MAYO, Fla. — The Lafayette County Board of County Commissioners held its budget workshop on Monday afternoon. The board went over what is increasing this year, which every department said retirement has gone up because of new laws by the state.

The millage rate was approved at a maximum of 9.7 during the Lafayette County Board of County Commissioners Monday night meeting. 

The current millage rate is 8.9723.

Steven Hall, owner of “Hall’s Custom Wood Work’s & Restoration,” in Live Oak, asked the commissioners to allow him to place blessing boxes within the county.

“We call them blessings of hope centers,” Hall explained. “We want to put them up at every community center in Lafayette County, plus one more somewhere else.”

The blessings box works as a “pay it forward” situation, but with donations. Someone puts a donation in the box, then if a person or family needs that item they can go and have it.

The owner of Southern Fire Pits, Jonathan McCray, wanted an approval of having a building in the industrial park so it has room for their expanding its team. It will need at least 8,000 square feet to fit its two teams into. It is working on building 50 bar stools for John Best, from Treehouse Masters, for the new Halpatter Brewing Co. in Lake City. Southern Fire Pits will be on two episodes on Discovery Channel.

Wanda Williams, owner of Tumbleweed’s Smokehouse, wants to build bathrooms at the corner where she has her mobile kitchen set up. The area is zoned as rural residential, but they want to change the zoning to commercial. This way, bathrooms can be built, it will take 60 days to change the zoning to start creating the plans for the bathroom. 

During the meeting Scott Sadler, department head of Public Works, discussed wanting to reject the tractor bids and reopen them to have more brands be available to chose from. The two that they received bids from were John Deere and Challenger, but they are not as compatible as ones they did not receive bids from.