Commission Meeting Day!

County Commission Tuesday!! Seems that today will be a "boring" government day. I looked at the agenda and do not see anything contentious for once. It's good to have an "easy" day... although the 5pm hearing about the townhouses/multifamily housing may get some attention. It was denied by the PDC.

I will not be there today. First time in awhile. I just got back from a trip and trying to catch up on work before leaving again all of next week. I am also filming my next episode of "Beyond the Agenda" to release next week.

I will be watching from the office today. Figure, I will give them a day off from hearing from me!

I did notice one thing... Citrus County is not faring well so far from an appropriations stand point in Tallahassee. Budgets are not finalized yet, so anything can change, but we should not expect much by the looks of it.

There is only one project that has funding in both the house and the senate.... Regional Public Safety Training Center.

This project has $750k earmarked in the house and $1.5 million in the senate... which is what the county has asked for.

This will be a facility that will go near the government building in Lecanto that will allow the sheriff's office, the school police department and the fire department to train on. Gun ranges for the sheriff/police side and fire training on the fire side. The idea is to move these from the landfill location, particularly the sheriff range.

One thing that is sort of shocking. We are asking for $5 million to renovate the courthouse. This will expand judicial services. We just voted to sign a lease with City of Inverness to move the BOCC offices to their building down the street. The plan is to begin renovations on the court house.

The senate side has $350k earmarked for this. The house side has zero. Well short of the $5 million we are asking for. Not sure how this project gets done without state funding support.

I guess the good news for all of this is that the senate has money for all the projects that we asked for, except Floral City Septic to Sewer, although that may be included in the federal ask from Congressmen Gus Bilirakis' office. Not sure.

We will see if Representative JJ Grow and his house colleagues will get matching funds for the county projects we asked for funding for.

In other agenda news.

The county is once again doing a piggyback contract with another government. This time we are piggybacking the City of Ocala for wastewater tanker and wastewater plant needs.

Apparently it is for emergency sewage and sludge hauling.

The problem I have with piggybacking, while legal, is that they are bypassing the bidding process. The City of Ocala only had ONE provider submit a proposal for the bid. Do we know if this is the best deal out there or that other companies are not interested since 2023 when this went to bid? No... of course not because we are not bidding it. We are basically hand selecting a company to provide the services to us... similar to Inspire and the Comp Plan update.

Again, a major problem with piggybacking is that we are tied to the original contract, in this case Ocala. If Ocala does not renew the contract or cancels it, that decision also applies to us.

In this case, the contract is set to expire next month and there is only one renewal option remaining for one year.

I am also curious why it has a proposed budget of $600,000.

When the original contract state the budget for Ocala is $100,000.

We are copying the Ocala contract... so not sure how we can have a $600k budget for this when Ocala only has $100k. That is the highest amount the company can charge for its services based on this chart

If it is the budget for the entire department, then why does it state the budget is $900k on the agenda document provided to the BOCC?

One last thing that caught my attention.

Why is this contractor excluded from disclosure? This is the project to provide water services to Holder Industrial Park using the grant Governor DeSantis gave us a couple of years ago.

Staff is citing that since this is part of construction of a wastewater facility, that it is exempt from disclosure under records laws citing FS: 119.071(3)(b)... however, that only covers the blueprints, plans, etc NOT the contractor itself.

(b)1. Building plans, blueprints, schematic drawings, and diagrams, including draft, preliminary, and final formats, which depict the internal layout and structural elements of a building, arena, stadium, water treatment facility, or other structure owned or operated by an agency are exempt from s. 119.07(1) and s. 24(a), Art. I of the State Constitution.2. This exemption applies to building plans, blueprints, schematic drawings, and diagrams, including draft, preliminary, and final formats, which depict the internal layout and structural elements of a building, arena, stadium, water treatment facility, or other structure owned or operated by an agency before, on, or after the effective date of this act.

In fact, on another agenda item, staff wants to approve a similar project and discloses that DEP is doing the work (although they are likely using a contractor).

So no reason the contract should remain "Confidential" as that does not appear to be covered by the records laws.

I guess I had a bit more to talk about today than I thought.. Have a great day!