special meeting open to order it's may 12th at 9 it's 9 30 actually and so uh i'll take a motion to approve the agenda to move second motion a second and the only item on the agenda is really an open discussion about the downtown master plan so it's just us we'll i think mr chestnut and alpha will be joining us shortly so all in favor of the motion say oh wait anyone from the public that speaks to the motion back to the board all in favor say aye aye any opposed motion is unanimous okay so mr prisley you have the floor yeah i mean i will say like this is kind of a hard conversation to have without all of us here the whole point was for us to all be here for this conversation in particular so um i kind of want to wait but i guess i'll just an introduction i know this is the map though right i got this yes you got the map um and i should printed it out but um i guess what i want to talk about is the fact that we own a lot of land downtown a lot of it and um i think that we have a real opportunity to be a key driver in an economic revitalization of downtown and i think it's really easy there she is that's okay um and so i think that our you know i think that the city has done some things to try to move the needle um on downtown revitalization and i think they've used strategies that when you look at research about how you do downtown like they're doing a lot of the things that you know are on the list from the planning association and community revitalization organizations of the kinds of things you need to do but i think that um a couple things stand out to me um with regards to the needs i think of downtown in order to really see it kind of blossom in the way we've seen places like fort collins or greenville or you know other towns around our country redevelop and that is um public private investment like major investment in places for people to live um so you have people here all the time instead of just you know nine to five um and that you have more going on down here than just bars for college kids and while i'm glad we have our college students and that they bring you know some financial investment to downtown i feel like we have a real opportunity especially because we're starting this do-si-do plan we're moving people in and out and so there there's a whole huge conversation we could have and i'm open to this conversation going wherever it goes but the key conversation that i wanted to have today is um kind of just generally our thoughts about that and giving staff direction to start bringing us back like a comprehensive sort of understanding of where we what we've done already i know we've done some studies of our buildings we have some information on them but one key thing i think is important is this area like that we're sitting on right now the area directly across the street next to city hall and the civil court pass that we're going to redevelop and i think that those three pieces along with city hall and bo diddly plaza are like they're like the center of our downtown they're like the core of our downtown and i think that rather than just bidding out the civil courthouse put this up on the screen yeah can we why don't we why don't we do that possible to do that that's the map that we used to have a little white box but i don't know yeah mark that's the map that was set we know but i said alan and josh if i could get the doc cam please yeah i can move down there at point i'm sure like two hours yesterday so i just gotta put that again so anna why don't you kind of go back over um so we can get or so one is north so that's the that's the soup the that's the property of property appraiser yeah so the ones that i mostly want i mean we could talk about any and all of them but the ones that i mostly want to talk about are these ones four two five seven and eight this little square right and in between them is bo diddly plaza and next to them is city hall so if you take this whole entire block is in public ownership yeah can you move over to the left so we can see so that four is ritz cleaner is that right move it over to the left so you can see what that's the that's the phil nix oh i see yeah that's phil nix okay so ritz cleaner parking lot phil nix building court services i think rips is probably number two yeah it's way up there if i uh okay yeah so not really sorry so phil nix wilson building uh the building we're sitting in now and then the old civil courthouse which is being rebuilt across from bo diddly right the other one that i am interested in the possibility of having a conversation about or at least like pushing on a conversation about is these but we can't really put them all on the screen at the moment so i'm going to leave these for right now which is adjacent to depot and so at that if we were going to do housing would be my number one choice sure yeah but so i mean i guess what i wanted to say is one i feel pretty strongly that we should keep these in public ownership i don't feel like we should be giving that property away i think it's the core of our town i think we should own it and i think that we do need to start we need to be thinking strategically about that that whole area as a redevelopment area and thinking about a master developer that can work with us on the whole thing rather than just like bidding out the civil courthouse for reconstruction for us to move administration and county offices and whatever and and to then to have this space open up and then to be thinking about this and then to be thinking about across the street that's really what we did with this right without uh invitations to negotiate we got all these proposals and we stopped that you know right and so we have that data though of what came back back to us right from that from that and that was when we were thinking about like redoing this for us and us being in here in some ways and things like that i think now with us moving i think one i don't know that we need the entire civil course i don't know what our office space needs are i know we need a new chambers we're going to need other things but i think there's a real opportunity for us to think strategically about this whole area and put together a package that we could put on the street for a public-private partnership that could really be powerful for the transformation of downtown and creating place making and creating spaces that people can enjoy that are outdoors as well as the potential for things like low-cost studios for artists and possibly loft type apartments for them above them or creating low-cost rent for small locally owned businesses non-profits yeah but i'm even thinking non-profits for sure but i'm thinking more like retail operations a lot of our a lot of our space downtown is taken up with it's either really large spaces that are restaurant sort of style spaces or bars you know we don't have a lot of the smaller spaces that a small retail outlet could go in a little or or a realtor or a um insurance salesman or you know folks that need just a few hundred square feet typically yeah yeah i mean i guess i'm thinking of things that drive foot traffic not so much people that like run their own businesses but i hear you but i mean if you're a downtown employee right that keeps you in the downtown yeah yeah it keeps you from leaving so from a you know a planning point of view we i think we need all the pieces and that also could be second story stuff first story could be stuff that brings foot traffic brings like small cafes restaurants retail shops you know art artists galleries like and then second story could be insurance salesman you know whatever whoever lawyers whoever else needs space but i just feel like we have a real opportunity and we need housing downtown i mean people living downtown again and again in research shows like having people that live there means that there's people here 24 7 that are interacting with the space and it drives that kind of investment as well and we're all invested in the idea of affordable housing and i think if we keep the owner public ownership of the land it drives the opportunity to sort of think about that and even do strategic types of affordable housing like specifically for our artists community have low cost gallery space below or studio space below you know inexpensive housing above and we create this sort of vibrant cultural dynamic that's happening with investment downtown so i just wanted to bring that up and sort of see how you all felt about that concept and then in order to kind of get everyone into the idea to then send it back to our team to sort of bring back what we've already done which like you mentioned and then what would it look like for us too instead of just courthouse then this but there's a piecemeal it to really do some things yeah that's right commissioner alfred then commissioner wick i i want to say that you know i feel like the city a long time ago i went to the city with a proposal that um i had seen done in sanford florida believe it or not and that was they made a a change in ordinance that allowed private property owners to have uh a uh second exit or like fire escape exit onto city property and so that allowed all the downtown second story buildings and third story buildings in their downtown to become um residential because that's a rule you have to have two modes of exit from a rental property and what keeps that from happening around here is that second exit and um they got they shut that down like in two seconds like their their attorney was like i don't know i can't do that it's like other cities have done it and it makes total sense right because when those buildings were designed it was a zero lot line often and um there was no need for that second exit so um i i feel like we need to include the city in this conversation so that we can have like the larger discussion about all the pieces that go together because i think if we make this big investment in it and they're not serious about like really looking at all of the strategies and parts and pieces that go into it and i feel like they are they just aren't they have it quite focused then i i think we could get somewhere yeah i 100 agree i mean i think no matter what i think us investing in this entire they've already made the investment across the street you know call it what it is it's it's up to you your just your thoughts on that but they've done it um they've created an open space kind of park-like space and there's and i and then bo diddly is across the street again i think if we did something that was more about bringing commercial and residential potentially downtown along with our office spaces and other professional office spaces and some place making that connected the dots between all of those pieces we could have something really really powerful you know and then the reason i circled the other ones down below is because i also i know the city's talked about daylighting the creek um years for years and i know that that that is i mean when you look at other like i've spent i spent the past couple of weeks like just doing a lot of research about redevelopment projects about what's worked and what hasn't worked about the kinds of like what they did in places like great rapids and greenville and fort collins and these places that are sort of known for having this like renaissance right and and all all of them there's kind of there's there's a couple things that i already talked about sort of creating place making spaces pocket parks and spaces where people can gather and enjoy you know there's also like the the there are some cornerstones but the cornerstones are less important than bringing people programming light wraparound type things like land really beautiful landscaping like bringing inexpensive spaces spaces for artists to be able to get downtown and create that vibrancy and then creating a lot of almost and almost all all of them not all of them but in a lot of them there was linear park connectivity yes so there was that connectivity between spaces that made a huge difference and so the other piece of this is really having a conversation with the city about that creek daylighting project like where that is on the cra list what is the priority of that project tell me so the creek that kind of runs over by the matheson museum and runs down to tifo park like they've talked about it is a linear park now it is a linear park but it's just stops it stops and it's in disrepair and it looks kind of the bigger issue there is that it's the back downtown doesn't connect to it all that well and i guess in long-term planning that could happen um but i think right yeah but i think that um and and that's why you see a lot of other kinds of activity down there but i think that you know there's opportunities for other kinds of linear perks but if you haven't been to sanford florida oh i have it's amazing and their downtown was dead that was one of the first things they did was play was like well they put in the river trail and they changed the rules about the apartments and so when i lived there i lived in an apartment above a cleaner you know and all the downtown was full of residents living above businesses in old buildings right and they were cool apartments yeah and uh you know i just feel like when you talk to folks they're like yeah we utilize our our spaces above the buildings but i don't think they're fully or well utilized right because they can't because they can't and so you know i feel like there's all these little parts and pieces that go into this there are because i can't um you know we have a lot of empty spaces in downtown now but it's just like that whole idea about a coffee shop right you can have a coffee shop and it'll do okay but when you put two or three coffee shops together they actually all do better right because it becomes a coffee destination right and that's it's like north avenue food like north avenue food park you know having more actually increases the business right uh success well that's i was just going to say we have a lot of empty spaces already and i know that the city working with university developers you know we're in that area down there right now it's like working in a canyon because there's no there are no kids here there's no businesses underneath and i know at one time we even uh claudia checked out the cvs on 13th street that they built right there on the corner upstairs level and they said no we use it for storage you know but the right so i don't know how you can mike did charlotte south carolina come up in your research at all a few years are north carolina i thought it was south carolina north carolina yeah charlotte i was in one of those cities which was an old old style southern beautiful layout downtown but dead downtown and i had and this is way before i was interested in any of this stuff but was told by these people they were trying desperately by getting businesses down having housing but nobody would come because he didn't want to be down in that busy area it's a bigger city but um anyway my concern is unless you're willing to give incentives to have those businesses come in you know the idea well that's you know that's what we but we would be in charge of that if we're owning that property absolutely no not necessarily i mean i think what i'm envisioning first of all i don't think we can solve this today and i don't think we could like we could like workshop this for weeks and i think that i guess my hope is that this is just a sort of a push for us to begin that dialogue but that that idea could be that we master we basically ground lease the property we master plan the whole space with the developer there are incentives built in where we basically have we can have restrictions in the contract like where we say we want a certain amount of public space we want a certain amount of like small space rentals right that we would subsidize with cra dollars for people to be able to get into i don't have any delusion that if we build class a commercial space that it's not just going to sit empty like it is everywhere else right what i'm suggesting is that we push on the developers because we own the land we're making it less expensive for them to develop it and they have the opportunity to develop and make money that we have a partnership where there's some kind of give and take right like we own the land they don't have to pay taxes on it they get this great deal in that in exchange for that deal they're helping us revitalize downtown by making spaces affordable for our small local businesses by providing space to these young entrepreneurs that are trying to start up local businesses like insurance companies or whatever and that they incorporate affordable housing as well as regular market rate housing into in the downtown area so you are you're okay with us buying the building across the street from the library because i think you had some concerns about i'm not talking about that building i'm talking about this corner i'm talking about this corner right here this building on the building across the street that's a seven okay across the street from but i turn we're seven okay okay eight is the civil courthouse because but we were still talking about the purchase of that building though yes i don't think we're ever talking about we're releasing it building what building she's talking about in the library she's talking about the city for the clerk oh the yeah that was the chamber space we're still we're still knitting forward with that that's what that's what i thought that's not what i'm not talking about oh okay i'm talking about master planning this corner this is basically okay i gotcha i gotcha i'm with you but my concern is y'all too that in order to get these people involved down here we haven't look at the city has still got this empty lot that's down here right across from the music center or whatever whatever you know what's going on with lot 10 because it's ugly and it does nothing to connect university and 13th with downtown and so you're talking about partners who are not really motivated you know to to do their part that's all so far maybe i mean i don't know i'm not talking about any specific partner so i don't know that they're not motivated i mean we had and i understand that things are different than they were but you know i'm going to use an example that it it upsets me that it didn't ever happen but i think it was a really good example of what's possible and that is the warehouse that's near depot park when the city first originally went down the path for that property it was just a giant warehouse it's on gru property and the city put out a call for a master developer to come in and help partner with it they got a lot of really great proposals from developers that from local developers that were partnered together from a large developer that's from this region and from an out of town developer they ended up awarding it to the out of town developer and then it took so long to strike the deal and draw the paperwork that company got sold and then they were they basically were going to have to redo the whole thing because they weren't in contract with that company it was like a whole thing but the concept i think was really good in terms of the potential also the economic downturn happened so i mean there's lots of things that could happen between now and then that could create challenges for a situation like this but i i i think that the challenge the opportunity far outweighs the challenges when it comes to i totally agree i i i really do applaud your enthusiasm for it and leading on it i really do you know i like i say my my situation has been that i've that's watched the development that's come in while i've lived in gamesville and uh you know there it's a lot of stop and start kind of stuff right that's all yeah so now i'm with you yeah and then we'll go so chuck we're just starting now anna has framed out if you look up on the screen that's our owned property and she's specifically talking with the circle seven areas all the numbered things are and then four and five to wilson this is the building that we are sitting in right here seven right here this is if you turn it back up right yeah this is across the street you can't like that because that's how he wants to look at it because that's what we're that's what we're facing have to worry at yourself there you go that's good okay putting on my brain no that really does help me okay this is where we are this is bow didley plaza this is the civil courthouse that we're eventually going to consolidate theoretical operations into this is city hall and then um this is the wilson building building phil nicks building and um so what yeah so city hall and then anna's talking about working with the city to develop a master plan for um for this area and then also the area down by depot park which is just depot park and then this is where we have the our whole fire station which is now epd and um epd and what it's epd epd okay yeah so those two areas right all right so just thoughts so uh for the record on lot 10 they are starting in um this year they're supposed to be starting a seven-story mixed-use building which is going to have 104 residential units uh workforce housing with ground floor commercial i think that the challenges had to do with the changing dynamics and financing yeah for the developer that came in with the project yeah why it's been yeah yeah but it but it's still going forward but um i i do want to say i do think it's important to i mean i ran on keeping this building here and i think that if we go out for for whatever that we need to recognize this building is a good solid building with good bones and it it really is and um i think that we should start from especially from an environmental point of view thinking uh you know seeing if we can utilize this building and whatever we have going forward i am not a fan of this kind of architecture at all but for a lot of people it's it's it's very you know iconically 50s and 60s and they like it um but um all that being said it's a good solid building my when i've worked on projects like this in the past there's always been like a two-day charrette and that's what i really think would be awesome and that would be hard to do to have the county and the city and the business people all get together and do a two-day charrette but that's what dover coal does yeah you know that's what doani does and um well when i say hard i mean hard for scheduling and logistics and all of that but i think if we could do something like that and all get on the same page and have like the people that do this kind of work all the time and really successful projects right and have a public part of the day be about the public coming in and providing input right part of it be about the institutions and the local businesses putting in input and then i mean that's that's i think that's the maybe not the next step but it's sort of like a step in the process i think it's a big step it's a big step because you know all of our you know we can talk about what the constraints are and we i think our job right now is to figure out the constraints because that's a big part of the the charrette process is to list the things that can't change right and so i think that um i think that is uh i think that's a very significant part of the whole process to to help you know i i think that's what's been missing all along is that the city is planning and we're planning and we're not necessarily planning together right well not only that but we're also planning the way that we've been planning to date has been very do-si-do it's very been like we finish one building we do another building we do that building then we go to that building and i think in this instance you know i think the civil courthouse is a core component of this block and us moving there or us moving around you know i mean and i think that like to your point i think people who are in the development world and people who are in the master planning world may see that rather than concentrating all of us in one space maybe it makes more sense for us to be some across the street on ground level where they would be accessible some in the course i don't know i don't you know i'm not a planner i'm not a developer but i know that creating open spaces real park spaces places where people can gather places where people can be and affordable storefronts and affordable spaces for our artists and our cultural like creators downtown is going to be critical in us revitalizing this space and i think on top of that continuing to push hard on things like landscaping and art making and place making downtown to make it a place people want to come and be and spend time and look at and enjoy and take pictures and and i think making it easy to get here and to get around you haven't stopped i guess i i guess i'm on the wrong page a little bit um i i thought that the idea was to demolish this right and build something new and attractive but i was thinking about more like housing housing because um i think that's what's needed downtown downtown is not family friendly at all it's for college students it's just for college students on the weekend and that's it that's exactly what i was saying is like i don't necessarily agree i understand this is a good building but i think that it's positioned wrong on the lot it's it doesn't have to be that's what our architects are for right it's you know and it and i agree with you i think it needs to be more commercial and residential spaces here at the core of our as you stated earlier with open space so it's a place to congregate yeah also but maybe there's a way to creatively reuse like you said architects figure out how to creatively reuse things all the time well that's why i feel like we do that this building had a lot of problems i mean the roof i thought uh at one point it was the hvac system but i think we got that squared away i thought and but there are other issues this is a very old building i mean this is the crux of the issue right now because i i don't see you converting into housing i just don't i'm sorry well and i i mean i you know my my thinking was not any one thing i guess i just want to be really clear about that my idea was not saying retail right exactly my idea was let's look at these spaces as a whole these spaces not the city hall space i circled it because i was saying those are all publicly owned but the the three corners we own around votedly and then up the other two and let's try to work on a master planning process with a master developer that would help us come up with a plan that would help to redefine downtown like you're talking about with residential and commercial without what our needs and think about it holistically rather than just in a piecemeal fashion that was that was the point so and it could be anything you know i mean i really think it could be parking michelle and i'll give my thoughts yeah mr chair um so uh and i believe it was before um commissioners prison alford were on the board but we went through an actual master planning process i believe avison young did that and there's a report on that and i don't think that um necessarily everybody was happy with what it came out with um but i do think through the as you mentioned the charrette process and and that um we can bring some folks in to look at that from the different perspectives and to some extent what's going to be important is to have them help us know what the market you know because it's got to be market driven if it it's got to be market driven if it's going to be a success ultimately um and what that looks like i'm not sure and it's also you know we need somebody to come in that can help us see the future so to speak because we're talking about um the civil courthouse being done in 2028 with them moving in and we would want to you know not not skip a beat beat move forward but at the same time we're still looking at planning and trying to figure out the market that's in the future three three years three four years so um but um i just wanted to remind everybody we did have that that um report have you seen that yeah i was here for that report actually i was here for that report or if i wasn't here it was like right before it was right before we came in and then y'all came in right when it was published yeah and then we presented i ran on it yeah we read that report and that was the thing i think that report that was one of the things i was going to i really originally wanted this to be agenda so staff could bring that report they could bring the maps they could bring the building condition reports all the things that have been done over time along with the city's like downtown redevelopment plan and cr8 dollar budgets and we would have this sort of comprehensive thing but i realized that was a lot to ask about this conversation like is this even something we're interested in moving on or do we want to just do-si-do it around you know and i to me it was like i love the idea i mean what when i think about downtown to chuck point there's really two downtowns there's the up until nine o'clock they're supposed to go home for dinner yes and then there's a second downtown which is when the students come in after i mean they're waking up at nine o'clock and they're coming in and the city has said we have two downtowns we have five to ten and ten to two um i also think that it's really important that we signal uh that the county is not leaving it there was for the previous manager thank you for the previous manager there was a discussion about maybe the county should leave downtown yeah i think that we need to kind of say we are committed to downtown we are staying in downtown and we are designing building eight which is the old civil courthouse for those operations now do we have to be on the first floor we don't we can be on and hutch used to say this a lot i think you and hutch actually have a similar idea that the downtown during the day should be walkable should be attractive for folks from you know out of town as well as in town should be open to the public with a linear bike head kind of focus um county government can be on the second floor enough they don't have to be on the first floor except for um growth management people that interact with the public on a daily basis the property tax collector you know so those are important to be on the first floor so i i love the idea of us kind of picking this back up and um prior to across the street of starting that and are we really going to consolidate our operations there or are there other uses for that i think it's the right time i also think though to commissioner alfred's point that you can't have the discussion without the city we need them at the table and so what i was going to bring up is a meeting with the mayor next week to talk about our next joint meeting which is june 8th i think or six six or eight and what we had previously talked about as a board is focusing on areas and that meeting we were going to focus on ihedi southeast 15th street heartwood legacy project and that was going to be that meeting i think the next meeting could be this area downtown and see their thoughts about that and that would all give us time to see what has been done for thinking about right each kind of get our own pieces and thoughts together are you guys okay with that with the city absolutely are you okay with that i am i would love for us to get a meeting with just us ahead of that that gives us a chance to get some of that background information remember no ahead of that next meeting like ahead of this yeah ahead of this meeting have a special meeting like all the information and we think about those pieces and i do feel like this piece and the depot park section like they've got the rts area i think we can do both of those in the same meeting and kind of just talk about the linear connection to downtown from depot what's going on around depot and then this sort of corner and how i think if those two were connected i think that creates that's it that's a winner i mean that that does it for downtown in my opinion yeah i i've been real impressed with the city's work to sort of push everything down south maine and the whole complete streets they've done in connection with the park and the museum and so i feel like that's the linear thing that they're working on and that maybe the open creek is like of a parallel you know like the exercise yeah the exercise component um i the point i wanted to make and now i can't remember what it is um yeah i think that um that's that's really important oh i know what it is i think that one thing that needs to be part of the planning process is recognizing how fast electric county is growing and the need for future our office space so planning those that flexibility into whatever we do so that you know if at some point we're required maybe to bring all our our at home workers back all the time like the state has done you know i don't know that they would ever do that but if they did you know we we would be in a pickle about office space as i understand it and so i i just think having however we plan it i think it needs to have the flexibility to be able to allow for expansion of county government um so that you know we can we can maintain the plan into the future absolutely 100 okay so what i'm hearing is first of all we'll see if we want to give some direction but what i'm hearing as far as the city goes is that our next joint meeting will focus on ehedi heartwood legacy project southeast 15th street kincaid loop that discussion and then at the september meeting we'll focus on the downtown and the depot park connection and revitalizing that area and prior to the second meeting we'll have another meeting to talk about special meeting about yeah about this no mr chair as part of that september meeting um i think the one thing about the downtown um looking at downtown revitalization it really is key a key component of our economic development strategy and i think it's also a key component of the city's economic development strategy so i do think that maybe talking about economic development as part of that september discussion and and how we're working together on those strategies uh would be good yeah as part of that september meeting because it all kind of ties together i love that yeah the thing i forgot to say was um you know the mcgerns were the first investors in downtown and really had a lot to do with the fact of how well downtown is doing now even though it's different from you know what we would hope it's still way better great job way better yeah i think it would be really great to ask them if they would like to join the conversation for lessons learned at some point just see if they have any ideas about um you know what's worked and what hasn't worked i think that would be great um i talked to ken yesterday they're leaving for norway today yeah but they travel all the time but um but i think he would be a really good um i think and i do think you're 100 right and i think in addition to them there's a couple other business yeah not just developers there's a couple developers but there's also business owners like i think of the top they now own the block everything on the block that isn't ours right oh correct um you know and so you know these are those who've been here for decades that have built successful businesses that have stood the test of time to you know bring in their perspectives and share their ideas along with this downtown advisory board and you know the cra board like i think there's a lot of people that need to be a part of this conversation absolutely i was just thinking that the girls might be a good a good pre-conversation to some of our other things yeah we can include them and just very quickly too the supervisor of elections has also asked for help down at that for parking and that sort of thing in terms of separating somehow from the property appraiser that's already that's already something we're planning on as far as this process i just haven't heard it mentioned so yes as part of this process would be a way to put the tax collector and the property appraiser together down here down here as opposed and then give that building and give the building fully to the supervisor oh okay that's perfect check you have any more thoughts no you agree with that uh with that approach yeah do you want to do a motion or do you want to do you need a motion to okay i mean we'll make sure that that's the way the agenda sometime in august when we get back from break maybe we could have our meeting our special meeting yep we can do that way it gives staff a little bit of time to prepare full things together but it's before the september yeah we can look at that monday do we need to let the city know too that's what we're doing so they have time to prepare oh yeah so when i meet with the mayor next week i'll tell them we have had this discussion about the upcoming june 8th meeting we're going to focus on that area unless he objects and then i'll come back to you all and then um we're proactively thinking about sort of meeting in the third quarter which would be this area and between now and then we're going to have some more uh another special meeting about good good all right anything else on downtown master plan commissioner frizzi yeah yeah that's great all right doing cra work which is kind of i mean we are invested in that area in this whole area okay so that's the agenda item next up we got public comment uh well first of all is there any public comment on that item that you want to talk to us about and then we'll do general public comment so any public comment on this item yeah come on yeah come on either one kelly because i know you've been talking to us a lot about lighting up the area usually when i get to a mic i want to sing but um since you mentioned the creek area there is a petition circulating in the neighborhood now that the mayor will see for the first time friday morning when he meets us out there on the garden uh to do permanent rezoning of the whole space from the creek eastward to sixth terrace and from fourth avenue in the north to fifth avenue on the south to permanently rezone that wreck and open space so we don't see future rounds of them are trying to restore the sixth street pavement and they've had two developers come in and even go as far as conceptual sketches sketches before those developers realize they would have a brownfield as soon as they stick a shovel in the ground over near the creek uh and that that also is a reason of their hesitation about unpiping the creek i still wish for that but it would entail a huge remediation but uh but and you said about the uh the creekside park as it exists now that strip park it is in good shape it just gets littered all the time but it's it's in good shape and well kept it's just unsightly all the time because people camp out on at the benches and just cover the ground with litter even though it's a trash can but the idea is that the open creek and its accompanying strip park connects all the way to depot park once john kelly is decommissioned hopefully in 2051. uh so well that's its current commission so uh that's that's an idea our neighborhood is pushing we want to protect the god we want to protect the green space so i think that's in the line with what you're talking about excellent thank you anyone else on this item all right we are now done with that we're now going to open it up for general public comment is there anyone that wants to talk to us about anything not on the agenda close fellow comments commission comments just enjoyed the meeting last night yeah it was good yeah good meeting and you know in speaking about that building um did you get a tour did you all get a tour no yeah it's worth getting the tour because it is what we can learn from that well i i think you know as we're designing our growth management and our planning and our code enforcement they have they thought that through and it's yeah right yeah and i was going to say how they've set up like the commission chambers and such i told them we would be great we don't have a commission office yeah we'd be visiting them to uh yeah and to get lessons learned from them too on things they wish they wouldn't have done a certain way too i will say though is it right in the middle of the second floor um and all of the folks that report her all around just an interesting i mean i don't think we can duplicate but there are things we can learn that they yeah um uh i have been trying to get on a surgery schedule for a long time and they worked me in for this friday so um i had originally thought that my recovery time was just going to be a few days but it's probably going to be more like 10 days so i will be out next week and then part of the week after so as long as i have the other three of you we are good alachua monday monday is it monday monday evening oh there's no way we could postpone that meeting we could try we could i know becky had tried because we knew commissioner president we could try again let's reach out because if we're going to miss two minutes there's a lot on that agenda there is parted down between the fire it's possible i can make it i just am going to look like crap so no seriously i have stitches on my face so michelle would you mind reaching out yeah we'll try again we when we knew commissioner prosia couldn't understand we we tried um but i'll ask thank you to try meeting for the city of alaska i'm an excellent city of gainesville so if we could all be there that'd be great all right we'll try to reschedule that that's great yeah sorry about that i just i just wanted to give you all that that's up okay so anything else nope all right so i have some stuff from yesterday we had um our children's trust meeting and i wanted to just update you all on two kind of significant items that we've been talking about with regards to um literacy and then the chair letter that we sent to the school board regarding um the motion that you did uh at the last meeting regarding facilities so let me start first of all with the literacy piece so i'm gonna pass these books around uh valley park library books yes so these these are program this is a program i'm going to pass around the agenda item that was shared with us yesterday so i'll let you guys take a look at that i think one is yours yeah so just so you know you you as a board are currently funding um this dolly parton program 26 000 dollars out of the gun violence and the children's trust is currently funding this program 63 000 based on the number of kids we have served is 37 a year yeah it's cheap it's unbelievable so if you'll turn to this slide um which is the third slide on what i just passed out first of all i think um since we are funding this it would be great if the manager could find 10 minutes in our an upcoming agenda item where they could present to us so you could see what we saw yesterday from the children's trust but if you look at that sliding scale i asked two questions i said what happened when we went from 830 to 1600 like what did we do differently and she said you doubled the funding i said wait we went from 30 000 to 60 000 she goes basically it's basically that simple a question so then i asked um what zip codes are we serving if you'll turn to the next page the next page are the zip codes of the kids that are served um because i asked specifically about three two six four one because i know that is a targeted zip code uh under our literacy program um and so then if you turn to them so those are the current zip codes a little bit more money just does more kids in each zip code if you turn the next page you can see the parent survey results from the kids that are receiving um books and then the next page talks about what the target is how well they're doing um but but really what's what's really great from my perspective is um kind of the last two pages just when i think about literacy and kind of our moonshot for the next three years we've got the the zero to five the pre-k and then we've got once they get into the school board you know k that's the way through um 12th grade and i know we are investing a lot of capital on um leah was there yesterday and the more we can help them prepare the less leah's job will be in the future and so i just want you all to be aware of this because i think it's a great opportunity the program has been going out for three years we can build on it um the funding is 37 a child and so i'm going to be pushing at the trust that we increase the funding from 63 to a larger larger number and i wanted you all to get this presentation because we're funding it out of our gun violence money and maybe we want to increase our money and i want you all to make that that's the person mary so um do all the kids get the same book every when it goes out every month so you know what'd be really cool is if we had a program mark where uh one of us or somebody important in the county read the book on on video and i think that would be great fun and i also think that you know one of the nice things about kids getting kid level books is we also have a problem with adult literacy that's right and so you know if we provide that sort of read along thing that could end up helping on two levels i love that yeah i'm in for that too i just think that would be a nice way to promote it and uh you know it's it takes just a couple of minutes to read most of these books so i think it would be yeah and the idea is that we get more kids to sign up and that the funding is provided so that they actually get those books in there it's a it's it's one of many different arms in our literacy movement that we're doing and i just think this is a real low-cost highly effective program yeah anything we should do to get it out there yeah 37 a kid for the year so i just wanted to share that and i know that now that you have this data your brain will start working and there will be other ideas that come up that's the first thing okay um the second thing i want to pass this out this is uh the mckenzie hito presentation that we received this is yeah so we um mr chair you the board would like these folks to come and present at a future board meeting yeah does anybody object to that no i'm down with that yeah this is the same one and i believe yolanda who presented to us yesterday at the children's trust she might be at our meeting at 11 30 um because i i said at the trust meeting i was going to share this with my colleagues and she might come and talk public comment but i'm not sure um marcia said she talked to me okay so you've got two presentations so the first presentation was given to us um in our background but the second the second presentation was what was actually presented and so this is item 18 this is the one that was actually this is the second one no the darker color red was actually okay so let me um if you'll turn to i got one slide i want you to see if you'll turn and i'm sorry i have my notes on it but it's the third to the last slide it should have a sticky pad on it oh the one that has the new slide that's this slide right here this one yep should have a sticky pad on it there you go right there so um this is like so the school board received and i'm just going to summarize it i'm not an expert at it but they received funding based on the competitive grant uh that they applied through the state and we are in the second of of three years of this grant so the funding has gone from 268 in the first year down to 121 000 so the school board is currently receiving 121 000 to provide mckinney-vento funding which basically is for staff the superintendent i mean obviously when you see that you say okay gosh there's clearly not enough funding to serve our kids that are suffering from homelessness and so there's a lot of stigma associated with kids being under this program because you know kids don't they labeling is an issue stigmatism is an issue and so the superintendent actually said that she confirmed what um lee said from the city yesterday which was quoted in an article that it's probably twice that number of kids it's probably two thousand two thousand kids that are either homeless or um cohabitating with other friends and houses or living in their cars and so when you think about that number there's 24 000 kids that's eight percent of our kids 8.33 percent of our kids are suffering um from this and so she said look we we do need help and so i i not just myself but dr hart who's kind of been leading the charge of the trust and i know serves in a committee with you right yeah we we've got a couple of ad hoc kind of so yeah so first of all um that group is meeting the trust is convening that group on may 26th are you going to that i'm gonna try okay i hope it's during my little surgery window so i gotta yeah if you can't go hopefully you i'll make sure somebody's there yeah so it's may 26th um and it's at the i believe it's at the trust and many of the folks that were at the convening that we that the board did with the family promise and all that but she said they've got 26 confirmed people already do you know what time i don't know um i'll find that out and get that okay you can just put it on our children's trust meeting with the yeah so that's may 26th housing folks okay and so i wanted to let you all know about that meeting but i mean the point of me bringing this up with you today is that um this is obviously an issue that the truck you know in the trust mission is to collaborate and coordinate and so it's obviously important to the trust obviously we have a significant funding deficiency and when i asked what are the two things that we could do as a trust or a board um the two big gaps she talked about which is actually the next slide are housing and transportation so under the allowable uses on the left hand side the next slide that's what the school board's allowed to do what they're not allowable uses are long-term housing utility bills housing and transportation and so i think uh your motion and our chair letter was perfectly timed in line with what um the school board's talking about and so i'm hopeful that we can with all of these different groups that are working on this um see if we can help the school board out in this specific area because it represents literally eight percent of the kids i think i guess i'm interested to understand i all of this is really good i think one of the things that it highlights for me is all the allowable uses and the need for almost like resource centers essentially at schools right like similar to your family resource centers that are scattered around the county like having those at schools that families could get some of those resources on site and have our schools be destinations for support services as well as for i mean that sort of is a highlight that i know has been talked about in the past but i don't know how far it's gotten and i don't know if that was any part of the conversation at all i'm so glad you brought that up on the last page i actually took notes so um william nice who is a social worker he actually said that exact point he said you know one of the things that is really important um is that each school have a liaison that is a trusted individual that the kids and the kids families trust that's at the school um because that's how we connect services by trusted individuals that are at you know we go to where where they are not asking them to come to us right and it's a root cause and so um to the extent that there are family liaisons at every school i don't i don't know if there are at the school board i hope that there are i know that um that's in this presentation but i think that's a key component of connecting that school liaison to then our community support services and our network of non-profits that are dealing with this yeah when when i was growing up that was the school nurse right the school nurse could connect people to all kinds of things and they always had a big closet with all the things that somebody might need and it was never embarrassing to go to the school nurse but the school nurse you know served that function i remember seeing it when i was a little kid and i'm talking about it and um i i think that that you know having that sort of trusted person and having that sort of the the the sort of the veil of of it being an office that any kid can go to right and um but it's got all the resources there for the kids that need that that would just be absolutely amazing yeah yeah they're cutting they're cutting our the counselors out of those counselors also were the ones who are the ones school counselors but you know the the size of the schools now are increasing and they will have one you only have one counselor in the school it's really hard to manage all that stuff when we were at westwood we had a store and we had similar things like that but the kids could go into the store with chits that they've earned you know from teachers um for behavior right and so you you earn these little uh papers and you take those papers that you've earned from the school everybody was giving them out teachers were all giving yeah squirrel men dollars exactly yeah and then you take those and it's a good way to pair behavior good behavior gets more world dollars right right awesome i guess i just was interested to understand you know i got to watch some highlights not meaning i didn't really get to watch at all but it seemed as if there was kind of a mixed response to our request to look at underutilized facilities for the possibility of housing i understand that housing isn't something that they can do but what they can do is is leverage properties that they own that aren't being utilized yeah i know the city said a letter i know um when i talked to dr mcneely i think they're she's going to bring it up at the next meeting and asked if there's an official response i also know um know that um when i brought that up at the children's trust meeting if there is a convening individual then dr hart from the trust will be that individual she's ready to go and our staff's ready to go hopefully either mary or anna you guys can be the county representative so uh nancy is going to be dialing in at the meeting mary chance is probably going to attend as our chair and if she does then they'll notice it because we'll have two board members our community action agency director has just gotten her phd and her dissertation was homelessness of children in right here you know so she's been doing that work um and it's a lot of experience well all i heard um yeah i mean all i heard from the school board yesterday and and they it was a great presentation and from the superintendent that uh it was dr pamela orshan is that the school board yeah they they need help and so i think if however we can help them um we should stand ready because if we're not just helping them we're helping like i said eight percent of our kids up to eight percent somewhere between four and eight percent of our kids are are suffering from this it's something that it's a bigger issue than the school board it's a community exactly yeah that's all i had anything else oh i did have very something very quickly um we're beginning to get ideas circulating from the animal shelter to work with grace um a little bit more intensely and uh at-risk community members so you know stand by okay it's coming they're going to be really cool ideas i think so today's meeting at 11 30 i spoke to the manager just to run this by you all so that you're okay with it so we're going to do the invocation we'll adopt the agenda um we'll do announcements from mark and then we're going to do a proclamation for latoya because today is her birthday that's right yeah no announcement oh good all right so we're going to do latoya i would ask i'm going to read that proclamation but i would ask we all kind of go down together we'll read it together we'll invite the family up then um we'll ask if they have any any words to say uh or anybody and then we'll go ahead and recess that meeting have a little reception for the family and then we'll reconvene at high noon for public comment no it's in that commission conference area behind uh shannon's just for the commission and for the family are we not expecting that many people we don't know i think that i don't know who from the family is her son is not going to be able to come he had a class he couldn't miss uh as an old theater guy i like to know every piece of the performance um stan richardson is also going to do a poem do we want to do that before or after the proclamation after i was thinking after yeah so we end with it it's nicer i'll give the proclamation then we'll invite stan up to do a poem and then we'll invite the family up to speak i was going to recommend doing the poem first okay just to kind of set the mood and the proclamation by the time you get to the end of it that might be a good place to gather everyone for the picture okay does anybody object to that okay no i like that okay mark stage manager and then afterwards just tell us yeah next time just tell us don't embarrass us by giving the wrong answer okay next time i'll tell you exactly what to do the true false and false also at the end of the proclamation are we we're gonna do a picture gonna get the family together and all 100 and by the way he says old actor he's not because he was just in a production what last month and yeah we're dancing all right so we'll do that we'll break and then we'll reconvene for public comment and then after public comment we'll do the two uh two or three three other parts is that everybody okay with that yes all right good all right we uh we are adjourned i'll see you all at 11 30.