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In response to another comment from Barbetta, Brownman explained that his staff members also bill a shelter project for their time in managing a contract to completion, prompting Barbetta to point out that the county also pays a consultant for assistance. "If we didn't charge for our staff's time, we'd still have to pay the staff," Patterson told Barbetta. Brownman explained that he had talked with a local engineer to determine whether the county could handle all the work in-house by hiring three people to deal with the vari- ous facets of shelter projects. The personnel expense would be $200,000 a year, Brownman said, and the employees could get 15 to 25 shelters put up annually. However, if the county hired one new person with all the responsibilities involved in the shelter work, Brownman noted, the maximum number of structures that employee could get installed each year would be 10. "Ten?" Patterson repeated. "Ten," Brownman told her. "Wow," Patterson said. Going back to the Manatee figures provided on the chart, Patterson continued, "Maybe you don't need to do all the things you're doing to make [a shelter] just perfect." She suggested Brownman talk with represen- tatives of counties with lower costs to find out how they achieve those numbers. Brownman said he could do that. % Sarasota News Leader February 21, 2014 Page 67