order and it is february 3rd and i'm calling this special meeting god bless you special meeting policy discussion of the board of county commissioners can i get a motion to approve the agenda second motion and second to approve the agenda anyone from the public to speak the motion seeing none back to the board all those in favor say aye aye any opposed that motion is in god bless you again i know i usually go in three so that's two but we'll wait for the third one
this is what i dealt with last week it's usually three one usually three yeah all right so the first
item on the discussion is the 2025 farmer market needs assessment report the recommended actions to hear the presentation and we'll have some discussions and bailey i see you're going to
give that so you're recommended welcome thank you we are ready to go so good to see you all again bailey mcclellan agricultural economic development coordinator and we i'm sharing the results of the 2025 farmers market needs assessment which was designed to better understand how farmers markets in alachua county are serving the community and where opportunities for improvement may exist and with the assistance from uf ifas we developed two surveys one for vendors and one for shoppers the goal was to understand shopping and selling behaviors identify barriers that vendors may face and better understand what drives participation at farmers markets across the county and from late september through early november of 2025 staff and i deployed surveys in person at eight farmers markets we also distributed surveys digitally to reach a broader audience through social media the what's good guide of weekly events and alachua county's primary communication channels including a press release and the county's primary page and in total we collected 338 responses and we will start with the shopper assessment which collected 282 responses and shoppers most frequently visit the alachua county farmers market hale farmers market in the grove street market and 61 percent of respondents report a household income of over 75 000 and data shows that farmers markets are serving households across a wide range of income brackets though the majority are high income earners and 70 percent of respondents are aged 45 or older which presents an opportunity i think to for more targeted outreach and marketing to younger demographics and most shoppers are reported visiting farmers markets a few times per month and their primary reasons for attending are to purchase fresh locally grown produce support local businesses and connect directly with farmers this reinforces the role that farmers markets play in both food access and community connection and while at these markets shoppers are most commonly purchasing fresh fruits and vegetables followed by baked goods honeys and jams plants and garden starts meat eggs and dairy products shoppers are most often using cash credit and debit cards for their purchases and 44 of shoppers report spending between 250 and 499 per month on groceries and nearly a quarter of them are spending upwards of 750 per month on groceries and of these budgets most shoppers are dedicating between one to ten percent to purchases made at markets word of mouth and social media are the most common ways that shoppers are learning about farmers markets and 30 percent of respondents cited visit gainesville alachua county channels as how they learned about local markets and i think this also presents a clear opportunity to for us to build upon existing promotional efforts and increase that visibility and the most commonly reported barriers to visiting markets more often are scheduling conflicts parking and accessibility uncertainty around product availability and their distance from their home or work and to better understand what could drive visitation beyond these challenges shoppers were asked which features at markets would be most helpful top priorities included shaded and covered areas and easier parking additional features are public seating restrooms on-site food options and space for community events and among the respondents who selected other common themes included entertainment and programming expanded days and hours stronger marketing and more centralized locations and to summarize the key takeaways from the shopper assessment farmers markets are serving a broad cross-section of household incomes though a majority of respondents report incomes over 75 000 dollars fresh food support for local businesses and community connection are the primary motivations for attendance and opportunities exist to improve market information product seasonality communications and physical infrastructure all of which would support increased visitation can you all slow me down if you need i'm moving through it so we'll move into the vendor assessment which collected 56 responses from farmers and small businesses participating in farmers markets across the county and similar to the shopper responses vendors are most commonly selling at the alachua county farmers market grove street market and the hail farmers market and vendors represent a wide range of experience levels with 39 reporting that they are new businesses and 29 of them are have been operating 10 years or more they're offering a diverse mix of products most commonly baked goods honey and jams followed by fruits and vegetables and artisan and handmade crafts markets markets are clearly serving as a primary source of income for many farms and small businesses and nearly half of vendors report that more than 75 percent of their total revenue comes from market sales and most vendors report earning under 250 dollars in a typical sale in a typical market day but 20 percent report average daily earnings of over 1 000 at a market when asked about business growth and the resources that would best support their operations vendors identified three top needs financial assistance opportunities to sell at new markets or expand market availabilities and networking opportunities with other farmers and shoppers and from an infrastructure perspective vendors most often most identified the need for better shade structures and better signage and wayfinding as features that would support their operations and when asked about the top challenges limiting success at markets they most frequently cited low customer turnout as their primary challenge followed by weather related impacts and those who selected other share concerns related to market management practices vendor mix and infrastructure limitations and we also asked vendors what what they believe makes a market successful and mirroring their top challenge 91 percent identified strong customer turnout as the most important factor this was followed by affordability effective marketing consistent scheduling and improved infrastructure and in terms of promotion most vendors rely on self-directed efforts primarily social media and word of mouth and consistent with that they identified stronger marketing and promotion as one of the most effective ways to attract more shoppers and other commonly cited strategies include greater product variety entertainment and programming and expanded food access programs would increase shopper activity and to summarize the takeaways from our vendor assessment customer turnout and market promotion are the most significant opportunities for vendor growth farmers markets are serving as primary revenue streams for many food entrepreneurs and small businesses businesses and infrastructure enhancements including wayfinding and protection from the elements would meaningfully support their operations and that really sums up our efforts over the last september october november it was a fantastic project to get out with some face time with a lot of our small farmer recipients who are selling at markets and then just shoppers overall it's great to just have some community time out of the office so thank you
fantastic report thank you thank you okay uh commissioner uh yeah so um thank you bailey this is such great information and i mean i think it's really it's a lot of things that if you're interacting with the markets on a regular basis you kind of know like intuitively but to have real numbers behind it and kind of a a strong understanding that it is an across the board thing and not just sort of the people you talk to or the vendors that you interact with is really powerful and helpful and i think it also mirrors what we heard from the facilities team when they were talking to the market managers at alachua county farmers market in particular um i i think that what i wanted to share with my colleagues i emailed you the other day and i think that you know we have been kind of dancing around the conversations of like how do we best one how do we best support our markets how do we best support our small farmers how do we best support people who want access to local food how do we best support food security and you know each of those is kind of a different question but i think there are some opportunities one of which we're sort of exploring already with a food hub you know because that allows for a lot of food access local food support growing businesses but i think another is thinking about the ways in which we can do all the things that she highlighted and that's infrastructure that's extent extended hours and and that's also having covered spaces and and like year-round space for our markets and you know to do that and i you know it's interesting because it wasn't in this survey but i would be really interested if we had asked like um most farmers don't even though they want more markets because they want to make more money they don't have the staffing to be able to continue to sit at additional markets right so you know to sit in a market means you have to harvest food on spec you don't know if you're going to sell it or not you have to draw you've got the staffing and all the materials you have to drive to the market and then set up and then you have to be there for three or four or five hours waiting hoping you sell all your product and at the end if you have it that product doesn't really have anywhere else to go and you're kind of like okay well now what right you're either donating it or you're taking it back to the farm maybe you're value adding it but you're not having the opportunity to really continue to capture right the sales from that product so most of our farmers i would suspect and i know that working food maybe has some data on this from some surveys that they did are interested in opportunities where they could continue to sell their products in a year-round fashion but without having all of that commitment of time and energy and so to me be like the logical response to this if we're going to make investments in sort of infrastructure around farmers markets is to look at the farm stop model that i sent you all and if you don't mind i have a few copies here but you have it in your inboxes i think i have like four copies here okay you read it yeah i read it it's been a couple of days oh yeah and i think i have a copy for the clerk and a copy for whoever else wants a copy but essentially it's in my it's in their inboxes too there's an article there that kind of talks about like what this what this is but essentially it's a farmer's market and a grocery store kind of combined right so it's a place where if you can imagine like those old-fashioned like antique stores with the stalls that are consignment and everybody kind of has their spot and then there's a there's a centralized checkout um and the little barcode has like the farmer's number embedded in it or the antique dealer's number embedded so that they know who gets the money um it's kind of like that model some are set up to be just like that where each farmer kind of has their own their own little spot to highlight themselves but a lot of them are set up like grocery stores so that people can shop by commodity by product right so the produce is all in one section and then all of the dry goods just like a grocery store would be and i think the benefit of this is that number one the farmers don't have to hang around um the whole time and number two it gives us the opportunity to have a grocery like market a green grocery type market that people can shop at regular business hours like they would any other grocery store um and as a destination it's an opportunity for us to do more visit kainesville it's a place where we can highlight what's unique about alachua county and i think it also could potentially solve a real challenge we have around fresh food accessibility in east kainesville i've also shared this with the city of kainesville because they have been spending on three million dollars that we appropriated of cra money for developing a grocery store in east kainesville was my first motion as a commissioner remember um within in collaboration with gail johnson and that money has just been sitting there and they've tried really hard i think to attract brochures you know from unsolicited proposals to um rfps including one that they just recently put out um without success and so to me that's telling us that one we know that market is not viable for a full grocery store right now that any kind of large brochure like a public's or a you know that kind of thing is gonna is gonna take on and number two that there's maybe something that needs to be done that's a little bit more community focused that's about like the people who are in our neighborhoods and in our communities rather than just like large-scale grocery i mean i know that's what everybody would dream of having but i think this would get us a long way there and it would help with fresh food access it would help with community food um systems and it would help with our local food economy so i'm i'm pushing this idea with the city of gainesville i'd like us to have a conversation with that at our joint meeting um they've started exploring it and i have had some very very initial conversations with the city manager and cra and they seem really intrigued and excited about the model there are online like free webinars that are like an hour that you can listen to like what it's all about there's three-day classes that they offer um and then there's also conferences the conference is like in two weeks so i don't think we're gonna be going to that this year but there's lots and lots of resources for this it's becoming a model that people are realizing is super super successful and you know because it's not rocket science it's not reinventing the wheel it's things that have been in communities around our country for generations and decades in a lot of senses but it's kind of been reinvented in ways that have more transparency and more accountability for the farmers and more support for our community so and i think we can add a lot of other assets onto this it could help with food truck you know accessibility we could be there could be a large shaded area besides the indoor area that would allow for pop-up markets or larger markets on the weekends for the farmers that just want to do that i could allow for events and programming a lot of the things that we heard about in that survey so i just want to put that out there it's food for thought for you all i'm happy to hear your responses now but i also just wanted you to know it was in your inboxes so you can explore it more
okay thank you commissioner commissioner alford and then commissioner wheeler i i really love this idea
i believe this is what i saw at the um i forget what the market's called in philadelphia but they had a corner of that which had produce that seemed to be multiple farmers and so i really appreciate the fact that you could have all these additional things added on to it because i think games will be a really great place for that kind of uh that kind of market that's open all the time where there could be food truck vendors that come and go where you knew you could go and not only get produce but get your lunch and you know maybe some other things maybe your music all the things that you see in those big city markets that you know we could do on a smaller scale i think that would be fabulous and i think that would work well in east gainesville or quite frankly several places around now but um no i love this idea and um i i vouch your expertise on you know how it could be organized but i think it's you know it makes sense and i think it goes really well with the food hub idea it makes it they could work really
well they really could yeah and working food is working on an online farmers market which i think could also tie many of these have an online purchasing component that allows for just in time delivery for the farmers so as they're bringing stuff just to sell they also can bring deliveries for the people who have pre-ordered and have it already packaged and the the farm stock can serve as a pickup location for those kinds of things so that could support those efforts so i think there's a lot of merit to exploring this idea further and i i mean i'd like to i wanted to make a motion today to ask staff to start exploring this idea and to refer it to them to actually also have conversations with the city of gainesville we i don't think we can do it without the city of gainesville number one i think it needs to be located in east gainesville and they have all of our cra funds which are the redevelopment funds we would utilize for for something like this you know the nice thing about this pro type of project is also it tends to be pretty revenue neutral so in an ideal scenario we would actually be hiring the staff that would operate the store um that would be like the checkout people and that kind of thing but they the that consignment fees that the farmers pay pay the salaries and pay to keep the lights on so once the infrastructure is built and you know you have a decent um setup and a decent number of farmers it can it kind of is a revenue neutral like operation in terms of providing um and that's why a confinement model works so well because you're not you don't have all that overhead and all that shrinkage of
having to buy all this fresh produce and then having it go to waste and if it was uh also uh taking the fresh access dollars that could all happen in one place and you wouldn't have 15 different vendors
having to manage that program exactly and ebt i mean they can stick it to use their ebt benefits here or any
other food assistance benefits one thing that i didn't see in the presentation that um i've had i'm a list maker i like to plan and then shop and so sometimes at the farmers market you don't see exactly what you thought you were going to see oh well i thought that was in season but nobody seems to have any um you could have an online component to say hey here's what's available right now and i think that would also be you know having that online access would would have multiple uh benefits for you know everything from restaurants to people that are over planners like me i like that yeah
you know we've had this conversation off and on yeah for a while now and we have the perfect site there and it's for sale it's just a matter of food line site the whole food line site yeah so the yeah it's got a big for sale sign up there you know and i understand the cost is an issue but if you're already talking three million dollars and we're looking for partners oh i'm with you a hundred percent there i i mean we have it now it's just a matter of trying to just agree that it's the best site and then actively pursue business partners who can you know we may not need the whole thing but again those are the kinds of places where there's smaller businesses there that we could put um satellite offices for some
of our other oh yeah social services a bank would be great right any of those kinds of things and i know
that um that this group that i work with the community action agency is looking for a permanent price you know so if we could locate some of these businesses who would be willing to partner with us you know that might make our negotiations a little bit easier but besides it there yeah it has everything
that you just oh i know i've toured it i have a whole video on my phone it's the largest single video on my phone pick up so much of my data and i refuse to delete it because i know i'm like i want people to be able like i want to be able to share it when people ask me it is an ideal scenario i mean there are things about it it's old but you know it already has all the cooler cases it already has a small like butcher area in the back it already has all of the you know it's got some storage in the back for all the produce it doesn't have it isn't food hub ready but if you have the rest of that
shopping center you know you have a kitchen area where you could take all the stuff that's left right at the end of the day and make a big pot of soup yeah you could sell yeah you know well and even just
doing other stuff like cutting it up and having like ready to go like stir fries there's a lot of
options but it seems to me that it's just needs now to be to find the business partners to make that work
yeah the only issue i see with that site is the fact that it's located on that sort of triangle of land where you have to cross one major street from either direction for most residents to get to it maybe but at least it's walking distance for a lot of it is walking distance
walking distance no i'll just say i mean i think regard i agree with you i think it's already set up as a grocery store it would be an ideal grocery store i'll just tell you that we've had we we've had multiple like not we've had independent individuals who were interested in starting a grocery store pursue that location who were really passionate and had the wherewithal and some resources to do it that couldn't get couldn't negotiate a reasonable deal we had a actual grocer who has a multiple chain grocer tried to negotiate a deal and couldn't negotiate a reasonable deal and then and and we have e heady right across the street where we've already invested a lot of our serie dollars in underground infrastructure and are trying to sort of make that a destination right with the clinic and the bus depot and all those things and food trucks and the new g tech kind of shifting to local business focus so i'm with you if it's right across the street and if we could could add good crossings and we could make that site work i would be all for it but right now i'll just tell you the people who own it think that they own the hitchcocks that's on alachua and i70 on 441 and i75 like that's the kind of dollars they're expecting for that piece of property and they're never going to get it and i think they don't necessarily need it they're down in south florida and i think they have a
lot of holdings and this is just kind of one thing well that's why we need a good professional negotiator then you know someone who can actually broker that kind of a deal because it seems to me that it's a good investment of our money yeah even if if we take it on and then eventually have to sell it or sell it off whatever but it seems to me that we could make our own kind of corporation of of business uh yeah opportunities yeah i i just yeah i'm with you i'm and i i think that's the
right location i think that hawthorne area of hawthorne road area where we're redeveloping because i think it's then it would be easier access for the hawthorne folks who have very limited grocery access the easy access for folks coming in from eastern alachua county in northeastern alachua county
would be really good for i just think it's worth the effort to do it but what would you be your alternate site what would you be your altered alternate idea right across the street you would have to build something there though yeah i mean they're building there anyway but how i'm trying to understand but yes you would have to build we'd have to build so for the amount of money it would take to build a facility like what you're asking for and you're presenting yeah you know what do you anticipate that that would cost i don't have those details but you know it millions oh yeah millions
okay yeah but there's no but the land is already owned by the city the land is already owned by the
city value of what they're putting is in the land i just hate to say they're they're butts they're butts all over the place and that's why it's lasted there no i'm telling you i'm i'm serious
there have been multiple brokers that have the negotiators and who know how much money they need to do that site work and they haven't been able to do it and you know craig carter's offer help like we've tried with negotiating that site and it's just you have to have a willing seller and it's almost as if the seller's not really that much of a willing seller it almost seems like they kind of want to hang on to it it's been that way with multiple properties yeah and they jacked up the price when they heard that the city wanted it the first time around when we were working on this many many moons ago like we looked at it as a potential site for working foods like you know kitchen incubator and like opportunity to have retail and and i mean they've just never wanted to budge it's like they then they heard then the city was looking at it with you know the unsolicited proposal for the grocer and ever since then they just haven't wanted to budge so i'm with you i just i'm just telling you it's kind of like when you talk to somebody who believes they sit on a gold mine and they don't want to move and they don't want to budge so you know to me that's not a good partner to begin with i mean if they didn't even want to sell it they wanted to lease it and you know being stuck on there again you just we just talked about a triple net lease with a an you know a not great partner that doesn't even live here so i mean i'm down to try again and i think we could definitely are there any issues that happen on that place because
it's in the are there is there any leverage that the county of the city could place on these people for having so long i mean currently have the tax no okay oh thank you i mean i there are communities
that do that that have vacancy you know taxes or fees that require you know sort of like push for commercial space to be viable and that isn't something that we have in this community so not
really yeah so um so let me just say a couple things so i think this has been a priority of our board economic it's been an economic development priority i'd actually like to hear from jessica and our economic development department with regards to from this survey what do you see as potentially some next steps based on previous direction that you've gotten um and and like anna said her very first motion when she was on the board with the city um do you have you have thoughts and ideas about where we take this survey data and how we progress into our budget cycle jessica do you want to are you do you want to um why don't you come up introduce yourself and i'm jessica hera i'm the development
director um we have spoken at great length about the results of this survey i think one of the things that we're thinking we can do immediately and daily has already started working on is the marketing component um that's completely under our control we already have campaigns going under an authentically alachua brand um to push out the importance of and actually as a market differentiator when we look at what all of the other counties in florida are marketing on um you see all of a lot of repetitive kind of messaging so one of the things that we're thinking we can do to really differentiate ourselves in the state of florida is to focus on our local food system the restaurants that are utilizing these locally grown grown products in the meals that they're preparing because really when we look at the agricultural community here and what is one of our number one um visitor spend categories is food and beverage and so we know when our visitors come here one of the things they're looking for are those authentic experiences how can i immerse myself we did last summer we did a campaign on we'll travel for pizza and we focus on all of our amazing pizza restaurants but um we're we're already moving plans forward to um increase the messaging around food food systems farmers markets restaurants who are preparing that are preparing that kind of food that's number one um number two we've talked internally we have small farmers brands i think they've been in place three or four years um it's about a hundred thousand dollars a year for i believe up to five thousand per farm um one of the things we wanted to float out to all of you is um can we find another way to support our small farmers um who also are selling at our farmers markets so some of the small farmers i think about 70 percent of them um that have received the small farmers grants are also participating in the markets um so what we were thinking is if we could look at some of the needs of the existing markets um the marketing we can help with when it comes to infrastructure and some of the other things we could support many more farms by putting some funding behind the farmers markets themselves and whether they would use that for the shade or whether they would use that for some of these infrastructure projects that they've talked about in the surveys i think that we could come in and say it's another way of supporting our farms rather than directly to those farm producers let us support them all through our farmers markets um so that was our second kind of
takeaway from this survey can i ask the question i love that idea okay yeah yeah you can't i just want
to finish my thoughts go ahead no go ahead go ahead well i so i'm thinking of this as like short-term medium-term long yeah okay and and this survey is giving us short-term ideas we could do right now um what you are talking about and what we have been working about on the the farm share and the food hub is the longer term but i think as if we can implement some of the recommendations improve marketing improve infrastructure at these farmers markets what we're going to find is that the willing sellers or the willing folks that really see the long-term vision are going to emerge in this local community if we're investing in local businesses local food providers local vendors which is i think a real focus of this board investing in our local folks um and and and get some infrastructure marketing at these existing farmers markets that then will drive um in my mind while simultaneously working on this long-term vision of which needs capital and partners the city of gainesville and the county and us dedicating yeah we we have food system money still left over from harpa that we can dedicate and publicly say we're dedicating this the city's dedicating this uh with the long-term goal of creating this farm share and food hub idea i think it's perfectly in line with what our strategic plan says and what our company so um go ahead so those are my complete thoughts and i just i think if we can get some short-term recommendations with a long-term recommendation um out of this meeting then we can move forward from the data that we receive which we kind of always knew it but we said we got to get the data now we have the data that justifies it um so yeah yeah okay so that's i conclude go ahead no i'm with you and i
think i mean i've been kind of a little bit waiting for the economic development chapter of our comp plan i know it was being rewritten because i know a lot of that is i'm hoping going to frame kind of a strategic plan for our food system you know sort of create that short medium and long-term kind of strategy and our climate action plan goals of how we're kind of approaches but i'm 100 with you i think we've done some short term already just with the small farmers grant with the work we're doing on agricultural conservation like protecting the land so we don't lose it to begin with you know and now making these investments in getting the information doing the marketing doing the outreach is kind of short and midterm um and then the bigger picture infrastructure for long term i'm 100 with you i think when it comes to investing in the existing markets i think it's a great idea and i think one of the challenges for that is and i guess a challenge to wrestle with for you all is wanting to go to structure differently some of them are run by one independent for-profit business that's just popped it up and it has a lot of support and help from the farmers in the community and whatever in some instances they're a non-profit entity that has a board made up of the farmers or something else and then you know in some instances it's it's kind of some hybrid of that um and they're all currently at locations especially even our own even the alaska county market that we have a partner had a partnership with um where they pop up so investing in infrastructure isn't necessarily doable for them because they don't own the property where they're operating like cypress and grove and the city's trails and the bike shop for one market hale plantations village for another farmer's market santa fe tech park or i mean san falasco tech park for another so they're all on other people's properties and pop up once a week you know so i do i just want to i think there's still infrastructure that they could possibly buy there's probably things that they would want and changing tenting and things like that things to
have live entertainment um so we could definitely explore that with our markets you know yeah i'm
totally there each one is an individual need and working with an individual need kind of like when we went to the the resource centers and they said we need coolers right you know and that will immediately help us um serve more people i mean i think the the infrastructure investment is based on having each vendor increase their sales per day and if we can get more above a thousand per day right now um that seems to be the target then you know we ask uh hail if we had more shade if you had more shade with that increased sales and they can justify it then i think that's the public purpose that we're looking
right i guess i just want to make sure that we have a structure that's flexible enough that we can do that because like i said you know like road street market is kind of like it's not structured the same way some of the others are and so you know doubles in the details doubles in the details exactly but i'm excited about that idea and i love that concept and um and i especially love the idea of marketing and communication about what we already have and i think that also creates an incentive for other people to think about how they could do it too and how they can fit into that branding you know and so it's something that we've tried to do it fits and stops with our small local non-profits and our community organizations you know we had the by local north central florida campaign and lots of and we have local food week and things like that but it's kind of waxed and wanes um so i'm excited
about those opportunities as well okay we got commissioner alford and then commissioner wheeler and then if we want to try to get a motion on the floor we'll get emotional i appreciate what you said in
terms of having like the right now and the short term and the long term planning i feel like that sort of strategic plan approach if we can communicate that to all the vendors so that they can see that this is what we're doing now but this is the next step and this is our long-term goal i think that will help them make the right investments moving forward as well so i think that um having that that strategic plan approaches is really important so i i hope that that works out because i i think that i know that's what's in your head i think it's just communicating that so that everybody understands i know that during the whole kerfuffle about the um alachua county farmers market that that was something that i heard a lot like what's the long-term plan and so and and i know we kind of have one and we've been moving towards that but i think putting that out there is is kind of key at this point yeah
and and they've had over 2300 folks in the last couple of weekends yeah it's very successful yeah and i think largely that is because they have many of the things that they have the infrastructure they have the shade structures they have the the economy that's already there that they're building on top of
so it's a great model yeah the customers appreciate it as much as the vendors do 100 they want to go and
once they go they want to stay commissioner wheeler and then i just you know we're we're kind of
vulnerable to the weather and the seasonal you know producing you know with the drought that we've had through the cold weather i don't you know with strawberries i guess is what's the crop now but even going to waldo which is where i have been often on sunday morning to go get vegetables they're not there's nothing there now the the people who used to be there regularly are no longer there and so i don't know waldo has that big stretch of the market you know it's covered high springs has a big covered area too i don't know even if you could rotate you know a month at this location a month at another location so that we're moving around the county if there are warehouses or other covered areas like that you know that we could use if we're talking about using things that are already there in place but uh waldo is uh you know is it's got a lot of covered area there that's not being used so and and the big place in high springs the big cover there by the depot you know there's another
covered area too but well high springs has a pretty successful farmers market that hopefully we'll be able to access this grant to expand some of what they're doing again it's a really entrepreneurial a matter
of what what produce is available at certain times of the year there's certain times of the year where there's not a whole lot the only time of year yeah i mean the only time of year that we really have
very little of anything is july and august end of june yeah and next week you know when it's freezing like this it's covered so people don't bring a lot to the markets because they've literally covered everything and they can't don't want to uncover the harvest and then a couple weeks after that the plants are rebounding so you have times when things get slower for sure but but really from early october some farmers push even into september but really like early october through june 1st we have a pretty robust harvest first of things you eat the fruits of then the things you eat the leaves and the roots of and then the thing and the flowers of like broccoli and then the things you eat the fruits of again in the spring and so we're really lucky i mean we are the vegetable basket for the rest of the country for a reason up in california and that's because we have a growing season that's longer than almost anywhere else in the country and i think this is such a weird anomaly this freezing weather you know i mean we haven't had wet weather this pool since 1989 so it's a but you know i don't know here's mark to come and tell us that this is going to happen more often and that we're going to have weather wilding and that things are going to get really crazy so i mean you're 100 right you know when you're talking about local food systems you're talking about working with our farmers on the challenges that they have but that's the challenges we all have and i think it's important for us to understand those challenges and to be building systems that are resilient and flexible to be able
to deal with those too you know and i'm all about supporting farmers but at the same time if you're paying farmers when the odds are against what it is they're doing if we're talking you know weather and and conditions that make it difficult even for cattle when we're talking about water resources being you know uh discouraging cattle growth because of the water resources you know at some point you know we're going to have to kind of look at the cause and effect of of what what it is we're trying to support as well you know so i i don't know what i'm saying except that if we have areas that are already successful that maybe we can move around the county to give the opportunity for a different population of people to have access to what our locals are producing yeah i support you know the local
farmers and doing whatever improvements we can for them and also the um farmer markets but i still would like to talk about that uh grocery store uh in terms of east gainesville i think that that's important to have a type of store that that's in this that i saw that i think is would be awesome but we need partners and if the city of gainesville have three million dollars of our cra plan this is a great opportunity uh to look and try to do this i mean because i see it as a benefit really to be honest with you and um you know wards is a great store i go there all the time so but having that
opportunity over there would be great too you know yeah i think from a law firm perspective as this board and our partner said we are seeking to build a a farm uh yeah a farm state type or a food hub grocery store in east gainesville right we've got some sites that we've seen but we need willing sellers and willing partners and that and our plan is in the next two to three years while we're investing in the local food economy and building that helping build that up um opportunities will present because when when when the government kind of puts their stake in the ground and that's when that's when we start to see those opportunities and if that willing seller changes his mind then we'll be here if he doesn't there'll be other people that it's a big count okay yeah so that's what i think and they're probably other opportunities yeah as a government we you know if this is the direction we're going we're going to be investing in the local food economy and we're going to be moving the farm grants into building infrastructure to enhance farmers markets those types of statements you know will will get folks to then invest their private capital and leverage that public capital investment i think that's ultimately the definition of a cra right you you invest public dollars to then bring on and leverage additional private dollars or 70 million tons in that 300 right and i think that's really the goal
of this of this board long the long that property is still available too on late eighth and waldo too
that we've been poking at yeah and i've some folks have been whispering in my ear about what their ideas are this could be a location for something that's right yeah that's right okay do you conclude chuck yeah i'm sorry all right you know if you want to put something on the floor yeah and i'll just
say there's also the blueberry farm in east kansas or by 15th street that's a historic farm and still and there's a lot of interesting goals around trying to keep that a farm and there's even folks like slick gardens are beginning to move over there and think about working with the folks who own that property to build this kind of concept too so i think there's lots of synergy and i think now where i think our food system is finally maturing into a space where a lot of those partners that you're talking about will come to us if the government shows that we're serious about making the infrastructure investments and we're and we're moving in that direction which i think we are um so i guess my motion is um that is three parts one that we continue to expand marketing efforts and um and our short-term efforts to support our local food system and local food economy initiatives two that we migrate our grant programs to support our farmers our small farms grant program to support our farmers markets for this coming budget year and number three that we work with the city of gainesville to explore the farm stop concept
as a solution for food access in east gainesville i have a question before i second that or you can
second all right so we're moving that we refer those three things to staff to bring back recommendations on no i'm just moving that we do them that we do them and then and then how we do them though they're all going to bring back recommendations yeah yeah yeah it's the part of budget yeah perfect um my
question is uh on the small farmer grants migrating them to the farmer's market would you anticipate those grants would be the same amounts or would we do smaller more grants or so i think that probably
i think that's where i would want stuff to bring back the content because i think most of it's going to be if we're going to do it for the market it's probably gonna be larger amounts like it you know it'd probably be like a nine twenty thousand or up you know like oh so you're talking about for the full market market not not the individual vendors i just wanted to clarify and it might be that the markets get together and all the vendors say like we each want a new point of sale system and the total is going to be twenty thousand dollars or whatever like i don't it's going to have we're going to have to be a little bit flexible and creative because the markets are all managed really differently right but i think they all have different amenities right so i think we might not want to figure out the the application structure until bailey's had some time to talk to the markets about what it is that they would do with money like that but i'm i'm thinking we keep the hundred thousand dollar amount for right now and then we look at like once they start to talk to everyone they can figure out cap on like what that might be a twenty thousand or twenty five thousand is it a hundred or two it's a
hundred thousand right now okay and this is ultimately um it is is providing our um a benefit to the farmers anyway so i i i yeah i support the motion and appreciate it thank you so staff brings back our grant
applications to the board to approve before we release them so this part of it will do the same with this and also when they um after they explore that determine the best way to do that it'll come back
he agrees right all right so it sounds like we've got some agreement from mark's puppy over there all right so we've got a three-part motion we got a three-part motion one to uh expand our marketing efforts two to um migrate our grants into supporting the farmers market the fifth two things you just said and then three to have staff work with the city uh and schedule that for a joint meeting so we can
and to add it to the joint meeting yes thank you oh and that to the joint meeting all right any further
discussion on the motion all right let's open it up to the public is there anyone from the public if you will nancy if you'll come over to this podium um yep and if you'll just introduce yourself it's the same light structure as we have in the in the in the chambers um so you know the drill and thank
you all for being thank you uh i'm very happy you're making moves about food uh security i'd rather say food sovereignty i want to see people get in charge of their own food that's why i think that's why i got it because i want to say something about gardens as well i'm glad that you're moving on food but and as long as you're trying to talk to the city they have a long unfulfilled commitment at the same time that they set up that garden in my neighborhood uh the mccrory garden they promised to do a city-wide network of community organic gardens so that old promise has never been fulfilled it please make this please include all these aspects every time you're dealing with the food issue and for that matter as far as covered markets there is a huge unused warehouse building trying to go derelict on southeast fifth avenue at the foot of sixth terrace and fifth avenue they did a pop up there one time and everybody that came was overjoyed and saying i'm coming back here and they never did it again so call the city out on these things that they're making feints at or not doing at all a city-wide garden uh a covered farmers market at that old gru site on southeast fifth avenue with six terrace terrace and uh i'm happy about what some groups are getting at farmers markets there's the uh double up program for snap recipients there's the senior market coupons but these federal programs are gradually going i thought they're slowly going away but it's not slow are going away which makes your local efforts that much more important so please be comprehensive every time you deal with push all the fronts and the people who are looking people who are dealing with different things the farmers market people will support community garden stuff the community garden people who are people who want them will support the market stuff you will build a greater synergy if you keep pushing all the
components together thank you nancy darrett oh my gosh you guys are just amazing staff is so amazing i'm so grateful for this county and the vision um so i had planned to come talk about farm stuff and how fabulous that model could be and what we you know kind of an interim complimentary step and here you are talking about it so i fully support that there's another model in springfield massachusetts in a low-income neighborhood it's a little less sophisticated but the whole food is medicine or fresh food and getting prescriptions and all this one in particular one example an old lady who was wheelchair bound arthritis type 2 diabetes high blood pressure on i think 50 meds or something insane and she started getting they had teens with bikes who delivered food locally she got involved she started going and volunteering and she her type 2 beat she started eating all this food her type 2 diabetes went away her high blood pressure went away her meds dropped to about three or four meds so there's huge potential from that whole aspect where you build that um and in a grocery store it really wouldn't work so the argus farm model they have all those trainings that anna mentioned and so there's adaptability and for the idea of having things in different areas maybe that smaller hub of the argus could be helpful um self-help credit union which we tried to get here years ago is here they are getting themselves set up and they have the know-how and the um the tools they know how to use new market tax credits they know how to build partnerships they know how to work with all income levels and help create pooled investing so i think they're launching in in around april so and i'm oh and uh and so that could be an avenue i know there are bunches of us who are starting to get excited about the idea could we pool our money locally and invest it here um and then the farmers markets and the marketing efforts i am i am uh alachua county market aficionado i do 90 percent of my grocery shopping there nine months out of the year i was really apprehensive about what would happen moving and it it's been incredible and um johnny who's one of the board directors he said they're getting over twenty three twenty five hundred people a week um and it's all new people i don't recognize very many people lots of families lots of families with children uh there's more space oh oh here anyway there's so much but i think he said permanent signage that they never had before just that and their marketing efforts have helped create this boom plus the the easy access for strollers and and family activity thank you for letting me thank you for being here yeah big breath yeah introduce
yourself take your time we're glad that you're here can you hear me okay hello thank you for having me my
name is uh rebecca fox and my family and i just uh moved to this area in july so we're new here so thank you for having us we uh we purchased the blueberry farm that is uh right on 225 on the way towards the waldo flea market and on the alakua county border that was santa fe blueberries santa fe river farms and now we're calling it river and root farms working on our signage and we were a recipient last year of the small farmers grant so we are so grateful for that thank you for that program and for that support we have been using the funds basic processing commercial kitchen so that we can create products that we can bring to a market and sell to a market up until now previously or for many many years we've run a u-pick and had customers come to us rather than bringing our products to market you can imagine why i mean it's a lot of work to harvest and pack in and bring to market never mind to set up the market to sell the market to interact with customers to run a pos system to bag to then break down the market and that's just one day a week and then the rest of the time i'm out in the field so the reality of all the things that we're learning about how to do and we're first generation farmers but i have a legal background a marketing background an entrepreneurship background and and we are educated out the wazoo and yet at the same time the hard work that it takes and and really the support that we need on our farm especially when our crops are covered with ice and we don't even know if we'll have anything this coming season and being blueberry farmers that means our season to your point is very very small um so we are working on that from a business perspective about how to diversify and manage risk and do all of those things and what i will say previously uh coming from being a vendor at the saint pete farmer's market um and just in general my desire to i participated in the survey i responded but i'll speak as an individual um that it is so helpful to think about the things that all farmers need and i'm speaking to farmers because i'm talking about food and our essential needs i know there are amazing crafters and other people who participate in the farmers market but again that's who i represent or at least am right now um that in order to tell people what we have to sell it have it available to them the importance of shared marketing like we said of shared spaces that can be managed and staff and talking about this shared model that's not just once a week not just three times a week that's that can be there when a mom can swing over after work or the reality of when we actually go to the grocery store in addition to the luxury of being able to go on a saturday morning and i'm there every week as a participant and purchaser thank you support the motion yes i support the motion
it's great to be here and you did great thank you well done um okay anyone else all right straight back to
the board for discussion yeah yeah and i i just want to i want to respond to a couple things that i heard um the first is on the gardens um i will say i i'm 100 with you and long before i was on the commission i brought forward a proposal to both the county and the city of gainesville um that we really needed a community gardens coordinator position our community gardens are amazing but they're um one they're only as good as the person who's organizing them right the person the passionate human being who decides their community garden is important and helps to be the glue that organizes the people who use those gardens um and oftentimes those people if they move or they pass away or they you know decide they're burnt out then like the gardens just start to fail because there's nobody there that's holding them up that's helping to train the next generation it's also that each garden is kind of an island unto itself instead of a network of gardens that we have across the community that can learn from each other that can share resources share tools by bulk compost together by seeds together each one is kind of doing it on their own and that makes it really really challenging um believe me i know because i run a garden a community garden and it is no small feat and i've got a small army of students helping me do it um so you know i do think that that's something that's worth exploring um i haven't brought it forward as uh as another idea because i feel like i've already pushed so many ideas and i'm really trying to give staff the space to like think about that and do what they're doing but the city of gainsville has community gardens all throughout the city that they fund and i do think that a community gardens coordinator is a really important position and you know i wonder if it's not worth at least talking to extension about what it would take to have at least a part-time if not a full-time person that would be doing that community gardens coordinating and school gardens coordinating they could do both support both entities our learning gardens at our at our k-12 systems and our community
gardens across the county should we add to the motion that we reach out to extension and see if they talk
about a community garden coordinator position what it would take during the joint meeting yes during
the joint meeting okay yeah yeah seconder yeah that's added to the motion and then the other so thank
you great awesome yay um and i and uh and i think working food wrote up a proposal for what that could look like with the budget like it was years ago so probably it's changed a bit but it is i i could dig it up so that i can share that with you all and then you guys use that as a jumping off point um the second is uh food is medicine somebody brought that up and i wanted to say we actually have a really amazing food as medicine program going on right now um the one community resource center in east gainsville is collaborating with uf health and they are working with the cancer center as well as the clinics in east kainesville and cornerstone clinic to receive uh referrals for people who have high high blood pressure diabetes pre-diabetes and are doing a food as medicine program and as the regional food as medicine kind of co-chair for the network of food as medicine i've been trying to support them in writing grants to get funding because their biggest need is fresh fruits and vegetables and you know they're working with food insecure individuals primarily who are who are the most at risk of experiencing food-based illnesses and so they're having to try to figure out how do we buy all these fresh fruits and vegetables that we're going to provide for these families and um they've used the they were able to utilize the funding that we provided for emergency food assistance um they've been working with part of the mighty the best they can to get fruits and vegetables from them they have giving garden now giving them fresh fruits and vegetables we recently wrote a grant to ifis for some funding that didn't work out but we're working on exactly what you were talking about that idea of how do we think about food as medicine and i think one of the things that could be interesting for the county to do we're self-insured and food as medicine is a win because we start getting people off of long-term medications and long-term illnesses and so there is an opportunity to for our if our self-insurance committee is up to it to explore how we might offer a food as medicine program for our own employees for our employee health employee health program and you know working with our food hub partner whoever that ends up being that could put together boxes and figure out the process for reimbursement because one of the challenges that we have right now is trying to figure out how do we get reimbursement for medicare medicaid and insurance insurers right to keep that cycle going because it's one thing to have a food as medicine program that's all stood up with philanthropy but that doesn't provide the long-term sustainability the long-term sustainability is in people being able to use existing benefits and existing ways in which they take care of their health and well-being and using that productively for proactive health and well-being rather than reactive medications so it also changes the whole
system which is what we need to do right yeah so we've been in conversations with a little bit
with blue cross blue shield and like at the state of florida level and like trying to think and with uf health trying to think about is there ways that we can start exploring this reimbursability this there's there's two things there's fee in lieu which is like instead of the 30 minutes with your doctor you bill you bill 30 minutes with a dietitian who then makes recommendations and writes a prescription for healthy food right or and then there's also just prescription benefits and writing prescriptions for healthy food and then being able to fill those with a purveyor that's providing that fresh healthy nutritious food so is that for five of your motion oh my god really i will for self-insurance i'll add that we ask our self-insurance committee to explore a buddhist medicine program for employees
of a larger gun you okay yeah okay okay you just got a lot of work to do all right my part motion michelle we might need more employees yeah i'll restate it um continue to expand the marketing efforts to migrate supplemental farm the supplements from farms to the farmer's market it's 100 grand uh meeting with city of gainesville to discuss long term um part four to bring ifas and the community gardens uh into that meeting so we can discuss potentially having a coordinator for that and part five is to refer to our self-insurance um to look into food as medicine as part of as part of
our pedigree can i clarify three and four yeah so on three i have work with the city to explore farm stop concept and add to the joint meeting yes farm stop concept during the jordan yeah during the jordan
and it was in east game so i want to be sure that that's in the gcra district yeah yeah but yes the new gcra district not the old ones yeah okay okay any further discussion on the
the the fourth one it was add to the joint meeting to discuss i had gotten community garden coordinator
coordinator coordinator and that would be through the extension office yes okay really bringing extension
to the county from extension and so much of extension and bringing them into the discussion with the city
i just need a clarification on when we're talking about foods for health the foods that we're asking to be supplemented from our community and if they are not available from the community then we're just saying supplement your diet with these things from wherever so it's not you're not just focused on local food as a part of getting these foods in boxes to people
yes they're all different so some are um they they run the gamut but typically it's about getting fresh fruits and vegetables and lean proteins to individuals and i mean the priority is to buy it from local farmers when we can but there's you know if you're trying to build somebody's diet out there's not always like you know we don't have a rice farmer here and we may want to add rice to the basket or there you know so usually it's a combination of shelf stable and
and fresh fruits and vegetables but what i heard was reimbursable expenses of meeting with a dietitian as a preventative means or as a means right so not specifying where you get your food no it typically
is you have to have the provider okay so of the food it's just like you go to a pharmacy so it's like you have a food pharmacy essentially right so just like you have a pharmacy that you would fill your drugs you would have the food pharmacy that you would go to and that may be that might be for our partner frog song would would create the you know the dietitian would put together like these are sort of the things you should be eating and then they would put together the box that the person would pick up weekly or it could be that they shop at the farm stop they get a voucher to shop for those
things at the farmer's market can you consider local being florida grown like what we have down in plant city where we have like and immokalee from south miami that area i consider local to be
independent family farms that are growing their food in our region and i think different products have different local kind of boundaries right like you can't get clams locally here because you don't have the ocean right and and our and our our season moves right so i'm i'm more about honestly for me it is about local it's about our economy and protecting our farmers here and our region but it's also about supporting our independent farms that are working hard to ensure that we have resilience and sustainability in our food system rather than the large-scale corporate farms that are taking over our global food system okay if that makes sense yeah yeah i just didn't know how you would promote that you know well they work with them so like this food hub is why that's a really good idea because then they can buy they can move their season right as like that's what froxland does like as the like as the season moves right like right now they can buy blueberries they have to they can't buy blueberries anywhere right now it's freezing in this area but like in in the season in early april and may like we might be doing it and then it might move a little further up to north georgia and then they be buying blueberries from there right same thing with strawberries they move and same thing with citrus so you just kind
of like move with the season okay okay but this part of the motion is to have our self-insurance committee research other benefits where food is medicine are provided and then bring back
those recommendations to the self-insurance yeah no i'm with you yeah and it is a very it's a kind of a newer area we can certainly point you in the right direction of research that's out there yeah i just
was hoping for the public you could uh expand a little bit on the role education plays on working with the dietitian providing the fresh foods because every kitchen is different every person comes in you know with a different degree of confidence with what they can do with fresh vegetables so could you talk about that briefly yeah so there's a great example in jacksonville they
actually have this program working with uf health they have a food pharmacy they have a registered dietitian on staff and so the doctors refer their patients who have hypertension diabetes heart disease to the registered dietitian they meet with the registered dietitian they talk about their their situation right what is their cooking situation what is their family budget for food what is their what are their goals and what is their medical condition and then they put together kind of a dietary plan for that individual with the dietitian and then they're able to shop at the food pharmacy that they've built and they go in and so it's like it's kind of set up like our concept might be set up instead of like a grocery store they go in and they can shop for the things that they want and need utilizing their prescription benefits through and they get recipes and they get recipes they get support and sometimes well they're so our food is medicine program that's actually what we were trying to pilot with the grant we were writing that we did weren't successful in getting um but is that theirs is very much just the dietitian meets with them they give them the recommendations then they go and they shop and they do their own thing there's recipes in the store and stuff like that but it's not there's not as much education the program here is really working on lifestyle interventions so they're working on not just providing food but also providing like a walking club so that people like have the opportunity to get active and work in community and they have cooking classes and their peers from the network are actually cooking with each other and sharing with each other recipes and the ways in which they're preparing these foods so it's a great way to get cross-cultural connections and community connections and health relationships as well as diet and exercise and so we were wanting to track how the lifestyle interventions of education and community connection increased the adoption and long-term sustainability of their food as medicine program so i think that was important to add for
the public that are listening to this so thank you yeah you're good i do the show i apologize i need to
clarify on your second part of your motion because i just verified with um with jessica you said this budget year we are halfway through the fiscal year 26 and those four are you done so it'd be for fiscal year 26 27 yes for the coming for the budget year so i wanted to make sure that was that was clear in the motion that we're talking about by 26 27 we are great yeah okay so i think for all of these things
yeah before we vote i just want to say a few things so when i first got on the commission i'll never forget it was one of the very very first meetings i had uh chuck um made a speech about newton's lake about the importance of newton's lake and we were at the time focused on the environmental importance of it and chuck was like many of my constituents get their proceeds from that like he was focused on the food component um mary helen wheeler obviously is a you know comes from kentucky and the old farm and you know she's always talked about the farm and how that impacts the economy um there isn't a commissioner that talks more about preparing their own food than mary alfred and i've seen i've seen the impact of that with you know many of your supporters um and then obviously anna's been the champion of this she got on the board so as a as a county commissioner what i've learned is when you've got three of you that want to do something you know staff says let's go do it but when you have five it becomes a really really high priority and when i look at the economy our local economy it's obviously health care university of Florida um and it's and our fastest growing demographics are our seniors and they're aging and so i think the effort that we're putting the financial resources the human resources into really building this economy so that we have more and more rebecca foxes of the world um that are successful that we are supporting those local entrepreneurs and local businesses is so so important for this board and and it's priority so um this is a discussion that really started started in earnest four years ago when we did our first strategic plan and now we're kind of getting some momentum here i really um hope that the community uh continues to provide us with the inputs that we got so that we know how can we really supercharge what this community is trying to do because i think it's it's really um building the future
for life can i ask a question before we vote on this motion have we gotten any information from further the mighty about our emergency food systems and their ability to fulfill the yes yeah want to give
an update yes yeah i want to make it a seven part mission or six part or however many we're at we're fine
chair we uh are reviewing the final uh numbers now uh we'll be releasing them shortly they were able to distribute approximately four thousand uh boxes i believe that that's the final number so we're getting the final tally on that just getting all the back information before kf okay well i guess i i would just
if i i'm happy to add it to the motion or just in general i guess since we don't know for sure if if you also bring that back as if there's money left on the table from there's not okay because i do know that they i have heard that they weren't able to potentially fulfill all of the children's trust i don't know utilize all the children's trust funding i'm just interested in us exploring like rather than that money just disappearing that we won't get the opportunity for fresh fruits and vegetables to be at the the pivot because we figured that piece out and so being able to potentially
so we took the balance of the hundred thousand that we were um using with frog song um i believe we had about 32 000 left that we didn't go through on the first round um so all of the family resource centers have been noticed that you have additional balance okay um we just kind of restarted the program about 10 days ago so they know they can start placing orders again and it's a declining balance it just is there until they spend it they can order whatever they want from about an eight page order form okay um so that's the frog song um just like sean said with bread of the mighty um they communicated with us i think last thursday or friday and they said they invoiced us for the full 100 000 when we checked on the backup it was exactly as sean said that they distributed about 4 000 boxes um we have requested additional information just some granular details from them and then we're going to route that for payment okay if we don't mind just checking this with the
children's trust or like with others to see if that if all of the food assistance funding was expended and if not if we could channel it towards those declining balances so those research centers could continue to get fresh fruits and vegetables i would appreciate it for sure okay we ready to vote okay
the public get another hit no no we we but you will get another hit in just a second on public comment um all right all in favor say aye aye aye any opposed motion is unanimous and probably wouldn't have changed but i do want to hear what you want to tell us of the quota comments all right and now's the time so now we have a opportunity for the public like this to all of our meetings to give us their thoughts on things that are not on the agenda or the things that they've heard during colleague yeah this is the time and last time you all used two minutes and 30 seconds let's meet an extra 30 seconds we're here for you thank you sonny
on the uh well since you mentioned bread of the mighty i do want to say if it whatever you can do to get bread of mine to flush chips and soda and sugar donuts out of their system i mean if they could be tara chips if the sodas could be nixie and zevia if the sweets could be stuff like this instead of sugar donuts i'll let the table see this no nobody gets to open them especially if you have glucose issues but those complex those complex carbs are less hazardous than what they've been but uh i want to say that of the of the community gardens in town the few i'll say the few community gardens compared to the neath uh only a fraction of them are actually started or supported by the city and the important piece of that is that they guard in front of my house the city has kept the water meter and continues to ever since it started and that's so crucial so the city program in fact the existing gardens that are done by community groups wipe out those water bills you know that that has been a key driver for the community gardens that the city was supporting the water the water meter yeah thank you
come on up mark hi good to see you thank you for being here thank you i think those are his lunch
there's a guy staying with us uh up from arizona state he's been there for five years he's now working at the rec center at uf he's like the student coordinator he loves the farm markets and i haven't been in years but he goes there he was there last saturday as well he's all excited excited about it um so this is about the little flying things so um you mow the edges and then you stick a sign in the middle and it says this is food and then something like you could even make it more interesting like this is food for pollinators and pollinators help us grow our own food or something like one two three forward at one point the kids in the back of the team go hey mom you know they're gonna it's gonna click on them that there's actually a sentence being built you can make other sentences as well but you want to communicate what you're doing and why you're doing it you have the ability to triple the amount of food available for pollinators very straightforward it's not a complicated equation at all you do it and at a certain point the people driving by go hey honey what do you think you're the okay and it's really the 10 000 people at home that you're looking for and it's like it's like a herd the herd is going a very busy tick-tock you know honey what time and the kids pick it up you're very busy doing it just routine routine routine and you're really just getting the herd to move a little bit this way you don't ask it's not like you stop running you're not saying that at all or swim suit you're not saying that either you just really just a little bit this way and you're leading by example people see you doing it they go well that's okay that makes sense they can see themselves doing it as well and then it becomes a thing um the people understand the connection they just need to be reinforced that it's it's okay you can leave part of it the way it is you don't need to mow everything you know what i mean it doesn't it's not necessary people get okay we'll leave that alone and later on you can build on that and say mom or mrs so-and-so you don't need to buy everything that's on sale it loads you know where it's from no that's pretty it's very pretty is it from here i don't know it's on sale you know what i mean like you want to slowly get more anyway you can do it you don't need a lot of like consultancy or anything like that just start doing it and those guys will take your suggestions i'm sure so that's it thank you yeah thank you mark i do like the idea of
of adding wildflowers that message pollinators and pollinators produce good that's like the
birma shave commercials they used to have you know did you uh y'all are too young for that
i've done that at one of our springs like you drive in nancy darren sorry go ahead so um i appreciate
mark bringing in the pollinators and it kind of ties in you know you started with a compact motion and ended up with a much more systemic comprehensive view of things which is one of the things i appreciate so much about this commission and staff and so how we bring the public into moving from overwhelmed convenience transactional living into beginning to build relationship minnesota has shown us what it means to really build the power of community we're seeing the federal funds all these grant programs disappearing so having as much infrastructure and vision and buy-in as we already do i think um building in and the i guess it's the whole marketing communication side of how we start to connect the dots for people in a deeper way and make it easier for them in their frantic lives i've got kids in my 40s with their kids and you know i remember my 40s where you just you don't have time to breathe let alone sleep and so how we both and we make it compelling so it's through storytelling and it's through uh through you folks show it kind of showing the way so that this is a public relational effort so i just want to again express my gratitude for this county and the vision and the people who care so deeply we're we're very very fortunate so keep adding to these motions so that we build we weave together a whole system because then we can thrive because it's not going to be easy and the financial side of it is getting really weird as well as the weather can we help support more high tunnels or increasing our seasonality dealing with weather wilding as well i know up in vermont i was just up there in september and they're doing four season growing in the middle of vermont despite the floods in the summer and the freeze in the winter and they're a lot of their high tunnels aren't even heated and they're able to create more markets so that may be something if we look when we think of shelter is not just for us going to the market but for our farmers themselves if we have infrastructure money and center for an agricultural economy up there in a rural area is incredible which may give us more tools thank you macy anyone else
from the public okay go ahead and close public comment move to commission comment chuck do you have anything
uh only thing i have is uh we i mentioned find help and the work that the safety net collaborative and um others children's trust and uf health are doing around kind of coalescing around find help as a community resource um guide if you will it's online easy to search i think 2-1-1 is still really critical as well because not everybody has the internet not everybody is internet literate you know so we still need to have the ability to make phone calls and hopefully eventually those two will also coordinate but i wanted to um i've had my intern working on promoting find help and working with satori and others in our community support services on helping to recruit people to do find help help um and get their profiles up and everything and you'll be getting an email soon that has the info again just so you have it to share with your groups like community action agency and others but i wanted to get you all's um take on just making like when we're putting out the promotional materials and stuff having elastor county's logo on it so like we are officially supporting the community efforts to like coalesce around find help because we built we made a flyer and went to put our logo on and i was like wait i don't know if we've actually like you know asked the commission
i'm not i'm not sure about putting the logo on there because we are not a partner with them in
any way it's a free resource we're just alec we're just like pushing people to create profiles there so we're not necessarily i mean we're not it's not like saying we bought find help we're just saying
you sign out yeah to me it's like if we do this then salvation army i can see a lot of other organizations asking for that and i don't know how we feel about that there's a paid feature we're not
paying for the service so i'm not sure how that's some of these some of these other organizations how
do we determine when when our logo safety net's not paying anything we're and uf health is paying for the back end to have it be on epic for sure but the same do you have health logo on there on the fire no and they're actually paying yeah yeah they're paying to have it on their ethics database not
like like i know when we've used our logo in the past it's when we've like sponsored something or we are we are we are using county resources for that that's what i'm asking is using county resources to
promote fine health as our singular county social services resource guide mark did you have a comment
you know normally when we get a request from a non-profit to include our logo we go to the department director and we find out if there's a direct involvement by the county um i can say whatever you decide on this though we can do an enormous amount of work to help push this out whether our logo is on it or not you know we can make it clear when we push out on social media our website we could use our new gogov notifications we can push this out and in the narrative above the post we can talk about what it is so yeah it will be it would be clear that alachua county is encouraging people to do this it is a it would be a little confusing i think to put the logo right on the flyer but if we're using the fire we will have narrative that makes it clear that this is something alachua
county thinks it's valuable that's great that works for me yeah i think that's a good way to do it that's great just as long as that i mean that's my point i started putting count you know my account kept my my interest time i want to make sure you all would go with us putting county time into pushing
the idea of find help as a cornerstone okay we'll do that um no anything else nope you got anything um i should congrats on leadership yesterday that was great sharing that oh yeah yeah i'm excited about that
i i do um i i still have a lot of questions concerns about the eco loop uh we broke ground on that right before i came on the board um i really would like us to have a policy discussion about the eco loop the possible we spend property industrial you know what we've got in our minds going forward with all of that out there i'd like to hear from sean and jessica gus steve from epd somebody from uf um regarding what it is we want to use the eco loop for uh because i am i keep hearing you know that we're not going to do this and we can't do that and that's also put a block on some of the things that they've been able to engage in other businesses that they've been in a to engage with because we put roadblocks on things that i don't always understand and i would like us to be updated on the latest technologies that are available i also know that there are professors at the university that are doing their own research and i don't know who we could gather from there but i think we really need to talk as a board why we've said no to certain things and to be open to new technologies that might free up our economic development people to engage with a broader base of businesses so when are we
next speaking about eco loop yeah so the board approved um authorized us to advertise for amendments to the pd to expand to make it very broad and a broad range of uses so the first part of that discussion will come back as part of that we can look at doing something subsequent if the board would like more on that but we're already going to bring it to the board well first of all we're already bringing to the board well we haven't done um land use changes at a special meeting we typically do those because of the public hearing so that's the next thing to come back is to expand considerably that allowable use which is what the board said okay to bringing back as part of a public hearing to open that up um subsequent to i mean so a lot of that discussion will happen then if there is something subsequent the board would like we can do that to to more discussion yeah i mean unless you want
to delay the change yeah i mean i guess what i i mean i was excited when we made that call to like expand the opportunities there because i'm with you i think like having it just be so focused on just like waste waste has been like hard in order of attracting businesses so i'm excited to expand it and see what we get but i what i hear you saying is like having a conversation about sort of what are what what parameters are we going to put around it what are the values we put parameters on it that we just took them away antiquated no we took us we just took them away we took them away with our last vote we took away all those except i will say this i'm not interested in opening the conversation about waste energy again we've had that conversation three times since i've been on the board in five
years like i'm tired of having that conversation but we've not really we didn't have voted on it i know that again i don't think we had all the information that we needed in i have all the information
i needed to do that though well lucky you i mean we we well we we have voted to eliminate some of the restrictions it is going to come back to us in the public hearing after that public hearing if we want to have a policy meeting that would be we can refer that to our next policy meeting to look at other things in course of what you're asking but now we won't be limited to waste right like we'll be
okay okay okay but but if you will talk to our waste people they will shake your head their heads too and say yes we have said we have put restrictions on what they can do with waste even to the point of glass that we're having to pay a lot of money to go down towards tampa in order to have our glass processing that we're sending stuff out of our county into another county that is willing to do that and if the other county is willing to do it and we are not that it's transportation costs i just don't understand why we're saying no i want to know why you all think we should say no that's why it's the policy i want to know why steve and gus and whoever else that we can get in there think it's not such a bad thing you know is it philosophy is it just your philosophy that we don't do this are we basing all of these decisions based on real knowledge scientific knowledge or just emotional responses and i've wanted to hear that from you all in a more intimate setting than being on the board out in front of everybody that's all i just wanted to hear why this community has been so result reluctant or resistant to certain things if there are new technologies out there that would bring us into a more modern age or a better decision making for that property out there that's all okay so if you feel like that we can need this needed in the broader
yeah but but if i recall there were a group of citizens came and asked us not to do certain things yeah come very classic again yeah right burning incinerating stuff i mean i remember that
how long ago how long ago it was last year okay i think that what we've done to expand the uses right now is actually going to open up a lot of what you're talking about because i think our limited scope the waste energy is a separate conversation and if you want to have that conversation that's i think that's that's a pointed conversation that we should have everybody's open to it but waste energy is one tiny little industry and we've just expanded it to not even just be waste anymore so now it's a whole new industrial park that could be lots of different things that support the circular economies and that gives our staff i think a lot more flexibility to attract companies okay and i'm not sure the weights to energy conversation is even that relevant if we're able to do a lot of different things there and glass is something that we could i would love us to have glass recycling and be able to make like countertops or you know other things with our glass or with our plastic with any of our things so i think to do that we need a murph because we we don't separate
our stuff like that right now so how long are we talking about needing a murph forever okay i would love us this is causing my frustration that we have these discussions and i'm not just restricting it yeah i'm talking about the whole thing well i think that's what that's the direction we gave at the last
meeting is to bring back opening up as a true industrial park not just a waste only eco loop right for at the
eco loop and then expanding into the eastbound property i guess i didn't understand that i guess i thought when we were talking about the animal shelter that that was the possibility for that i didn't realize at the time when we went to tallahassee to get that reverter that we were really talking about expanding into an industrial park and i guess that's why i was disappointed in the vote because i felt like that i didn't have enough information obviously because i was counting on that is a real viable possibility for that i had no idea that we went to get the reverter to expand to industrial and that's probably my fault i'm not absorbing enough information or listening carefully enough because i was so intent on having an alternate site that i lost sight of the fact that
we were expanding industrial out there i i think that our staff went got the reverter off so that we could use the property for whatever purposes and i do think that the animal shelter was one
of those potential i didn't have the vision that you all obviously had though gotcha okay okay
anything else uh okay then we're adjourned