BROOKSVILLE — Dough, dogs and DOGE kept Hernando County commissioners at the dais for more than nine hours on July 28.
By the time they adjourned, a proposed ordinance requiring businesses to accept cash was dead, commissioners had reached a rough consensus on how many dogs a resident may keep outdoors, and the county’s government efficiency panel had told them the county fleet includes “zombies” that rarely leave the lot.
Commissioners also agreed to lease a hangar at Brooksville-Tampa Bay Regional Airport to the Experimental Aircraft Association — at $600 a month, three times what the group had asked to pay.
The cash and dog debates alone kept County Attorney Jon Jouben and his legal staff busy for much of the afternoon. Both followed earlier discussions of short-term rentals and bridge jumping.
Dough
Commissioner Steve Champion pressed his case on money and the Constitution as the fourth version of the cash ordinance came up for discussion. The measure has been circulating since January 2024, postponed, voted down, sent back to strip exemptions, left to die in committee and revived on later agendas.
“The Board is considering the proposed ordinance in order to ensure that its residents will not be financially penalized if they want to purchase goods and services at retail establishments with cash,” the staff summary said. Businesses that add surcharges for cash customers, it said, “discriminate against Hernando County residents who do not have the resources or ability to absorb the surcharges.”
Champion noted that the state has made gold and silver legal tender in certain transactions and argued that debit and credit cards are not money. He referred repeatedly to a coffee company he declined to name that he said refuses cash.
“To me I think it’s predatory to charge people and not take legal tender,” he said. “The only thing that’s legal tender in the Constitution are the bills in your wallet or gold and silver, period. Credit cards, debit cards, they are not money.”
He added: “I’m looking out for the public is all I have to say.”
Commissioner John Allocco said the ordinance’s long list of exemptions troubled him, and that he could not find a single business in the county that charges a fee for cash or refuses to take it.
“I looked. I can’t find one,” he said.
Commissioner Ryan Amsler said accepting cash is the “American way.”
Pressed on the language, Champion said he does not like the ordinance as written and suggested bringing it back when another commissioner is present.
Chairman Jerry Campbell said the proposal amounted to regulating businesses.
“No, no,” Champion said. “We’re talking about the Constitution of the United States.”
Champion said the public needs more education on the issue, and commissioners let the measure die without a vote.
Dogs
An effort to regulate hobby breeders and puppy mills produced a similarly long debate over the rules for keeping dogs in the county.
None of us likes the extremes, Allocco said, but he asked what happens to a resident who owns one male and one female dog and wants a litter or two, or who wants to give puppies to family and friends.
“Is there a specific threshold, and how do we count that threshold?” he asked.
Jouben said the state law requires sellers to provide medical information and offer refunds, and that the county does not have to act to put it in place. He said the board had directed him to do something, but the direction was not clear.
“After watching that meeting, we couldn’t figure out what that something was supposed to be,” he said.
David Paloff, director of animal services for the Hernando County Sheriff’s Office, said the law took effect July 1 and covers puppy mills, breeders and hobby breeders, but lacks teeth and largely offers guidance on best practices.
“It would establish minimum standards but make them purely voluntary while simultaneously giving room to county governments to make them mandatory,” Jouben said. Clay and Seminole counties and the city of Jacksonville have gone that route and made the standards enforceable, he said.
Local governments also have the authority to cap the number of animals a household may keep, he said.
Much of the discussion turned on the county’s 15-dog rule, which requires a resident keeping 15 dogs outdoors to register as a kennel. Jouben said the threshold was written to encourage registration, because an owner registers once rather than dog by dog.
Campbell said he couldn’t care less how many animals people keep indoors.
“What is my business how many animals you have in your house? None,” he said. “But when they’re outside and they start affecting everybody else, that’s where the issue comes in. So that’s where this conversation started.”
Omar DePablo, the county’s development director, told commissioners that residential districts do not allow kennels, either by right or by special exception. Kennels are allowed by right only in agricultural districts, he said, while agricultural-residential and agricultural 1 and 2 districts require a special exception use permit. The 15-dog threshold applies in every district.
County Administrator Jeff Rogers said that means a resident in a residential district can keep 15 dogs and effectively run a kennel.
DePablo said anyone seeking to register would need zoning verification, which would not be granted in a residential district.
Campbell said commissioners had reached consensus on the number of outdoor dogs and on the health concerns animal services raised.
DOGE
Paul Passarelli, who leads the county’s Delegation on Governmental Efficiency, delivered a one-year report on the panel’s work, focused on the county’s light-duty vehicles.
Auctioning off underused vehicles would raise money and cut costs, he said. And while the county upgrades its digital infrastructure, he said, it should not let simple savings slip through the cracks.
The county has more than 700 vehicles, Passarelli said, including “zombies” that carry little mileage and sit “parked, not used.” Some vehicles get heavy use without accumulating miles, he said, while others do both.
Others, he said, are driven to and from work by county staff and could trigger an IRS audit because they amount to a “fringe benefit” rather than a benefit to the county and could be treated as “imputed income.”
“Those are the ones you need to be worried about,” he said.
Champion said some vehicles must be available even when idle, such as fire apparatus, but that other departments — the library, for instance — might find it simpler and cheaper to reimburse employees for mileage on personal vehicles.
Rogers said a county vehicle is sometimes the better option when equipment has to be moved for a public event, because the gear and the crew may not fit in an employee’s car. He said he would review how the fleet is used.
In other action
Commissioners voted 4-0 to approve an economic development incentive agreement with Belleview Bioscience LLC for improvements at Brooksville-Tampa Bay Regional Airport.
Commissioners voted 4-0 to lease an airport hangar to the Experimental Aircraft Association at the market rate of $600 a month for one year, rejecting the group’s request for $200 a month for five years. The association was moved ahead of 43 others on the waiting list who are willing to pay $600.
Commissioners voted 4-0 to buy property at 671 and 699 S. Broad St. for $5.5 million for the Central Government Annex Building, which will house several county operations.