10-7-25 Special Meeting @ 9:30 a.m. - Oct 07, 2025

I'd like to call to order the Alachua County Board of County Commissioners special meeting policy discussion. Is there approval of the agenda? We'll approve the second. We've got a motion of the second. Are there any further discussion on the motion on the floor? Are there any citizen comments to the motion that's on the floor? Back to the board. Those in favor of the motion will by the side of the line. Aye. If there's a policy in your side, the motion carries. Good morning, Mr. Chair. Good morning. Mr. Chair, I'm Mark Sexton. I'm the Communications Director for Alachua County. I'm involved in this presentation because I was also the Legislative Affairs Director in 2018 when the local bill that led to the current agreement with the City of Gainesville was being passed. I was very involved in that, and I was very involved in the negotiations between city staff and county staff in coming up with the current interlocal agreement. I'm joined today by Tommy Crosby, who is our Assistant County Manager in charge of finance, and by our newest Department Director, Jessica Huroff, who is our Tourism and Economic Development Director. Mr. Chair, the items that we're going to cover today, theoretically, why we're giving this presentation today, there seems to be some question or confusion as to why this presentation is here today. We're going to talk about CRA history, Community Redevelopment Agency Act history. We're going to be talking about the history of the GCRA. We're going to be talking about the now well-established, well-known request for the city, from the city, to extend it, to double the time frame of the current GCRA. We're going to be talking about current financial challenges. Mr. Crosby will cover that. Ms. Huroff will be talking about county initiatives. We will kind of bring it back to the future of GCRA funding, and then we have a few words to say about partnerships with our cities. So why this presentation? There has been a great deal of discussion for the last 10 months about this ask. County staff first heard about it in December of 2024. There was a meeting between GCRA staff and individual commissioners. It was part of their regular update that they have been giving you all. And in that meeting, Mr. McClendon and I became aware that this ask was coming. It was not gone into in great detail, but they did give us a heads up that it was their intention of making this request. The next time we kind of had a direct conversation with the city on this was when Mr. George Burgess, a consultant from Miami that the city hired, was putting together a report on economic development and partners in economic development and putting together a report. And he interviewed city staff. I was one of the people he interviewed. I think Ms. Huroff and Mr. McClendon were also involved and the manager. And it became very clear that part of the report he was presenting included this request to extend the GCRA. I won't go into much more detail on that unless you have any questions about that. The next time... Oh, and by the way, he then reported that report to the city commission. And the city commissioners at that time had their first opportunity to talk to each other about this expansion of the GCRA time frame. So, at this point, county staff and city staff had talked. City staff and our commissioners had talked. And city commissioners had been able to talk to each other. We thought, you know, we agreed that the time for city staff to give you an analysis of what the county staff to give you an analysis was, was after the city had presented their full plan to you. And we had two regular city commission meetings, one that Ms. Huroff attended, one that I attended. At both of those meetings, the city tabled the item. It was not presented. It was when we had our first look at their PowerPoint, which is a detailed presentation on why they were asking for this extension. It was publicly facing, on their agenda. It was a public document at that point. The next opportunity that we had to listen to the whole presentation so that we could give you our staff response to it was at your joint meeting in June, on June 17th. We got to the very end of that meeting. I know Mr. Smith had changed his flight reservations that day because, you know, they wanted that presentation at that meeting. And we got to the end of that meeting, and it was tabled again. So city, county staff still had not, we've seen the PowerPoint, but we still had not heard the full presentation with all of the details filled in from city staff. We thought our next opportunity to do that would be with individual city commissioners in early September in advance of the joint meeting on September 15th. The mayor called the chair and asked about canceling that meeting. I think he was concerned about the amount of energy that both staffs had put in on the doge effort, and the chair agreed, and then city staff, I believe it was Moe Deal, and Latoya Ganey spoke about it and came to a mutual agreement to reschedule those meetings in advance of the December joint meeting. County commission meeting. County commission meeting, sorry. I have to keep those straight, don't I? So, for 10 months, staff and staff had talked, commissioners and commissioners, city commissioners, have talked with you all individually. City commissioners have had a chance to talk to each other. So there are a lot of conversations happening. There have been more conversations in just the last week. The only set that has not had a chance to talk to each other is you all. So we thought this would be a good opportunity to kind of bring some sunshine to this and some transparency and let you all talk to each other. You know, it just seems to be happening behind the scenes, and everyone has talked but you all, and that's why this presentation. Okay, CRA history. And I'm going to keep this brief, and I apologize in advance because I know you all understand this history very well. But for the benefit of our residents who perhaps are not experts on the CRA, back in 1969, the Community Redevelopment Act was passed, and it was adopted. It gave municipalities unilaterally the ability to create community redevelopment agencies whose primary purpose was to address slum and blight and to finance redevelopment projects in blighted areas. The funding, the way it worked was it was funded through tax increment funding. What that means is you looked at the property values at a given moment in time. Once you've established the CRA, anything above that that you collect in the following years goes directly into that district, into the CRA, which was managed by the city of Gainesville in this case. They were typically sunsetted after 30 years. When first formed here in Alachua County, the one exception to it being unilateral is if you were a charter county, but we were not. So when it was first formed, the county literally had no say. It was statutorily available for the city. The goal with CRAs has always, part of the narrative, has always been to declare mission accomplished. And at sunset, cities typically take care of the municipal services and programs needed in those areas. One thing that is confusing and leads to some disagreement, but in our view is crystal clear, monies come countywide and citywide to go into the GCRA. We still provide countywide services. The city still provides citywide services to the folks living in a GCRA area or a CRA area. So in effect, cities, city residents and county residents not living in GCRAs or CRAs are subsidizing the general fund services for the folks inside the CRA. That's fine, but it should be a point that everyone understands that monies that would normally be going into countywide or citywide services are now going directly to the district for other purposes. This is just an example of the countywide services that everyone in all of our county citizens that live within the city of Gainesville receive. You all are well aware of these. Every time you call an ambulance, if you need animal services, juvenile justice, we spend $62 million on social services through our community support services department. And those services are all benefiting our county citizens that live in the city of Gainesville. I won't read all of these, and this is by no means all of them, but I will just say that you provide an enormous amount of service to all of your county residents regardless of where they live. Quick timeline, downtown redevelopment agency formed in 1979. The downtown CRA plan was adopted in 1981, and if you do the math, that makes it 20 and 25, 45 years old. The downtown CRA is 45 years old. The College Park University Heights CRA was created in 1994. The 5th Avenue Pleasant Street CRA, 96. The Eastside CRA in 2000, and it was expanded in 2006 and 2010. 2019 is when the city of Gainesville approached the county with the 10-year and done plan. On the county, on the city's Facebook cover page, they call it, they have kind of branded it, one decade, one mission. And then in 2022, the GCRA boundaries were expanded. Okay, GCRA history. There was a great deal of frustration at the county commission level, as three of you remember. Three of you were here when this original deal was struck. If ever a district was ready to be sunsetted, it was the view of our commission that the College Park University Heights CRA was the one. The city resisted that. I'm not, you know, it's natural. There were millions of dollars coming into the city coffers from that. So they were not voluntarily doing that. So the county decided, since they felt so strongly that it was time to sunset that, that they were going to look for a legislative solution. They ran a local bill, House Bill 1237. That bill was seen as the only way for the county commission to effectuate the sunsetting of this CRA. Because we had statute that we had to deal with. The only way to do it was for you all to get the majority representation on the CRA. So that bill was predicated on you get representation equal to the amount of funding that you're contributing. At that time, you were contributing two-thirds and the city one-third. So that would have given you control. This was not about a strong desire to govern the GCRA. This was seen as the only way to sunset something that had to be sunset. And just to put it into the raw numbers, when I say mission accomplished in College Park, the property values had quintupled, gone five times what the original base was, and they had accomplished the mission and accomplished it beautifully. Commissioner Cornell? I had a point here. I think this is the right place to insert the idea that, really, for Mary and for Anna, that the county commission was frustrated because of the mechanism by which the CRA funds could be spent. We, and when I say we, this body, as well as the city commission across the street, had a strong desire to invest public dollars into East Gainesville. But because of the mechanism that was there, we couldn't use College Park TIF money to invest into East Gainesville. And we had come up with an idea of, we'll take our money, you take your money, and let's do transformational projects in East Gainesville. And that was really what was driving this inability to invest in East Gainesville that both bodies had committed to doing, but not been able to do, because of the mechanics of the CRA. And the fact that, I don't, there was, at the state level, and there continue to be at the state level, this idea that CRAs are supposed to eventually expire when blight has been eliminated. It was in College Park, yet it still was not in other areas of the CRA. And so, I believe it was Anthony Lyons that actually came up with, with our manager, this idea that sunsetting the CRA would give both boards a lot more flexibility to invest $70 million over the next decade into the areas that we wanted to invest. And so that, I didn't see that in here, but I wanted you to hear that. I wanted you to hear that. What's up? I followed that. I mean, I was very interested in what was going on. And you're about to start campaigning, so I know you've... But the frustrating part for me is that you all just didn't add any governance into that management. But anyway, that's all we're excited about. Well, and that is a great, that therein lies that was also coming off of the Grace Marketplace governance where we attempted to have joint governance. We would make recommendations, but it was a city department. And so, probably a mistake, as you said, but with the idea that we would have $70 million and it would sunset in 10 years, we did, and we continue to trust our colleagues to make those investments. Thank you, Mr. Chair. That was the perfect transition to my next slide. But so the whole mechanics of the GCRA, it was predicated on a promise of 10 and done, now branded by the city, one decade, one mission. The funds that were still available that had been collected in the old four GCRA districts remained in those districts to finish out and do projects. Rather than state statute, which governs the CRA, this was done by interlocal agreement. The term was 10 years. It got rid of interior boundaries, as Commissioner Cornell mentioned. It was a fixed annual contribution. They took the last year of the CRA, which was about $7.5 million, and they said, we're going to fix it at that rate. The county, it's a little more complicated than that. The county was, our portion gradually goes down to do projects in the unincorporated Gainesville urban area. But it was still based on that last year of the CRA. This is an important point. And just to say, the basis for that formula was to equalize so that both the city and the county were paying equal because for decades, the county was paying two-thirds and the city one-third. And it was very important to the commission at that time that there be an equal buy-in. Not equal now. Equal at the end of the year. Equal. Correct. The last year was equal. The original proposal, there was a discussion to make it equal now. Right. And that was not ultimately supported. The step-down concept was well supported. The enticement of Anthony Lyons' really very well-thought-out plan was, we are going to focus on a few transformational projects that can be done in 10 years with a funding level of $70 million. And, again, I think I've mentioned this, we were getting ready to sunset the College Park CRA. The legislature was very open to that idea. At the request of the city and our bill sponsor, we pulled the bill that had passed by a strong majority in two committees, bipartisan majority. And, you know, we had a pretty good feeling that if we went back the following year, they were very sympathetic to sunsetting the College Park CRA. And, again, and I can't stress this enough, the pitch from the city was create a 10-year plan, complete those projects, and wrap it up. That was the city's proposal to sunset the GCRA. There have been some communications that have gone out recently that the history has been a little bit muddied, that somehow the county is voting today to sunset the CRA. We are, in effect, taking no action today. This is just a graphic view of what each side is contributing over the 10-year period. So, again, the goal was to focus on transformational projects. It's the, after nearly 50 years of county CRA and GCRA contributions, it would finally sunset. And, by the way, the other strong selling point by Mr. Lyons and the then GCRA staff, most of whom are not there anymore, but when we were talking staff to staff with Anthony Lyons and Sarah Vidal Finn, they actually had done the math on, after 10 years, how much general fund will be available to the county, the millions of dollars that you will then have control of in your own general fund. They also talked about and were very excited about their general fund dollars being available to them without the constraints or the added bureaucracy of the GCRA. So, that was part of the pitch. 10 years, projects, defined projects that will be done for $70 million, and then we're done. There was conversation even from our commissioners. Now, wait a minute. Are you sure you're not going to come back? One commissioner in particular hit that hard. And we were absolutely assured by city staff, no, this is the plan. So, you know, for the public's benefit, if you've seen any communications about what the county is trying to do here, all we're doing is sticking with our deal. Okay. Now, the current request to extend the GCRA. And it's not informal, by the way. It's a very structured PowerPoint that we've been hoping to see for five different opportunities and have yet to hear the full presentation. So, when we sunset in 2029, we will have been in the CRA, GCRA business for 49 years. The city's request is to extend that up to 69 years. It would add 20 years. From what we can glean from the city's proposal, and, again, all we've seen is the PowerPoint. There's always details within a PowerPoint. But they seem to be recommending some sort of joint governance. That has not been spelled out. Mr. Burgess, in his presentation, the consultant from Miami, when he presented the plan to the city commission, he said he actually was quoted saying, of course the city would keep the majority representation on the GCRA. So, assuming that that was kind of their thinking, that that was discussed, the county contribution is unclear in the PowerPoint. If it were to simply double our contribution for the original 10-year period, it would be somewhere in the neighborhood of $75 million. They've also recommended what looks to be doubling or more the boundaries of the GCRA. Now, whether that's going to come with a corresponding request for more funding, it is not clear in the PowerPoint. And then they also suggest a countywide ballot and referendum to bond countywide and citywide property tax for GCRA projects only. I mean, they are suggesting going to the ballot and having every resident of Alachua County vote on this. One of the other promises, and I actually talked to a member of the former CRA and asked kind of what their administrative costs were from a staffing level, and they said they had about 10 staff people. Another one of the selling points on the GCRA was Mr. Lyons said, we will realize efficiencies by going from four districts to just one, and that will include administrative efficiencies. But as you can see, it remains at 10 staff people, a director, two managers, six project managers, and a staff specialist, all totaled with benefits. It's in the neighborhood of $11.5 to $11.7 million for the admin during the 10-year period. There are also, there have been some concerns about the Waldo and 8th Avenue project, too, because we've been listening very carefully to the discussions, and there have been at least three different proposals from $150 million to $90 million. I think the latest conversation was about $40 million. And it seems like each time they're going back to NV5, or I think they were bought out, I'm not sure what the new name is, to come up with. So we are a bit concerned about the amount of money being spent on planning that. When that was the gem of what was sold to the county back in 2018, we are going to do something at 8th and Waldo Avenue. We're going to do it in 10 years with the existing funding. They certainly had the option of adding wild spaces funding if they wanted, but that was what was explained to the county. Those are the boundaries of the new GCRA map that the city is proposing. As you can see, heavily expanded up in the 39th Avenue airport area in Section 1 there in yellow. In Section 3, it actually goes up Main Street and incorporates 6th Avenue, or 6th Street, excuse me. In Area 2 there, it incorporates South Main and Southeast 4th Street. And then there's a little tiny sliver at the top of Section 4 there that pulls in Hawthorne Road and Southeast 8th Avenue. Okay, and at this point, I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Crosby. Good afternoon, Mr. Chair. Tommy Crosby, Assistant County Manager. So briefly, part of the conversation is just the financial impact of what we're looking at in the future and the things that we're considering going forward. So, obviously, here are some headlines, and none of these are surprising in our efforts that we've been listening to. So, tax reform, we have inflationary issues, we have interest rate concerns, and all these are similar challenges that are faced. And we're seeing these things are staged right now, very similar to what they were before the Great Recession of 2008. Remember, we saw four years of skyrocketing home values, interest rates, and inflation right before the crash. So, obviously, that always concerns me. We're seeing the same thing, housing concerns statewide. We're seeing now, we're starting to see houses stay on the market longer. Prices are starting to give way on some of those, becoming a buyer's market. Some of the same things are starting to happen again. So, that's just looking into the near future. Some of the other economic issues that we've been talking about, again, inflation at highest year was 22, depending on where you're looking at. 9% inflation back in 2022. We're back down to around 3% a year currently. Cost of living adjustments from the Department of Revenue based on factors they use and how we can, what our rollback rate is in calculations. That peaked in 23 at 8%. It was 4.7% 24 and about 3% 25. So, right now, we're back down to about a 3% cost of living adjustment rate. But it has been up the last few years. Another big challenge we're having is construction cost index. We know that they're skyrocketing. So, we're looking at a, just looking at our fire station. So, we're building the same fire station three times. And so, you're seeing, we're seeing over the last four years about a 5% increase in those type costs. So, housing is always a concern. We talked about that. Consumer confidence is a concern. Look at labor market concerns that we're seeing around the country as well as in Florida. The impact of tariffs. So, there are a lot of unknown economic impacts that we're having. So, that's kind of the main economic issues that we are looking, staring down the last couple years. So, go back on the other one. So, federal funding uncertainties we've been talking about. FEMA is a big one, knowing how reimbursement is going to work, what we're going to get reimbursed if we are, how much we're going to pick up our own tab. I think you'll see next year in our budget, we talk about reserves a lot. But we're going to need to carve out just a resiliency fund. Just set aside, y'all talked about that in some of our budget meetings, about making sure. We do have some aside from the old reimbursements. But we probably need to make sure we're covered with hurricanes next year. We've, so far, birded some major storms this year. So, but we need to be looking at that in the future. From a, we're not sure, looks like federal grants are still going to be coming in for foster grandparents and things like that. But you just never know what's going to happen at the federal level. We do know that the Affordable Care Act subsidies are a big concern. And the shutdown, the current federal shutdown, that's a big point of discussion at the federal level. That will have local impact on local citizens. So, be aware of that. So, I think one of the directives that the board has provided is the human services area is looking at medical losses for citizens. So, if we're going to do any assistance, that's money out of our general funds. So, just be aware, those are more financial, long-term discussions to have of where that money goes. And remember, all money is in competition with itself. You know, so whether it's a GCRA, whether it's a local human services, whether it's public safety, roads, all those are in competition. Those are competing that y'all have to decide every year on. So, keep that in mind, long-term commitments. State funding support. The governor, as you're aware, has vetoed almost all of the appropriations, individual appropriations last year across the board. Very few went through. We don't see that changing again in the near future. We're all aware of the doge efforts going on around the state. And what they're not only implying, but also the pressure they're putting on local governments and things that are happening there. We know property tax reform is coming. We don't know what it looks like yet, but we are confident that that's going to happen this legislative session, if nothing else, but at least putting a ballot initiative on the November ballot. I personally believe that you'll see some things come out of legislation as well. And just as an example, Live Local came in place two years ago. We talked about that. We had one property that has already been excluded. It was about $9 million in taxable value, and the property appraiser currently has five more under litigation. So, they're challenging that they are exempt. So, what that means in terms of dollars, you're looking at about $70,000 in lost tax revenue for the one property. So, if you have five more, you're talking about $400,000 in lost revenue. The commercial lease, sales tax relief that was done by the legislature last year, that hit our infrastructure fund by $2 million, but it also hit our general fund by about $175,000 in shared sales tax revenues. So, again, the state level is putting a lot of tax reform through legislation, and then we'll be on ballots, and that impacts all of us. Just a reminder, a move to a $250,000 homestead exemption, which I don't think is very far-fetched at all, what we're hearing, will be about $47 million to your general fund at current millage rate. So, I can assure you that any, even though I'm not in Tallahassee, I can assure you that any adjustments to property tax reform will include limitations on your ability to increase millage to compensate for anything. So, that's not their goal. So, just be prepared for that. So, those are the state kind of funding limits that we're having. So, just a reminder, we talked about in our last budget meeting, our commitment on our taxing funds, fire and rescue, is about $80 million. Law enforcement and judiciary, including the jails, is about $150 million. Health and housing is about $70 million. Our infrastructure program is about $140 million. Just our road transfer alone from the general fund is $6.6 million currently. If you'll remember, the board made some pretty big commitments at the time in terms of roads and what we're doing there. So, you know, public safety, fire, law enforcement, and roads are the biggest three items we have in terms of commitments and what we have committed for the commission to afford. And so, those are just ongoing commitments that we've made. I just want to keep you aware of that and into your mix of how you are going to spend your money in the future. Commissioner Prisian? Yeah, I guess I just want to make a point. I, you know, you said, you made a comment that all money is competing with itself and that we have competing priorities and you sort of, in some ways, sort of couch, like, social services and human services versus infrastructure, public safety. It's sort of like these sort of things that are kind of competing with each other. And I just want to make a point that I think is really important for people to hear. And that is that poverty is the number one driver of crime. And so, when we make investments in economic development and we make investments in housing and social services and the social determinants of health, we are investing in public safety. And I really think it's important for people to understand that because we wouldn't have to make so many investments in law enforcement and in detention if we were helping people lift themselves out of poverty by having good economic development opportunities for people and supporting people with their basic needs. And really, I think that this board has really worked hard to focus on those root causes and to think about how our investments in growing our economic development department and in growing our economic base and in investing in social services like housing and food and health care is really making a difference. And so, I just want to make that point because I think that at the end of the day, if we're talking about what competes with what, for me, root causes are always going to win. And investing in people, investing in the human capital, and in those social determinants of health is always going to win the day over, you know, locking people in a box. Just want to point that out because I think it's sort of a dichotomy that I don't think you meant to make, but I just, it's kind of implicit in some of those conversations, and I don't want to, I didn't want to let it go. And Mr. Chair, if I could clarify real quick, and I think the competition we're talking about is the competition for general fund dollars. Right, I know. And so, I wanted to clarify that as well because our general fund is only around, what, $300 million. Only $225 of that-ish is actual property tax. Right. Those are made up of CST, PST, some other sources. But the funding for the GCR agreement comes out of general fund dollars. And because of the way cordoned off funds work, you all are familiar how government budgets work. Because of the way those cordoned off funds work, certain things we have to take out of the general fund because we can't use those other sources for those things. And so, we get this competing needs that come out of this one minor pot of money in the whole scheme of our total budget. And that's where we struggle at times. Some of these as well, I mean, we also compete because you have a burden on your taxpayers. So, you do have fire assessments, stormwater assessments. You have assessments that also compete with that general fund as well on the amount of level you're going to put on a tax bill. So, those as well have to be taken under consideration. It's not just millage, but it is all the things that a taxpayer has to pay. Mr. Cornell. I just want to reiterate what Commissioner Frizia said. I couldn't agree more with the point she made. It's really why we have the Children's Trust. You know, I read the Doge audit, and when I saw $31,000 for Planned Parenthood, I thought, that's actually an investment that's saving so much more money, and maybe we should look at increasing the funding for that program. And so, I completely agree with you. These are investments that we are making because we know that one year for a child in the juvenile justice system costs $35,000. You know, that's a lot more expensive than some of the programs that we are investing in, like the gun violence initiative with our partners across the street, and many of the food things that you have brought to this board. Well, that's just the cost of them being incarcerated. That doesn't include the mental health challenges for their families and all the other costs. We view those as core services that we need to invest in. So, I just wanted to say I agree with you. Yeah, thanks. And, Mr. Chair, now I want to thank Commissioner Frizia for the perfect transition to our next slide. And, that is, we're going to turn it over to Ms. Huroff to talk about decades of pasting East Gainesville commitments and initiatives. So, thank you. For a part of today's discussion, we wanted to reaffirm for our residents and for the board that the county has a decades-long commitment to East Gainesville and downtown, past, present, and, of course, future. The county's investment in East Gainesville and downtown has never been limited to a single administrative funding vehicle or agency. This commitment existed long before the GCRA and will continue long after it, and our focus remains on advancing meaningful long-term commitments. The county's track record speaks for itself. For 45 years, we have been not only the major funder of nearly every major project in East Gainesville and downtown, we have many additional investments that have been accomplished both independently, as well as on a case-by-case basis with the city of Gainesville and with others, demonstrating that staff can work collaboratively to accomplish great things for the residents as our shared responsibility to our communities. The list of these successes is very impressive. We just highlighted a few here. To continue to address housing needs, we are actively advancing a multimillion-dollar East Gainesville legacy project. We collaborated with UF Health and the city on the UF Health Urgent Care Center East Side. The county has secured a $36 million federal investment with the U.S. Army Reserve's Equipment Concentration Site in East Gainesville. This is an extraordinary partnership with an estimated $3 million in annual payroll to 60 high-paying civilian jobs. They bring great benefits. And an ancillary but connected project with that is that we've been able to partner with Santa Fe College, and this fall we're launching a heavy diesel mechanic training program to train our residents in high-demand, high-paying careers tied to this facility. Construction is already underway at the county's new judicial complex and parking garage right across the street. This major county investment will modernize our court operations, improve public access to judicial services, while supporting the continued revitalization in our downtown area. And you all know one of my favorite projects, but just last week we awarded $1.4 million in tentative funding through our Nature and Culture Destination Enhancement Grant Program. Many of these projects are funded right here in the downtown area in East Gainesville. They support museums, cultural venues, and organizations that not only drive tourism, but bring jobs and community pride. These investments are part of our own independent and continued efforts to advance the place-based assets that strengthen both our local economy and our quality of life, demonstrating our county's dedication, no matter what the funding vehicle, to attract investment, create jobs, and support sustainable growth in Gainesville and eastern Alachua County. So the county continues to support culture, tourism, and community well beyond just the one GCRA funding mechanism. As we were looking at this and reviewing the many organizations and initiatives located within the GCRA boundaries, one of the things that became clear is the county has already independently invested tens of millions of dollars into these organizations in addition to the GCRA funding. This includes long-standing support of key cultural institutions and tourism-driving venues, such as the Hippodrome Theater, which has served as an independent cultural anchor in downtown Gainesville. The county and the city each invest separately into the vital functions of that private nonprofit, ensuring its sustainability in a pretty difficult time for a lot of cultural nonprofits in the current economic climate. The Cade Museum is supported by both operational and capital funding by the county, and the county has for many years provided support to the Fifth Avenue Arts Festival, multiple events at Bo Diddley, home to some of our numerous festivals, including Fest, the City of Gainesville's Downtown Arts Festival, events at Heartwood Soundstage, including Tom Petty Festival, events at Depot Park, including Hogtown Medieval Fair, and many others. So these direct investments through the county provide that ongoing commitment to supporting the cultural and civic life in East Gainesville and downtown Gainesville efficiently, generously, and independently. And again, we have a long history of joint projects that have been completed outside the CRA or the GCRA on a case-by-case basis, highlighting these strong partnerships the county has built with our municipalities across the county. And some of the most valuable and transformative projects have emerged through these direct collaborations, again, on a case-by-case basis. Success is highlighting the strength and effectiveness of cross-jurisdictional partnerships, including, as you see here, the Central Receiving Facility at Meridian Behavioral Health. This provides 24-7 crisis stabilization and health services. The Four Creeks Project, a joint land conservation program with the city. The 34th Street Senior Center, which is thriving. It's a beautiful facility and partnership. And then looking at some of our other municipalities, Legacy Park with the city of Alachua, Champions Park with the city of Newberry, and the IFAS Extension Office with UF-IFAS, the State Department of Agriculture, and the city of Newberry. And the county has completed dozens of joint projects with every municipality through four rounds of Wild Spaces Public Places funding, supporting parks, conservation, and recreation across the county. A few years ago, the city requested and the board approved a generous allocation of one-time funding to support downtown homeless outreach services. And I just wanted to add, not listed here, but top of mind for many of us and county staff is the Sports and Events Center at Celebration Point. That was a $30 million investment independently from the county with our private partner. And that project is already delivering significant economic entourism benefits to our local businesses. So moving forward, just looking at the future, the county, as of October 1, recently adopted our new strategic plan. And there is a whole economic element within that plan. And staff is already focused on creating quality job creation, business development, and expanded access, as Commissioner Prezziah mentions, to economic opportunity throughout Alachua County. We are looking to strengthen these public-private partnerships and advocate for state and federal investments to advance these targeted developments, again, across the county, particularly focused on areas of food systems, the circular economy, and the Forward Focus Initiative focused on Eastern County. In June, our board enacted a resolution naming the newly formed Department of Tourism and Economic Development as the Economic Development Organization, or EDO, for the county. This action is very important. It advances our staff's ability to work with site selectors, work with our partners in Tallahassee, in marketing the region as a desirable place to expand and grow businesses. And staff, as a reminder, you all know this, but for the public, staff are currently working on many multi-year programs, including transitioning the Sports and Events Center over to county operations, the Forward Focus Project, our 24-hour child care initiative, and the food hub. So, with that, there is no doubt our promise to our communities remains the same. Honoring the 10-year mission is not seen as a step back, and it is a reflection of our commitment to completing the work and the important work that we began together. And with four years still ahead, and, as Tommy says, economic uncertainty on the horizon, our staff remains focused on working collaboratively with all of the municipalities and our GCRA to deliver those meaningful results as promised. So, with that, turn it back to Mark for what's next. When we talk about the future of the GCRA funding, and particularly with the public in the room, I see Mr. Lyons is pretty much the architect of the very elegant one-decade, one-mission plan. There has been, and, you know, we understand that it was not an authorized email that went out, but there was an implication made that the county was somehow getting rid of the GCRA. And, of course, nothing could be further from the truth. The city proposed the 10-year and done plan. The county is merely recommending following through with that, but on one email that went out, it said this will end the GCRA. And, frankly, that's a city decision, not a county decision. There are some ways that the GCRA can continue. It could continue with the current city funding that's being put into it, albeit at a smaller scale, but they could continue that way. Wild Spaces Public Places is putting over $200 million into the city coffers. There has been some talk from city commissioners of adding Wild Spaces funding to the 8th and Waldo Avenue project, for example. That is certainly an option. We fully intend to extend or reissue Wild Spaces Public Places in 2032. It's our hope that it will be successful. We think it will because we'll have 10 years of projects to show off. That will be a continued source of funding for the city of Gainesville and others. They could choose to keep it running at its current funding level with a very small millage rate increase to replace the county funding that's going away. We estimated it would be about a third of a mill to raise the money that they are losing from the county. If their GRU initiative on the ballot in November is successful, they could use general fund transfer to make the GCRA hold. As far as partnerships with our cities, I am going to keep this very short because the county manager told me to. But I will say that communication is important. We've seen a lot of examples of communications that we've been disappointed with in the last couple of months, not just with the city of Gainesville but with other partners that the county has entered into agreements with. We want it to be crystal clear that the county is an excellent partner with our municipalities. In the case of the CRA, we're talking about when this sun sets, you will have been in this business for 50 years of funding that department of the city. County actions, your actions, have created an incredible variety of resources for cities. The current issue of Wild Spaces Public Places, $200 million in funding directly to the city of Gainesville, tens of millions more from the other three issues of Wild Spaces Public Places. Although not statutorily required, each time we've passed Wild Spaces Public Places, we've taken money from the county's share and made it available for joint projects for the cities. In the case of the current one, $6,666,000 was dedicated to joint projects directly with the city of Gainesville and also other municipalities. Todd Hutchinson did a quick calculation for me. He said, Mark, I don't have time to go all the way back to 1981, but he did a quick look in his quick books, whatever CPAs use. I doubt his quick books. No, but you can't say quick books. I'm trying to dazzle Commissioner Cornell here. Spreadsheets work. Yeah. And he calculated quickly that since 96, which was 16 years into the CRA, the county had already contributed $81 million to CRA and GCRA. And then, of course, it was the county's original putting the gas tax on the ballot and taking the heat for the subsequent increases in gas tax that has made millions of dollars available to both the city and our other municipalities. Not on the ballot. Gas tax. I think the original going above the state-mandated was a ballot initiative. So before I get to the staff recommendation, we just want to make it crystal clear to the public. The county is not recommending getting rid of the GCRA. The city has the ability to keep it going. The county is actually, with this recommendation, not taking any action. The idea of sunsetting the GCRA was a city recommendation. And, you know, as we look around, I know we have three commissioners that were here when this was originally, this deal was struck. We don't, I think we have one, maybe one, maybe two city commissioners who were here when all those conversations were going on. The GCRA, CRA staff has done a complete changeover, at least at the leadership level. So we want to make sure that people understand that this was a city initiative to keep the college park money flowing for 10 more years. It was a city promise to do 10 years, $70 million, and a few very clear, very specified projects. The biggest carrot in that was 8th Avenue and Waldo. And as far as we can tell, that project is not moving forward in a very efficient way right now. But the promise was to get these projects done and then free up general fund for both, for the benefit of the city and the county. And therefore, our recommendation is to follow the original agreement, let the GCRA sunset. City has the option of keep it going. Reinvest reclaimed revenue in county and city priorities. We are very good at working with the city on joint projects. But these projects have the absolute consensus of both the county commission and the city commission and city staff and county staff. And consider future projects and partnerships on a case-by-case basis. And Michelle, I promise this presentation would be 15 minutes and it's only been an hour. Sounds about right. That's my presentation. We're all available. Cornell? Okay. Thank you for that history. I think it's a well-done presentation with a lot of information. I will tell, I want to speak to my colleagues and I want to speak to the three city commissioners that I saw walking, Commissioner Book, Eastman, and Chestnut. First of all, thank you all for being here. And I want to speak directly to you when I tell you that when I saw the email go out from your department, I was really angry. To try to frame that this county commission doesn't want to invest in or continue to invest in East Skain'sville, it's factually inaccurate and could not be further from the truth. I support and have always supported the Waldo and 8th project. I believe this whole board has. I support and I have always supported E-Hedi, Heartwood, and how it connects to our legacy project on 15th Avenue. And I believe this board has. I will continue to express my verbal support and my actions in supporting investments into East Skain'sville. It was the reason we did GCRA. We had to move funds from College Park into East Skain'sville. And I'm pleased with this commission, the city commission's actions to make those expenditures. I was very happy to see your city manager correct that. So, Ms. Curry, thank you. Thank you for correcting that that was not unauthorized communication. I think this meeting was important to set that record straight. And I also want to tell my colleagues across the street that it's a little early for us to be having this discussion. I want to have this discussion as we get closer to the end when we know a lot more about basically the two slides that Tommy produced, which are the economic headwinds and the expansion of county priorities. I had a direct conversation with Ms. Curry. I'm looking forward to working with Mr. Parsons about how there's just a lot of uncertainty at the county level and I believe also at the city level with regards to ad valorem revenue. And until we get through next legislative session, I'm not really going to be in a position to say I want to continue it, expand it, do it on a project-by-project basis, because essentially, local government and how it's funded could completely change in the next five months. I mean, it could just completely change. And so making a commitment today over something that could force us to completely change just doesn't make sense. I feel like our staff, at least our staff has told me, they felt like they needed to get this on the record because of all the conversations we're having about renewing GCRA. I appreciate the long-term vision, but I just don't feel like we're in a position, and I pushed my board during the budget cycle. I said, let's do the rollback. And for the first time in 12 years, this man right over here said, Ken, I'm a rollback guy, but I can't because of the uncertainty at the state level, not because I don't want to provide tax relief to our taxpayers. And I appreciate it, Chuck, that position because it's the right position. You know, the state has created a lot of uncertainty at the county level, and we're all faced with that. I think I support the city's referendum, the GRU referendum. I publicly said I support that. I will continue to support that. I think the city's situation could drastically change in less than a year. And so I don't know if we need to pass staff's recommendation because it really isn't doing anything. It's just continuing our commitment. I appreciate staff's recommendation, but that's where I am today to my colleagues, to my city commissioners that I'm talking directly to in this meeting. That's where I come. Commissioner Prizzi? Yeah, I mean, I 100% agree with you. I think it's premature to have this conversation. I think initially we thought we were having the conversation with the city. We actually asked for this on the wire we're having this conversation. I mean, the other reason is for direction. I mean, we asked... I've never talked to y'all about this. We asked to have the conversation because we've never had this conversation. And the last thing that I ever want is for us to be in a joint meeting with our colleagues and us trying to hash things out for the first time. That's just not productive, right? It wastes everybody's time. And so for me, it made sense once we'd heard the city's presentations and had a dialogue with them to then have our conversation. But I 100% agree with you. My main feeling is that this is way too early, especially given the economic situation. And, you know, it's our state, but it's also at the federal level. Like, there's so much uncertainty at every level of government. We don't know what money is getting cut. We have cuts that were in the big bill that got passed that aren't hitting until after 2026 because they wanted to avoid the impacts before the election, like SNAP cuts and affordable care cuts. And those are going to hit Florida harder than most because we don't have a lot of the other safety net programs that exist that there are in other states. So we're about to see some really intense changes, not just in the way governments are funded potentially locally, but also in the general well-being and welfare of our community. And we're going to have some really hard choices to make. FEMA cuts are another great example that I think Tommy mentioned. So I'm with you. I would say to the, and I echo what you said to our colleagues at the city, I will say this. I do think that it's really important for me to understand exactly where we are with the projects we've committed to, exactly how much more we need to invest to get done what we committed to in those 10 years. Where are those budgets? Where are those projects? Like, what are the timelines? And to your point, you know, 8th and Waldo was always one of the biggest and most important projects. And while I'm excited for what I think the city is planning there, it has been a moving target and it seems to be moving more and more towards recreational upgrades to a park. And while that's awesome and amazing and really needed for our east side, especially for our youth who need great places to go and deserve the same kind of facilities we have on the western side of our county, I'm not sure that's going to bring the economic development that we were anticipating with the original vision for the 8th and Waldo projects. So I also feel like that's something that I want to really understand. Like, what is that? What does it look like? And with the downtown projects, like, how are we investing in the wraparound supports that are going to make that successful, right? Like, we're making all these really great investments. Like, we're seeing the benefits of the ambassadors downtown. We've done beautiful work with our facade stuff and the work. Like, I point to the project at South Main Station as, like, I mean, that outdoor space is one of the best outdoor spaces in all of Gainesville now. It's beautiful. It was super well done and that was really a great investment and that kind of work is being done all over the place. But now we need to also be making the investments in telling people about these spaces and getting people downtown. Because we're only, like, you have, you only make the infrastructure investment but you don't make the investments in telling our stories and getting people down there, the marketing, the communications. And I think those are great partnerships with our Visit Gainesville folks and great opportunities for us to make additional investments through that program and other programs. But I do want to see us, like, how are we taking what's left of these warriors and wrapping around the support structures and programming that are going to make these successful and making sure that other decisions we're making aren't shooting those decisions in the foot, like decisions to increase costs for rents or increasing costs for certain rental activities downtown, like the Bowdenley Plaza, for example. We want people downtown, right? So if we increase the cost to rent those spaces, then we're just sort of like... Limiting. Yeah, I mean, we're kind of biting off our nose to spite our face. So I guess that's another piece of what I really want to understand, like how are we working within your own departments to ensure that we're driving the traffic and we're driving the people downtown and how can we support that with our economic development efforts, with our redevelopment efforts that we're going to be doing downtown as we begin to... Our do-si-do plan begins to play out because we're going to have massive infrastructure investments and opportunities for redevelopment downtown with facilities the county owns and also, of course, with Visit Gainesville dollars to drive visitors to come and spend their money down here with our local businesses. So I guess that's kind of the major things I have to say. The only other thing I would say is I 100% agree with you on East Gainesville and I'll just put this out there one more time. Grocery store in East Gainesville, people. It was my first motion as a commissioner and if it's the last thing I do before I leave, then I will feel like I've been a success. But I know you guys have worked really hard. I know we've had a couple of almost wins but we need access to healthy food in East Gainesville. We have 12 Publixes within like, you know, a stone's throw of my house and I get downtown and I can't get, you know, I've got the one Publix on Main and then once I go east of Main Street I've got nothing. We need grocery. We need healthy food access in East Gainesville and if there are creative ideas about how we do that since we can't seem to get our major grocery chain to bite, I'm all ears. Thank you. I would just say I'm with you. You all have said it all. There's no reason to. Yeah, it's a repeat. Yeah, I agree. There's no reason to repeat. You guys have been extremely eloquent in reiterating the things that I believe as well. I think also this next two years gives us an opportunity to work on being good partners and, you know, good communication, good partnerships can help us across more things than just the GCRA and it's, you know, it's not a one department partnership. It's a partnership across many fronts and it's important to me that when we say we're partners in a project that we actually act and make decisions as partners and I think this will give us some time to work on practicing that. Mr. Chair? Yes. I will add very quickly that I realize that this project has been an important project for a long time but I also recognize that Commissioner Chestnut, Cynthia Chestnut, this is one of her big deals and I would like us to see her get this, you know, done or at least in motion before we older commissioners come off our seats. You know, I know these legacy projects are important to those of us who put a lot of time and energy to specific projects so, you know, with the focus being on helping that get started at least before we leave our positions on our commissions. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Okay, I just want to make my comments is when we were talking about the extension of the current CRA, I wasn't really in favor because at that point I was elected official and I've been elected about 20 years at that point when we had that discussion. 2019, yeah. Yeah. 2019, 2018, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I remember. Yeah, yeah. So that was kind of frustrating to be an elected official for 20 years and all the talk was about doing something in East Gainesville and nothing was never done and nothing today has not been done. Some things but not a whole lot. Nothing. I haven't seen a transformational project so it becomes frustrating to me, you know, and of course we support East Gainesville. I've always supported East Gainesville. I was a District 1 commissioner in East Gainesville and we brought the Walmart. I mean, we were trying to do things to make East Gainesville better but, you know, things happen but my point is I want to do what's right, you know, and do the right thing but I'm still disappointed. I'm just going to be honest with you. All the talk has been about East Gainesville. When I look about and look at the downtown redevelopment, they've been in business the longest but we're still spending more money in downtown. We've not spent a whole lot of money in East Gainesville. Let's be realistic. You know, let's be realistic. It has not happened and that's what's disappointing to me. So, you know, you know, I'm short time crazy, folks. I'm just going to be honest. I got three years left. You know, it's very, very disappointing. I know, I like that. Short time crazy. That explains where I am. But it's just frustrating to be elected official that long and don't really see really major change happen and that's what you get elected to try to make a difference and make changes and it's been very disappointing to me and I don't care how loud we scream, it still falls on deaf ears. Finally, finally, we're having someone to make an investment for some houses in East Gainesville and that is great and we passed it as a board and I thought that that was the most significant thing that at least with my legacy on the county commission is that we got some additional housing in East Gainesville and all of that stuff and hopefully the project will happen on 15th Street and it makes the carpet garden and all of that hopefully that will come aboard and happen but we really need as Commissioner Prisian said a grocery store we need more than just a grocery store we need a movie theater I'm just going back to the Plan East Gainesville and what I've heard people say over the years they would love to have a movie theater there all of those things that West Gainesville have the folks that did that in the Plan East Gainesville and to be honest with you not much has happened with the Plan East Gainesville it is probably continue to collect dust but anyway those are my comments and Mark thank you for bringing this presentation because we didn't know all of this and all of this information you presented today we knew about the CRA but we didn't know exactly everything the city was talking about this is the first time we as a board had an opportunity to listen hear and talk about it and all of that stuff and so and as Commissioner Cornell said we're not at that position right now to make any recommendations because I'm still at a wait and see what happens in the legislature and with the economy because that's very important at this point because it looks like 2008 again to me but I'll leave that alone but anyway so we're getting close to that so those are my comments and Madam Manager I would just say as far as the timing I agree that this is a conversation that probably we maybe this time next year you know is another good opportunity to have that as we get closer depending on what happens but as you know how the planning process works for budgeting we are already planning for FY27 literally right now and we just put the last budget to bed so you know from a budgeting perspective to be able to plan for projects that you want to accomplish and commit to doing them you need to know that you have the funding as it comes up and I think that's kind of why the discussion has been starting now because from you know from our watching the city meetings etc they want to make some of those you know decisions moving forward but again as your staff to make that commitment today for something that's going to start several years down the road I believe that it would be irresponsible for us to recommend today to go into a long term commitment given the financial uncertainties that we have maybe that's not the case a year from now I think that's why I was talking about those specific budgets too because I think understanding what's left what's left to do of the projects we've committed to of the projects we've started to your point to finish what we started to Commissioner Tessna's point 20, 50 years ago with this effort to try to revitalize East Gainesville and bring economic development in that area what have we committed to what have we started and what's left budget wise to finish those projects and then I think that'll help us to have a conversation at a baseline of how do we make sure that we don't leave things undone and how do we work with our colleagues across the street to get those accomplished might it be extension maybe might it not be maybe but like I think we need some of those like hard numbers and that conversation as a baseline to even begin the conversation and then I think there are things that I hope we'll see continue and I hope we'll continue to invest in things like the facade grants things like you know I know we're not necessarily doing a lot of lease subsidies right now but lease subsidies you know things that are going to actually drive that economic development and opportunities for our local businesses to thrive and to expand those are the sorts of things that I see no matter what moving into the future that I can you know get behind when it comes to opportunities to make joint investments in downtown and East Gainesville you know beyond infrastructure today is the first time I've heard you say you're more interested in really understanding 8th and Waldo less sports more economic development background services and I think I hadn't heard that from you so that's important for me to hear and support in conjunction with what the city commissioners think because I think that instead of having a discussion at our next joint meeting about this I think we should really get it focused on can we talk about specifically that project what are y'all thinking here's what we're thinking Mr. Chair just one quick point about that specific one thing that was concerning in the powerpoint from the city was it said that 8th and Waldo E. Hedy and other projects that we thought were the goals for the 10 year period would not be accomplished without an extension of the GCRA that was of concern to staff just very quickly I know you're ready to listen I know you are trying to get there too but one of the things that one of the reasons that I was pushing so hard on that complex that was for sale on 8th and Waldo was because it would expand the economic possibilities it wouldn't just be for recreational it was a large that's right it was a large and Patricia Lee brought that you know for years has been bringing ideas to us about economic development over there too so you know if we could just expand you know the way we're thinking about that area to include the economic possibilities thank you okay at this time we're opening up for public comments and we're at the podium here it looked like the city manager wanted to get closer to you come on close come on get me spots flus I wanted to wake you up I've been I've had a lot of involvement with CRA over the years first two discontinuous terms on the 5th Avenue Pleasant Street CRA when it was still under the TIF format on the big board for CRA during its transition from TIF to a city appropriations board my experience way back on that 5th Avenue Pleasant Street was to see a professionally prepared development plan for Pleasant Street that existed before CRA came to be revised between my two terms to completely eliminate a chapter named anti-gentrification this was under the leadership of Mr. Lyon and that has borne through throughout doing things for the east side what essential needs are met by that monstrosity of concrete at five points what essential needs are met by brick sidewalks in fact on the east side you ask anyone on the east side when they see brick sidewalks come along they say oh they're fixing to ease us out so this has been a huge impact of CRA I've reminded you before about that area over behind Eastside High School and Eastwood public housing that was designated 31 years ago as an economic development focus nothing all that money for brick sidewalks and that concrete message five points could have gone into that you know all the things you did to make celebration point possible all the infrastructure all the public spending that happened never never mind the financial mishandling since that's a different item but why wasn't any of that done for that area over there behind Eastside in 31 years I'm glad to see this idea of funding the CRA get recommitted to county priorities and I'm sure everybody out here who lives outside of city limits as soon as you said roads that was the magic thing that money could go to some roads as well as economic development on the Eastside so I think it is wise of you to wait and see what happens with the state with property tax because we know if they eliminate or vastly reduce property tax the state is going to go up on all kinds of fees they're going to keep collecting just as much money from the public but it's going to go straight into state coffers and give them that much more clout over everything you do so make the wise decisions now please good morning Cynthia Curry city manager for the city of Gainesville I'd like to just first say that I was too disappointed with the intersection of the discussion of conversation around the meeting today the communication or email that went out was not authorized by me or my chief operating officer Andrew Persons who has oversight for the GCRA we want to reach common ground that's where we've always been we've never questioned the county's partnership with the city we've always come to the table and tried to to make it work I would like to say that my conversations regarding the GCRA and whether there was an extension in sight or not started with the county manager I have not had any conversations with Mr. Sexton and yes George Burgess was a part time slash consultant that came to work with me and my staff to lay out an economic development framework for the city we were very pleased with his interaction and conversations with members of the community which of course included not only the school board but the county and many others Mr. Lyons and his organization many others and so we were very pleased with what came forward but my conversations have always been with the county manager I'm sure she will acknowledge because I would not stand here and represent something that's not true we have been attempting as this conversation has evolved around this GCRA extension I have been meeting with her I did not want to break protocol and just have the GCRA staff start meeting with county commissioners I wanted to line it up with what the county manager's office was doing these conversations have been evolving as far as I know prior to May I've had zoom calls with the manager county manager and her staff she's had some of her folk on those calls we have had our staff from GCRA lined up to meet with each county commissioner to make sure that you all knew what was in the powerpoint and conversations beyond the powerpoint so that you had some of that detail prior to a meeting like this that has not occurred I know those meetings were set up because I had conversations with Michelle about them and making sure that we did not break protocol by just coming into the county and starting those conversations so I want to make sure that you all understand that we understand that there is a lot riding on the GCRA and what it has produced in the past and what it will produce in the future we just want to reach common ground there are still some major projects that need to be funded how they get funded obviously is a big question we simply need common ground Commissioner Chestnut Commissioner Eastman Commissioner Booker are here they may want to have some comment beyond mine but simply this conversation clearly cannot be resolved today around whether there is an extension or not and I appreciate at least what I've heard regarding to continue this and try to see how we can make it make it a conversation that works for everybody but I want to also make it clear on behalf of the city that we did not come into this meeting nor did we start anywhere else questioning the partnership of the county as it relates to how we work together and how these projects evolve and so with that I want to just say thank you and I guess we had to get this elephant off the wall at some point this conversation this conversation did it Mark I do have some counterpoints but this is not the place we can deal with that later Greg Bradley why do I have a dog in this fight I come to you not as an insurance agent or anything like that I come to you as someone who used to work in the CRA and so I'm coming at it from a different perspective one I agree with the analysis I think it was a great job congratulations on your analysis and I understand that the sunset of happening in 10 years I understand all the rationale behind that so a couple things that I think we need to concede one the county has been supportive and two there's been a lack of progress as Commissioner Chestnut your frustration there has been a lack of progress but I want to put that in some context so with CPUH you know College Park University Heights when the CRA was under that function organization and then downtown always always has there been developers on those boards private investment and they were making sure that their investment dollars were going to yield the highest return for them note I don't need to call names everybody knows the developers they sat on those boards they made sure that the investment went in the places that it needed to be for the return on their private investment same thing with downtown it's only when we get to 5th Avenue Pleasant Street and the east side portion of the CRA do we look to government to take the lead at some point we need to be attracting private investment if we want to see the changes occur you're not going to get it being led by government it has to be private investment so when the question is asked what do we do with 70 million dollars which I guess was 7 million times 10 you know what do we do with that that's the wrong the answer to that question is how do we go get 300 million in private investment and leverage the 70 million right so I want to just call out something that says you know we're not this isn't the right time to have a conversation I believe that it is for number one because we keep using this word description East Gainesville there is no such thing there's not St. Louis and East St. Louis those are two municipalities separate municipalities there is the city of Gainesville period and every time we put that description of East Gainesville on there all we do and those of us who grew up here and those of us that are here now we all know what that means East Gainesville it's Gainesville and we need to be supporting Gainesville and there's no separation between downtown and the east side of Gainesville every time we use those descriptions we perpetuate the problem so my question and comment to you here is big picture going forward I don't know what it looks like there's plenty of time but I think it's a wake up call that we need to see some progress the question I would have for you is is the mission accomplished on the east side of Gainesville or is there still work to be done and if there is then I think we need to address it good morning Mr. Chairman and to my classmate and to those who are on the county commission I wish I knew that you weren't going to take an action that I might not have flown in yesterday to be here but I'm glad to know that that wisdom has taken place what I would say is a few things to add to all that has been said first thing that needs to be said I think city manager said it but I want to be more direct about it is thank you for the county's commitment not just yours but the predecessors to you for that 50 years of investment you got to start off by having some good home training first and say thank you for that no matter what communication we don't want to miss the excitement of the energy not being continued people got some angst all of us got some angst that's why you got the room filled with people that are in the room because we were concerned that the energy and the love that's been shared was not going to continue at the same level so we need to start out by saying thank you for that investment I hope that one of the things the next thing you will think about that was talked about by a couple of colleagues here at this desk that didn't happen that you can begin thinking about it if it were to be extended what type of governance structure would you like to see what would it look like is it one two three whatever seven seven member board and appointed board I'm not here to answer the question I'm saying let's not sit back and say well we should have done something we didn't do it if we're going to contemplate going forward while we're waiting for them to give us an idea we don't need to do that with friends and family we just say this is what we would like and say that and put that on the table and then make that happen and then you can have some negotiation from what that looks like I say to my good friend Commissioner like it but for those of us who live in Gates games all of my life like I have we love Walmart Walmart is our grocery store I walk there every night I'm here in town getting steps in and have friends and family neighbors that are there and we love it we want more we want Publix Winn-Dixie whatever combination we can get but we love that and how do we use that investment as a leverage opportunity we thought 20 years ago when Commissioner Chestnut Commissioner Long and this Commissioner and the other Commissioner Chestnut stood up against those who didn't want Walmart to go there we thought immediately something was going to happen I was in the state house at the time 20 years later it has not happened so how do we leverage that private investment that Mr. Bradley just talked about I and others got the wisdom of the idea of affordable housing not being number one issue that I got my blank handed to me a little while ago and focusing in on the idea of economic development I've got a couple projects on the table to leverage that issue how do we do it together we don't need to do it separately we need to do it leverage together the thing I hope that you will get out of this conversation and why the timing is important for you to figure this out is let's look at 8th and Walno sports complex and use it as a leverage opportunity and the bonding issue whether it is going to be on the ballot or a defined set of 20 year funding does need to happen in short order it can't wait three more years yes you have to look at Tallahassee I respect it as a former person who spent a little time there I get that point yes sir I'm sorry but I hope that you will say hey if it's going to cost 100 million 50 or 150 let's dedicate funding for that make it happen approve that project and go forward thank you Mr. Chairman for your indulgence further comments hi my name is Chelsea Carnes and I serve on the Gainesville Community Redevelopment Area Advisory Board and I also I guess I'm here with a slightly different take I just wanted to express gratitude for the work that the county the city and the GCRA have done for arts and cultural events in Gainesville there's so little funding for these programs and there's so many incredible organizations I see a lot of them represented in this room actually and the you know it's not that much money but the little bit of granting that the GCRA does goes a long way to support events in downtown Gainesville and around the GCRA area so I just I want to bring that to your attention and if you know I think it's wise I appreciate your consideration thoughtfulness and kind of pushing off this decision until you have more information and time to kind of decide how the program will sunset if it does but if it does sunset I just want to encourage you all to think about that grant money that we get and how it might be replaced because it really does it does a lot to support and you know arts and activities in Gainesville we know that makes downtown Gainesville safer I know that you're concerned with gun violence and things like that in our neighborhoods downtown so you know don't dismiss the good that those programs do and thank you for the good that they've done so far I appreciate it good morning my name is Jason Mitchell I'm a citizen at large former GCR member and chair first of all I would like to thank you county board for the support of the GCRA I've been really passionate about my involvement because I saw it as something very viable to what's needed in East Gainesville one of the things I would say is very remarkable about the GCRA that sets it apart from most agencies and bureaucracies is their earning of public trust they've been in the faces they've been in the trenches they've been in the spaces that most people don't go they have a relationship with Duval Lincoln these other spaces and when it comes to public trust that's something you want to preserve there's a long history 50 years of giving money but do we really see the difference in the money like someone said we always see as a Walmart so public perception public trust like he said Gainesville is one city I have one body if the right side of my chest hurt what am I going to do I'm going to help it but what's the problem we're double minded there's not one mind there's not one heart and so when we have a double mind and we have a double heart there's no humanity serving the body we've got to up in the level of leadership I love what he said about the developers that's true we got to target the money on the youth to get entrepreneurial we got to target the money in ways that generate revenue I appreciate wild spaces and public places but that is not cutting it you see the attitude on the west side nobody's talking about public spaces museums and stuff like that you relegate it over here and it cuts off revenue development and flow and that's it's time to loosen the hold on that maybe we can put some of the things that you talk about over there public spaces and wide spaces you got Kanapaha Park there can be even more things like that we got to treat the body like a body we can't be double minded and I think there was one other thing I wanted to say but I'm a little nervous but I really love what GCRA does and I hope that you continue to support and do it in meaningful ways that like it can't be shooting a hose on plants on one side and just dripping on the other you gotta grow it and in the times that we live in Gainesville is one of the best places to live because of the GCRA Depot Park G-Tech other things they do to make a difference with businesses thank you for your time any further comments thank you Mr. Chairman I'm Robert Mounts and formerly years ago president of the University Park Neighborhood Association and sat for a term on the old College Park University Heights redevelopment advisory board and served as the last chair of that board when it was converted to a 10 year project which I knew then it was explained to me then it was a 10 year project $70 million $7 million a year for some defined projects and staff really had in mind what they wanted to do with that money then but since then I've been past president of the Matheson History Museum and still chair of its advisory committee and it's one of the few sources of grant money that we look to to survive and I've seen what was done with all that College Park TIF funds on South Maine and Neepo Park all of that is wonderful but I love this conversation today because as a born and raised Gainesville native I certainly identify and understand why haven't we developed on the east side of Gainesville as we should have and the Matheson stands kind of in the center you know it tries to reach out with educational programs to all communities were very diverse that's still part of our mission statement even though the word has become tainted but what you've described is a success story we hope it continues the grant process is one of the few ways that small organizations like the Matheson can go seek public funds most of it comes from donations but I do think it's right to defer this conversation another year or two but I hope in one way or the other you continue the marsh to develop the east side of Gainesville thank you it's going to be the last call for folks because we have one more item on the agenda so I just want to make sure we get to that okay go ahead I don't want to rush anybody but I just want to make sure that you guys get in line to come up please thank you thank you my name is Jamie Swick I am a sixth generation ACR I was born and raised in Alachua and I now live in downtown I just wanted to talk a little bit about what the community partnership grant and the downtown grants do I'm in the process of preparing for an event right now and to have these events properly policed usually cost between one and five thousand dollars and so these grants are in the amount of five thousand dollars and I just want you to know that having these events properly policed is really important because we are hosting people from the county so when we you know from Alachua would come into town going into town was going into downtown Gainesville and doing something and so having those policed properly is really critical I think to the safety of all of your county residents speaking to the business improvement grants I've been a licensed real estate broker who works in the commercial space for 25 years and I can tell you that selling in my backyard is really really hard because of the perception of it just being a run down part of town so I can tell you that as a commercial real estate broker those business improvement grant dollars have really helped to revive that area and the last thing I wanted to speak to was in reference to the downtown ambassadors just so you guys know they call 911 between one and ten times a day and that has been really important for creating a meaningful relationship with the GPD so that they can find out you know how to bridge those gaps in security and I think that's also important for your county residents because on Friday and Saturday night the downtown parking lot is full of trucks so I know who's coming into town it's my it's my family and they're eating at Mars and they're having sushi when they're feeling wild at Dragonfly and being able to have them come into town and feel safe again has really been I think something we can attribute to the downtown ambassador program so thank you for that and then just to speak on one issue as it pertains to real estate development I know there's a lot of question about why are we not seeing more development in the east side of town of Alachua County is because your average median income is around forty thousand dollars which represents about forty percent and sorry this makes me nervous and when we look at the recommendations that have been put forth for tax incentives in Alachua County in Gainesville it's at eighty percent which means anyone doing any development for income levels under eighty percent are taking that risk on entirely on their selves and so just like with the challenges of getting people to come to downtown we also are experiencing those challenges as a result of that eighty percent AMI being so high thank you so much good morning mr. chair and board and other county staff my name is ed book I'm one of seven city commissioners I just want to say I really value the relationship that we have there's five county commissioners there are seven city commissioners so I feel like we're doing really good work together together as two elected bodies a good example is the MTPO which we serve on together and we're making some some really incredible efforts there that have probably not been done in years just like we talked about a ten-year agreement for the GCRA big things transformative things huge projects take a tremendous amount of time so I understand when we get disappointed and that we're concerned that we haven't made the the appropriate progress just because some of my other colleagues are here and the city manager called us out to step in front of you I won't take three minutes I'll simply tell you that we do have the eighth and welder project isn't that Thursday are we not speaking about that Thursday so for the for our county commission colleagues we're going to be doing some really interesting work with moving around parts and pieces to see where we can make the next step we have made progress so I just want to let you know that in case you'd like to come to our meeting and I believe that on the city county joint meeting that we have our December 3rd meeting is that not right Mr. Sexton so I think that we're going to have an opportunity here within the next 60 days to speak together further and pursue these discussions because some of my colleagues are here I really don't want to have substantive conversation I just want to say thanks I think we agree on most things any 12 people get together and they're not going to agree on on everything so thank you thanks Ed good morning good morning happy to come over and have a little conversation with you all today and I'm glad that you decided to defer action this morning as you know we were going to meet jointly in September and chair chestnut and the mayor that meeting had to be canceled and rescheduled for December and the topic was this the GCRA and our partnership and partnership here is a very important word because that's what we are East Gainesville and I have to separate it out because you can't be too benevolent when there's a portion of your city missing East Gainesville is depending on us they are depending on us to help them realize a dream a dream that we're all familiar with that goes back really to Tom Coward and the North Florida Regional Planning Council and that dream has not been fulfilled now I came this morning prepared to give you some figures that may look different from what your staff presented but we'll have an opportunity to do that in a more formalized presentation now Chuck you used a term from your dad that you're short time crazy so am I so am I yeah yeah she said so am I his dad used to say that all the time but Commissioner Wheeler was right on target I ran for re-election because of my commitment to East Gainesville and because of my commitment to Citizens Field a senior citizen center at 8th and Waldo yeah that's that's our plan that's our plan and to see people in East Gainesville realize their dream their dream for them and their children and I want to say emphatically emphatically are committed to East Gainesville we are committed to 8th and Waldo and as Tom Petty would say we won't back down thank you thank you guys I'll be brief because I know we got a big discussion after this but thank you guys for deferring this I do think that it's an important conversation I do kind of want to bring it this all into the larger context when we talk about the the Gainesville CRA there's obviously a lot of history Mark went over a lot of the history there's a lot of you know back and forth that our bodies have had but I think at the end of the day what's important is that we have this commitment that is together we have a partnership with one another we have committed actual funds that are in enterprise funds that are being held accountable by the community for these major projects that we have going forward and so I think the real question is is in 2029 what does that look like does it look like a Gainesville CRA does it look like what we currently have I think there's a lot of power in that partnership I think there's a lot of power in that commitment of us both putting funds together and saying what are the projects and the programs that are going to move us forward and I think there's a lot of power in saying this is its own set aside amount of money that will live far beyond my time in office your time in office all of our times in office and so when I saw the staff recommendation I see the first a lot of this discussion has been around number one let the GCRA sunset and for me a lot of my questions have been over two and three when we say we're going to consider partnerships on a case-by-case basis what that sounds like to me is something that can easily dissipate into those roads into those general fund dollars into everything else and I think we all agree that East Gainesville and our downtown and these communities are important enough that we need to have a commitment that goes year over year over year and whatever that structure looks like and I think that it's time for us to start having that conversation I understand maybe we wouldn't be making real substantive decisions till after legislative cycle maybe we wouldn't be doing things until later in the process but I think we need to be having that conversation because this is a commitment as everyone here spoke to either that I think it's critical that has been critical going up to this point I think will be critical going forward so I appreciate you guys talking about deferring it but you know I'm willing to have a discussion get a little creative with you guys whenever we get to that thank you all right we move to our next item I guess the first I guess there's a lot of things I could respond to but I'll just first to my city colleagues thank you for taking the time to be here today for this conversation and I think all of you have said things that I 100% agree with and Commissioner Chestnut I hope we can help you see that legacy through and make sure that you didn't waste your time running again and serving again we really appreciate it because I know you've already done your time and this was above and beyond the call so thank you and to Brian I'm with you on that as well I think we do need sustained commitment to making these things happen and I think some of the audience today spoke loud and clear and I think some of those things are things like the grants and the support for our business improvements and the things that like lift up the day-to-day businesses as well as these infrastructure investments that are kind of bigger and transformational we hope to the gentleman that talked about Greg Bradley who talked about private investment I 100% agree with you but I do want to say that our current way of doing private investment oftentimes is really extractive because our private investors they just want to make money and get out and what I'm looking for is private investors that want more than just a return on their investment in the form of dollars but that actually want to see that transformation happen and that care about our community and I think once upon a time we had developers and we had community businesses that wanted to make investments to lift up people as well as to make money and those are the kinds of people I'm looking for when I look for private investment in our eastern part of the county including East Gainesville because I don't need more extractive development happening in our community we need our dollars to stay here to recycle here to hire our local people with fair living wages and real quality jobs and I hope that we can also realize that there's a lot of wealth in the eastern part of Gainesville and in Alachua County there's they're spending we're spending tons and tons of dollars even though each family may only make a little bit of money that money is real money and it right now it's mostly being extracted into corporations and going outside of our community and the more we can invest in our locally owned businesses and help lift them up and help create ways for them to invest in their own communities I think we have a real opportunity and that is that can be creative things like us having community bonds that actual individuals can buy into and invest into their own community that can look like like entrepreneurial support I loved the idea of Mr. Mitchell had of investing in our local youth and entrepreneurial programs I think the city's I mean the county's done that a bit with our new Santa Fe heavy diesel mechanics program I hope we see more of that but I just I guess I just wanted to point out that I hope that whatever we create when it comes to private investment and public private partnerships really looks at making those investments in people who live here and who want to invest here because they want to see this place be successful and grow and not just big scale developers that are in here to make a buck and get out and I hear loud and clear from everybody that the grants are super super important I hope our staff heard that because I think that as we move forward thinking about how we craft things with economic development and visit Gainesville and my colleagues I keep saying it again and again we invest a ton of money in sports sports sports sports but arts and culture are the foundation of our community and so often the arts and culture are what are the fabric that hold people together and I hope that in the future we can use our visit Gainesville dollars to invest in art sports and culture and business the way that we have done with sports and that's I think that's all I wanted to say today oh the last thing is to CRA colleagues in the city I think one of the things that would go a long way at least for me individually is that when you have a meeting with the city to present on projects that you have that same meeting with us we're equal and actually larger investors in those projects and I think one of the frustrations for me has been you meet with the city and you talk about the projects and you get their input and feedback and they have long discussions on their agendas and they have long discussions on their agendas and then it comes to a joint meeting and it's one of 10 things on an agenda that we're trying to get through with 12 people speaking and so it gets rushed through and I don't feel like we have the same opportunity to make real substantive comments on projects so perhaps we could actually agenda the Waldo and 8th project the same way you're doing with the city with us and we could do more of that opportunity for us to have it on our agendas and talk about these projects so that we're going to move forward so that we feel like we're an equal partner if you will in the decisions and I understand that ultimately it's a city department and they have to make the city decisions to make it move forward but it would be great to have that opportunity. Thank you. I'm just going to say ditto to my colleague because Anna really hit it of the highlights. I do want to say to Commissioner Cynthia Chestnut, 8th and Waldo, I want to make that happen before you're out. I want to have a plan for that before both of you are out, actually three years. I think that's a commitment I'm ready to make today and the point that Greg Bradley made I think was really critical which is the reason College Park was successful was because we had local developers that leaned in and were able to leverage not in an extractive way because that word is really good and it's used. Oftentimes I see out of town folks coming in presenting at the city and I would feel better about seeing our local folks coming in and discussing how one Gainesville it is but private investment will follow public investment. When we did this in 2018-19 that was the discussion. How do we leverage 70 million? I don't know if it was 300 but it was a bigger number than 70. It was I think 250 to 300 million. And that, we're going to see that with the Army Depot Center. We're going to see, you know, our investment was the land and they're investing tens of millions of dollars to create jobs which we heard about but really transformed the northern end of Waldo Road and we've always said, at least I've always said, that the anchor to the southern end of Waldo Road is 8th and Waldo. I mean, that's just what it is and that doesn't just involve us in the city. That involves the University of Florida, Santa Fe and all the stakeholders that are a part of Gainesville, the greater. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just have one really quick, quick thing to say. You face this. We haven't met you all before. I haven't met you before. So please come downtown so that you can see. You can introduce yourselves to us as our board too because you all have been working with the city but you're also part of our county and Ms. Wick, you too. And, you know, it's good to see new people coming forward and I just would invite you to come downtown to our meetings too. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes. Mr. Chair, just so the public's aware, we currently have about $1.4 million in cultural grants and up to $2 million, I think, in grants we give total to Arts, Nature, Culture. So if they are, they're welcome to apply for our grants as well because we do invest quite a bit in those different programs and conferences as well and they can reach out to our tourism office for those grants. I think Chelsea has come down to us. I think they can get those too. And the Arts Council also has grants, many of which fund downtown and I just want to say one quick thing too is through Visit Gainesville and we've talked with our GCRA staff about this, we're deploying over 100 million advertising impressions annually all with the goal of Visit Gainesville, Alachua County. I'm fully focused on the importance of that consumer spending to our downtown and all of our businesses, consumer spending in the county is over 26% of all spending here. So as it comes to, you know, moving forward with at least the next four years that we really want to have a strong, comprehensive partnership so that when we're alluring people to come to Gainesville, the experience they have when they come downtown is the experience they're expecting with a close collaboration and all of that messaging. Okay. All right. We'll move to our next item, the NV transportation discussion. I'm not sure after yesterday how much we add to that. Add to that the timing on that because we bumped it from prior and then you had it on your MCPA yesterday, but nonetheless, we have Jeff. What's up, man? Good to see you, man. Come down, Dan. He gets one day through. He's going to do the NV. I said we're doing the NV. I mean, oh, I'm sorry. I didn't see you. He's in on me. Mr. Chair, so I believe Jeff Hayes, growth management director, I believe all of you were present yesterday at the MTPO where there was quite a lengthy discussion of this subject. Just for the public who may be here, be watching, the discussion has been about the city of Gainesville insourcing the ADA and paratransit service, which is the bulk of that type of service that's currently provided by NV transportation to the tune of about $3 million, about 70% to 80% of that of the trips that would either be paratransit or transportation disadvantaged. And the issue has been, as the city goes through that process of insourcing that service into RTS, that NV has stated that it would be difficult to or impossible to provide the service for the unincorporated residents or the residents to the smaller cities that's currently provided through the transportation disadvantage program, both at the state level and via the county's contribution to that service. So, as was stated yesterday, but the city is going to look at it again this week, I believe, on Thursday and agenda it. There were statements by NV transportation who was here and could speak further if necessary to, you know, their desire to be able to continue and they're working on a plan to do so to be able to bridge that gap from when the city completely insources by March, which has been their pledge of next year, to potentially when the city could take over all of the service, if necessary, later in 2026. So, that's where the discussion remains from yesterday. And so, happy to answer any questions. Mr. Coons is here. NV Transportation is here. And happy to take any questions. What motion do you need from us in order to make sure that we can assure the residents of Alachua County that they will be able to continue to get transportation from where they are to where they need to go? Mr. Chair, I don't believe we need any further staff direction. The issue will be if and when NV transportation comes back, if there is a budget impact, that is when we would need to discuss with the manager and Tommy what that may be and what's possible. Obviously, nothing beyond what has currently been budgeted, certainly with the county. Right now, our contribution to transportation disadvantage is about $191,000. And then we have additional contribution to NV via the emergency funding. Potentially, we have a contract to provide trips in the event of emergency for shelter transportation. So, there would be a couple of other, you know, if there were financial impacts, that's when we would need to come back. As Mr. Kuhn said yesterday at the MTPO, there are some decision points for the community and that county involved as well in terms of requesting or being involved with the state designating the city or RTS as the coordinated transportation, the CTC, excuse me, to provide all of the service, which would, whenever that would happen, whether it could be earlier in the year or in October. So, that, those steps would need to take place. It sounds like that would probably need to take place by December. So, we have another month here to work through the process with NV and the city to figure out all of the moving pieces. I just want to be able to look with a straight face at my constituents and say, yes, we are not going to be stranding you. You will be able to get to your appointments. So, that's, you know, basically, I just want to know that, you know, whatever that commitment may be, I just need to feel comfortable in making that statement. And, Ms. Chair, obviously, staff understands that completely. We understand that's the direction of this board, that we're not going to have a gap in service for unincorporated or residents of the smaller cities. Like I said, the issue may be that we haven't, there's no budget identified for an additional impact, and there certainly isn't at the state level, so, which is even the larger share of the funding that we provide for that type of service for county residents. So, that isn't, could be an issue, but. Thank you, Jeff. I appreciate it. Colonel and then Prissy, I guess. Yeah, I actually, if Scott would indulge us, I actually wanted to understand how the state funding worked, because NV is our designated transportation disadvantage provider for the next three years. If I, I was spotty yesterday, but thank you all for letting me participate. But, as I understand it, they are the transportation disadvantage provider and will receive state and federal monies matched by some portion of local dollars. And so, I'm trying to understand logistically how that works, and also how it works with paratransit now for the city. Is RTS now going to receive that money starting March 1st from the state, or is that separate? So, could somebody maybe explain that? Scott, if you're able, that would be great. Good morning, Mr. Chair, members of the board. Scott Coons, Executive Director of the North Central Florida Regional Planning Council. We serve as the official planning agency for the state-funded transportation disadvantage program here in Alachua County, as well as 10 of other counties in North Central Florida. The state funding comes from a state trust fund of $1.50 each year when we renew our vehicle registration tag. $1.50 from that fee goes into a state fund. Those funds are then allocated on a state formula to the 67 counties to provide paratransit transportation advantage services to disabled, elderly, low-income individuals to life-sustaining activities. The overwhelming majority of those, as you know, are for medical appointments, grocery shopping, and similar trips. The formula has been adjusted over the years, and the amount of funding coming to Alachua County has been reduced based on that formula for the past several years. The current allocation to provide that service is $525,000. Next to that. It's $525,000, and it varies each year, but that's the current allocation. Those funds go to the designated community transportation coordinator, which is MV Transportation. They are designated by the State Transportation Disadvantage Commission, which is an arm of the Florida Department of Transportation. They make that designation on a five-year cycle. As I mentioned yesterday, MV Transit was just redesignated in July of 2023, so they're just starting year three, that five-year designation. That designation is based on a recommendation from the Regional Planning Council, serving as an official planning agency, with advisory comments from the County Coordinating Board, which Commissioner Chair and Commissioner Chestnut serves as chair of. That organization only meets four times a year. The next meeting is December, and the next meeting then would be in March. If MV Transit and the county and city are not able to work out an arrangement where they are willing to continue to provide its service between March and October of next year, the State Commission would need to formally, at one of their four meetings, formally designate a temporary or emergency community transportation coordinator. And then the Regional Planning Council, serving as a designated planning agency, would either need to go through a formal request proposal process for a private organization to be the new permanent community transportation coordinator going forward, or under Chapter 287, use a non-competitive process to recommend designating a governmental entity, such as the City of Gainesville and the Regional Transit System. And they've indicated an interest in doing that, but not until October of 2026. Who determines the budget, the 525, whether it goes up, down, stay the same? Who determines that? Depends on the amount of funds that go into that state trust fund each year, based on the $1.50 contribution from automobile tags. It's all from the state legislature and the annual budgeting process. How is the paratransit funded? I would need to defer to city staff on that, but the paratransit service is required for any transit authority operating a fixed route system, which the City of Gainesville Regional Transit System does. They must provide paratransit service to anyone with a three-quarters of a mile of a fixed route if they are unable to get to the nearest bus stop. Usually that is someone who's disabled or below income status and can't have other resources to access the fixed route system. That funding, as Mr. Gomez mentioned yesterday, and I'll defer to city staff, comes from multiple sources that support the regional transit system. They do get some federal transit funding. They get some state transit funding. They get some funding here from the county. They get funding from the city of Gainesville and funding from the University of Florida and funding from Santa Fe College. It's all the sources. And is the federal funding direct to the provider, or does it flow through the MTPO? It goes direct to the transit provider. It goes directly to the city. It does not flow through the Metropolitan Transportation Planning Organization. It is part of what's called your transportation improvement program, that all federal and state dollars need to be included in that plan, but they do not go through the Metropolitan Transportation Planning Organization. You go directly to the city of Gainesville as the transit operator of the regional transit system. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Gomez. Thanks for being here again. It'll be yesterday. My only other question, Mr. Chair, is hearing from MV with regards to what their thoughts are for the increase in funding that they would require from March through October, and then what their thoughts are for continuing as the state provider for the next two years under the existing contract. Good morning. Good morning. Almost good afternoon, Mr. Chair. Yeah, it is. And members of the commission. Thank you for allowing me to be here again today. My name is Randy France, and I'm the Senior Vice President of Operations for MV Transportation. And, Mr. Commissioner, before I answer specifically your two questions, if I may have just a minute or two just to educate the room on a few items. MV Transportation is the leading transit service provider in the United States, partnering with over 100 transit agencies, municipalities, schools, and corporations nationwide. Every credible insourcing study in the country arrives at the exact same conclusion. Insourcing always costs more than outsourcing. A study published last year by Rochester Public Transit found that paratransit service would increase by 22%. The same study also found that insourcing would lead to significantly higher risk in the areas of complexity, liability, and staffing. A study conducted at a great expense by the San Diego Metropolitan Transit System and published just last month found that insourcing the city's paratransit system would cost taxpayers 82% more than current outsource model. Despite claims, the city has been unable to produce third-party studies or any evidence that their effort will actually save money, including a lack of details on where they would save costs. They have not provided MV with any proof, nor have they responded to Florida DOGE or the Florida Open Records Request Act. In fact, the three lines of detail they provided in the September City Council meeting had major errors and ignored entire categories of costs. The city asserts that insourcing would save $500,000 in fiscal year 26. The city recently announced that it won't actually begin the paratransit service until March. That's six months into their fiscal year. So half of the alleged $500,000 of savings is already fiscally accounted for. The interim city manager asserted that insourcing will allow Gainesville to save 10 existing driver jobs and 20 vacant driver jobs that will be filled. MV services the city and the county with 20 drivers. So if Gainesville hires 30 drivers, that salary and benefit expense would rise by over $500,000 a year. Gainesville is ignoring hundreds of thousands of dollars of insurance and claims costs that MV has always paid for, but the city will now be responsible to pay for. The RTS estimates it can slash vehicle maintenance spending by $200,000 simply by reallocating the paratransit maintenance into a city-owned facility. MV pays $90,000 a year in rent. The only way to save money is to conduct less maintenance or skipping on parts, both of which could be a disaster. The RTS recently signed a $200,000 agreement for routing software MV already provides as a part of our service today. RTS is planning to rebrand and rewrap all paratransit vehicles before starting the service, likely at a tune of $30,000. The RTS is counting on slashing administrative costs by getting rid of MV's very lean management staff. But it has no one on its staff that has ran a paratransit division more recently than the 1990s. I can go on, but I think you get the point. In July, in the spirit of our 22-year partnership with Gainesville, MV offered RTS a $213,000 price reduction. Those funds came directly from our funds we used to invest in our leading innovation and technology, including AI, microtransit, and planning capabilities. Most recently, we were then told that the $500,000 savings target was inflexible. MV proposed adjusting its service for ambulatory riders, which can be serviced at a lower cost by utilizing transportation network companies, also known as TNCs, as we do in many other markets across the country. Many of the largest, most sophisticated transit systems in Florida, including Miami-Dade, Broward, and Pinellas, utilize TNCs in a very similar fashion. The proposed model would also allow added benefits of limiting the city's need to make capital investments in vehicle purchases over the next few years because those TNCs provide their own vehicles. The combination of MV subsidizing Gainesville and redesigning the service for ambulatory riders would have allowed the city to achieve 100% of its budgetary savings it said it needed without negatively impacting the paratransit service upon the riders that we have serviced for the last 22 years. I would like to say that one more time, please. would have allowed the city to achieve 100% of their budgetary savings it said it needed without negatively impacting the paratransit service upon which the riders in Gainesville and throughout Alachua County depend on, something Gary Luke and his team do extremely well. Gainesville waited until after the fiscal year 2026 budget has been approved to reject that offer of 100% savings. Gainesville likes to state that the amount it is paying for this service has grown over three years. Respectfully, that is an apples to oranges comparison. Trip volume has increased from 35,000 trips in 2022 to 52,000 trips. That's a 46% increase. You are comparing pre-pandemic levels, intra-pandemic levels to post-pandemic levels. It's an apples to oranges increase. In our proposal, through their RFP process, Gainesville Living Wage Ordinance, that increased personnel costs by roughly 30% in 2022. We knew what we had to pay our people based on the Gainesville Living Wage Ordinance. Inflation, the only actual rate increase, were driven by the standard CPI adjustment in our contract, as agreed to by the city for Gainesville three years ago. They reflect an actual increase in volume, regular wages, inflation, which the city or any other provider would have been subjected to. None of these costs benefited MBE. The CTC program has been viable only because it shares the same personnel and equipment servicing the much larger workload of the city of Gainesville. In our business, when you lose the leverage of volume, it creates severe inefficiencies. Those inefficiencies, such as increased deadhead, has the likely potential to raise costs. And that's what I mentioned in yesterday's meeting. I'm going to say it again. Lifeline is an overstatement. Over the past year, more than 99% of paratransit riders we provide residents to in Alachua County who live outside of Gainesville were for critical purposes, including dialysis and serious, serious medical treatments. I thank you for your time today, and we'll close with how I started. I am deeply concerned for the residents who we have so deeply cared for for 22 years. Thank you. Good questions. Yes, sir. So, as I mentioned yesterday, we are adamantly working on a solution that would allow us to continue to be your partner in the county. I also mentioned yesterday those inefficiencies could potentially drive increased costs, and I committed to coming back in a future meeting to share what those potential solutions are. Like any other market we operate in, we're going to operate with integrity. It's our mission to leave no one stranded, and that's what we're working hard to solution. When might you have those for us to present to us? I would like to have those at your next meeting. Yes, ma'am. I'm interested if you can share it all in how you work. Like, I mean, you said you offer the city $500,000. I'm just interested in how suddenly you were able to reduce costs to the point of being able to offer $500,000. Great question. So, we utilize transportation network companies. Yep. You know, some of them you could maybe think Uber, Lyft, et cetera. These are not those folks. I operate many districts or many divisions within the state of Florida under, you know, my divisional regional umbrella where we utilize TNC networks. Are those employed with benefits, or are they just free agents that get interested? They're not free agents. They're employed by other companies who we subcontract with that still share the same rigor and responsibility and, you know, interest of safety, still go through our same training program, still have the same rigor, but it's a third-party provider who we do work with across the country. So, they would also have to pay the fair wage? Yes, ma'am. Okay. Service and transit. We follow local and state laws. Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am. Thank you for your time this afternoon. It is officially now this afternoon, I think. Thank you. Yes. Sure. Again, Cynthia Curry, city manager for the city of Gainesville. I want to make it very clear that the gentleman that just spoke, representing MV, has never met with my office, me as the city manager, with oversight for all of the departments that work for the city, that operate in the city, and neither has MV met with the chief operating officer, Mr. Persons, the incoming interim city manager, I am still the city manager, has not met with him, and he has oversight over the transportation. The half million dollars, the half million dollars, the half million dollars that was referred to came up in a meeting that I did eventually have with the MV representative that is consulting with MV that is sitting behind this gentleman. I worked with Mr. Frank Martin for probably over 30 years in Miami-Dade County. I know him very well. But it was at that point, about three weeks ago, that that half million dollar savings was presented to the city, and it was short of the final budget hearing where the budget had been approved. So I just want to make that clear. We never had the opportunity, because we were never asked. At least I was not. They may have met with the transportation department, and I'm sure they did. MV has been a good partner. They provided great services. We've heard nothing but good things about MV from the public. We understand the challenge ahead of the city in terms of providing the service, the customer service that's necessary. There's a lot at stake here. But from a budgetary point, this is where the city has landed. Those decisions have been made by the city commission, and quite frankly, I wish that we could have had more in-depth discussions earlier on with the MV team. Mr. Wheeler? I just would ask, too late, to have those conversations. Yes, I think the city commission is going forward. Yeah, he said that yesterday in the meeting. Okay, all right. Well, he's offering them the savings they required, so the budget shouldn't be a budgetary impact. As I understand it, it's both a budgetary impact, but also a personal impact, that they did not. And that's what I heard yesterday, and that's also what it was communicated. What I am mostly concerned about is exactly what Commissioner Alford said to Jeff, which is communicating to the citizens that are not going to have scheduled service effective March 1st, what is our solution, and who's going to provide that. If MV is willing, we need to just know what it costs, and we're going to have to figure out how that money flows to those providers. When MV comes back, and I hope Randy hears this, I hope you bring back the stopgap fee, but also the desire or not desire to continue for the next two years under the program that you have with the state. And I've also heard that you're potentially in discussions with UF, and if UF can provide some fixed routes, then that may help you, it may not help you, I don't know. But I'm interested in all of the citizens of Alachua County, not only in the city of Gainesville, but outside the city of Gainesville, and on campus, and just making sure that if you need dialysis, and you have a number to call to take you there, then you have that service uninterrupted. Yeah, I agree with you. There was a statement made yesterday about promising too much and not being able to deliver, and I'm really, as a former business owner, ramping up, starting a business is hard enough, and then ramping up too quickly is often a real cause of failure and a cause of a business is failing. And I don't want us to put our citizens in that situation, so I think it's really important that we have a long-term plan with MB Transport and not commit too quickly to transferring over to a city-provided service without having a real assurance of the level of service not changing or putting anyone at risk. I think it's really important that we watch that, their level of success and how they transition. Yeah. Yeah, the point I want to also make to my colleagues is we have a new MPPO board. I heard you talk about a true regional plan. Yeah, I mean, this would be under that. Yeah, and the point I want to make is the point that Commissioner Pinkinson used to always make prior to him rolling off the board, and that is that the capital of RTS flows largely to the MPPO. And I understand shoring up RTS within the city. I get that. But that's now an MPPO function. It always has been, and it's always been a rubber stamp. You know? Sure, no problem. And I would like for us as a board to have more input into that budget that flows through the MPPO if we're not going to have any input as to the decisions across the street that I can. And I say that because I heard the mayor say maybe RTS needs to be a regional transit system if that's the case. All those discussions I thought were going to happen were going to happen over the next couple of years. Where my brain is, just for my colleagues, is this discussion is accelerating all that. Absolutely. And I'm ready to now start to have it because it's not just one fixed route in a certain place. We're talking about transportation for the whole county. And for me, it starts with our most transportation disadvantage, just like we reestablished those routes at Grace. They did with our input. That's where I am with RTS. I couldn't share that with you all in a remote, but I wanted to tell you all about that. Well, you know, everybody that uses a transportation service, whether they're getting on a bus normally or if they're using a transportation disadvantage service, they are a transportation disadvantage compared to anybody that's driving a car because they are putting their transportation needs into the hands of an entity like RTS. And so I think you're exactly right by saying that you're leading it in this case because while it might be a choice to do that, you are still putting yourself in the hands of needing to get to your job, to your place of worship, to wherever it is you're going, into the hands of another entity. And I think that that's a really important thing to remember. It's a whole network. It's a whole network. It starts with fixed routes. It starts with fixed routes. But an ideal scenario, you know, using public transportation wouldn't make you transportation disadvantaged. If you have a quality public transportation system, it's actually an advantage. Oh, no, no, no, no, I know exactly what you're saying, but I mean in terms of choices for many people, it would be great if it was a choice, but for a lot of folks it is not a choice. Well, I'm with both of you. I mean, I think, you know, when this conversation started happening, I was like, we shouldn't be having this conversation now. We should be having this conversation when we have the conversation about the Regional Transit Authority because that would be the logical time to be thinking about the holistic services that a regional transit system would offer, including TD, paratransit, like all of the things. And while, and looking at what we outsource, what we're in-sourced, what RTS currently does, what's needed, and putting together a more comprehensive plan for a regional transit approach. But unfortunately, we're here now, and we're having to have this conversation. And so I guess my question to staff is, in addition to being prepared to hear MVs, budget prices, I did, I sort of heard that there are some other people doing this work in other places, and then there was like they're not interested or they might be interested. Do we need to also prepare an RFP or RFQ or some kind of sort of request for proposal so that we have what are our options out on the table for this service moving forward, given that we may be in a position where we don't have a number force about the next meeting. And that's one provider. We've got a new director coming in, too, though. Do we need to do too much of this groundwork before he gets in here, whoever it is that's coming in? I'm talking about for the county. I'm not talking about for the MTPF. I'm talking about for the county. Like if we're going to outsource TD, we're going to get a price from MV. Do we also need to ask for other vendors to give us a price? Mr. Chair, possibly. I think the issue is, and as Mr. Coons alluded to, we are a partner in TD for the unincorporated in smaller cities, but we're still the junior partner in terms of that process. We're 191,000 versus the state's 525. So potentially, but I think we would be right back in the same boat of going out to find a new CTC if it's not going to be the city of Gainesville and RTS. And I think that's another part of the conversation, which we have not had yet, which is, okay, what are those rates going to look like? And we need to make an informed decision on that for the community. Yeah, states do it. I think it's worth, and I think your point is good, and it's good for the MV folks to hear. This is not a blank check situation. This isn't the only option. They're not the only option. They're probably the best option right now, and hopefully their price will indicate that. They would be able to provide it with everything that was stated more affordably than anyone else could, but we need to be, you know, we can pursue other options, and we can if that's necessary. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Go ahead. I'm always laughing as the chair. The mayor yesterday was suggesting that each board move to have our staffs work together on this. I don't know if that's where we need to go in terms of, I know they were going to offer that at their board meeting as a body. Yeah, I mean, I heard the mayor say we really don't want it. You know, we understand that there's a high cost to going outside the city, and this is not something we're asking for. We will do it to help provide the city, the county, with that service, but that, and I heard the parts, it's crystal clear. We want to focus on service quality before we take it over, and we won't be in a position to offer that until October 1st, and I wouldn't expect them to. I mean, that's a lot to ask. That's an awful lot to ask. I'm on a county road in the middle of the city, right over there in Buchholz. It's a county road in the middle of that area over there. So, you know, how are those areas served? That's in the city. That's in the city. A county road doesn't matter. It doesn't matter, because I vote in the county. I don't vote in the city. Oh, you're in the unincorporated area. Incorporated area of the state. In the middle of the city. Yeah, you would no longer fall, if I understand it correctly, you would no longer fall under the city's contact unless you were to see a resident. But there's two things here. There's paratransit, which is fixed route service for folks that the city will be providing still in the unincorporated areas of the urbanized area. It's just the transportation disadvantage service, which is like point-to-point service for people in the outlying areas that we're talking about. Now, I guess there's... Because Joni Changehill, who lives, you know, who has come here, the blind woman with the CODA, you know, has come in. And she's in my neighborhood, too. She's over in that area, too. How's your support? Just to reinforce with Commissioner Rizzi, if you live within a three-quarter mile of any of our fixed route transit line, then that's going to be a paratransit trip, whether you're inside of the city or whether you're outside of the city. Because we run service right now out into the county. So Hale Plantation, you run outside of the county. Right. That fixed line service, you'll be covered. Three-quarter mile, it's a paratransit trip. Okay, I didn't realize. Okay, thank you. Thank you. We can share. We have a map showing the extent of the three-quarter mile from fixed route, the TD area, and then the unincorporated portion. We can happily provide that to you all. It might help with kind of thinking about this spatially, too. Yeah, that would be great. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, manager. Mr. Chair, I would just say to Commissioner Krizia's question about an RFP potentially, I think we have two things. You have a short-term and a long-term. We need to make sure we have the service in the short-term. And so I think there's a limit there on where we can go to make sure that that is still happening. In the long-term, if we need to do some form of procurement after we take a look at this to make sure we have that service, you know, available for the long-term, we will bring it back to you with that procurement. Okay. But I think right now, of course, yeah, it's the short-term. We've got to worry about. March to October. Yeah, worry about. Okay. And then we'll look at what we need to do moving forward beyond that. Well, I kind of talked about it yesterday a little bit about the level of service. That's where I'm at. I'm sorry because I think Commissioner Wheeler's had the opportunity to serve as a Transportation Disbandage Chair also. But when I did it was when I was a city commissioner, and I'm telling you, those were bad times. I mean, I'm serious because it got so bad, they were actually coming to city commission meetings to talk about being left in a doctor's office and stuff like that. Nobody's picking them up. They're not on time. And I guess that's going to be my question. And will those same regulations that MB has to provide by now, the new person will have to abide by those same kind of rules like being on time, all of that stuff, and the complaints and all of that other stuff because that's what we deal with in our regular meetings to make sure that those things are happening and all of that stuff. And we do have some of the citizens there also speaking about it. And I remember some of those same citizens that are there now, back then, was complaining about services. And, you know, I can only speak about what I know is that MB came in, changed it around, everything got back on par, everybody was happy. And I'm assuming for the last 22 years, everybody's been happy. So I don't know what to say. I've picked up people who've been left in that 22 years. Yeah, right. So, you know, there are breaks in it. Yeah, yeah, 100%. Everybody's perfect. Perfect, right, right, yeah. But I'm just saying, overall, compared to CTS, oh, my God. I understand. I catch that. But anyway, that's just my comments. I just worry about the level of service for these folks. Exactly. Not who does it, but the level of service that they get, that it will maintain. That's all. Okay. Are there any further discussions? If not, are there any public comments? Oh, yeah. Public comment on MB or public comment? Either way. It's just general public comments and comments on MB, however you want to do it. It doesn't matter. People in person now or the video? You. No, no, no. That's our regular meeting. No, no. It's just you today. Oh, okay. And hopefully college. Yeah, right. Yeah, whoever's here. Okay, greetings, commissioners. And I'm Moksha now, and I do reside here. And I have to be honest with you, I'm just going to may the meditations of my heart and the words of my mouth be acceptable and creator's sight, because I'm very livid. So, Curry, I really like you, but I want to make clear, you and I saw each other at, you and I saw each other at Fresh Market. May I, please. I'm just very. No, you make your comments to me. Okay, how do I? To me. Not to you. Okay, sorry. Curry and I, I like Curry. I do not like Pearson's. Um, we saw each other at Fresh Market and I let her know that I, I can, the microphone seems to have went off. Hello? Yeah, you can hear that. Oh, okay. There we go. Um, so I look at you even, okay. Thank you. That helped me not be so angry. Um, so I saw Curry at Fresh Market back in May and let her know that I was trying to make an appointment with her to actually speak about transportation and predatory towing. I have not been allowed to make an appointment with Curry and I have been working to make an appointment with the commissioners for a very long time because at ACLC, we were told about this RTS thing back in November and as a nurse and as a veteran, I see preventative measures and thank you. Some of you are also visionaries. So I said when that RTS thing was presented in November, um, and then again in May, what about paratransit? Is this going to affect us? Willits was at the one in May. Oh no, don't worry. Don't worry. It's not going to affect you. Well, it's sure the heck is affecting us. So June, I'm still trying to get in with the commissioners. I finally got in with them in July and I want to especially thank Ed Book, Cynthia Chestnut and Desmond Duncan Walker because you are the three that even though I don't always agree with how Book and Chestnut vote, they actually will be honest with me and tell me the truth. And I am very upset right now to be told that these proposals did not go in because I have begged them to show me stats like Cornell and having a degree in science, I want to see stats. I have yet to see the stat of where they're going to save money. I also said to them, San Diego did the same exact thing and I concur with what Randy said because if somebody that speaks on this, I do my research. They never have provided that. They are going to waste money. And again, they are not addressing the four programs, the evacuation, the foster care, the elder grandparent and the medically disadvantaged of which I am on. They have also not provided what is the city limits? What is the city limits? I go to horse therapy in Archer, so I basically won't be able to go to that. And then last week, everybody that knows, knows me. I use MV when I cannot, people know that I have health issues that come and go. Well, last week I was with MV the whole week and I had to have two medical procedures last Wednesday and they picked me up at 6 a.m. If RTS takes this, they have said that they will not do the 4 a.m. to 8 p.m. Those kidney dialysis patients need that and there are sometimes people like me that need to have a medical procedure and they got me there on time at 6.30. They are not perfect, but they do a lot of good in this community. In RTS, there is no way on God's green earth that they are going to have this program up and running by March and people could die from this. So please, the county, Wheeler, I love her, she said, and Lieberman, I love her, said that the buck stops here. You have the ability to stop this, to do a moratorium on them because if not, we can hire an attorney and be another lawsuit. Thank you. I don't use MV or paratransit myself, but I have worked with many disabled people over a nursing career and what's happening now with the city taking it over reminds me of things I've seen going way back here. For instance, in the mid-90s when welfare reform came on, the leading bidders in our community were Goodwill and Santa Fe College. Goodwill was so committed that they set up their own career service even after Santa Fe got the contract. And CareerSource today does not measure up to the standard that Goodwill Job Junction set. So it's important who runs something. What is their commitment? Are they on mission? And I see the city commission saying, oh, here's a sponge full of money. We better drag that in. It's their fiscal desperation that's making them take this on. It's another funding stream they can glom in. But where's the commitment to that service? And I'm worried that that's going to be missing. Any further comments? Yeah. Yes. Hi. I'm Bill Radunovich. I'm really just here as a taxpayer. I also don't use these services at all. But when I heard about this, I wondered some of the same things that have been brought up, which is how is the city going to save this money? And so I would simply ask you as a taxpayer who wants his taxpayer dollars used wisely, but to help this people of the county, to remind you that, you know, the representative from MV laid some very specific charges regarding the city of Gainesville and how and where they are going to save this money. And I guess, you know, one of the sad facts of our current political moment is really a dearth of critical thinking. And so I would ask you to simply, you know, take those charges and get real answers, get solid numbers, do real thorough analysis as to where and how this money will be saved and, you know, how it will affect this service and then vote and then, you know, proceed according to according to actual facts. That's all. Thank you. Commissioner Kahn. I mean, I guess I just want to make it clear to the public that we don't get a say in what the city decides to do with the paratransit at this moment. So we can't really determine that we don't think that their decision is a good one. And so therefore, you know, we just don't have that authority. And we weren't afforded the opportunity to have the conversation in advance. So we're in the situation now where we have to make the best decisions for the people here in our community. And right now, I think, to Commissioner Chestnut's point, the first thing is level of service, ensuring that we continue, we have continuity of a quality level of service that approaches the support and transportation that these people need with empathy and with thought. And then the second thing is cost and that we do this with efficient use of tax dollars so that we're not tripling the cost of a service on the backs of our taxpayers. So I think those are the two things that are sort of in our charge right now. And I'm hopeful that MV can come forward with a reasonable proposal for us so that we can move forward with them. And we don't have to pressure the city to move quicker with their transformation of their paratransit system that they're trying to achieve while we're working on this option for our county residents. As a reminder from the budget perspective, increased dollars to the county is a county-wide impact across all segments of our community, including residents. I have a general commission comment. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, I guess I just wanted a general commission comment. We got the maps in our boxes the other day, and I guess I just wanted to know when those were going to be, if we were going to be agending those for an upcoming meeting soon. If not, I'd like to make a motion that we have those agended at an upcoming meeting in the near future. I mean, I have a few that I favor that I want to talk about, but I mean, we can either agenda all of them or we can agenda just a few. Yeah, there's only a couple I have an interest in, too, but four and eight. These come from citizens. Citizens. Okay, that's what I'm trying to question. So if we agenda that, let's agenda for four and eight with the existing maps. I have some specific minor things that I might want to look at. Yeah, to tweak. I think there's some things to tweak, for sure. So that would be fine, as long as we are also agending the four and eight in the existing maps. Okay. For discussion. Pleading forward towards the... The maps that were submitted by Dan. Okay. Doctor, sorry. The maps submitted by who? Right? The existing maps that were already done for us? No, the existing, our existing... Oh, our existing districts. Our existing districts, and then four and eight. Okay. Yeah. No, the ones that were submitted by Dan. I thought you meant Dan Smith, so I was like, okay. No, no, no. None of those work. No, I don't, I know. No, I agree. I was not a fan of those, but I thought that's what you were talking about. Four and eight and our current... Our current districts. Okay. Okay. I have a question, though. I'm just puzzled. How is this going to work with the districts when you have three commissioners all at one time and then two at another time? So when do we set, if we change the districts, what year will that take place in? It will take place in this coming election cycle for the two that are running now and next election cycle for the ones that are in office. As I understand what Sylvia has communicated, four and two would have to live in their district when elected. One, three, and five would have until 2028 to live in their district when elected. Okay. That's what I want to do. Right. Mr. Chair, there is a grandfathering provision. And this is kind of a really good time to do it with two of you guys thinking of dropping off of the... Retiring. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I... Yeah, that's why I was asking. At-large election, so it really does not impact every vote until it does. Yeah. Until it does. Yeah. So it's really a good time to do it. Okay. So we're still at-large... Yeah, yeah. I just wanted to make sure. We're still at-large... Right now until the courts. So we're still at-large... We don't know. ...at-large until we're not at-large. What does that do for our people who are trying to campaign now? Well, Mr. Chair, there is an automatic stay when we're on appeal. We're on appeal. I'm waiting for the first DCA poll. And when will that happen? We don't know. There's no way to know. We're still litigating the Growth Management Act from 2020. It's still in front of the first DCA. So likely they'll be running at-large this time. At-large. Yeah. Thank you. And if we're going to change these districts... No, because it's at-large. So they would be at-large. Everything's at-large, yeah. But they would still have to be... They still have to live in their district. Yes, ma'am. This is the problem. Yeah, right, right, right. It's not a problem. They would have to live in the district, right. So they may have something to say about that. That's exactly... Well, I just want to make sure that they know that if this district... They're not in the district now, right? That's right. They're in trouble. That they could be. Right. They have to move twice. Okay. That's why it's important to have the conversation now, because qualifying is in June. So we have a little bit of time for people to know what the districts are and know that they live in the district before they make the decision to run. Well, this is what I'm saying, because I've already got about six people who are already falling for my seat, but they're asking questions as to where... We should do it soon. Yeah, we should do it soon. We should do it soon. We should do it later. Mr. Chair, to that point, just so the time frame, there is a statutory timeline that's mandated, so you cannot change them after November 20th of this year. So if there is going to be a conversation, it would have to happen. It would either have to be... It would have to be the first meeting in November, not the last meeting in November. Correct. We'll have to have an ordinance on the first meeting in November. That's the only scheduled meeting in November. So we would need direction on what that ordinance would do. So we'll talk with the manager, we'll... Get it on one of the next two meetings so we can have the conversation in. Do you have to advertise the ordinance, though? So it has to be this next meeting, then. You would have to discuss it Tuesday. Okay. That's correct. I don't know that we can have... I don't know that... I mean, these haven't been reviewed for me. Oh, I can... So, Mr. Chair, we... To make sure they're legally... Right. These have been reviewed because they're based on precincts, and the precincts were based on census tracts. They've been reviewed as to population, and that's all that staff ever reviewed these as to population. It was when we brought in the other elements that we brought in an expert. Hey, guys. Sorry. Sorry. That's all right. Anyway. So I think... So they're going to come back... Move that they get on the next agenda so that we can get them in time for advertising. Yes, please, because this is... These are drastic changes from the people that I've been talking to. So I'm sure they want to be here, too, for that meeting. Those that are running, I'm assuming. So 8, 4, and the existing math that will occur in the other. Yep. Second. Got a motion and a second. Further discussion? Are there any citizen comments to the motion? Back to the board. Those in favor of the motion, vote by the sign of an aye. Aye. Those opposed, same sign of motion carries. Are there any further commissioner comments? Commissioner Alfred. I just wanted to thank everyone, especially for your support for the lovely gift basket during the past few weeks. It's been a rough time for your help. Thank you so much. That's what you do. There... It was a rough few weeks, and I really appreciate the support. And the community as well. I got a lot of community support, and I want to thank everybody that reached out, and it really helped. On anything, we're adjourned. Thank you all for being here. Until the next meeting. Until the next meeting, right? Until the next meeting.