancies in the current budget? Yes. So we have been living off of vacancies for a while. We've narrowed down the
number of vacancies. I just wanted out on the record that there vacancies in the budget. That doesn't mean that they are part of any of the reductions that we've done. Correct. Yes. Yes. And so are we this is outside the general fund. Just so it is outside of the general fund. I
should have said that to start out with. Still we all connect all the dots from the audience. The are those vacancies being are we seeking to fill them now? Yes. And this is not and uh Mr. Mr. Edwards probably can comment better and I can. He's working with Christina
Brandolin in our HR department. This is not unique to seminal accounting. This is a short shortage in the industry. We've partnered with our consultants as well to help augment some of our our staffing, but we are working on a plan that once this is up and running that we can get fully staffed to where we need
because one of the things we've actually looked at is if do we need all of the positions that are vacant? And so that's another analysis we're going through as well and we'll have that complete this fall. And I think we've done that in past years as well. And so we've narrowed it
down. I just wanted to make sure that we get it out there that those are not 20 new positions. Those are 20 positions that are already in the budget and that are currently sitting vacant etc. And there's work underway. And that concludes my statements. Thank you. Um we still have the
collaboration agreements with the other cities for supplementing our needs for employees. Oh with employees not not so so we have interlocal agreements with all the cities for exchange of services like buying and
selling water and wastewater services but not for staff. So, at one point there was a staff sharing agreement that was put together by city of Alamont Springs uh to the other partners in the event we needed workers that could help
supplement each other and we had an agreement to share. So, it sounds like to me you're not aware of it and it sounds like to me that it probably has not been utilized or it probably was never a executed. Yeah, I'm I'm not aware of that agreement. I know that Florida Florida Warren has some emergency
cooperative efforts, but that sounds different than what you mentioned. Okay. Um, this may be a question for the county attorney. The current Seaman's and water quality litigation. Um, can can any of those
proceeds once they come and if they come be utilized for this purpose? For any of these purposes in the utilities? Well, the county is not currently involved in active litigation. We're in we're in pursuit discussions. Understood.
So, I think it would depend on the result of that sort of lawsuit or agreement or whatever is resolved with those parties. Okay. Are we considering land use entitlement capacities as part of the master plan?
In other words, have we looked at what is already either approved for development or has entitlements for improvements as part of this master plan? Yes. Wherever we um have information on
approved developments that have not occurred, we have accounted for their impacts, water, wastewater, and reclaimed. Um, additionally we did um assign some future growth to some of the core overlay corridor and overlay areas
identified planning and development um to make sure that we uh you know assess the capacity needs of those areas and put in any new infrastructure if necessary to serve them. Right. Yeah. My concern is the 1792 corridor which is marked for
redevelopment in the future. Um, and some of my concerns are we talked about conservative drone demise back in 200 678. Uh, the county hired Jacobs to come in and stand up some of these treatment
areas. Um, and put a program in place for the maintenance and monitoring and repair and and upgrade. uh which I come to find out later we did not follow uh that roadmap which ultimately has cost us time and money. Uh I've also gone
back and looked at some engineering documents that talked about uh infrastructure that was supposed to go on the ground and planned updates to lift stations um other piping scenarios uh but were never acted upon. Are we
certain we've dug through all that information and when we get this master plan all that's going to be there to be able to follow that roadmap? Well, so and I can so we have looked through with program management um you
know all the old engineering reports and studies you know everything that we have in our files to see what is applicable to the current master plan um that being developed you know what is what is dated um and and what is still you know projects that still need to happen. Um
so so yes is the answer to your question. You know we are we are looking at you know prior engineering studies I mean, the Reagan Center is a prime example that now we've determined after they've already gotten their approval to do that
that there was documents that date back 10, 15 years ago that talked about uh the need to improve lifts and structure to go in the ground. Um, and then once this was done, now they're told, well, we don't have the utilities. Uh, Oxford Road's another example. Um, you know,
those are things that I I I'm not looking to point fingers, but I want to make sure that we draw a clean line in the sand moving forward, that we've covered all those missing links that should have been covered or at least been discussed to the county commission
as to why they weren't being performed. Uh, and we find out after the fact. Just want to make sure we're capturing all of that. Yes, sir. because it's not going to be fair to future decision makers sitting here 20 years from now to go, well, it's supposed to be there. They're
going to have a new consultant that taxpayers are paid more money to go, well, yeah, well, y'all talked about that or plans to do that, but nobody ever did. That's my concern. So, I want to make sure I want to emphasize to me it's very important we're capturing all of what we believe needs to be captured.
And then finally, don't we have some agreements? We're supplying capacity to the city of Longwood, maybe some others that maybe are outdated. Yes. Um, are we looking at those as part of this master plan as to what the county
is actually supplying to other municipalities versus what we need to reserve ourselves? Yes. So, we have, like I mentioned before, interlocal agreements with all of the cities. the one with Longwood um has expired um but we're still you know
we still renew um the actual services and provide the services um for the wholesale fee um separate from the master plan development we are uh have an effort to uh renew and update those agreements and and the 23 just as an
example the 23 uh FD regulation that I mentioned before that's something you know that I would like to build into the agreement where wastewater services are provided just to make sure that these uh agreements address current regulations and um you know are fair on both sides of the equation.
No, and I agree and I want to be a fair partner with our with our cities um and our neighbors, but at the same time I don't want to short the county for a promise they've made that they can't fulfill their own obligations for those that have
entitlements to do those developments. And now we're telling somebody, well, if we if we weren't shipping capacity outside of our boundaries, we'd have it to do, right? So, I want to make sure that's covered and and it is part of the master plan in the grand scheme of things because if we can't plan for what
we're ultimately going to do with somebody like Longwood as they grow and demand more capacity, how are we going to handle that if they don't have their own capacity? Um, I don't want to put ours in peril uh by increasing capacity or reserve capacity
um and so that we don't put ourselves in the back seat when we should be in the front seat of that that vehicle. Mr. Chairman, what I'm saying? Yes, sir. Okay, Mr. Chairman, that was the audit that I hinted about that we talked about the developers that not using their full capacity that
they've actually told us that are on the reservation and that's part of it. Yeah. Yeah. And that will be coming chairman that will be coming back to you this fall as well because we are reviewing all all of those because this has come up in the past about Yeah. I want to make sure that I think
it's it's it's it's on us to make sure we set up future boards for success and not have them sitting where we're currently sitting right now digging out of a hole going, "How'd this happen?" Right? and it gets into, you know, and I know
this is enterprise fund to a certain extent, but there is some general fund dollars that play a role in this master plan. Um, and to the point where anability to get workers and so forth. Uh, this is yet another sign of
you make cuts to the point where even if you were able to get some of these people, you can't hire them, right? You know, we talked about police officers being in high demand. Well, this is another one. Wastewater plant workers, huge demand. Uh, when I talk to people around the country, it's like, we'd hire 100 of
them if we could. So, great. Good work. I appreciate it. I understand it's a a living document that's subject to change, but I just want to make sure that we hit all the things we suspect could change or move around other than
outside powers and pressures that come with regulations to make sure we're there. Mr. Lockheart, before you go away, this binder. Does this look familiar? Techno.
Utilities master plan binder addendum. Techpub SJ88-1. That That's the one Johnny that you submitted for a supplement. Okay. The other day. Yes, we had. What? Okay. So, I've looked at it. I I
understand what it is. item I'm so for those of you who don't have the binder in front of you is a trip down memory lane that is saltwater intrusion and coastal areas of Valuchia Boulevard and Indian River counties technical publication January 1988
and it is a it is a great document it is a trip down memory lane it gives all kinds of fascinating information how what through what lens do you want me to read this how what how am I utilizing
this information to make decisions in the future. Yes. So, so there was a comment uh at the last work session about looking into saltwater intrusion. Um I provided a short narrative um about how the the cup and CFWI I think um help um protect the
MFLs and and maybe limit saltwater intrusion in our area. Uh the St. John's River Water Management District has been looking at saltwater intrusion for decades and you know they they continue to monitor uh and and look at salt levels. Um but that is the most recent
uh technical publication we could find. So that's fascinating because if 1988 is the most recent technical document on something that seems to be an important topic that maybe that's something we need to talk about not for us but maybe talking with our partners at St. or
other maybe the East Central Florida Regional Planning Council. We could have conversation with them about that if this is something that we need to have updated information on. And and again, just looking locally, part of the narrative touched on the uh the Geneva bubble uh the Geneva Freshwater Lens and state statutes that
were enacted 20 years ago, I believe, to help protect protect that resource uh for that part of the county. Well, and we still have active sampling wells in the Geneva area that are that are checked by St. John's um to make sure if something's changing.
Well, let me ask part two. So, the very first page of the binder is uh project names, permit numbers, expiration dates, and actual usage of um gallons per MGDS
and I so are these current projects or are these all utilities? So, those are all the utilities in Semino County as provided by the St. John's River Water Management District. This data came from them. Okay. Um and the updated line in their Castleberry, I
believe back in April or May, got their cup updated. They had a recent cup issuance and it was it was cut way back. Their their cup allocation was restricted pretty significantly. Okay. Because some of these are expired, some are very near expiration and some are at or exceeding
their permit. What does that mean? I mean, what does that mean to us? It's important, but but I think how to Commissioner Zenau's point, if if we are if if we're selling some of our water to some of these other utilities and they're already at their
own max of their cups, what how does this impact us and are we going to need to do something to allocate for them? Um, well, so I know that's a lot of question that I know. I just I want to know when you give me information I want
to know exactly what type of decision I need to make with this information and what's available to me to do something about it or is it just wow this is really crappy I think what I think look what the commissioner is asking and I saw the
same thing was got all this information why do I have it and what what should I be paying attention to what what was your expectation me so I took an entirely different view of it. I'm just going to own this. I suspected that we got all this
information cuz one of us asked a question that is really your job and I said when they need me to review this I will be glad to review it. So there's there's the different styles of our board and governing managing and that that is correct and I will tell
you with as you know I'm trying to manage I want to make sure that I know that if am I supposed to govern information what am I going to do with it? Okay. I took a leap of faith and we will and what what if chairman if you will if so is you know how important this master plan is to this this county
and how many different versions the county has been through the master plan so I have told staff Mr. Edwards Mr. Swinson's involved in this too is that and that's why you all have these binders. Every presentation that we give to you, every question that is asked, the followup, everything that we want to
make sure that you every question that you ask, no matter uh if it's one or two or three of you, we're going to provide all of the information to all the commissioners. So, we'll do a better job to say that this if if this is the one that you know came from another one of your colleagues and that um we will, you
know, update you as appropriate with that. So, here's the surprise you might come to understand about all that. Everything that's in that booklet and all the answers and all the information, one or more of us are still going to have questions that the answer is in
that book. I don't think that's a surprise. Mr. Not a surprise. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. One of the reasons, one of the reasons why we have that book is because during our work sessions, I was talking to these two fine gentlemen about the salt intrusion
issue on the eastern part of the county, which has to do with Ovido, Geneva, and Chiliota. The city of Ovido did a study for saltwater intrusion back in 1998. Boil Engineering was the one that did it. Took them two years to do that study
that to put monitoring wells across the entire city to do it. That's when the city established a new water field off of Chapman Road outside the city limits to the west side of the city and I was looking for more information to see if the water in salt intrusion has migrated
to the west as they predicted back then. That's what I was looking for. Okay. I will is that in the binder? Not the part. I'll I'll coordinate with a veto to see if they have updated information that I can bring. That was the reason why I asked that question, okay, a couple of meetings ago, cuz I
was trying to understand how the salt intrusion because of the Geneva bubble. Yes, sir. It was threatened back then and it's still being threatened, but the salt intrusion is moving inland. Well, we just had a presentation by the water management district last year
on the Geneva bubble. I asked them to come give a presentation on the saltwater and everything we heard from them was that all the wells were checking just fine. There was no issues or concerns. I just wanted to see if there was any additional data that was out there and
that's what we did. I asked that question during one of our work sessions. Understood. Great. Anything else? I'm feeling rather vindicated. Nothing else. Thank you all very much. Very much. Anybody here from the public that wants to make a statement on this? No, sir.
We'll we'll try to make it. I believe this. Well, Nancy, I'll let you have it. Just as this is a special favor. Try to make it quick though. Yeah, I will. Nancy Harmon 752 Pioneer Way Geneva, Florida. So, as I'm listening to this, I'm I'm really happy
to hear it. Believe it or not, I'm happy to hear it because water is so important to us. And I've been concerned about our facilities for a long time because working for the DoD, we have this problem. So, seeing it, knowing it,
going, "Oh my god." Again, it's a good problem to have because at least you know where you're going to go, right? So, having said that, there are people in Geneva that I don't know if they're on the bubble, but they are getting saltwater intrusive. Oh,
yeah. A lot. Um, so it is happening because of where our wells are located that they're testing, which are really close on the top of the bubble. I think you're not seeing it. I'm not seeing it in my water, but I did have a dream the other
night that I had rust on my uh new shower tile and it was bad and I'm like, "Oh god, I got to call Jesse from the Welk I use." So, the really the concern that I have and I haven't heard it here is that um the EPA
the government the federal EPA is reducing their budget or their by 50%. And in the presentation that I heard the other day, they're saying, "Well, the states are going to have to take care of that problem. We're not going to manage." I don't know how much of this
we might depend on state of Florida to help us with money. I don't know about grants or things like that, but being we're talking about taxes and we're talking about where we're going to go. If the federal budget is doing away with
50% of their jobs, that means who's going to do the inspection, who's going to do the paperwork, that means everything that we're doing here to ensure our quality of water, it's our now job. So when you're talking about employees, it may be very important to
look for people who are regulatory and who can separate within your in your water department, the Nazis, if you want to call them that. to come and look at everybody and go, "What are you doing to make sure our water is right?" You know, you're you're overseers.
Just a thought because as more and more cuts come, we as a state, we as a city, we as a county, whatever, we're going to see the need for the money and the expense going to be assumed locally. So, I just didn't know if I didn't hear anything about here where
we're getting anything from the state, but I do know we ask a lot often for grants. So, I'm just putting it out there. Thank you very much. Thank you. All right. Very good. We will Anything else, Mr. County Manager? No, sir. All
right. We will move on to district of Fords. Commissioner her had the pleasure and I think there were some uh others of you that attended the Semino County Chamber state of our schools lunchon and the results of the school district continue to be
outstanding. So congratulations to Semino County Public Schools for their good results and for a good event. It was a packed house. Um, on the 7th of August, I attended Good Morning Seol and Ghee hit it out of the park as he always does. I don't know if he's still in
here. Uh, on the panel discussion, uh, holding it all together for our hotel years and us in terms of not overcommitting us with regard to the tourism investment district. Good news
from CFX. Their bonding rate uh was improved to AA3 from A1 with a stable outlook. This is the highest their bonding rate has been in the 62-year history of the organization. So, congratulations to the CFX team on
outstanding work. The pleasure of attending the Rescue Outreach Mission fundraising dinner the other night put on by Talk of the Town. The event that evening raised $15,000, but there is a month's worth of funding
that goes in. We don't know that total yet. So, very successful. And by the way, really fun. It was a really fun event. And I'll give a shout out to the IT department for launching the no before training. And if you haven't done it, and that includes five of us on this
board, because we are just as susceptible to fishing exercises as anybody else. And quite honestly, it can help you at home not to be sus susceptible to that to invest the 15 to 20 minutes that it'll take you to go through that and learn what the bad
actors in the universe are doing through technology to steal from us. If I could ask, is is that the training we went through earlier this year? I I don't know if it was earlier this year, but they are all different. So, if they're re if they're launching it again, it is slightly different than
what you've seen before because the bad actors keep changing their behaviors. So worth the 15 minutes. It's the annual requirement. Oh, it's the update. This is the required one. Yeah, I did require one earlier, but if it's a new one, I need to do that. Yep. That's it. Great.
All right. The next one up is going to be Commissioner Delari. No report at this time. Thank you. Very good. Commissioner Constantine. Um in addition to um going to a number of the um events that Commissioner her indicated, u also the career source that
a number of us went to had one for the celebration of the Semino County Public School sector academy uh talking about teaching them about the local government and of course the services that we provide and I thought that that was a really successful
program. Um the uh I want to congratulate our fire department for having the boys and girls back to school bash at uh East Alamont Springs, the Boys and Girls Club. There was well over a hundred kids there and uh backpacks
galore and just a a lot of fun that was had by all. Very very hot day though, but um it went really well and I want to congratulate them. want to congratulate uh both Christian as well as Alan Harris for the uh their presentations at Ko
very wellreceived Allan also talked about uh emergency preparedness and getting them involved as well as Christian and I think that he's already received a lot of um requests for meetings have you not Christian um from that meeting with some of the other
cities um as Commissioner her indicated uh at the good morning seminar. Gee, you did a great job, but so did Robert Agusa and and uh and you know, Jacob Seagull showing the partnership that we have
with all of those folks together. Um upcoming things, I think tomorrow the PBA is talking about our airport. Uh the uh on the 14th in Daytona, I will be as one of the six um board of directors
meeting for the Florida Trust in their annual meeting. Um and uh looking forward to that uh sad note that I but I it's something that I think I need to bring forward. A very good friend of
mine who um I served with in both the House and the Senate and he went on with a continued distinguished career with as president of Florida State University. um my good friend John Thrasher, we sat next to each other for six years in the
house and uh we became very close and uh tomorrow or I'm sorry, August 19th in um Tallahassee at Florida State University, they will have a celebration of life for him. So, uh just wanted to bring that
up. I wish I could go uh quite frankly, but um it's right in the middle of the day and uh there's so many other it's going to be difficult, but uh I will be communicating with the family um on that. Uh on the 19th also, the Central
Florida Zoo will be having their annual meeting and um the uh on the 21st uh in Semino County at Lake Mary Event Center, I will be speaking on the state of real estate for the Orlando Real Estate
Board. Uh I do have one appointment and that would be um Oh, and I want to congratulate communications again. That's just a remarkable um uh you know and dist and distinguished u award that they received.
Congratulations to them. Uh I do have one appointment uh for the parks and preservation for a two-year term starting January 1st of this year uh through December 31st, 2026. And that is
Mr. Mark Smith. Motion second. Any further discussion? All in favor I oppose like sign. Hearing none carries unanimous. Thank you. Last thing I just wanted to talk about is something that I think is near and dear to us because we have
become I mean we took the very bold state uh uh stand in u protecting our citizens as well as protecting our wildlife when we did the bear cans and the education and the urban bear ordinance. And tomorrow the FWC is going
to um more than likely put in a bear hunt. Quite frankly, I um I've been hunting before. This is no nothing against hunting except for the fact that you know they're they're they're in the last
time they did this in 2015. In two days there were 300 bears that were killed. They're saying that for 23 days they're only going to allow 187. I don't know how they're going to do that, but they're saying only 187. But the
interesting part is even though a fourth of the entire bare population of the state of Florida is in Semino County and surrounding, they are only suggesting that 18 be taken. And that is primarily because of what we have done and how
successful we have in in being able to maintain the population and ensuring that they would, you know, not be um going into what used to be their territory, now our territory uh in in northwest u um and and west
across from I4. I just wanted you all to know that I don't think that we and that there should be a beer hunt in Semino County and I understand that we don't have any control for the state and I don't you know and I'm not asking anybody else to
share this uh but I am sending to the chairman a a a in form of a email just requesting that if you're going to do the hunt you don't have to do it in Semino County. We have we are doing everything we can to control our
population and um we have not had a negative incident in many many many years or a number of years and we continue to be dedicated to that urban bear ordinance. So I wanted to say that if anybody wants to join with me in
doing that I would I I'd be happy to share um the request to Rodney Barrero. But I did want you all to know that that is something that I feel very strongly. Not stopping the hunt. I don't think we I'm not trying to I don't think we can.
But stopping the hunt in Semino County where we have shown that we have been leaders and we can do we are doing the right thing. And that's it. Good. All right. Commissioner Lockhart
handouts for you all. um been working I've been working with the county attorney's office and animal services on a situation that's been going on in my district um for quite some time. What you have in front of you is a list of
citations for one um address in my district um that's for a variety of things. uh animals being at large, odors, barking, um you name it. Over 30 citations since 2023.
and the neighbors are getting very upset understandably that that the infractions continue to happen and while this individual is continued to be fined and animal services doing everything that they are supposed to do, they are
going out there, they are citing, they are doing the work and citizens are filing affidavit when animal services cannot be present. Um the the behavior continues. So each of these citations um have been appealed by this person to um
county court and when they go to the court and the court tells them that they must pay the citation it is in a completely different category of cit you know it's it's now the it's now the court telling them they must pay this. It's not just the seminal county animal
services officer writing them a citation. So the the highlighted citations that are on this list remain unpaid after having been court-ordered to pay the citation. We have a provision
in our code that allows us, it's section 20.137 that allows the board of county commissioners to request that the court order uh issue an order to show cause for anyone who has failed to pay the civil penalties that the court has
actually told them they need to pay. This is the the last line really that our board has already in our code to allow us to try to hold a citizen accountable. Um citizens have continued to ask me, well, what's the point? You know, they keep getting citations. They
keep not paying them. This is just going on forever. You know, what's the board going to do? Well, this is the one thing that we do have in our code that we would um be able to do is ask the court to um have this individual show up in person
to explain why they have not been paying these citations. And so I am asking the board at the county attorney's not direction but at at their advice and talking about how our code is written that the board would have to um give
direction to the county attorney to file this in the courts for this particular resident. Is that a motion? It it could be a motion. I want to make sure that there are any questions that I you know you definitely have the opportunity to ask. I've got a lot of questions.
So, I'll make it I don't disagree. Yeah. I would like to happen. Yes. Um but you know, my questions for the county attorney are should we really be looking at the entire ordinance perhaps moving forward to put more compliance
teeth within the ordinance? Um number two, you go to the courts. We decide to do that. Okay. You get a judgment, you get a demand, whatever. you still can't collect it. Then what? And that's what this process is for in
your code. This is the only next step that we currently have. Whether you wanted to add more options, we could definitely explore that. But it's not uncommon for these civil citations that are confirmed or adjudicated by the county court judge to to sit on a shelf
unpaid. There's not really a lot of enforcement action taken outside of the county to get the payment and they usually are the payment is usually due within 30 days of the judge's order. It it's not only not get the payment but
actually get compliance of the nuisance it was originally called in for. Correct. Cited for because do it over and over. With this example, it's the same Yeah. the same sort of violations. I mean, I I understand what the commissioner's concern is and I and I share that with the residents and so I would be looking
to the county attorney for advice on maybe look at the ordinance, come back to us, say this is what we could do to prevent this from happening. I mean, we could turn up the heat, you know, one more notch. I mean, I'm okay with that with the commissioner, but I
don't know that it gets when when I see this kind of track record, I'm not so certain us going to the court judge is going to change any of this. Well, just for clarification, it they've already been to court. The court has already ordered them to pay. The process
is for the county as the citation giver to ask the court for a show cause hearing to bring the person back in before them to say they still have not been paid. So they're still so they're accountable to the court, right? Understood. But but the court's not going out and
arresting them. They're not going out and taking the offensive do that. No. Can I question? I I think we've skipped in the process that's that's being described. The court doesn't collect money. Who
collects the money? The clerk. The clerk. That's it. So, so what efforts are being made on on our part to collect fines? And is this and is this based on the
ordinance and the judge's order to pay a fine isn't strong enough for us to collect and enforce our fines? And how many others are out there that aren't paid? This just one example. So that's a whole bigger discussion that needs to be
had that I can assure you that the the court is not collecting fines. The clerk is collecting the fines and so maybe we need some some visibility into that. I I so I would I'll do whatever you want
to be to to be supported on this. I guess the piece that I don't I'm saying the same thing you did chairman. Why are all of these dismissed? Um well, when they were appealed to the county court, for whatever reason, um
the judge either consolidated the fine, you know, I think just by way of example, this is, you know, let's say the citations equal $3,000. The judge said, you know, you owe $500 and I'll dismiss the rest of them. Okay, that does make sense. Because several citations are brought at
the same time depending on the timing when they're issued. Mr. Chairman, this is an issue where if a district commissioner feels that they need to be taken to the next step, we should be supporting that district commissioner. Yeah. Yeah. There's no question about that. There's a bigger issue at hand. But the first issue is I mean, I'll
support Commissioner Lockhart and and agreeing that we get the county attorney to go show cause hearing, but at the same time, I I would like us to have some agreement that we should be looking much in this much deeper. Agreed. This goes back to the whole
earlier we have an obligation for those decision makers in the future to set standard. They don't have to revisit this. Well, and I'm not convinced at the point that you go back to say show cause, isn't the question going to be what have the collection efforts been, right?
I'm just asking the question. I don't know the answer to that question. I think the clerk's office would have to be the one that answers that. So, I'll let the county attorney decide how much she wants to share about this current situation. And there's um
there there the this person is very well aware that they owe this money. There there is ongoing active communication from county staff to this person reminding them that they owe this money. Um going through this process is the
only thing that we have currently in our code until until and unless we decide to modify it to take them back before the judge. They could be held in contempt. Um and and because there is there is nothing else that any one of us would be
able to say to constituents right now that we could do other than this step. So I feel that it's the right thing for us to do those things that are within our power and then beyond that we can decide what we might want to do next. Yeah. And if I could just clarify
once the citations are appealed to the county court, they're county court jurisdiction. They're county court citations. um they do become a fee that's due to the clerk of the court. Um the county pays the clerk of the court $10 per citation that we file with them. Every time we issue a citation, we pay
the clerk $10. Right. Um so it's it's no longer our citation, but I can tell you with regard to this particular person, um like Commissioner Lockhart says, she knows she owes this money. Um, we currently have one of her dogs in
custody because it was off leash running around the neighborhood, which is one one of the violations. And we have a code provision that says she has to pay her citations before we will release the dog. And so the dog's in jail. The dog's in jail. Dog's in jail at our at taxpayer
expense. Are you making the code? So, I would like to make a motion to request that the board authorize the county attorney to request the county court issue an order to show cause as to why this resident has not paid their civil fines.
Second. Motion second. All those in favor? I oppose like sign carries unanimous. Thank you. You're welcome. Um, conversations for another day for sure. Um, the other thing that I would like to bring you all up to speed on is
at our last Central Florida Commuter Rail Commission meeting, there was a presentation to talk about weekend Sunreil service and what it would take in order to bring that to fruition. I'm going to give you all copies of this presentation. Um, so keep one for the
clerk. Um, the I will I'm going to skip to the bullet the highlights of this presentation. the the main we're going to have a work session on this topic in the near future for the commuter rail commission because it is it is a deep dive and it is a commitment that each
one of us will have to bring back to our boards to to decide how we want to move forward. That being said, for the Sunshine Corridor to be a reality, we will have to run nights and weekends. Um if you if you're trying to catch a flight to the airport and you need the train to get you there, we can't be
running Monday through Friday uh you know 6:00 to 5 to 10 or whatever the time is right now. So I want to draw your attention and I'm sorry there are no page numbers on these um on these slides but mine are upside down
to well you know listen turn it up turn it the other way then. Okay. So, so the fourth to last slide which has weekend service options listed at the top. Mhm. Um, one of the biggest
hindrances we have right now aside, if you put money aside, the lead time to buy the additional locomotives that would be needed in order to comply with the FRA regulations, um, so that they're taken out of service at the appropriate time and and serviced at the at the
amount that's needed and have the number of staff and what have you. We would need to buy additional trains. The lead time to p purchase those three locomotives is is anywhere um well it's about 60 months. So it's fiveyear lead time to purchase the locomotive. To
lease a locomotive could be 12 to 18 months. But there's only one company right now that's offering leases. And while they have signed some lease agreements, they have not actually delivered on any of those locomotives as part of their lease. So, um, minor
hiccup there. Um, so the purchase of three locomotives and three cab cars, capital cost of $61,800,000. Um, that is what we would need to run um on weekends for the additional capital costs. the if we wanted to lease, if the
lease actually, you know, became an option, that's $3 million um a year for a lease, which it would be obviously a much more manageable dollar amount, but we I I hesitate to even talk about that as being a real possibility.
So, that's capital. When you talk about the actual operating expenses, the annual cost um for 40 trains Saturday and Sunday would be I'm I'm just going to say between 25 I'm sorry
about 29 million. It changes if you lease or purchase, but let's just say for the for the argu for the sake of the argument, let's say an even 30 mil, right? Um it it was definitely a shock to the system for
every one of us there. I think we both we all all of us had a little like you know lump in the throat. Um but the reality is we would be splitting that. Um we have a a currently existing funding agreement. That funding agreement could be modified. Orange
County is very concerned because they would be a a one of the largest funders of this. But when you look at 26 million spread ac or 29 million spread across five funding partners um annually
my personal opinion is that the benefit to the community to be able to run this system nights and weekends to the airport to the attractions to the iDrive area is is actually nominal when you consider what we spend paving roads and
the the cost to to to run roads in this community is far more than that. So there's a lot to discuss. There are a lot of different options on the table. Um we have uh FDOT has some irons in the fire talking about u to other providers. There are apparently a couple of
commuter rail systems that have gone under in another part of the country and they're putting up their locomotives kind of like on eBay. And so I, you know, I hate to be, you know, I don't know that we would be the first ones to be able to bid, but the reality is with
a 6D month, 5-year lead time, if we're thinking that the Sunshine Corridor could be operating in the N in the next 5 to seven years, we need to start thinking about buying trains now. So, I don't want to sound the alarm, but at the same time, I want you to know that
this is what we're talking about in order to make this operation work. So full disclosure, no surprises. Those are the numbers right now. Questions? Have a statement. Does it include four-letter words?
No. No, I would never do that. Uh when we first originally brought the train bought the train sets, the locomotives were particularly uh we paid attention to the type of manufacturer the locomotives we purchased because they could be revamped. Yes.
A number of times if not indefinitely. the new locomotives cannot. So just okay be aware interesting that was not brought as a part of this discussion but I stand up I just want to make sure you that's good to know because we don't have an opportunity to talk this freely outside of these
meetings. No we don't we don't for sure I I can just tell you I'm no fan of spending another penny on Sunreil at this point. Um, I'm still a little sore after the original agreement we've got, but that's something we weren't part of making a decision on. But I'm
open-minded enough to have a financial discussion on what it really looks like for a return of investment. You know, it concerns me that you have the private entity, Bright Line, who's now now been identified that I guess their credit has been downgraded because
of some financial issues. Um, and if the private sector can't make a go of it, and I thought that was a pretty good deal. I don't know that the public sector is where we need to be doing it, but I'm happy to look at the numbers, have further discussion, but my my first come to mind is I'd like
some money back, but that's that's I know that's not going to happen. So, we we could have get further information, maybe have our representatives as to a work session or something. Does that make sense? Yeah. I certainly we can do a work
session. I would write like to schedule that after the commuter rail commission has had their work session so that we can kind of see where our partners are as well. I don't know how that all of the partners go back to their boards to have this kind of conversation or bring this information back to their
colleagues. So um there there may be a little disparity there when they come to the table. Right. I will say while philosophically I understand completely that that the cost for Sun Rail was laid in our lap and basically we were
um told you you by FDOT by the state by you know we were talking about unfunded mandates. We were told you will pay your this portion of operating for Sun Rail or we will take it out of your work program. So we, you know, we really
were, they were going to get their pound of flesh one way or the other. So, so we are paying them because we we now are paying them. And moving forward, if if the if our community is committed to
the Sunshine Corridor when this and they oh the other thing I need to tell you is they took um FDOT uh took the procurement for the PD&E study for the Sunshine Corridor from the
local district and is now running it out of Tallahassee. So they made a pivot. They made a the FDOT made a So five is not running it. Correct. It's being done out of um Tallahassee. They they made an operational decision. and they felt like it was a large enough
procurement and something of statewide concern that it made more sense for them to bring it up to the I call it the mothership, but what whatever whatever they call their their Well, did you see what what else they did which I sort of feel bad about
because we had such discussion about when when we were supposed to take over Sunreil, we were having that spirited debate with FDOT was we kept pointing out three counties to the south with Tri Rail was fully funded through the legislature and guess what happened? Now
they're defunding Tri Rail. Fall back on the counties. Yeah. Yeah, that was that's been interesting to watch. Um so clearly DOT does not want to be in the um in the train operating running business. Well, it might tell us a whole lot right there.
Yeah. Well, I you know it we've got decisions to make. We're you know Yes. Commissioner. Oh, I'm not chairing the meeting. I'm I'm actually raising my hand here. So Oh, go ahead. So, I haven't weighed in on this today. I I will tell you where I'm stuck on all of it.
I think at the point that they put in a ticketing system that actually is cash positive to the system. My ears are wide open. So, that has changed. The ticketing system has changed. It is not costing more now to
buy a ticket. They want to cost make it. Yeah. So, is there is there actually a revenue stream that makes sense? Oh, no. From Okay. Well, that's a one step in. We're one step in. And so, I Yeah. I mean, there's never going to be
a revenue stream that makes sense with mass transit. I I understand that and I'm going to understand that when we talk about our uh microtransit program, but is it as high as it can go? Oh, no. I don't think it is. I think there are things that we can do
within the rules of grants and all of that good stuff. I do not want to repeat what Lynx did with holding fairs flat for however many years they did. It's not it's just not a good idea. Yeah, agreed. I I think there are so we're in this weird transition time
where you have FDOT still putting together the budget, right? They know the historical expenses and we're coming in and our CFO teams and our our finance teams and you know they're they're looking at this and they're trying to figure out in the DOT
world of budgeting how this is going to translate to the locals and what they've spent. And so we're they're telling us what they think we need to allocate for budgeting and we're we haven't had enough experience yet to actually be the ones running the numbers to know if
those numbers are actuals or budget or we're you know it's it's this weird time and I will also say Valuchia County and Seol County look at public taxpayer are spending a little
differently than some of our other partners. Trying to say that very nicely. And so where we might try to rein things in and be a little more judicious, there seems to be more of an uh a lassair
um attitude toward budgeting on some of the other partners. So when you're in a partnership like that where you're not all on the same page and coming from the same mindset, it it does make it a little more tedious to get to consensus. Um, but at the point that we're wanting to
expand to Saturday hours, there is an opportunity there to create a dynamic that shifts that. Yep. That's my point. I don't disagree. It's going to it's going to be an interesting deal moving forward. I just want to make sure you all are always kept in the loop and um I
don't I don't I'm not I'm not there for me. I'm there I'm there for you for our citizens. So, if there's anything else on that, I got one more topic. Okay. Um, so I had a call from a citizen
who had uh two citizens who had um a lot of fireworks in their residential neighborhood um bottle rockets actually um that came through their pool screens and when Yeah. And so holes in the pool screens, fire, you know, a huge uh also
fire started in the backyard, a hole in the grass, you know, what have you. completely understand that fireworks are legal according to state statute on Fourth of July and New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. Um, but they're asking what can be done to keep people from
shooting bottle rockets into my pool screen and onto my property and damaging my property. And so, um, the sheriff's office, I guess, was, um, not able to really help them with that situation because fireworks are legal
on those days. So, in talking with the county attorney's office, there there there is a provision and Orange County has recently adopted um some language that helps to would help law enforcement to look at situations where there are
actual projectiles in the air that are going into other people's properties. I don't want to spend a whole lot of time talking about this if there's no interest in asking the county attorney's office to look at it further or distribute this information. I just wanted to bring it to your attention that Orange County has found a way to
address it and it's people are be and listen I'm all about the 4th of July shot off a few fireworks myself but um but this is this is getting out of control and I don't think this is the only situation where this has happened. So anyway, throwing that out there
because I told the resident that I would bring it to the board and ask for your um approval to have it be looked at further. I am completely supportive at looking at this further and I would tell you that I I believe that our ordinance does say right I think there are days when it's legal and there's days when
it's not and I will tell you in in my neighborhood Fourth of July is a week long right New Year's Eve is a week long there's other holidays in the middle of the year I don't even know what they are where big parties happen and fireworks go off and these fireworks are
city level fireworks like sometimes we sit out in the yard and watch them and other times we sit house with fire extinguisher. You just I think we got to get a handle. I I don't have a problem looking at I would like to know if we can figure out from Orange County
what success they've had in doing whatever they're doing. Number one, you know, it's always been a problem in the rural area. You would think in the rural area, hey, everybody got plenty of room to let off fireworks. But the problem with fireworks in the rural area is it startles horses. shoots it
and next thing you know you got a horse tied up in barb wire busted through a fence and now it's three miles from their home and you know the sheriff can only do so much. Um so I I mean I'm happy to look at it and understand what
success they've had other than just saying hey here's a letter don't do that again. Um in the grand scheme of things yes that happened. Does it happen like every week, every month, or just every Fourth of July? I mean,
they put bottle rockets up and they fire. It all comes back down somewhere. If not in my house, the way the wind's blowing, it's the other neighbor's house the way the wind's blowing. So, I I don't know. I'm happy to have a better understanding of what Orange County has
been able to accomplish, if anything. I can't tell you. It's a fairly new regulation they just put in place um in May. So, I don't know that they're going to have a lot of feedback yet, but we can reach out to them. Sure. I mean, I'm just not a big fan of
making rules or laws that aren't enforceable or not going to enforce just because you got one or two that are bad apples. Understood. So, that's my position. Fair enough. Good photo of the attorney. Okay.
Okay. All right. Thank you. Again, not trying to ram anything down anybody's throat. just committed to bringing it up, right? No, no, no worries. Appreciate that. That's all I have. Okay. Um, I'll try to go through this quick as I can since we're just on that topic. I'll bring up my ask for my
constituents. And I think I already know the answer to this because I brought it up before, but I'm under an obligation to bring it up. You all probably received an email from one of my constituents this week that has to do with um taking over private roads and drainage
systems again. Um the admin cone says very clearly that the county has no responsibility to maintain the private roads or the private culverts, driveway culverts or anything else that's on a private property. Uh that we would get
involved and and do something if they wanted to start an MSBU and the entire comm community agreed to do it and bring it up to county standards then and only then would the county take it over. Uh, and of course that's cost prohibitive for most people to burn a private road
up to county standards. So my question is, do you all have any problem relooking at the admin code to consider whether we want to take over private roads again or not and drainage systems?
I think the question really rests on the use of an MSBU and how much those citizens are going to be contributing to it. personally. I mean, it's not just an MSPU, it's also now you have a minimum width of a rideway, right? It's the problem the problem I have in
my district is, and it it's not often, but it's often enough. We get new residents move in. They're not always told they're going to be on a private road. They they don't do their due diligence, uh, or they do do their due diligence and now they want everybody else to pay for the problem
that they've purchased into. Um, there's other ordinances throughout the state and other counties, and I think we've actually done it with our admin code. If it's an emergency situation where the roads washed out and fire engines or first responders can't get there, we can
make a temporary one-time repair. But what is continuing to be asked for in my district is for the county to pretty much take over the maintenance of the road and the drainage, which none of it county standards and most of all of
which have de descriptions on them that say this is a private road you're buying here, etc., etc., although it could have been four owners ago. So, I'm asking the question just to ask the question if if it's something we
want to go down that road because if we do, I'm going to have a lot of people that want county take over the roads, but it's going to be cost prohibitive for them to get at the county standards since it's MSBU. So, I'm asking the question because I said I would ask the question.
Sounds familiar. Yes. So, do we have any precedent in this county of doing this anywhere else? She asked with trepidation. Not that I'm aware of. I'm not aware of where what I am aware of. We've had
numerous people, property owners, inquire about an MSPU. And soon as they learn that the code requires them to incur the cost to bring the roads up to county standards first before the county would ever take them
over. That usually stops the conversation because it's just not cost-effective. Even if it's a half mile long road um for the for the citizens to go in, pull all the culverts, regrade the road, get the permits to do it
through St. John's and on and on and on. It's and and commissioner, you know, the as soon as you start that, there are people in my district that want us to take over the medians and fixing the medians. Understood. Um people that have built signs in the
right of way that now want us to fix the signs. Uh even though we we had nothing to do, this is a slippery slope that I would I do not want to start getting involved in. If there is problems, real problems, right? uh you know that that
that are caused by us. Okay, that's one that's one thing. That's a different story. That's a different story. But what you're asking for opens up a can of worms that and whoop ass that I don't even want to talk about. Well, we actually have talked about it before, but I thought
Yes, we have. And we we dismissed it. So, I I've done my due diligence and I brought it up. Great. Um, I'm telling your mom commissioning constant TV. I've seen I've heard you say worse words
without a doubt, but my mom said them, too. So, I think that's good. Some of these I can skip because you all have already mentioned them that I've that we already to. So, I'm skipping those. Um, attended the ribbon cutting for the unveiling of Semino County 1765 map and exhibit and opening over at the
museum. That was pretty neat deal. Well attended. um attended the Red Bull press conference uh which is the Red Bull competitive challenge which is the roller coaster challenge. It's going to be Are we building our own bicycle? I think
we should have our own My back already hurts. I'm not getting into that. Have you seen that? Oh my god. Oh, it's a crazy course. But um it's it's pretty neat. There'll be 40 teams uh competing. and it will be broadcast
worldwide. It's first time it's in the United States. It's a tandem bicycle all fixed up with all kinds of fancy trim that's going to be riding a obstacle course over Crane's Roost water all over the water uh area. So, that's
going to be interesting. Um Steve, are you listening to this? You want to try it? Bob, you and Lee can do because I'm I'm not doing it. I'm too old. Let's get a team for the fire department. No. Um, I'll be with you.
Comp issue. Yeah. Also, one, of course, a lot of you know, unfortunately, Egg Mary was eliminated in the U playoffs last week. Alto, Alamont Baseball Academy. Um, I'll read my notes. Uh, all stars are playing in
the Babe Ruth World Series in Branson, Missouri. After pool play concluded yesterday, the Alamont Springs Allstars are the number one seed in the US pool and the number two seed overall. just one run behind Chinese Taipei in the 42 team tournament. There are 25 teams from
the United States, 17 international teams. This is the fourth straight year that the Anamant team has made it to the World Series. Last year, Alamont Springs sent three teams to the World Series. This current 12U team is the reigning world champion, having won the 11U World
Series last year. Uh the Alamont Springs Allstars begin bracket play tomorrow 4:30 against the Hawaii team. So root the Alamont Spring team on. We we sincerely are proud of all of our teams here in the region. Um and uh you know
good good stuff there for our children. I also want to give a special shout out to the sheriff's office and and the men and women of law enforcement. Um, you know, school has just recently started and you know, the sheriff's office, those men and women are out there keeping track and keeping our kids safe.
Um, there's been some crosswalk violations with people just not paying attention. And and I want to believe that motorists aren't doing it on purpose. They're just distracted now the school's back in. They blow through some of these passing uh, you know,
improperly around buses. So, I would just ask the general public to try to be cognizant of what's going on with school going back in. We want our children to be safe and and thank the sheriff's office for, you know, the things they're doing each and every day at our schools to to keep everybody safe and the
parents concern down to a minimum. Um, it's great stuff. So, outside of that, I've got nothing else. We will move for uh public input on any non-aggenda item. And what do we have there, Miss Dominique?
We have one speaker, Leslie Grubel. Lesie, how are you today? Mr. Chairman, is she's coming up. I just want to say also I think there the eight-year-olds from Sford have have won their national tournament also. I
haven't seen that. I was in I was told by Justin Frost. Okay. And everything that they had they he has two boys in it. They they winning too. Congratulations. A lot to be proud of our kids here in Seol County. Club of Little League Baseball. Okay.
Yes. And the soccer. Is that right? That might be a little close. Yeah. Just just give us your name and and address for the record. Leslie Veril, 1841 Misty Mo Road. Misty Mo Place, Longwood, Florida. Okay. Um,
on a high note, I I just want to say that I've sat in on a number of these budget budget meetings and I am really pleased that the county offices have reduced and tightened their budgets and to keep uh their budgets at an only
increase at 1.3%. And that's 33% of the budget, isn't it? Yes, ma'am. Right. So, um, and I would also comment that in regard to the other 66% of the budget, one of those involved in this
was Sheriff Lima. And I add that Sheriff Lima's concern about the loss of fully trained officers to other areas, offering signing bonuses and other areas of higher salaries.
I think they explained well why they needed that budget increase and even at that you had asked them to to go back and look again and saved us a million dollars. Thank you. And I think that it's important to
recognize that this is a very real problem with the police and I hope the county will understand this and the citizens when you look at Orange County looking at ICE bonuses being offered to their trained officers and I don't know if they're looking at
whether or not maybe even Seol County might go down to get some of that money. So that increase in our budget was probably well done. So, the only thing I wanted to wondering
about why um one of our commissioners just continues to vote no um on all of these uh budget ideas. Um and I'm not hearing any suggestions to how we might
help our budget. So, I I wonder why. And it kind of leads a little discon disconcertion with what the budget is. So I would ask that maybe that commissioner could somehow come
along with explaining why he's the only one. Um then I offer an act an action item for the lobbyists that were here earlier today that they look at the um the state's unfunded mandates.
This is ridiculous. I have heard one of the representatives actually brag that their budget reserve has gone up to 15.1 billion. While in the meantime, we in this county
are struggling with millage increases, gas tax increases, and our t utility increases. Not that I'm saying they are not necessary. I'm only saying that someone needs to talk to that. And I think that behooves our citizens of our county to write our
representatives that has nothing to do with you, but maybe would get these mandates cleared up because I find that to be egregious. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Leslie. Caution. All right. Is there anyone else?
Mr. Green, did you fill out a form? You're not speaking. Come on up. You know I'm messing with you. I can take him. She's kicking me. I can't take you, but I can take kicking me kicking me in the knees. Welcome, Mr. Green.
Uh, good evening, everyone. It's been a long day. Yes. Um, let me first say, um, my name is Emory Green Jr. I'm the executive director of the Midway Coalition. Um on this day,
it is exactly 6 years, 11 months, and one day since I stood at this podium on September the 11th, 2018.
The board looked a lot different at that time. We were in a different place. It was uh before a global pandemic. Um, since then we've had countless hurricanes, hundreds of meetings person,
uh, text messages and Zoom calls and all of the above. But I wanted to take a moment um, to affirm and acknowledge each of you. Um, first and foremost, Chairman
Zimbabwe. Um, I'll move on to our commissioner, District 5, Commissioner Her. Um, Commissioner Bob Delari, Commissioner Constantine, and Commissioner Lockhart.
Each of you have prioritized our community with a level of urgency in such a short amount of time to ensure that we are never left behind
or forgotten. The things that we advocated for early on, the things that we can now check off the box to say that we've accomplished
will be legacy items for not only just each of you, but for this body. So many times in our government and our system, we find chaos. we find uncertainty.
Um, we kind of get dismayed. But I wanted to give you that date today so that everyone watching in TV land, everyone that is here in the sound of my voice in this body,
they understand that change doesn't happen overnight. But it takes a collective effort of individuals like you and the residents of historic Midway Cananan City that understand the
importance of building a brighter future, not only just for this county, but for all of the residents that you serve. as North Orlando continues to grow in and around the airport, bringing
amazing transportation uh like Scout. Um building new green assets like the Midway Loop Trail and connecting residents all through this county from the Lake Monroe Trail Loop that is now
coming down Celery Avenue connecting downtown Sanford. This is the turn of a new leaf and I wanted to personally on behalf of all of the residents, the elders and the
community that we serve that's growing exponentially say thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Good work. Good to see you. Good work. It would be remiss of me to not say, as we all know, if it were not for the
community and the assistance from the community and community leaders like yourself, it would be difficult for us to make some of the inroads that we have uh and helping collaborate and getting all these things accomplished. So, thank you as well and thank the community for
their understanding, their patience uh and and getting us to where we all want to be. So, thank you very much. Is there anything else for the good assistance? Anything else? For the good of the order.
All right, we shall be adjourned.