Better use for $560k?

As expected, yesterday's BOCC meeting was a fun one. The Fire Services workshop took close to 3 hours to finish. There was A LOT of public input. Ultimately, they implemented the $125 MSBU for Fire Services (up from $79 previously).

A theme I kept hearing from Commissioners is this... Be involved.

There were comments that people rarely show up to the budget hearings and commissioners questioned why that is. Then challenged people to find savings by showing up and providing ideas.

I am pretty sure there was a room full of people yesterday providing their thoughts and ideas, yet, they didn't listen. I get that commissioners have to do what they think is best and people are going to be upset either way, but to challenge them to show up and then when they do, dismiss it and ask why they do not attend budget hearings?

To that point. Commissioner Bays would LOVE for you to go out and meet her this evening in Beverly Hills.

Now all that said. Let's talk about savings.

As mentioned earlier this week (here), the County has hired Inspire to provide consulting services based on a contract they signed with Tarpon Springs. I am digging into why this firm was chosen out of the 6 qualified firms in Tarpon, but that is a topic for another day.

Today we are going to talk about the $560k and if it is needed for this consultant. We want to talk about savings, can we save money or is this absolutely necessary? The money is being taken from the special projects funds. The revenue generated by Duke's property taxes on the coal plants is where this money comes from. It is for one time use type projects because the money will dry up eventually when Duke closes down the plants.

Makes sense.

But with space needs and things of that nature, is this the best use of the $560k? Is the comp plan that outdated that it needs a revamp or are commissioners just not happy with it because it doesn't allow what they desire and they keep approving project after project that may not fit with the current plan?

That was a question commissioner Finegan asked yesterday and a valid point.

In any case, the argument was made to choose Inspire because staff reached out to other counties and they raved about them apparently. So here we are, with a $560k contract with Inspire, which by the way, goes away if Tarpon Springs cancels theirs. Since we are piggybacking off their contract, if they no longer have a contract with Inspire, than neither do we. What happens if that comes within 12 months and Inspire is not finished? Do we get nothing for the money we spent?

This is the reason I asked them to do our own RFP and get our own contract and not piggyback off another.

In any case, the public asked if this was needed? The public asked if there were other options like AI to do this for us. Commissioner Barek asked about getting interns from the colleges and got Inspire to admit they use interns for some of this work as well.

I wanted to give the AI route a test run to see what it could do. Here is what I came up with in about 30 mins of work.

I took 2 sections of the current comp plan and had the re-written. The red text is the original text and the green text is the change.

Housing is first.

For those that don't want to look at the whole thing, here is a screen shot sample.

I particularly found this part interesting... and it's new.

Next I did the recreation/open space element of the comp plan.

And some screen shots for those that want to see a sample without downloading the entire thing.

Pretty interesting huh?

Would this be final? Absolutely not. There is plenty of work to do to fine tune it, but this only took 30 mins for these two sections. Certainly very good for 30mins of work.

The kicker? I referenced the comp plans for Sumter, Lake and Pasco Counties, which are Inspire clients. I directed the AI to search through those documents and public input for them and craft a comp plan for Citrus county based on Inspire principles and methodology. I also referenced public input in Citrus County.

This is what I got in 30 mins. Crazy.

Now imagine if I held community meetings to get more community involvement. Imagine if I met with business owners, the chamber and other stakeholders for their input? Imagine if I met with staff a few times and got their opinions on growth and all of that. Imagine if I ran growth projections to show what Citrus may be facing in 25 years.

Imagine if I had all that data to put into this and fine tune it for what Citrus needs.

My guess is it will be very close to what we get from Inspire and at a far lower price point.

So my question is why are we not using technology available to us to update things like the comp plan and LDC? If we are looking for ways to save money, is this not a good place to start?