10-6-26 Special Meeting @ 10 a.m. - Oct 06, 2026

So this is the other issues, the other seven areas, a lot of housing and environmental, et cetera. Brandon Pogia is acting performance manager. I don't think he's presented to you before. So he's been working with Donna for a while. Donna's getting ready to transition into retirement in January. So she only has a couple months left. So Brandon is very strong with technology and AI skills and things. So he's been working real well with, and I believe we have our consultant on the line as well to answer questions, Kale Scott. So those questions can be directed there as well. So I'm going to let Brandon kick it off. What we have is basically the seven focus areas that were attached, those worksheets that were attached, as well as he's going to kind of look at, show you the dashboard and what that's starting to look like. That's got a long ways to finish being developed. All this in preparation, we want to go live very soon for the management of the 27 budget as we create our measures and our outputs and outcomes, but really also to help us as we migrate into 28 as we know what we have to do in January for 28. I'm smiling because we just adopted the budget and we're talking about the next budget in literally the very next meeting. When I started this job, you had at least four months to kind of relax before you kicked it off again, and those days are well over. So anyway. Brandon, welcome. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning, Mr. Chair, commissioners. My name is Brandon Pouya. I'm Operation Performance Analyst filling in for Donna today. Joining us via Zoom is Keith Scott. He is with KLSA. We've been working with him since last year through the development of the strategic guide and then into this year as we work on the implementation process with the departments. Keith, thanks for joining us today. Today I will give you an update on the build-up of the strategic guide focus area implementation. We'll walk through the draft worksheets and show you the dashboards that accompany them. These materials are still in development. We're looking for the board's guidance on focus areas and the department actions outlined in the worksheets as we continue this work. I'll start today with a brief overview of how we got here and the work completed so far. Last year, the board approved the current strategic guide, which includes 10 focus areas, and within those focus areas, 33 board objectives. During the course of the development process, we conducted community outreach via a community survey, and we offered two community workshops. The departments were also engaged to solicit their feedback. In addition to that, we gathered up the information from the comprehensive plan, advisory boards, and other board-approved plans, studies, and long-term projects that were currently in action. Early this year, we drafted the implementation plan worksheets for each focus area, and as Tommy mentioned, we've addressed seven of the focus areas through several rounds of engagement with departments. This was to identify, define, refine the measures and deliverables that you'll see in the documents. Each focus area, we had at least a kickoff meeting. We met individually with the departments during that process, and we also had a final joint meeting with those departments for each of the focus areas. Typically, in between these meetings were two to four weeks where we provided opportunity for the departments to input their information into these worksheets. During the kickoff meetings, we shared examples of performance measures and dashboards from various jurisdictions. The jurisdictions used had comparable size, notable university community presence, and or experienced growth pressures coupled with environmentally sensitive lands. We also provided performance measure suggestions within the implementation plan worksheets themselves. This was to provide departments with ideas to consider as they engaged with the materials. The worksheets and dashboards that we present today are in progress, so they're not completed. We are continually working on them. The worksheets list performance measures and deliverables that relate to initiatives and tasks that align with the board objectives. The dashboards are meant to contain high-value, publicly available metrics and information in a single place for the purpose of establishing priorities, policies, and budget. The dashboard content is sourced from a variety of information providers, so not only us but any reputable governmental or nonprofit sources that we can find as well. The seven focus areas that we're currently working through are economic development, environment and conservation, housing security, parks and public spaces, public health, social and youth services, transportation, and waste management. We plan to continue to build out the remaining three focus areas through the end of this calendar year. These include, as Tommy mentioned, emergency services, land use and infrastructure, and public safety and social justice. The implementation plan worksheets that we have are being used to track the strategic guide implementation itself, focus department efforts, identify activities and gaps for the continuous feedback, help with the budget process, enhance tracking of measures and deliverables through the Achieva software that we use, and then keep building and sourcing information on those public dashboards. As time permits today, I'd like to review each focus area implementation worksheet along with the dashboard and receive any additional guidance and direction. We'll take a look first at parks and public spaces. Before I kind of go over the specific facts about this focus area, I'd like to just give a brief overview of the document itself. So the first page of the document is the overview of the focus area. It includes the board-level objectives, what we expected the departments to who would be participating in this particular focus area, key information that was observed, at least some of it through the process of building the strategic guide, and then generally speaking, some potential barriers to implementation that may be referenced within the document itself by the departments. Following that page, there are the portrait documents. So the portrait pages are about performance measures. On the left side column of those, those are measures that are currently in place, and then on the right side are the proposed measures by the departments. And then after those portrait pages, we have landscape pages that are talking about deliverables. These are things, generally speaking, that we don't count per se. They're more project-oriented and more focused on some kind of product or result at the end of that project or deliverable. And the idea here is the proposed would replace the existing. They would just replace the existing. So there are additional. In addition to the existing. Yes, keep existing and add to it. The proposed measures have been aligned to this particular focus area, and then the proposed measures are in addition to. Okay. Wait, wait, okay. Sorry. Can I just get clarification? Please, yeah. So we had a whole list of deliverables in that thing that you used to give us every year, that big, long document. A lot of those we said were not relevant anymore or were overburdening, like in terms of what we were measuring or we weren't doing the right measurement. So these aren't replacing that, they're adding to it? Yes. So performance measures right now are additive. They're not removing. Through the course of department interactions, we look at the performance measures that they currently are using because they use them for a variety of purposes. So we refined them as time proceeds. I guess my feedback, if I can, Mr. Chair, is just that I think that part of why we went through this whole exercise was to try to shift some of our performance measures and give departments the opportunity to get rid of ones that weren't making a lot of sense for how we were measuring or that were redundant, you know, to what we're already measuring in other reports or that we had to report out for accreditation or public sector stuff. And so trying to align those things so that we didn't have a lot of, I felt like in our old reports we would have a lot of the red, right? And it was like, and it was red over and over year after year, but it would be red because it wasn't the right measure, right? And so this was supposed to be, I thought, in one way an opportunity for us to align with our strategic plan, but also an opportunity to kind of rethink some of those performance measures. So I would just request that we do make sure that we're deleting any of the ones that don't make sense and that we aren't going to just add a bunch more that now staff have to report extra or double that what they were having to report before. So we don't disagree, but as we've rolled this out in phase one, we just don't feel comfortable that we're there. Right now we're trying to get departments just comfortable with identifying where the right ones are. And so before we start abandoning the ones we have, we want to ensure that we have in place enough of the right ones to start, or not measuring anything at all. Because if you look, there's some that still have the list are pretty scant. Okay. Also, we want to make sure we're trying to differentiate the list that the board and the public would want to see as measures that are applicable to them. But there's also the creation of measures that are good for the department to continue to measure for themselves to see that probably don't need to be necessarily forward facing. So there are a lot of those things. More internal measures. Yeah, internal measures. Which is good. Right. And so that's going to be kind of worked out through the wash, if you will. I don't think, I think this first pass of this is not obviously the final product. We still have a lot of work to do to get where we want, where we believe the board wants us to get as well. So we don't, we hear you loud and clear. We don't disagree. Okay. And there are some that you look at and you're like, that, that's an old measure. It doesn't really help anything. I think economic development, you'll see some of those. Because one of those is like a number of calls on wage issues or whatever, you know. Right. It doesn't really help. Also, the second component, the last thing you kind of mentioned about being all red or being all yellow. We're trying to also make sure as we build the measures out that it's not about whether they're green, yellow, or red or whatever the case may be. It's more about us being able to track and know exactly where we are in things. Because there may be good reasons why it's not on track. And that is the purpose of it. If everything is, or has to do his regular, come shut up my mic, get closer, I'm sorry. But that we are, know why, I mean, if everything is green, that's not necessarily good. We're not, we don't have the right measures if everything is green. We need things to be yellow and red because we need to know what we should be working on. Yeah. So, and that continuous feedback loop that we got out. So, we hear you and don't disagree at all. I just don't think we're there yet. Go ahead, Anne. If I can, I do think that one of the things that, and I'll be honest, like, we got this like a couple days ago, so I haven't had a chance to read through every single one of these yet, but I will and provide feedback either at the meeting or through the manager. But I think one of the things that, I mean, I love, like, for example, in Parks and Rec, like the park acreage for 1,000 residents and availability to open spaces, you know, the quality of the parks and how they're measuring up and are they meeting the standards in the parks master plan, like how many of them are meeting these set goals that we've set in our master plan for the types of infrastructure and services that are going to be there. What I'm a little concerned about is that some of them in this one and maybe in others have, like, a lot of, like, number of this and number of that. And, you know, as somebody who's spent a lot of time doing impact reporting, like, the number of things doesn't really matter always, right? Right. With accounting, it's not always what you do. Right. Numbers might be, you may have a lot of something, but if nobody's using it, then, like, it may or may not be the right measure. So I just, you know, and there in the proposed, like, the number of active intergovernmental partnership agreements, like, I'm just not sure if that matters. Like, if we're, like, why does the number of those things matter? You know what I mean? So I think that, like, understanding a little bit better why that would be a metric is interesting to me because, like, sometimes those coordinated efforts are really important, like, on the soccer fields or – Right. But sometimes they're not. And we only might have three in place, but they're really good agreements that are working really well. And at the other parks, we're providing the programming or we are – we don't need to have a service agreement in place. So if the measure is the number and we only have three and we've got 100 parks, it's going to look like, again, we're going to go back to that place where we're always in the red. But it's just a – it's an odd measure. So just a reflection on the ones that say, like, number of, like, why is that the measurement and if – and is that the right measurement in terms of what we're trying to ask or is it success at delivering that partnership, right? Like, number of active intergovernmental partnerships that are in good standing or that are working well or, you know, that on a metric scored a five or better from the contract, you know, a contract partner or – I don't know. Well, I think some of those need to be more in line with are they being effective in – Exactly. – having good – how many kids have been able to play soccer or tennis or how many citizens are engaged in the park. Yeah, exactly. I think that's more of the actual final measure. Right, exactly. So what I hope transpires today is exactly what you're doing now and that is that the department has here these conversations so that – because we're not going to build the measure. Right. We haven't yet injected ourselves into building the measures for them. We're trying to let departments understand what the board is seeking in the strategic guide so they can build those measures that are about being effective and being successful in terms of what – why you're putting the money where you're putting it and why you have to guide these measures that you want to achieve. And so we want to modify that. So I hope they hear this loud and clear and it's exactly the feedback. Yeah. I think service to our clients, the number of people getting to participate in events and programming at the parks, the quality of those programs as ranked by people, like being able to get better feedback from folks that participate in our events, like did they enjoy them or not enjoy them, you know, and then like what – Do they come back every year? Do they – when they renegotiate their contract, like how many complaints do we get about the standard of the quality of the maintenance of the parks? Like those sorts of things or the impact measures of how the citizens engage with the spaces for parks and recreation anyway, I think matter more than like how many of any one thing we have. Like I'd rather us have three quality things than, you know, 50 things that aren't working very well. Well, I think even, for example, in the parks, I mean, one of the things that – and it takes – so like parks takes time. Yeah. Because when you're talking about boat ramps and there are certain things we don't control like right now, the level of the lakes and the conditions. It's actually making life easier, right? Yes, you're right. Building boat ramps. Exactly. Some of those things are a lot tougher right now, but also how accessible they are, how many people access them and use them, and what kind of repair they're in, what kind of condition they're in, how they are open, or are they available when people want to gather and want to go fishing and – or the case may be. So we – again, this helps us understand. So, Tommy, do you want Brandon to kind of go through each one and then get our feedback and then go through the next one and get our feedback? How do you – Yeah, I would like to do it as we go. That would help a lot. All right. So why don't we let – why don't you present the parks one and then we'll give feedback and then we'll go to the next one. All right. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So – all right. So with regard to parks and public spaces, this particular focus area has three board objectives. In the course of the activities in this document, we have six reported measures from Achieve – those are referenced – those are the ones on the left. And then in the three objectives, we have ten proposed measures from the departments. Down in the deliverables where we've identified outcomes. And these outcomes were those pieces of information of what does success look like from our board retreat last summer, last year's summer, and also major themes that came from the survey where over 400 residents responded. So those are what comprise those outcomes. And the departments identified at least 31 deliverables in that section for this focus area. Can I – I guess I'm just interested in the objectives, like how – I guess this is where I'm wondering, like, why or how we might integrate, like, the experience of residents and their level of satisfaction with our parks as one of our key objectives. Like, you know, for me, the objective is these things, but the ultimate goal of all of these things, right, the objective is that people have a good quality experience at our parks. Well, yeah, I mean, there's second bullet in the second objective, percentage of park infrastructure rated good or better in annual conditions assessment. So that would be presumably from a – But that's staff doing that assessment. I'm talking about – Oh, I – Residents doing that assessment. No, those are annual conditions that our staff go out and do. It's like a review of the – so that's what I'm saying. It's like I feel like there needs to be some, like, level of – That's a staff evaluation, not a public evaluation. And I think those are probably some of the things when you're looking at objective two and three. Uh-huh. So, you know, I think one is more of the widget county, more as one of the parks that will – you know, implementing the master plan. Right, making sure that each park has a pavilion if it's supposed to have a pavilion. Right, and the accessibility and all this. Right. So then you get into two, and then you're talking about creating and maintaining spaces. So this is where we're looking at balanced park distribution, where people are. I think you're right, we should then expand it into is it being used, how many people are being used by, how are the people rating the park. Uh-huh, right. That's where you get that feedback. Yeah. I agree. Yep. So just having at least something that sort of talks about the resident experience and how we might get feedback from them on that, whether it's those little buttons where they push the smiley face or the not smiley face or rather – you know, I don't know what it would be, but just thinking about how do we get that resident feedback. And if you had a comment section on the website where people could leave their comments about their experience there, too, that it might help other people coming in and see, you know, what amenities are there. There, yeah. I definitely think 100% agree with the concept that, you know, this is going to have its own dashboard, and really this dashboard is for you to see and us to see, but there should be connectivity to the new web pages when they come out so that people – whether it's comments, complaints, concerns, accolades, who did good, you know, which is – those kind of things should be all linked and connected. That connectivity should be there to be able to go on that parks page. Because the parks page should then be, as a part of everything you're doing, exactly what both of you are saying. If you go somewhere to find out what is available in Alachua County. I want to go skateboarding. Can I go find out – how do I find out where to go skateboarding in Alachua County? Or I want to go hiking, or I want to go biking, or whatever the case may be. You look it up. You boat ramp. Where are the boat ramps? What's going on? Because everyone has their own hobbies. Everyone focuses in on what they want to do. You're able to go find that there. You're able to access it. And then you're able to provide us feedback via – more feedback through us to say, okay, this is how it went. This is how – and we attract who's going, how many are going, et cetera, et cetera. So it's a global model far out – far beyond just the strategic guidance. Okay. Weird. So that is where we're at right now with the parks and public spaces. And we will continue to refine the information and – in addition to refining what we currently are collecting with regards to performance measures. And I think you see the performance measures, again, the first objective of the master plan is really about location, following the master plan, things that we've walked step by step through. So you're really getting there. Just are we maintaining it? Are we – are we expecting it? Are we – I mean, we complete it, are we going to track on the – on the five-year plan that we bring back annually as a part of the capital budget, et cetera. I think two is more the build-out that needs to take place, invest in the creation of new recreational and public spaces. So one of – maybe one of Jason's goals this year that we – that he and I worked on is about more active rec. And upkeep and improvement. Well, more active rec. So when I first came to work here, that board at that time was very much into – we are passive. Kingsville handles active rec. The county's passive, right? That was always the big thing. But that hasn't transpired as the county has grown – Urbanized. Right. Urbanized. And the city lines have not really grown. We've become more active. We have, you know, some agreements like you're talking about soccer and tennis. But we're also talking about building active parks to enjoy nature, not just through our conservation trails, but also through the boat ramps and through – now we have West End that should be more of an active area, not just passive walking trails, but also who can offer something out there. The board has us looking at partnerships and possible golf partnerships there, et cetera. So a lot more active participation than we've had in the past. And that's one of – one of the things that while Jason's going to build that part out here, he's also going to look at in terms of transitioning to be more active and having more citizens be able to participate in our parks. So that's an example of what we're doing. Yeah. When I think of active parks, I think of Veterans Park, Jonesville, West End, and where is our active one going to be on the eastern part of the council? The Cuscoilla, for example. You know, that probably should be more active than it is, you know, with what we have out there. If we're going to continue to have the pool and the lawns and all that, it should be more of an active park. More of an active park. Exactly. So that's kind of our goal next year is to build that out as we go into next year's budget to get through November. Yeah, right. That's – yes, that's our goal. And that will – you will see that kind of move over into the strategic guide and those objectives. Yeah, and it's one of the top four service priorities of our residents. Yeah. That's why I think that that – you know, I mean, I think one of the – I think that Jason's team has been doing a really good job of strategically using the small amounts of money they have to upgrade parks that really needed it, that hadn't had that attention like Jonesville and others that really needed the attention as well as trying to get to underserved spaces. And I think that, you know, part of the reason that this is a thing that matters to so many public is because it's what's in their yard. It's what they interact with every day, right? They're not – they might – that's why roads matter. It's why parks matter. It's because it's the things that they interact with every day. They don't even – they don't even think about stormwater or environmental protection as much because it's just there, you know. It's like it's like part of – they have good quality of life. Because it's there, but it's not necessarily something that they interact with on a regular basis. But having that customer experience built in, so in addition to our annual conditions, what feedback mechanisms are we creating for the public to share with us? Because right now it's like complaint-based primarily, and that's unfortunate because I think there's a lot of people having really great experiences at our park and being able to share that message too, like, you know, the quality, like, resources that exist, especially as we upgrade them and that they're enjoying them and that they're working. And that helps us also, I think, with – as we continue to add things and we're buying things from different vendors, like playground equipment, for example. Like, we'll know the ones that people really like and that seem to be working for the kids versus maybe ones that aren't and don't. So I think that's helpful for us, like, long-term from a procurement perspective too. Agreed. Mr. Chair? Yeah, go ahead. No, let's go to the next one. Yeah, just very quickly. The key departments, I really love that you all put those three together. I think it's really important. I know working with the Tourist Development Group for all these years, I realized, you know, that we've really been trying to make sure that there's a gig in every community and every community in the county has something special to offer. So, you know, the focus on parks and open spaces, environmental issues, you know, we really were trying to make sure get into the tourism part of that and the economic development that that would impact. So thank you so much for doing it. Keep that together. That's important. All right, Brandon. Let's go to the next one. All right. Yeah, so before we go to the next, we'll just kind of take a quick look at the dashboard that we currently have in place. And so the way these dashboards are currently arranged is at the top, we have our internal, the things that the county measures through the departments. These are the objectives, of course, but then we have these graphs here and the list. These are the measures from Achieve It. And then right after this section, we get into content that is outside of Achieve It. So it might still be within the county, but they might also be resources that are outside of our operations. So I think that's where you see the going from the widget counting, which I think is necessary, to the ability for the departments to add maps, forms, things that can be identifiable, more things that you're talking about, customer surveys, how we start building out things other than measuring where we are in the master plan and measuring where we build something else. Yeah, I mean, I guess maybe. I guess I'm not, I don't know if I'm following you, but I guess I see it as like one of the KPIs is number of parks receiving X rating, you know, from the public that have accessed it. Not so many, how many people access the park, but like how many of them like that were asked said like, this is awesome versus like, this sucks, you know what I mean? And I think that's where you should find this. This is on a GIS map where you can hover over a park. Right. Kind of like a Google review almost. You know, what is this park doing? Where is this park open? How is it rated by people? What is the specialty of area? Is this a walking trail? Is it a skateboarding area? Does it have a bathroom? Does it have a bathroom? Is the bathroom unlocked? I mean, you have to really ask for that data, right? Like, you have to really see how are we doing when they walk up to the park where they can QR code. It's got to be mobile. Right. It's all going to be on the mobile phone. Very few folks are going to come back to their house and log on to them and give that feedback. It's got to be. We're at events. You know, you sort of have a little survey. I mean, it could just be strategic. I mean, I know it's work, but I do think. It's got to be easy for them. It's got to be easy. Yeah, they do it right there. Right. Or the people won't do it. Right. Like you said, the red and green. They'll only do it. Right. They'll only do it when they're mad if you make it something that they have to go find and do. Then they'll do it when they're upset. Right. All right. So we'll go on to the next focus area. And we do want this exact same feedback for these areas. I mean, it helps us tremendously to hear. So this one is economic development. It's the last one in our packet. A lot to say about it. And so with economic development, we have three board objectives that were identified on the strategic guide. Five departments were identified initially for the participation in this process. They did identify four strategic and policy partners in the community as well. And within this, we aligned eight measures that are in achievement today. And there are 16 proposed measures from the departments. In the 12 outcomes that are identified in the document, we have 24 deliverables, majority of which are in progress. This was the one earlier we were talking about. So objective one, promote economic growth. So if you look through that, again, the existing percent of wage sales complaints, dollars received through tourist tax collections. Those are just, wage accounting doesn't really help. So we're trying to add some more number of new jobs created with wages above the county minimum. That's something we should track. No, I mean, I really like this one. I mean, I think the direction that this is going, it's really about like how the overall economy of our county is doing. Right. You know, and like job growth, the kinds of jobs that we have, the incomes that we have is really important. I also think, you know, understanding the, like, who's getting jobs. That's, I don't see that in here specifically, but like the, you know, that underemployed and unemployed people, like, you know, like when we look at careers, like how is that going? Like how are we doing at helping people that historically haven't had jobs or have had to struggle and get jobs, like start to get in jobs, like, and reach, like workforce development programming is another piece that I feel like we should build in. But I, I think this is really going in the right direction. Like, you know, wage theft complaints, definitely. I mean, we have certain programs that we're running that we want to know if they're doing well. But like you said, those are more internal measures. Is that program going well or do we need to do something about it? But it doesn't necessarily tell the community that we're doing something for economic development. I do also feel like this one, when I saw the key departments, I was really disappointed. I mean, I'll say this. One, I think economic development should be its own department. I think it, I don't think it really needs to sit under tourism. Like, you know, tourism is about, about a very specific type of economic growth and about storytelling and about celebrating and about creation of events and programming. But it really, economic development is so much more than that. And it really is cross-departmental. Like, without all of our departments being focused on economic development, I'm not sure that it's going to get done. So I don't know that we need to list everybody here. But I do think that a broader, you know, a broader focus. Like, I mean, our HR department, we're a big job creator, you know. And like, who are we hiring and what sort of jobs are we creating? And the fact that we're increasing wages all the time and going above and beyond to make sure that I'm in a way, like, that's a big deal for economic development in our community. So, like, those sorts of things matter. And I think just thinking a little bit more across county about economic development and having it be a part of what a lot of our departments are thinking about, you know. Like, she talked about the gigs for a lot of our communities where environmental protection is a really big part of it. And then tourism sort of dovetails really well. But in other places, you know, it might be more about building up industry or agriculture, as we've been focused on a lot, you know, which is less about tourism specifically and more about sort of a bigger picture of building up infrastructure and economic opportunity. So I think we might expand the departments a little bit. You know, when we met with Newberry, you know, they've got big expansions coming out there through their programs there too. What I had done is asked Jordan and that bunch, you know, when you all have projects that are coming into your city, if they don't fit, and you feel like that it's still a great opportunity for somebody in the county, share that with another economic development person in another community, Hawthorne, for instance, you know. Or if it's something that's not going to fit in Newberry, share the information then with the other outlying communities so that they have an opportunity to capitalize on what they are doing there. Alachua is another one. You know, they've got big things going on in Alachua, big things going on in Newberry. So if it's something that's not going to fit in their community at the time, if they would share it with one of the other municipalities, that, you know, we could do a little bit more cross-county, you know, sharing. Yeah, I'll add to that. That was what I would say we need to add to our focus area strategic policy partners is the municipalities. And then I also think we need to add UF Health, the VA, HCA, and the airport. Yeah, maybe. Those are key figures of economic development. First of all, I love the fact that we have this area. Yeah. You know, this is new to us, and I'm glad we're focusing in on it. But when I think of economic development in Alachua County, it's our public institutions of education and then hospitals, the three hospitals, and then our cities. And I don't even know if you're looking across. Well, I look at UF for the ag. UF, University of Florida, IFAS. So, I mean, I think of ag. But you think of ag, not UF. Well, I mean, IFAS is a research institution that provides education and outreach. You're thinking of ag. But I'm talking about the actual farms. I mean, our third largest industry after hospitals and education is farming and ag. Those are our three biggest economic developments. So who would be the policy partner for that? The Farm Bureau? I think it's a much more diversified group than that. I mean, I think we have a food systems coalition. We have local farmers. We have the Black Farmers Association. We have Farm Bureau. We have Farm Credit. I mean, it's a pretty diversified group. So I'm not sure that we, I'm not as worried about who the targeted individuals are and then make sure that we're thinking about the farmers as strategic partners and that we're thinking about the infrastructure and the opportunities in that area. The other pieces, like in this one, I thought, you know, again, like I don't see community support services anywhere. I know that they're primarily in the social services realm, but like we talk all the time about root causes and we talk all the time about the safety net versus a safety harness. And this is where that rubber hits the road, right? This is where if we do well in economic development, then the people who can't afford food and can't afford housing suddenly can't afford food and can't afford housing. And so where we're intersecting with people who are the most challenged economically and also struggling to retool for workforce development, those are those opportunities for us to have those conversations, right? Like how do we collaborate strategically with, say, our family resource centers, career source, and, you know, and CSS to see like what are those opportunities to help people who are struggling the most to identify opportunities for wage growth for new job opportunities. Well, family resource centers might be the key policy connection. Yeah, so it's worth a conversation around that too. So some of those partners probably right now they're, you know, talking a lot about institutional partnerships, but I think you're also now looking at what are the cattlemen associations and the farmer market groups, et cetera. Yeah, and career source. One of the challenges that we do have in this area, in this community per se, is when you're talking about economic growth into that network, from the, those that are struggling affordability and housing, et cetera. We also, we're challenging this community to bring in those levels of jobs in. We have a tendency to want to bring in hospital jobs, which are trained. Those aren't the people in that category. Those are usually unskilled or low-skilled people that are looking for positions in warehouses or agriculture or things that, and if you look, we target where we get a lot more excited about tech jobs and hospital jobs and things that usually required us to bring in people from other areas into our community for good jobs that also is economic development. But to bring in that component is probably going to take a little shift and thought process of what type of jobs we're really targeting to bring in and what industry we're willing to say, you know, that's, it's not a sexy industry, but that's an industry that it can bring good, good, hardworking jobs in that people can now pay their rent, pay their, feed themselves. Well, how do we, how do we create those partnerships with like Santa Fe College, like what we did with our heavy diesel mechanics, like how can we create workforce retooling and workforce development programs and projects that actually target industries that make sense? So we, so it doesn't have to be an unskilled job, but it, but there are affordable and accessible opportunities to get retooled and to get those skill sets that are necessary. That's why resources are a partner on here. That's why they're on there. That would be another reason too to maybe even look to Marion County in Ocala and also Lake City because those, they are building different kinds of industries up there too, and I don't know if there's any way for us to communicate, you know, across county lines, because I know that Ocala is, isn't a, is industrial, but at the same time agricultural, and they have built up big, big businesses down there that attract a lot of workers, but they don't have the housing for those workers too. So, you know, if there's some way we could collaborate, you know, we do it at FAC all the time. So if we could figure out a way to work across county lines with those bigger communities that have a different focus on the economy. Good, good point. So on the second board objective, we do hit the farmers. We hit on the third bullet, local farm. Right. Participating in county support programs and initiatives, number six, farmer market grant programs, and then number seven, number of active ag and food system partnerships. What number are you on? So that's the second measure, and there's seven bullets there. It's the third, sixth, and seventh bullet, second to the last page, under targeted strategic partnerships. Yep. So that's good. Yeah. Okay. Any more on this one? No. We just have the dashboard here. So on this dashboard at the moment, we currently have our internal measures that aligned with the focus area, but we are still attempting to source out the content from the external sources. Do we have a way that we're tracking, like, the projects that, like, I'm just wondering about, like, I mean, like I said, I love the drive towards more of the economic numbers that show overall economic growth, but I'm wondering, like, where we have really strategic progress projects, like the ones that we have listed in board level objective number two, I think about the airport gateway project, I think about the forward focus project, I think about the food hub project, I think about the military concentration site project, right, like those projects, heavy diesel mechanic project. I mean, they're kind of, you know, some are bigger than others, but they're really focused things that we've done to try to move the needle on economic development. I'm just wondering if we have a plan to incorporate those into the dashboard or to incorporate those into regular reporting, because, you know, we get lost. Like, I have no idea where the airport gateway project stands at this point in time, right, and that's okay, because staff are probably working on it hard in the background and things are happening, we just don't know about it, but having some kind of ability to check in on those things on a regular basis or get the information on where those projects are and what's moving with them. I feel like the forward focus one has a good thing with our, the website, the Zen City website and the newsletters, but some of these other ones kind of are a little more behind the scenes. So wondering how we build some of those that I know have those strategic stakeholders that are interested in them wrapped around them, get that data on some kind of an iterative basis. It's a great question. We are going to be using Achieve It not only for the widget counting activities, but we are also planning to move into the area of status updates for these kind of projects. The deliverables that are in these lists, and I know since transportation was the first one to hit the road, we are going to start working. Thank you, Sean, for that. We will start working on implementing that sort of report that you're talking about. Okay, cool. Thank you. Yeah, you brought up a good U.S. Army Reserve. It's definitely got to be a policy partner there for that corner. I just have one more thing. You know, you guys, you hear me mention Takachalee regularly. It's a big compound out there that's beginning to shift a little bit. But we're still working, trying to work with folks out there, and there is momentum. So as an economic engine for this community, it's something we can't lose sight of or take our hands off because there's great opportunity out there, and we're seeing, like I say, there's going to be some changes coming that we have been involved in, in terms of a lot of exciting things. So just keep your eyes on that, too, all of you, as a real economic engine for that part on that corridor. Of the county, yeah. That's right. So please don't let that one go. Okay. All right. Next up, we will take a look at housing security. More at the beginning. That's the second one, after the alignment. All right. So under housing security, the board's objectives, there are three. Expand affordable housing, support vulnerable populations, and long-term housing stability. Two of the primary departments in this focus area are growth management and community support services. They identified local housing authority, city of Gainesville housing and community development, Florida housing finance corporation, and, of course, community support services as strategic partners. There are eight measures, there are eight reported measures that are in Achieve It today, and there are nine proposed. We have 10 outcomes, and there are 29 deliverables listed. I mean, this is another one where I think, again, housing, I know that, you know, growth management's focused on the actual, like, physical, like, how do we plan for it, where does it go, and community support services is the primary person doing our housing programming, but, like, this is a huge economic development factor. If we don't have the housing for the workforce, like, they're going to go somewhere else that does. So I do think, like, having economic development plugged in and having some of our other, you know, departments plugged in, like, you know, even, like, I think about a lot of times the conversation, like, we had a whole conversation at the Affordable Housing Advisory Committee about how we have the opportunity to shift some of our codes and some of our growth management, like, land use policies and have incentives to increase affordable housing. But some of those, some of the hardest ones for developers are things like our tree code and our open space code, and, like, when we start messing with those and we start bumping up against the issues of environmental justice and, like, you know, should we be saying that, like, in affordable housing, you don't have to protect the trees and the open space as much because we want you to build it, but then, like, then we're creating spaces where the affordable housing doesn't have that same quality of, you know, beauty and open space and that shade, some of the shade and some of the other things that people need. So I do think that having, again, some of our other departments, I get why the focus area departments are here. I just hope that, I guess my overall comment is that I think that those cross-departmental conversations are the things that are going to create innovative opportunities in these spaces and help us move the needles forward. And so the more cross-departmental conversations we're having around our strategic goals, then the big kind of wicked issues like housing and economic development, the more likely we are to actually advance them. Don't you think they do that anyway? I mean, don't you think that they talk across departments? I don't think that we have yet built intentional cross-departmental teams that are focused around our strategic goals and moving those forward. I think that, yes, they talk to each other about projects or about problems or about specific things that are happening. I think that they do a good job with that. But I think that in terms of saying, like, we have a strategic goal of affordable housing, let's all put our heads together and talk about how to move this needle forward, that I don't think is happening necessarily as much as it could happen. And I know that means time away from the specific projects that they're working on, so it can be challenging to do. But I think you see that in both government and private sector companies, when they're trying to shift big problems, big things from an innovation standpoint, it takes those cross-functional teams to be focused on that issue and to all kind of think of it as their problem or their project and not just the people who are like, I have to work on this every day because it's my job. You know what I mean? We're a pretty intimate group here, you know, when it's really hard not to. And this is the one where I think we've added a lot. Yeah, we have. This is one where, you know, previous boards did not have this level of focus. And I'm happy, though, where we're headed. I think one of our policy partners also has to be, we've got the city in there, but I think the small municipalities are, you know, where people are moving to and where the housing is being developed. And on, you know, a quick really, like, specific focus piece of feedback is that under the proposed, like, number of heirs' properties resolved, I would say even better is number of families with estate plans. Like, you know, because the goal isn't just that we clear heirs' property. The goal is that they have estate planning in place so that they don't fall back into heirs again and again because they could clear heirs and then almost immediately fall right back into it if they don't have set up wills and estate plans for their property. So, and I know that that's been a big focus of the projects and the funding that we've been given to the law school is they're focused on estate planning almost as much, if not more so, than they are, like, clearing heirs' property because clearing heirs' property can take years and be very complicated for certain families. But estate planning can be relatively simple, especially if they don't own a ton of stuff and can make life a lot easier for everybody involved. So I think adding that in there, I know it's a very, like, narrow thing, but... Yeah, but, I mean, those top four bullets are really good. New rental units permitted, new number of workforce rental housing units produced per year. Yes. Those are, these are good measures, right? Okay. Homelessness is no much reduced saying... And this was, you know, I was interested to see this was next to transportation, the number two priority. Yes. Transportation being the first. And then for the housing security dashboard, of course, we continue the same pattern of county measures at the top. And then in this situation, at the bottom, we have additional resources where we provide the links and maybe a description of why those links are there. These are links that maybe the page doesn't present well enough or doesn't have the data that we would want to embed in, but we want to still make those resources available through the dashboard. So, of course, we're still working these out. Great. Do you have FAQs at the bottom of these things? Frequently asked questions. We do not yet. That's probably something we see. Good idea. Yeah, that's a great idea. I would say, this is one where I would say numbers actually do matter, and having, like, a reduction in the number of unhoused individuals in our county is definitely a goal under the local populations. Yeah, like that we see that annual count going down. I know that's something that we've been working on with our permanent supportive housing and through our collaboration with Keys to Home. Our next one up will be public health, social, and youth services. Before economic development. This particular focus area has five board objectives. Address social determinants of health, enhance care coordination, social services infrastructure, and animal resource programs, expand behavioral health, and deliver youth services. There were six departments that were initially identified to participate in this focus area. There are currently identified five strategic and policy partners, including Meridian Behavioral Health Care, Aladger County Sheriff's Office, Aladger County School Board, Children's Trust of Aladger County, and City of Gainesville. So I'm guessing we think of these policy partners as being the institutional partners. Right. It might be worth it to say that, because I think this area could really alienate a lot of our community partners. Like, every page that I'm seeing, I'm like, but there's so many community groups that are working on these issues that aren't listed here as strategic partners. And I know that could get really long-winded and be this insane list. And I don't know that we need to go there either. But we might want to say, like, institutional partners or, like, or maybe it's just funding and it's, like, people we have funding relationships with, like, released would be listed here or other partners that we have direct fund, like, peaceful paths or, I'm just trying to think about how we identify these partners without, like, offending a lot of the people who are working in these areas that consider themselves to be strategic partners as well on these issues, especially when we get into housing and community support services. Like, there's so many groups that are working day in and day out on these. I would hate for them to feel like they're not considered a strategic partner when they're doing a lot of hard work. Okay, and I think that in line with that, it makes sense to start looking at that list that we already work with. Right, people that were funded in some way. There's a broad list of those that are. We do consider partners. We have a vendor-contractual relationship, but really they're more of a partner relationship while we work doing the grant. Yeah, you could just say some private community partners. Right, agreed. And that would encompass them all. We could have that in each of the sections. Yeah, I'm less concerned with the, when you said it becomes maybe an exhaustive list, but that's okay. I mean, this is supposed to be a tool and a mechanism to build out and make sure we are inclusive of everything we need to approach. I think it helps. I think that when people see themselves in this, then they start to get more buy-in, right? So if we're listing our community partners, like the family resource centers, if their names are here or, I mean, you know. Community Springs. Right, Community Spring. And I think about that for economic justice and economic development, or we think about release reentry with housing and with this work. Like I just think about all the partners we have that once they start seeing themselves, you know, in the government documents, it makes a big difference in terms of helping to move that needle and then feeling bought into our strategic plans as well as their own. So what I hope comes out of this eventually is this has always been kind of a component of the budget cycle, which is why it's kind of been headed through our office. What really ultimately should happen is that high-level overviews tying it, the budget to the strategic guide, is really a budgetary function. It really should be its own kind of entity or document or way to track in general for the board. It's really a board item. It's really a board thing to be addressed. And so I agree with everything of the direction you're trying to go. I think that's where we do need to go. And I build out one of the big, just as a side note, one of the big arguments in my budget shop. And Mo's not here to, yes, April is, but Mo's not here to throw anything at me. You know, it's like they're trying to, oh, this budget book is so big. And I'm like, yes, I want it to be big. Because anything you need to know about the budget, including Alachua County and the economic environment of Alachua County, if somebody really wants to look at a page cover to cover, nobody does because they don't have that kind of sleep problems. But if you really do want to look at it, everything is in there. Why would we take things out of it? Because it's in there. We can find it in there. Maybe it's more of a resource. Same thing with this. Over time, this should grow to be a huge thing that you can find there, that you can access, especially now with AI tools, that you can find what you want to find in it without saying, God, it's 500 pages long. How am I going? So, yeah, we need to get there. This should be a... Well, and each section of that is really focused in for that department. That's what they're doing their day-to-day operations to try to achieve. So for each of these, maybe then adding that, like, community partners that are in, and we can just allocate, like, funded by the county or something, so that it's, like, clear, like, maybe not everybody's listed there. Or maybe we don't. Maybe we expand it and we just think if somebody says, hey, I don't see myself listed here, maybe we add them. We can ask the department folks. But I also think advisory committees that are related to these topics is probably worth listing because we have all these advisory committees and they're all linked to these and knowing which ones are sort of thinking about these because then they can give us feedback to some of these proposed things. Like Roscoe and Parks. Exactly. And land management and environmental protection and affordable housing. I agree. Yeah. Okay. Sure. Yeah, advisory committees definitely should be in there because they give us their work plan every year. All right, so for the public health, social, and youth services, we have 26 existing measures, and there are 35 proposed measures in this document. Okay. We have 18 outcomes that were identified, and in those 18 outcomes, we have 48 deliverables identified by the departments. Majority of them are in progress. I guess I have a question. On the number of individuals that entered housing through prevention move-in services, is it possible for us to measure retained housing? Is that a possibility? Like it's one thing to move them in, but do they stay in the housing? So that was on the last one. It was about 90 days about successfully staying in housing was actually in the last one. Okay, great. I think it was a 90-day. Sorry that I'm just now like, I know it's not. We just got it. We had a long time with that. Which goes back to your point of, look, some of these things are integrated and should be integrated, and a measure in another focus area may also apply to this focus area. A lot of good ones in here, Connie. Something that I think the care coordinate, I don't know where it fits in here, but I think it does fit in here under the social determinants of health, is number of individuals diverted from the jail or from like institutionalization, like through what we now have our mobile integrated health team, and we have the central receiving facility, and we have the co-responder teams. Like we have all these efforts to try to divert people that are in a mental health crisis who don't really need to be going to or just experiencing homelessness and don't necessarily belong in jail from ending up in jail. It's the only place to put them. So I don't know where that fits in here. If it's in here, I apologize because, again, I'm just starting to dig into it. But I do think that's something we need to think about and where we put that. And maybe it's in the public safety one, and that's why it's not here yet. But I think there's some overlap with this and with housing and economic development as well. I think you see measure and improve the conditions related to the social determination of health. There's a whole list of those things that you're talking about. Oh, yeah. Jalen takes risks. I guess this is what I mean. Like this, I wish that this somehow tied to our economic development goal, like that it wasn't just the number of people enrolled. Like in an ideal world, it's like the number of people no longer enrolled, right? Like that's like the goal, right? Like the idea is that we could like move people out of the need for these services. Like the number of people enrolled in these services right now is probably actually a pretty good measure because we need more people getting the services. But ultimately, the dream is that we move people out of needing these services and into opportunities for well-paying jobs and to be able to take care of their own situations without needing county support services. So I think thinking about how those two dovetail is something worth having a conversation about, one of the challenges that we face there and, you know, being a budget guy, get out of my realm pretty quickly, one of those challenges is because when we have our conversations about budget is the reality, the perception of what people are looking for out there versus the reality of what people are, where they're at in their life in terms of they're always going to be in, you know, looking for permanent support of housing and they're always going to be, because that's just, that's what they're chosen in life. So it's just trying to figure out those people that are looking for help to do what you said, to eventually own a home, to eventually do these things that are really looking for those economic opportunities and that we can assist with those things. But we have to identify that reality up front of which ones, which one are these programs serving, I think it's probably 99% of the people. Motels or by the apartments, who are we serving, what ultimately is going to be the goal of that. Right. Making sure we understand that we're aligned with the, what we're doing there is aligning with the goal that the board had laid out initially. Switch your previous point, how do we capture those folks that were unemployed or unhoused that are now on their own and not relying on government services? That's really what you're asking. That's right. Like how many people did we divert that got the mental health supports that they needed and then were able to like support themselves in moving forward? Or we worked through the Family Resource Center and they got, you know, they got some rapid rehousing support and they got some food support and then they worked with CareerSource, they got some retooling support. And like, you know, there's a lot of different pieces. And I think that's the challenge is that right now those pieces, each of them is kind of in their own little bucket and then people have to literally run around the county and run around from department to department to get those support services that they need to make it possible for them to not need those supports anymore, right? And we make it so difficult to navigate and manage those systems. So the care coordination piece is really exciting in here for me is how do we build those systems and work together and, yeah, measure the number of people that, you know, get that coordinated service in there. It's tracking the individual. Right. It's tracking the individual from using community support services to no longer need it. And I would suggest that in those conversations we've had in our budget cycles have indicated they do track a lot of that. Probably need to do a better job of how we build it into this plan and how we build it into these measures that we can show the success rate of supplying that service and then accomplishing that goal. Yeah. So I think that's something we could work on. I mean, we have the fourth rule, sorry, Commissioner, is reduce ER visits of Alachua County. So that's a way we're measuring it by a reduction of something that's happening. I guess I just think that there's like a, to your point of like measuring the individual, I know those are hard things to do, but I think that to me, like when we talk about the park services and people's improved experience, when we talk about this and like people like how do they get the support that they need to then move out of needing that support anymore, right? When we talk about economic development, how do we build a stronger workforce and give people the tools they need to be successful? Like those are the big goals. Like from my perspective, like that's like the big hairy audacious goals, right, is that we're creating an improved quality of life for the residents of Alachua County and that's happening because they have more opportunity. They have the ability to take care of themselves and support themselves. They're thriving and enjoying the parks and recreation that we have to offer. Like those are our big goals. And like they all kind of in a lot of ways like dovetail together, right? And so it's, those are the hard questions is like what are those measures? Like how do we get to that? How do we show that we've actually done that, you know? And that's what I mean when I talk about the departments talking together. Like having a measure of like we reduced this number or we increased this number of me, it was one indicator, but how do we look at the overall success of our programming? Go ahead. These agencies usually have somebody assigned to those folks, right? That they're generally, these folks that are coming in and going through these programs are assigned a worker or someone who's following them. It seems to me that would be where the information is coming from. Whatever agency is. The case managers. The case managers of whatever agency is working, that's where that data should come from. In terms of, yeah. You know, so, you know, that would be the place to find the information you're asking. This is good, though. Number of percentage of participants receiving SNAP benefits. A lot of that. Right, so it's like I want to say like number of people getting the SNAP benefits, like making sure we're getting people enrolled in SNAP that need it, but like number of people that came off of SNAP and no longer needed it. Like how do we measure that? Well, the agencies will know that. The agencies will know that. Yeah. I think like, for example, when the health department came, they were able to reference a lot of that about how many people they kept out of emergency rooms because of the after hours care. A lot of the agencies are tracking a lot of that information. Just get the information. We need to figure out how to do that. Good. Good. Anything else, commissioners, on this one? A lot of work on this one for the community support. Thank you. A lot more to go. Yeah. There's a lot of them. Yeah. And I'll read them to direct you to chat with the teams and see. But it's really good work. Okay. Are you also including animal services in this discussion or with health? Yes. Number of animal licenses. Yeah. What I'm asking is, too, we've got animals, number of animals received, but none of the, we're not talking about animals released, too. So I don't know if that's significant, but it would be to me. You know, I mean, we know how many we're getting in there. And I'm not sure. How many adopted? Yes. You know, we're at least, you know, released, whatever that means, you know, that they've gone out of the shelter. But the shelter facility capacity by type, I don't understand that. How much space we have. So it's probably how many. Or dogs and cats. By type, dogs and cats. I would like to see number of adoptions. Yeah, there was a list of requests, like number of adoptions, number of euthanasias, number, like there was a request by a number of the community members on like sort of some basic reporting that I think we just said we could do when I made that request on the, on the, that might be just easy numbers to put here as proposed reporting. Is there a reason you all did not put release? I said, what were you thinking or not thinking? Well, I think right now, animal services is the next transition. This is the scope of the departments, not us. Okay. We're not really determining all of this. This is what we're going to need to add to when we get that report back. Right. And get the animal services director onboarded. Okay. Okay. Gotcha. So with their dashboard, we have, of course, our internal measures here. And then they also have some information with regards to broadband and then some links at the bottom. But, of course, we're continuing to try to develop these out. Talking about the kids, do we have any, are we talking specifically about following our children in the juvenile justice system here? Do we have, I'm trying to see. When we're talking about youth? Does it look like it? I don't see anything, any indicators. No reference to kids. Most of these have to do with tracking through the school system and tracking through. Hopefully that will be in the public safety. Like, we'll see, like, reduced resistance. Reduced violence. Okay. I mean, to Commissioner Wheeler's point, this is titled public health, social, and youth services. That's where those cross, that's what I'm talking about. We don't have the public safety, but that would be another one. Like, those cross, like, the social services are obvious, oftentimes driving the crime rates and recidivism rates. Like, so much of the crime and the people that we have in our jail are there as a result in some way or shape or form of poverty. Yeah. I mean, the number fifth item here is deliver youth services. Collaborate with nonprofits and community partners to support delivery of a full range of youth services and improve child rooted in evidence-based practices that are both proactive, intervention-based, focused on early childhood education, literacy, strengthening stability, and reducing youth and gun violence for children at risk. Yeah, I think this one's been more of a prevention side, and then maybe the public safety one would have more about DJJ. Okay, that's fine. I think that's right. Yeah. And, like, reducing recidivism and what court services is going to be doing. There's where we have 4H, peak literacy, Gainesville Thrives. We still have a lot of youth services. Summer camp. I mean, we have kids that have to be transported out of the state because of their involvement in gang activity. You know, so, you know, it's... That's going to be in the public safety. Okay. I hope, yeah. I work, y'all. I know so much. Overrub and so much in... Yeah, it's a lot of work. So that would be one, I would say, delivery youth services that we could get more indicators of, like, the literacy efforts that we've initiated. Yeah, they have, like, kids on grade level in here in one of the bullets. So... To me, that's more of a school board. Yeah, it's a school board. Yeah, some of these are out of our control. I mean, some of these we're trying to... Absolutely. As a government, a county government, you know, we don't... Children's Trust has its own entity now. It's on agency. Right. School board has its own agency. So while we make a track and report some of that information out, I don't know how useful it is. We don't have it in our departments for that. How is it your strategic goal in some of these issues when you don't have the... We don't commit those kind of resources to that function. We could provide funding to those institutions. To some degree. But I think that's why when I was talking about the dashboarding so long ago, I was talking about a community-wide dashboard, and I was talking about metrics that we... That there needs to be a certain number of metrics that in an ideal world, the Children's Trust is agreeing to, the City of Gainesville is agreeing to, the County is agreeing to, community partners that are agreeing to, that we're all measuring, and that we're all feeding into, right? Like, we're spending $500,000 in literacy initiatives, right? Like, yeah, you can say it's a school board initiative, but guess what? Guess who's spending the money on it? We are. We are. And the Children's Trust is, right? And so is the school board. It would seem like we should get some reporting back. Right. That's what I'm saying. I think we kind of need those community-level, you know, like the idea of people moving out of poverty and moving out of homelessness. Like, that's a community-wide goal, right? Like, we're all, each of us is putting money into those situations in different ways and like measuring, figuring out what those metrics are. And I know that the community foundation was talking about a community-wide dashboard and like having some of those metrics, but us measuring them the same way so that they talk to each other and the data looks the same. Because when you start to report data different ways, then it looks, you know, it can get really confusing for the community. So if we're able to... Kind of here's a question to Tommy's point, I think, is who in community sports services is our youth services person? Right. So the idea is that you've delivered, these are our goals and objectives. This is a strategic guide. This is what we're trying to accomplish. Well, the budget office goal is to resource that as needed to help the departments achieve those. Well, some of those things, some of these things we're talking about are outside of our realm to even do. Yeah. So we can't create a matrix and we can report. It's kind of like economic development. What is your unemployment rate countywide? Well, some of that's a factor of things we can't control. Some of that's a factor of nothing we can control. If we're in a nationwide recession or the state of Florida is going through something, it's out of our control. I mean, that's reflective when we go to get bond ratings. The first thing they ask is, well, the state of Florida is in this economic condition. You know, we're a component of that. So if unemployment is upstate, why do unemployment is upstate, why? Our ability to hold a department of you're creating measures and you're asking for resources is limited to the ability of what they can do within your realm of county. So our metric becomes basically the outcome that we are contracting. Right. I think I hear you, Tommy, but I also think, I mean, there are things like, say, the unemployment rate that are just like, you know, but when you have communities that are focused on ensuring that our unemployment rate is as low as it can be in the times when the economy is great and that we're focused on attracting those good jobs here and on building up our local businesses to be able to employ more people in the good times, then our unemployment rate in Alaska County is going to be lower than the state average, right, because we've done a good job and I do think that like us picking those big picture measures, those some of those like sort of like the big goal, like what is the big goal, what is the big thing, like if we've done our job, what have we, what is the outcome, right? Like we've done our job in community support services, like less people need community support services, right? They work themselves out of a job. If we've done a good job in public safety, there's less people in our jails committing crimes, if, you know, and there's less people that need fire rescue because people are doing their fire prevention and they're following the rules, like if, you know, like what are those big things that we're trying to achieve and then, yes, we're not going to have control of all of them, but measuring them helps us move the needle towards those goals, right, because we're always thinking about that as the ultimate goal instead of thinking about like how many people visited our park, you know, like it's not just like this one thing that we have control that we're thinking about, we're thinking about the big picture of like what we're trying to achieve for the community and people are working towards those big picture goals and then the objectives, like you said, are more of this like what can we, what can we control? I mean, right, I don't, the only part I want to caution against is that our ability to control it, right, you know, maybe we have some level of control, maybe there's some things we can make an effort to expand upon, but at the end of the day, is our success or failure based on our efforts, how much of it is and how much of it isn't, and not to say that you don't try to do a better job every day of improving the quality of life, that's what we are in the business of doing, right, as government. I mean, we do say collaborate with nonprofits and community partners to support, so I think, I think Tommy's point is right on, I wonder if there should be a youth services delivery in our parks and rec section. Right. Probably, and in public safety to Commissioner Wheeler. Soccer, tennis. And in economic development. I mean, they need things to do, places to go, jobs to work, right, those are the things that they need to keep youth focused and busy and doing, so yeah, I mean, I think economic development, like workforce development opportunities and pathways to good jobs and economic development for youth is an important point, I think parks and rec, giving them things to do, places active rec to do, and I think in public safety, like, you know, for gun violence and at-risk youth, like, providing those re-entry programs and pathways to support them so they don't recidivize is really critical. Does the Children's Trust have their eye at all on these kids who are in the justice system? Yep. Okay, good. Yep, they do. And the Sheriff's Office does too recently. Because, you know, we fund DOJJ through the state, and we also have kids that are often incarcerated at the jail before we can find a place for them, so I just want to make sure that there's somebody watching those kids. Okay. Anything else? Let's keep going on this. All right. Next up is waste management. In waste management, we have three board objectives, circular economy advancement, sustainable materials management, and community engagement, and education. The primary departments identified are solid waste and resource recovery and environmental protection. We've identified strategic and policy partners of Florida Department of Environmental Protection and the University of Florida. There are 19 measures in Achieve It Today that align with this focus area, and there are five proposed measures. In the nine outcomes that are in this focus area, we have 18 deliverables identified, some of which have been completed and are also in progress. Mr. Pizzier? Yeah. I really think that this one, particularly number one, kind of misses the mark. Like, I think that circular economy is not necessarily about waste management. It's about economic development, and it's about rethinking our waste streams. I mean, yes, ultimately, like, the waste streams, but it's like, I think that the proposed goals need to not be recycling rates. They need to be, like, waste diverted out of the waste stream altogether. Like, they shouldn't even be in the waste stream. Like, it's like, it's like directly tied to economic opportunity. Like, how are they getting diverted out of the waste stream and into other opportunities? Rather, that's as a product stream for something else that's going to be manufactured. Rather, that's the, you know, things like the reuse project that are, like, taking couches and bulky materials out or construction materials being diverted into new construction. And that's going to take, I mean, to me, is, like, do we have an actual resource recovery park and a full murph? Like, that's a proposed goal for me. Like, where, how are we actually moving things out of the waste stream and back into our economic cycle instead of them being in a hole in the ground? You know what I mean? And, like, so I... But if it's not waste management, who would do that? No, it is waste management. I'm just saying it's not... I'm just saying, like, the goal of circular economy is to, like, rethink waste. Like, it's, like, it's not waste until it's wasted. And the whole idea of circular economy is to not waste things, right? And so it's, like, rethinking it. And the goal should be around, like, amount diverted from the waste stream. And I guess recycling, you could argue, is diversion, right? But, like, I think it's more about just, like, where is it going? What's happening with it? Like, if we're just shipping it... Well, I say increase diversion rates. They say reduce reliance on landfills. I just think we need... I guess my goal with this is that this is, like, where the rubber hits the road. I'll just say this. I don't think that our zero waste plan that we got, it didn't have any actual actions, like, a lot of, like, tangible actions and things that we need to do. And I think this is where we need to start defining how we're going to move the needle on that actual waste reduction, like, building a MRF, owning our... We have to do a landfill. Like, what are we doing to begin to actually create a circular economy? And I don't... I guess my point is I don't just think, like, reporting our recycling rate is doing that. Right. I got you. You know what I mean? I think it's about economic development and opportunity and, you know, the resource recovery park and the eco loop was, you know, an example of something we tried to do. Maybe it hasn't worked in this iteration, but I think we still have a lot of opportunity there. I just want to make sure we're kind of not missing the mark on this one because it doesn't... It feels just like it's just continuing to be a focus on sort of like... So how do we change that? I don't know. I'll think about it. I think we need to talk to our stakeholders. I mean, I think talking to, like... I mean, like, for example, it's not like diverted. It's like amount of compost created and sold in the county from county waste materials. Like, it's like the goal. Like, what are we trying to create? Not like, what are we diverting? Right? Because, like, we could divert it and it never gets turned into anything. It never goes anywhere. You know what I mean? So, like, it's more like what is being created. Like, you know, so... Well, could you go to the focus area, the blue? Let's have... Let's look at those first for you right there. I feel like it's advanced the county's goals by identifying and implementing key economic development opportunities around resource management and reducing reliance on landfills and utilizing resources. You know what I mean? Like, it's more... I just... I don't know how to fix this. You want to add economic development into this. I do. Yeah, so I think we can do that, though, on where we say circular economy, advance the county's goal by identifying and implementing key waste management resource conservation milestones. I mean, we're going back to what we worked on a year and a half ago, increasing diversion rates and reducing reliance on landfills. That's where you want to insert and provide economic opportunities out of the waste stream. Out of the waste stream, right. Like, I guess my focus is less on, like, what we're getting rid of and what we're doing with it. Does that make sense? Well, I think that's part of the circular economy, the goal, right? Yeah. Yeah. So I think that's just supporting the feedback we're giving back to the waste department here. Let's integrate this into the economic development. One of the... I will tell you one of the fundamental struggles... And maybe the economic objective would refer back to the waste. The waste one, yeah. Right. One of the fundamental struggles that on the budgetary fiscal side we have when we're developing and working with Gus's team through this is understanding as we have these conversations, getting them out of a conceptual idea and getting them into something that's actually functional. Exactly. But that doesn't actually drive up the cost of the tipping fees because those are your citizens paying all of those costs. So it's got to be something that has either some type of return on the back end. Now, there may be an offset with climate issues that we need to address that are worth that that have value as well. But as far as we always have to balance that with if we do this, is there an additional cost to this? But you mentioned one of those things that I agree that we're going to have a conversation about a landfill at some point because the number one energy consumption of the county is trucks going back and forth, right? And so we are aware of that. So we have to always talk in terms of that global look at economically as well as climate and resiliency issues. But when we say we're going to build something, if it's going to cost this much money to pull it out of that recycling of the economy, what does that mean to the scales? You know, we're already struggling with what we're hearing tipping fees are going to be, what the solid waste assessment could be next year. So we're always balancing that impact to the citizens. And so that, when we go back to those decision points, I want to make sure we understand when you say, is this going to impact, is it 2% of the waste stream is impacted? Does it impact 15% of the waste stream? Is it substantial enough to make a difference in that waste stream? Or is it just a very small component? Because while the reuse thing is good, it's such a small component of the waste stream. Yeah, but I guess my point is, I'm not talking about any specific waste stream. What I'm talking about is that in order to have those conversations, we need to have a full materials recovery facility, because we're not doing any of that unless we're actually sorting our waste streams so that they can be used as the raw materials for something else. Rather it's couches and mattresses, or rather it's construction debris, or rather it's organics, which is 30% of our waste stream, or 35% of our waste stream, which is very much something we could do something about. Like, we have to have the ability to do that, to sort it, to get it to the manufacturers that want it, to use it for something, right? And until we have that goal of building a materials recovery facility and actually like having targeted waste streams that can not be waste streams anymore, move into other things, like we're not going to get there. But until that's a goal, a proposed goal, is that we are doing that, like our waste stream is no longer a waste stream, but instead it's assorted resource material for some other economic opportunity. For some other economic opportunity is where we're getting stuck right now. Right. We keep putting it out and nobody's like, no, we're not doing that, we're not interested in that, that doesn't help us. Right, because we need a materials recovery facility. Is there a county that's doing this really well, that's what we know? That would be a good question. Washington County is a very good example. Lee County? Lee County, they do. Come on up, come on up, Gus, I'm sorry. Just about Lee County, our friends in Lee County. Goes almost all the ways, Director. So Lee County is a very good example because they do a little bit of everything. They don't kind of concentrate on a single technology, so they do C&D, MRFs, they do traditional recycling, they do waste to energy, they do composing, they kind of try different things. So that would be a good place to look at. But since I'm at the table, I'm just going to take this opportunity to ask Commissioner to proceed, when you say MRF, can you? I mean a full resource recovery park. You're not talking about like traditional, I mean, we have a MRF, but that's not what you're talking about. I'm talking about the ability for us to sort our waste stream into raw materials. Okay. That's what I'm saying. Like this goes, like bulky waste goes over here, construction waste goes here, like glass recycling is here, paper recycling is here, can aluminum and metals is here. But we have that. And organics, no, we do not. We have glass, paper. So years ago, the county looked at the possibility of creating what we call at the time a dirty MRF, which basically you take the garbage on the floor instead of putting it into a truck, you kind of separate it into different things. That's what you're talking about? Is that what we're talking about? I don't know. I honestly, I wasn't planning on having this conversation today. So I don't have like a directed, like I'm bringing a proposal to the table about what we're doing. What I'm saying is that I think that this goal is missing the mark on a circular economy. Like if what we're talking about is a circular economy and wanting that circular economy to be our waste stream moving into the economics and being, instead of being waste, being a resource that's used for manufacturing or turning it into something else, we have solid examples of that. And I hear you saying it's a smaller part of our waste stream, but I think that those conversations, like it's also economically viable. It's actually covering all of its own costs. The work that Repurpose Project is doing, they cover all their own costs. And they did a pilot where they separated that material and they went and got it and they were picking it up with a dang truck. And they were still able to cover all their costs and get all of that out of our waste stream. So I don't actually care that it's only 5% of our waste stream or whatever, because now it's no longer there and it's something we don't have to haul. And it's creating jobs, well-paying jobs in our community, and it's covering its costs. So it's a huge win for us, right? Even though it's a small percentage of our waste stream, it's a big win because it's creating economic development. It's creating jobs. It's creating opportunity. It's getting things. It's less stuff we have to haul. It's less energy overall. And being able to do that for lots of different waste streams is what I'm talking about. Being able to do that for the bulky waste in a bigger scale, being able to do that for construction debris, being able to do that for metals, which are highly recyclable and actually economically viable, being able to do that for organics makes a lot of sense. But we have to be focused on it, because if we're just focused on doing our waste management, the way we've always done it, then we're not going to get there. So specific to that, I think the two areas where we're lacking is getting the organics from the waste stream. It's a difficult process. You can do that with a dirty murph. I actually had a meeting with a company last week. That's exactly what they do. They can separate the organics, and they market it, and I haven't looked into detail, but there's people doing that. As far as the reuse, the biggest issue with reuse that I'm struggling with is there is a humongous amount of reuse happening in this community outside of what the repurpose project is doing. It's difficult to quantify. It's happening. You can do curbside. You're saying it's not even in our waste stream, because that is outside of us. I got some furniture. I'm just going to go to Facebook, put it on curbside a layer, and it's going to be gone within a day. We can't quantify that, but that stuff used to go to the transfer station. Yeah. So I'm really starting to put a number or kind of measure that for what is happening to a much larger degree than we think it is. That's so funny you say that, because I have heard people say, just stick it on the side of the road. Somebody will pick it up. They will. It just happens. But to Commissioner Christie's point, how do we put that into our strategic plan to not encourage people to put stuff on the side of the road, but encourage that circular part of the economic engine that we're trying to do that. Or it's on the side of the road, and we have a vendor that goes and picks it up and gets it to the partners that are working on it. I mean, that's my point. It's like, I mean, that's what they piloted when they piloted. The thing that we funded them piloting was, and they got really good data and really good numbers. And everything that they've done, I'm talking about repurposed project now, everything that they've done, they've broken even. They're creating jobs. They're creating jobs. They've broken even. They're making money. It's sustainable as an operation. And they're just doing it at a small scale. But maybe it goes under the sustainability materials management. Maybe we connect it to the economic. Commissioner Wheeler? Yes. I have a lot to say about this one, too. Gus, you know, I call you on the weekends about all of these things. At one point, I had asked this group for us to have a meeting with GFL, Waste Pro, Repurpose, any of these folks, you know, so we could talk about coming up with a plan so that we could communicate with each other as to where these things go. So I've also talked to Gus about, you know, using the most current and evolving industries. And I talked to him and he's talked to me and shared, you know, what's happening out there in the world that we're not accessing. When you talk about Lee County and they're doing the burning that you're talking about, we put that one off our discussion. Even though there are evolving industries doing this in a much safer way than when we had these discussions years ago. So we need the education. This board needs the education. The community needs the education. But we're leading the charge on this no burning stuff. So, you know, my concern is that what we're doing in terms of the circular economy, you're talking about the words, resource conservation milestones, I would say no. What we need to do is to engage with the most current and evolving industries so that we know what's happening currently. And what's, University of Florida, when we talked about the gentleman that you've already spoken with, who is now putting his project in place in FLACA, you know, somebody that we didn't know about because we had not engaged with the university, know what those personal projects are. They're not university projects. They're individual projects of professors who were doing their own research. They're doing waste energy in FLACA. I know the guy you're talking about, though. And that's the thing is, like, you know, I think that sometimes there's this idea that just because somebody has this idea or they're, like, building something that, like, it must be cutting edge or it must be, it must be, like, value. And I just, I think that that's, we have to be careful because sometimes. I agree. And that's not my point. The point is that there are things that are going on that we don't have access to. Yeah. And we have not been open to. And this is why I say we really need a round table with all of these folks here so that we can come up with a plan putting things on the roadside. Free Gainesville is one, isn't it? Free Gainesville where you just put the stuff out there. There's some, there's a million of them. Got, you know, so get some of these players so that we can come up with a plan where everybody understands the rules of the game. And I'm in my home community, a little bitty town in Kentucky, they have a pickup day or two times a year. They know on this day, everybody put all their stuff out on the road that they want. And then you can go up down the road trying to find, you know, what you want. And then after that, the garbage trucks come in and take everything away. But hopefully, you know, a lot of that has been picked up and reused by other people. So there are ways that we could do that so it's not just constant stuff on the side of the road. But I think we just need to be open. That's all. As far as the new technology, I mean, we do have county compliant policies that direct what we do. But we're still meeting with people who have new ideas and new technologies that fit within those compliant policies. But the policies may be more restrictive. Just in a certain area. I mean, like, but, you know, once you get there, the choices are more limited. I gotcha. But we're still meeting with people looking for different things to do. Well, that's what I was saying. It's just the most innovative and up-to-date practices that we can possibly have access to. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Commissioner. So, Commissioner Prizio, what if on the sustainable materials piece provide recommendations on reducing organics if we added and reusable materials from the waste stream? Because that's what you're talking about. You're talking about. I don't know. I guess I don't necessarily feel like I have the right answer to, like, wordsmithness on the fly. I think I want to think about it. And I could provide some feedback to Gus and his team, like, in email. Yeah. Because, I mean, like Tommy said, this is a living document. It's not like today's the day that we're having the conversation. You have to do it today or it doesn't ever do that. Right, exactly. I feel like it's okay. My point was just to give the feedback that I think we have a zero-waste plan-ish, but it's like a plan that just sort of has, like, some ideas and some general concepts and goals, but it doesn't give Gus, like, actionable things. Like, our, whereas I feel like, like, things like our bicycle pedestrian master plan or our parks master plan, it's like these specific parks in these specific places and these specific infrastructures. And the same thing with the bike placement, it's like these specific intersections and these specific roads and these, you know, whereas the waste plan is just kind of like, generally do this and generally do that. And, like, there's no specific. And I feel like we need to get to, like, these are the specific activities that we're going to do to move the needle forward. And to me, construction debris, metal, bulky waste, organics, like, those four things are big things that we sort of have momentum potential on. How do you feel about, we have historically, since I've been on the board, transferred our waste out of county? Should we be focused on keeping it within our county? I think we need to have that conversation. I think so. And I think we need to have the conversation with all the stakeholders. Yeah. So, I don't know how that. Exactly. Like, those are the things that. But that's a big. Big one. That's a, like, a really big one that's not. But I think those two go hand in hand. Like, if we're going to keep the waste in county and building our own landfill, how are we doing that? And how are we making sure that we're also making that last as long and be as small as possible by pairing it with building this dirty merph or full merph or whatever we want to call it that's going to allow us to optimize that space and utilize those resources. Yeah. So, to Commissioner Wheeler's point, I think that is a big boulder that we need to start to tackle in the spring. It's already in the plan. We have some direction from you from a meeting a few months ago. So, you will be seeing that soon. So, just a reminder. The next step is to put an RFP to still transport solid waste out of the county for at least the next five years. Right. Because we can't do it all in. That would give us seven years. To develop. A minimum to develop. Here's my point. We can't have the – I guess from my perspective, if we're serious about circular economy and we're serious about waste reduction, we're serious about these things, we can't have the conversation about a landfill in our county without also having a conversation about a materials recovery facility in our county. I agree. Got to minimize the footprint. partner together. And if we're going to do it in a place where it has existed in the past, then we need to be talking about how are we making that the most impactful, positively impactful for the community that it's going to be located in, right? How are we going to – like the mining idea. I mean, that would really require us to have some place for all that stuff to go. If we're going to take it out, where are we going to take it and what are we going to do with it? So, you know, I mean, if we're talking about mining an existing landfill, like we should be not sending stuff to a landfill. Like we should be taking stuff out of a landfill and at the same time just sending stuff to a hole somewhere else. Like that's, you know. So are there policy partners then need to include the waste – the people that we use, that we pay? The waste haulers? Yes. The haulers? The haulers. Shouldn't they not be a – they're the ones picking it up. They're more of a vendor. Aren't they more of a vendor? Pardon? They're more of like a vendor of our policy. Are they not community partners? I mean, I think a bigger – I mean, they're a partner in terms of hauling, but I don't think that they – they don't want us to reduce our waste. They get paid to haul around the waste. Like I feel like we need people who are like – like you were talking about, like IFAS, like our engineering departments at the University of Florida, like, you know, our Chamber of Commerce to be attracting manufacturing that utilizes the waste streams from other – I don't know. You know, like those are the partners I think we need. Maybe. I just – they see it. And I've talked to – and I've talked to a few of those folks picking up the stuff, and they just kind of shake their heads about, you know, what it is they're having to haul to the dump, you know, and put in there. Because they shouldn't have to until Commissioner Ridley is saying, yeah. That's right. Yeah, we need to set up the systems. You know, so I don't know even if you can just bring them in then everything – this forum that I'm talking about to at least come up with a plan so when they see stuff on the side of the road that they know should not be going to the dump that they have somebody else to call. Go get it. You know, that's all I mean. You know, include them in the conversation so we know what it is they're seeing. Well, I agree with that. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. And you're right. This is not the last day. This is the – we're showing you kind of – we got your – what the strategic guide. We're trying to provide information back for you to give us feedback so we can do it more in line with what you're – Well, you all tolerate me because this is my last. You're going to keep calling me. Thank you. All right. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Oh, yeah. She's getting everyone's numbers. Everyone's going to keep getting calls. I haven't. No doubt about that. I haven't. I haven't. All right. And then real quick here, the Waste Management Dashboard, we have, of course, our internals and then some additional resource at the bottom to – Transportation maybe? Environment. Environment and conservation. First one. Sure first. Yeah. All right. So for environment and conservation, there are three objectives, protect natural resources, regional environmental collaboration, and climate resilience strategy. There are multiple departments that were identified as primary for starting off the conversation. They have identified three strategic and policy partners that – they are Florida Department of Environmental Protection, Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, and U.S. Department of Agriculture. There are 30 measures that are currently reported and achieve it today for this focus area, and there are 15 proposed. There are nine outcomes, and in those nine outcomes, the departments have identified 42 deliverables. Well, at least. That's awesome. I'm going to have to take the time to read this one and give feedback. Or not. Or not. Yeah. Might all be great. These are good. I guess, again, without having really, like, read them all, I'm interested to know things like where we have, like, overlap in our tree code and our, you know, tree planting programs and in, like, our goals around shade and resilience and open space, like, thinking about those sorts of things. Like, how do we tie those together in terms of our long-term, like, reporting, you know, like, amount of, like, shaded open space in Elantra County, amount of, you know, we have the land protections and things like that, but, like, how do we think about, again, sort of the outcome, like, what does it do for people? I suppose just, like, number of trees planted, like, you know, I'm just thinking how do we think about it from a bigger picture perspective? Like, I don't know what that is exactly, but, and I know I'm kind of babbling, but I think there's, like, connections between these different programs, and I think you guys have the right departments, and you've got growth management and public works and facilities, like, you've got all the different groups that are working in these areas, but, like, parks, how do we get to the, like, outcome-related? Okay. Tommy, talk to me about the, it says consider and talk about the public works FEMA rating system. What are we thinking about there? Because what, so, you know, flood controls was a huge issue, 17 and 18. Right. I know we've spent a lot, is that, is that in this area, or is that in kind of the public works? Transportation element. Yeah, this is, this is more to do with the environmental impact of the tree deserts and some of the things that, I don't see the flooding aspect, it may look in the water quality section. There's a water, there's a number of stormwater quality projects initiated, which those are kind of interrelated between the flooding and the water quality. But I believe those would be in the transportation component. I mean, a huge part of our climate, I mean, I guess, like, I'm not saying anything, like, we have a lot of goals on our climate action plan. I don't know how they dovetail into this, but I think much like in the parks we talk about, we referenced the parks master plan. I feel like in this section, we need to reference our climate action plan and, like, sort of the goals we have already built in there. Because we had that, we did a lot of work around flooding and flooding areas and target areas and priority areas and food systems and flooding and resilient infrastructure. That also is in other areas because it has the circular economy and it also, so if you're going to reference it, it's in other areas and flooding, to your point, is probably. I think anywhere we have these major, like, we have bike and padet, we have streets, safe streets for all, we have zero waste, we have climate action, like, we have these plans that we've sort of created for the county that we spent a lot of time and money on, and I feel like we need to reference them in here and tie back to them, because a lot of times the hard work and the details are in those plans. Yeah, so we do have this bullet deliverable county climate initiative website and Zen City Climate Action Plan page. And we also have, it looks like, one of the things they're considering, the public works mission of the data, FEMA Community Rating System Flood. Right. Sure, it's on it, so that's referenced in here as well. I don't think it's built out as a deliverable or an outcome yet, but that's something they're trying to build out. Oh, I see, okay, okay. Oh, yeah, meet the targets in the Climate Action Plan, I see. Yeah. Awesome. Okay, good. It is good, this is it, but you like to think a lot of work, yeah, this is. And then this is the dashboard we currently have for this focus area, environment and conservation, and they do have several embedded resources here. Of course, down at the bottom we have several links. As we build all these dashboards, we will, when it becomes necessary, start breaking them into having the resources identified underneath the particular objectives when it's appropriate. So right now they're kind of either together or in this case we've separated them out because there was ample number of links to make that reasonable. Okay. Go back up, go, just go back up if you would, just into the, is that one of our kids' pictures out there? Yes. Is this one of our, give them the camera? It's a great one, yeah. That's good. It is. Thank you. They do their art project and they sign off on the, us being able to use. We can have it because it's not theirs anymore. All right. And then last for today, but not least, we have transportation focus area. This was the focus area that we started out with that you had already seen and provided feedback and we've attempted to update this document with your feedback. Yeah, we covered, this is the one we covered in the first meeting. Yes, there are three objectives, roadway maintenance, public transit options, and transportation planning. There are eight reported measures in Achieve It Today. There are 14 proposed. There are 15 outcomes listed and there are 31 deliverables identified under those outcomes. So we spend, obviously, the board and Ramal know each other intimately. So there's a lot of effort in, between this and the PCIP and all of the things that we have been trying with, now that the infrastructure tax was passed and the commitment the board's made and other resources towards the transportation system, a lot of effort has been to build this out and this is a lot more measuring, if you will. There are some outcomes driven, the high-level stuff, a lot of this is about getting actual roads paved, getting roads built out. Commissioner, President. My only comment in this is that I feel like under transportation planning, we need to include our Safe Streets for All on Bike and Pedestrian Master Plan and include proposals. And it may be in these more detailed ones, I'm just looking at the big picture page, having reports on the sort of like how we're doing. Right here. It's on the third, transportation planning. The third bullet says Safe Streets and Roads for All and it's got the link and it's got Bike Ped Plan right above it. Yeah. I guess what I'm talking about is like in the language of the actual like focus area, it's not mentioned, it's not mentioned as a proposed transportation, like I don't, and maybe it's just cut off. Yeah, I don't actually think that that's printed out, it's like cut off. So the Bike Ped Plan, the deliverable unit? Yeah, right there. Right. Yeah, it's under 2.1. The outcome is... Yeah, no, she's saying in the first sentence, advance currently established and long-term transportation planning, i.e. pavement management plan, Alaska County comprehensive plan, MTPO activities. I think you just like it called out there. Right. Like instead of MTPO activities, the Bike Ped and Safe Streets and Roads for All. For All. All right. It's captured, it's just... It's just in the deep, it's like deeper in the actual like outcome, deliverables and activities. All right, dashboards? Oh, yeah, sorry. No, I just had, just a quick question because this has been in my mind about Windsor, you know, in that little community, it's a historic community out there, but it's also got some business things going on, so I don't know if economic development, you know, would be an issue with some of these things, too, in terms of making sure we're getting growth activity into these smaller areas that, you know, maybe have been hidden for a while, and I don't know where that would fit. I just have to say... I think under the economic development, when we talk about incorporating the cities into that plan... And the roads that lead to them. Well, and this one, partner, I think the partner to enhance and evaluate existing and new public transit to increase accessibility and reliability, and they talk about rural... Okay, good. Yeah, rural roads, so... You can read it, find it quicker than I can. That's all I was thinking, because, you know, as the economy of that little community grows, you know, then it would be nice to make sure that the access into it is inviting, you know, it would encourage people to go there, that's all. Yeah, I hear you. I mean, to your point, I do think that, like, our outlying areas, the rural transit issue is a major issue we've been talking about and trying to solve, like... And those are, you know, county roads, but these are leading right into the city, you know, or the community. They may be villages, but, you know... Right. But, I mean, all of the small cities. I mean, Hawthorne, Newberry, Alachua, Micanopia. I mean, the number one thing we heard in for Focus, the number one thing we hear again and again when we go to the Safety Net Collaborative, when we go to places, it's always... Transportation is, like, the number one barrier, you know, to people gaining access to services and supports. It's definitely a major, major... And so we keep thinking about it. It's not an easy... It's not an easy... There's not an easy solution where... But they're little jewels. Windsor is a little jewel, just like Cross Creek, you know, and some of those that are economic, you know, attractors as well, you know, and tourist attractions. And so I just... To have those roads get the attention that they could use would be really helpful to the economy, too. That's all. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Done. Commissioner. Okay. And then we have their dashboard. And as you can see, they have several resources available, many of which are from our departments, but several are from external as well. So... It's definitely one of the more complicated ones. Yeah. Sure. So, again... Good work. A lot of efforts have been put in. A lot of meetings have been held. A lot of things behind the scenes. Department directors have been working with Donna and Brandon, and this is their document. This is their stuff. This is ours. We're just kind of the liaison bringing it back to the board. They're hearing what you're saying, so we can keep connecting those dots. Yeah. I mean, I think for the board... You know, on our board agendas, we have all the different departments. And as we're doing our meetings over the next year, you know, looking back at now, we actually have a document that has key objectives and indicators, and we can see how these agenda items kind of relate back to these goals. I think it's great. It's a great first start. Yeah. I agree. I guess one thing I will say that I think is important to... Not sure how we do it in this document, but I think it's really important to remember, in addition to all the programmatic pieces that are important to connect the dots and to make sure that we're having that interdepartmental, you know, cross-section conversations and bringing the strategic stakeholders that are community-oriented, as well as those that are institutional together to get buy-in and to make sure that these align, is that we have a lot of departments in the county that aren't listed in here. And they are the ones that often make and break projects. Procurement, HR, legal, budget, right? And, like, you all, even though you're behind the scenes on everything, like, you are all really critical to all of these things being successful because you're the ones that are approving things, moving things, protecting us from risk. Risk is another one. So I hope that, I mean, I don't know if they just need to be listed on every single one of these. Are they in our infrastructure? They're not in our infrastructure. They're in governance. So they're included in governance, and basically, I believe, it addresses it at the beginning because you have the IT. All of that is, you're right, we've just. Governance in a minute. That's why we end up here in these kind of conversations is because it's where the collective gets together. Right. I guess I just, I think that sometimes, at least my experience, a little bit here, but also in other areas where I've been more of an implementer, when I've been a staff person trying to get projects done, is that oftentimes the way that those different departments, what I call the internal services departments, right, versus programmatic departments, they often kind of get thought of as, like, you know, you put the piece of paper into the inbox, it gets stamped, it gets signed, it gets moved into the outbox, it goes to the next thing. But I think that what an ideal scenario is, is that they see themselves as active partners in the programmatic work getting done. Like, they are as critical to us getting all of these goals done as are the people who are on the front lines doing it. And we need them as bought in and to see themselves as, and we see, and to know that we see them as just as important and just as critical to this work getting done. Because it can get very, probably really exhausting to be always behind the scenes having to just be that paper pusher, you know, even though that's not really what their job is. But, like, that's what they're doing behind the scenes, they're making sure this administrative work gets done and that the risk is reviewed and the money is there and we're covered legally and all these pieces. But sometimes they just get thought of as, like, well, my paper went in there and eventually it'll spit back out and then I'll be able to move forward instead of, like, they're a part of the team. So I just, just trying to sort of say, like, I hope that all of our internal services departments understand that we need them to be thinking about these goals. And many of the people in those departments probably have passions in these different areas, right? Like, they may be a procurement professional, but they may be really passionate about waste diversion and may have some really great ideas about how we could do that within our sustainable procurement policies. You know what I mean? And, like, so just really trying to sort of create this, like, really full-scale county momentum around the strategic plan is, like, an all-in goal. Like, we're all working on these goals trying to get them moving forward. And it's not just the people who have to, like, at the end of the day report on safe streets for all, but it's also the people who have to, like, approve the projects and put out the RFPs and... Good input. Yeah, really, really good input. Appreciate it. We do a lot of effort in doing exactly those things, being concerned about. Okay. Is that it, Tommy? Yes, sir. Thank you for your time. Yeah, that was very good. Very good. All right, Commissioner, that moves us into closing comments. We've got public comments. So, yeah, come on. Come on up. Now it's the time for the public to speak to us about anything not on the agenda. Mark, I think you're the only one. Go ahead. Yeah. Sure. Step on there. Aw. Sorry. You can stand over here if you want to stand up. Yep. You can give that dog to me. I'll take it if you don't want it. Sure. If he really likes it or not, because he's very, you know, sticky. Oh, no, I'll take it. Oh, except you're going to step on your dog. Oh, that's... Oh, no. It's not going to work. It's not going to work. Is that going to work? I just meant I would have it forever if you don't want it. It's a chihuahua thing, I think. Okay, Mark, go ahead. Thank you. So, it's kind of only remotely related, but... Whoa. So, I was very lucky. I got a graduation... For graduation, I got a ticket to Tokyo, and I didn't come back for 10 years. And my first job was at Sony. You know, this is Walkman. No, this is a Walkman. It's slower. And then I worked at Mitsubishi Heavy Industries at the Electrical Motor Division and Sumitomo Forestry, the headquarters, which is very interesting, because it had these big, giant maps on the wall, where all the projects were. And I thought it was really cool in the beginning. A couple years later, I realized, oh, my God. But I also worked in schools. And so, you walk into a middle school, and it's very large. The entrance is very large. And there's all these lockers. And so, you go to a locker. It has a key in it. And you take... You open it up. You grab the slippers. You put the slippers on. You put your shoes inside. So, in schools, nobody has shoes on inside schools. Zero. So, none of the crud, none of the water, none of the mud, none of the nothing is inside the school. It's so simple. It's super simple. There's no crud inside the schools. And the same, when you walk into a classroom, you know, blackboard on the right. On the left, there's a clipboard, and it has four names, four names, four names, and four names. And so, every week, there's four kids that are responsible for cleaning up the class. In the corner, there's like a bucket and, you know, some spray stuff. And it maybe only takes 10 or 15 minutes after each class, but those four kids that week are in charge of cleaning up that class. And it changes the culture because, you know, you're, you know, obviously on that team that week, you know, you see somebody else drop something, and it's like snarl, you know. And so, kids are, from the very, you know, early stage, they're part of the actually the maintenance process. Nothing stops you from doing the same thing here. It's called copy and paste. It doesn't cost anything. When the kids grow up and they're part of it, it becomes normal. It just becomes normal. They just don't think of it differently. When you go to a public bathroom, any kind of bathroom in Japan, there's a 96% chance it's clean. If you go to a bathroom in the United States, there's a 60% chance it's kind of like, you know, when you go to a little gas station bathroom, you're like, I'm not so sure. I'll just hold on until I get home. I've never seen as much crap on the side of the road as I have these days. And I've been there for a while. And it's gold copy and paste. It's culture. When the kids grow up and they're part of it, they're part of the responsibility, it becomes normal. And nothing stops you from going to the school board saying, yo, bro, make it so. And maybe you, well, good luck, maybe. But yeah, maybe you donate the buckets and the mops. But it's so simple, man. It doesn't cost anything. Okay. Thanks for your comments. All right. Anyone else? Yeah, come on up. Oh, come on up, Lee. I didn't see you back there. Okay. Good to see you. Hi, everyone. My name is Lee Scott. Born and raised here. I work in the homeless and mental health and systems impacted community. I just made a film called Uncarcerated. I was named to the National Represent Justice Fellowship last year. So for the next six to nine months, year or so, I will be a super annoying bug in everybody's year. I would love to see our community get to a place where we have a standardized 24-7 response to mental health, homelessness, and substance use. I think we have like a patchwork quilt of it right now. I'm really proud of the work that my friends and colleagues are doing, whether it's the co-responders or the paramedicine program or Alachua Fire Rescue Mobile Integrated Health. But we're not there yet. We don't have a standardized, directly dispatched from 911 process right now. The co-responders have a lot of limitations. There's still a lot of people that don't want to talk to someone that has a badge and a gun when they're in a mental health or substance use crisis. Maybe they're on probation and they can't have an interaction with law enforcement. There's a lot of limitations. And I think even the co-responders would recognize that there's some limitations there. I think the way we get there is by having everybody that responds to crisis in the same room at the same time, whether it's UF Street Medicine, the Mobile Outreach Clinic, Great Street Outreach, the co-responders, 911 dispatch, get everybody in the room at the same time and talk about how we get to programs like the call program in St. Pete. Directly dispatched from 911, non-police response. They responded to 21,000 calls, zero incident safety record last year. So if you're thinking, well, you know, we can't respond to the guy talking to himself on the street corner unless we have the police there, that's not true. They've done it around the country. The HART program in Durham is amazing. I've done a lot of research into this. I'm passionate about it. I screened my film yesterday for Grace staff. And I said, raise your hand if you've needed a crisis response, but instead you got the police and somebody ended up going to jail. And everyone in the room raised their hand. Raise your hand if somebody got trespassed from here and now no longer can get services, but if you had a crisis response, that would not have happened. You've got a downtown homelessness problem right now. I know everybody's talking about it. And a lot of those folks have been trespassed from Grace because they just didn't have staff and crisis response that could handle it in real time. And I think there is an answer here because I think we have amazing folks in the community that are already doing the work. I just think we need to take those few next steps. And so as you're building out this strategic plan, I'd like to maybe see if we could spearhead some of this. It also is cost effective. It's about $650 to send traditional response. It's about $150 to send programs like the paramedicine program. So from a fiscal standpoint, taxpayer standpoint, it just makes more sense to not have folks in the jail where they're waiting on a bed in maybe a rehab or a treatment center. Just skip that whole process. We can get them help in real time. Thanks, y'all. Thank you, Lee. Thanks for your work this weekend. It's good seeing you out there at the Neighborhood Summit. Okay. Anyone else? Okay. Commission comments? You got one? I do. First, I want to say I hear here, Lee. I think that I envisioned that our mobile integrated health team would become that sort of first response. I know that it's going to take some time to build. I really pushed hard for the community health workers to be in that space and for us to have more of a social worker component to that program and for it not just to be about the opioid response. That's a really critical component of what they do. And I hope that may not be the right team. It may be that there's these other components of teams that we need to pull together to create something. But I do, I 100% agree. And I think that that's always what I sort of envision being possible is that the paramedicine programs that could respond from a 911 perspective, the same way they show up for a heart attack for, you know, they show up for medical emergency that we could have mental health or substance abuse emergencies could have the right team showing up instead of it having to be either our, you know, fire rescue team or our cops showing up. And neither of which are trained to be able to do the work for mental health and social work, nor want to be there. Right. So I agree with you 100% and I hope as we work our, as we work the public safety component of this strategic plan and as we think budgetarily post November when we have a little bit more freedom to have conversations about that future, that we can keep having that conversation with our sheriff and our fire rescue team. Yeah. I think no matter what happens in November, this is public safety and it's public health. Well, and it will save money in the long run. And it's such a good investment, as Lisa said. Yeah. So I think I agree with you. I'm wondering from the manager's perspective, who would be the right person to refer a convening of this continuation of this effort? Is it the mobile integrated health team? Is it community support? Where does it fall? Do you need to think about it and get back to it? Yeah, because it's so many people. It could be either, but I'm also, you know, have to be concerned about capacity if we're going to make one responsible for the convening itself. Yeah. Okay. Well, something for us to be thinking about. I did get an email from Gretchen Casey about your film and so I'm excited about seeing it. I have a couple other things. Go ahead. The other thing is, I would like for us to send a letter to the school board about having a joint meeting to discuss the Triple River property and the affordable housing project opportunity on that property. I think they are applying to our... I got word that they submitted it while we were here today. I think everybody has got it. Okay. So they are applying for our infrastructure for tax dollars, our affordable housing infrastructure for tax dollars. Who is this? It's a private developer. Oh, yes. Yes. And they, yeah, and they have, my understanding from the conversations that I have had with them prior to them submitting their application was that they really wanted to work with us on the purchase of the land component and the land is currently owned by the school district. You know, I've had individual conversations with some of the school board members. They seem really supportive and excited about the project as well. The idea is that this would be up to, I think, almost 500 units of affordable housing for public service workers and individuals and families. So it could be really powerful. So you want to have a meeting or you just want to refer our manager to... No, the manager. So the conversations that we've had is that it's going to be a board decision for them to be able to work with us because they have appraisals on that property and the appraisals are very high. And so I want to have a conversation where we get a presentation of the proposal and the idea and we have a conversation about a collaborative approach so that we can get a reasonable price for that land. Because the appraisals that they have as far as what I've heard numbers is really, really high. I've already had conversations with the superintendent. I think at this point it would be either a proposal that meets what the superintendent's recommendation would be or it's asking the school board to work with you. Yeah, I'm in favor of having that discussion. You know what? No, no. Listen, this is what I proposed to them when I first went on that board when I first came on this board. Give a motion. You might get a second. No, you will, but I don't know where we are. I've kind of not been a part of the conversation. I think they're open to the idea of selling us land. I think it's just a matter of having a dialogue about the price and about a collaborative project that would focus on public service workers would be a win-win for them in recruitment and retention of staff would be a win-win for us in terms of actually using the IST to build significant units and affordable workforce housing. So I think it's about just having that conversation and giving them the opportunity. It's just really interesting because really when the school was still there, we had talked about the possibility and now they're talking about Stephen Foster, you know, the same kind of thing in terms of using those buildings for housing in that space. It's amusing to me. That's all I'm saying. Well, this would not be using those buildings. This is tearing them down and building. I got you. I got you. But, you know, it started a long time ago when we were talking about it. I think Leonetta was the only one who thought, ah, yeah, that's, you know, that's an interesting idea. Because there's a whole lot of land behind Terwilliger, too, that could have been, you know, anyway. Because of the nurses, the hospitals right there, the nurses could have stayed there, the CNAs could have stayed there, you know, the paramedics. I mean, you know, so we had this conversation eight years ago to see it actually now take flower. I think it's exciting, but it's amusing. Well, I think it took having the private developer that could envision the private developer that could envision the project and bring the financing for it. Absolutely. I mean, they're bringing a lot of money to the table to potentially make this project happen. And they're proposing the amount of money that they need for us in order to buy the land? I mean, they put in an application. I don't think that staff have found a chance to review it if they put it in today. But, yes, they're basically saying it's our infrastructure surtax proposal, so they're saying we want some of your infrastructure surtax dollars to go into the project. But my understanding was that those dollars were being asked for specifically to purchase the land. And so if we can broker a deal with the school board that makes that land reasonably affordable, you know, with quotes around it. That's so interesting. Are they, at least, is Stephen Foster in that conversation? No, it's just this one project. That happens to be out in the community then, right? Because I've heard it talked about out in the community in terms of using it for housing. So, okay. Now I'm up to snuff. Thank you. Okay. So I motion to send a letter to the school, chair letter to the school board requesting a joint meeting to discuss the opportunity for affordable housing through our infrastructure surtax dollars in the school board's property. Okay. So the chair letter requesting the joint meeting. That's what you need, Michelle? You got a second? I second it, yes. A second. Eight years later, I love it. No, I'm just glad to see it before I come off. Yeah, I'm glad to have that. Anyone want to speak to the motion? Okay, back to the board. All of the papers say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. Cool. And then, sorry, I should have pulled my notes up. I have so many things. I would also like to ask if we could ask for our court services folks, I'm not sure if they have the ability to do this, but our jail population was over 990 people. In the most recent past, when I looked at the current report that I just got, it was 987. 880 of those were misdemeanors awaiting trial. I could go on and on. But, you know, our jail population is really, really high. I know that our sheriff has been having conversations and dialogue with the stakeholders about what we can do. But I think we really need to have some, like, better data and information about what's driving this. I know we can point to this or we can point to that. We can point to violation of probation. We could point to, you know, backlog of cases. We could point to all kinds of things. But really having the information, like data and information about what are those causes? Like, what are the cases that are in the jail right now? Why are they sitting there? Isn't that what Cedum Sagan is supposed to be discussing? No. It's technically what PSC sort of discusses. You mean PSC? But we never, we get, like, basic jail population reports. But they're not digging it. So there's no discussion about it. I'm talking about, like, the possibility of court services working with court administration to do a deep dive report on our jail population and what's driving the increases. Is it increases in arrests? Which, like, which units in arrests? Like, which type of arrests? Is it violence? Is it VOPs? Is it technical violations? Is it, is it high bombs? Is it, you know… Do I give direction to the manager to ask court services for that? Or… I do. To make a motion that court services work with court administration to do a deep dive into our jail population and what's driving the rapid increase in jail population. Second. Okay. Got a motion to second. And I think the sheriff is coming to speak to us at the… 1027. Yeah. Second meeting… It's, I know that it's… Probably not going to… Yeah, it's not, I mean, I don't think that it's, it's the sheriff or it's any one entity. Like, I think it's, like, a lot of, you know, it's like death by a million cuts. But they may… Yeah, they may have some information. They may have some information at that meeting. And I think just having some of the data and information to look at and being able to understand, like, oh, okay, well, we've got, you know, in this area, we've got a lot of really high bonds and so people are sitting there because they can't afford them. And in this area, we've got a lot of, I don't know what it might be, you know, a lot of trespasses, a lot of unhoused people who keep trespassing and keep getting recycled into our jail and back out. And then in our jail, like what Lee was just mentioning, like, that's, I know that that's part of it. How do we solve that problem rather than just, like, continuing to have this revolving door that the sheriff has to deal with? I mean, it's… We're almost pushing against the top… I mean, our jail only holds 1,200 people and they can't operate at that level. Yeah. It's like untenable. So we're pushing against a point where our jail is becoming… Michelle, how long do you need to get that information back to us? Can you get it back to us by November, December? You're asking how soon I can get the information on what is accounting for all the jail population being higher and the rapid increase? That doesn't just depend on us. That depends on other people, too, and their ability to provide information and work with us. I don't want to say a specific… November, December, maybe January meeting? Yeah. Okay. Maybe 90 days. 90 days, yeah. So we've got a motion and a second to ask court services to do a deep dive into some of the causes, root causes, see if we can figure this out. Any discussion? Any public discussion? Have we done anything more towards trying to get some of these people out into the workforce, actually working on our crews? We talked about… Well, I know release re-entry is doing a lot of work. And we're looking at that. Okay. We just need to look at who would be eligible from our perspective and from their perspective to be… That should be part of the discussion. The request for… We already have directions. I think that's a separate direction. Got you. Yeah. No, you have directions. Okay. Any other discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. 3-0. All right. My last thing is our outreach team. That when they're out there and they're sharing resources, 988 is one to share. I think getting the 988 out there as much as we can and letting people know about it. And I know Sam… I found out that SAMHSA has a bunch of free resources that we can get. Like we can order like buttons and pins and notebooks and anything we want to like spread the word about 988. So I just wanted to mention that to our outreach person. And I was at an event and they were talking about all the… They had all this really cool free year promoting 988 in their community. And they had signs up at all their grocery stores which I thought was really cool. But they had a bunch of other like swag. And I was like where did you guys get all this? And they were like SAMHSA. They got it for free. So I just wanted to mention that. Okay. Thank you for that public service. You got anything? Just one quickly. There's a meeting Thursday with the city where they're going to be discussing the copper site. Okay. And I didn't know if there was anybody from us going to hear it. I contacted Steve but I don't think he's in the area. Steve's out. But Chris Gilbert's usually the one who handles that stuff so I'll just check with Chris. Chris? Okay. Yeah. Okay. Because it would be really interesting to see what they're talking. The last I talked to anybody about that at the city they say well we can't afford it. So I don't know if anybody can afford it but I think it's 100 acres right there of potential that we need to have our eyes on. They are just now starting the slurry wall. The slurry wall. Yeah. It's taken this long. That's another eight year thing. Yeah. So they're just getting started on that as I understand. Well I'm anxious to know what it is the city has to say about it too. That's on Thursday? Thursday at 1 I think they're first on the docket. Okay. Anything else? All right. We will reconvene right here at 1 30. Thank you. We're adjourned.