5-5-26 Special Meeting @ 1:30 p.m. - May 05, 2026

special meeting 1 30 may 5th special meeting to order we've got a couple items on the agenda any changes to the agenda i just wanted i think the agenda that the commission has in front of them has the ear first no i had the published agenda has the land conservation first i just wanted to make sure we would move forward that yes i asked them to republish to make sure that the final agenda had the land conservation first that's the final agenda move uh agenda and mr chair the comprehensive plan evaluation appraisal should be under public hearing so change in the agenda is to make the alaska county forever ag land first and then as a public hearing the comprehensive plan evaluation appraisal second then we've got public comment closing comments any other changes to the agenda nope did you second it all right anyone from the public would speak to the motion i know y'all are all probably here for the ear but we're going to do the first in case that's okay all right back to the board all those in favor say aye aye i oppose that motion is genuine okay we've got the agenda and miss lieberman who's first up first up will be andy with the uh alachua county forever update thank you for being here and you are recognized chair commissioners um so andy christman land conservation program manager and i'm going to be presenting an update on our implementation of our alachua county forever agricultural land protection strategy um with some discussion about partnership terms that's the emphasis of the so just as you're aware um the alachua county forever program has three main functions that are implemented in our alachua county government here within the environmental protection department thank you um the first one uh and the one that people most probably recognize is the land acquisition component of the program and um that is a 25 year old as you know um aspect of our operations with ongoing land acquisition fee simple land acquisition we also manage the bulk of those acquired lands as county nature preserves and then additionally we also house the county's tree planting program just to uh remind as i often do the alachua county forever mission is to acquire improve and manage environmentally significant lands to protect water resources wildlife habitat and natural areas suitable for resource-based recreation and that recreation of course is on the fee simple acquisitions and then with the addition of our agricultural land protection strategy which is a strategy under alachua county forever that mission is to increase farmland conservation within alachua county through the purchase of agricultural land conservation easements and to promote open scenic space when you all as a board authorized um the the formal creation of this agricultural land strategy there were several motions involved in uh that adoption and the three that are highlighted in yellow um in your presentations are the ones that are most germane to the discussion today um so of course the first one was you adopted a resolution that laid out the guidelines of how the agricultural land strategy would be uh implemented how acquisitions would work how partnerships would work um the second was that you allocated 10 million dollars of the land conservation portion of the wild spaces and public places local government infrastructure surtax to be used specifically on agricultural land protection and then that total was like 80 million and we allocated 10 of that uh well and at that time it was still forecast to be potentially 150 million it's been subsequently reduced with some changes in sales tax law within the state um so it was a little more than than 80. 150 down to 10 okay um and then the second one that's really germane to today's discussion is that for partner funded easements um that we would establish and require minimum easement deed terms to protect um the county's investment in those easements basically um and retain county rights and those rights as were stated in the motion were things like the right of enforcement the right of inspection what was unstated there but um it was i think assumed by staff at least uh was that there would be an ownership interest as well but it was not a stated part of that motion um and then the third one that's germane to today's discussion is um that staff was directed to prioritize projects that have cost sharing either through some partner or landowner donation some form of cost sharing um also grants could be an option as well so those are the three that i think are going to most inform your considerations today the two primary partnership updates that i'm i want to highlight are partnership with the federal government and the state government those are the two entities that existed um we recognize to have sort of the longest standing and most consistent funding um partnership programs that were potentials for us to work with um and we'll start with the federal government first any partnerships also be private absolutely um in fact uh in the past uh your alachua county forever program has partnered with um specifically the federal government we did five easements in partnership with the federal government um over a decade ago and on those five the partnership structure was set for each one the federal usda nrcs provided 50 of the cost alachua county forever provided 25 and the landowners donated 25 so that's a structure we've utilized in the past but we have also had landowners who have donated portions of fee simple acquisitions and easement acquisitions by basically accepting less than the appraised value on um on their property and have we ever had private entities like a act or other non-profits that took the 50 that's the piece under these two um thinking through right now um so not private entities so we we have in the past partnered with act on an undivided interest on a fee simple acquisition but we have subsequently received guidance um in more recent decades that that that that's not a structure that we should pursue so um so then when it comes down to partnerships it's really state and federal in terms of external funding if it's not if it's not land or donation yes okay now there could be a foundation that could donate a portion of value in and particularly that's a role that a partner like act could help facilitate for us um in recruiting those foundation or or or donor values but um we haven't done that yet yeah sorry no no thank you okay so first looking at the federal government structure so um the fed the federal government's current and primary way to partner on agricultural land protection is through what's called the usda nrcs asap program or the agricultural conservation easement program and that is the structure of that partnership is that um an entity in this case alachua county would um nominate a a project to the federal government for consideration for their annual usually it's going to be annual ranking of projects if the if the project ranks well enough um to get into the the money essentially to get into the funding level um by the federal government then the feds will offer a 50 percent cost share on the acquisition of an easement and in that case the easement would be the county's easement template so it would be the our easement and the federal government attaches what's called minimum easement deed terms that protect their rights and investment that's attached as an exhibit to the easement um the county holds title and the county has the right and responsibility of enforcement so again as i mentioned we've done that previously on five easements with um the usda and um this year in implementation of the agricultural land strategy we submitted nine additional properties to um the usda to be considered in their annual ranking in their 20 25 26 ranking cycle um none of those easements were scored well enough to be funded um in this past year and the feedback that we've gotten from the federal government on this is that now and probably for the foreseeable future the primary emphasis of their easement um ranking is on south florida because they they they use um there's an agricultural land census that's done nationwide every few years and they use the trends in loss in farmland shown county by county in that census as one of their primary ranking criteria so that meant for the state of florida in this past cycle for 34 properties that were submitted to them statewide 11 were able to be funded which is more than double what they normally are able to fund so that's great in the state but um the bulk of those were in desoto county hardy county polk county since we're not losing farmland fast enough we rank low correct correct the better you do the worse you are are yes basically unfortunately um so yeah we should talk to our uh federal representative about that that can help us with that yeah um oh hey all right different hats on tonight got it okay well one thing that was um expressed to us in discussion with the state level nrcs staff is that we do have the opportunity to suggest revisions to or maybe slight modifications to their ranking criteria to place more emphasis on some aspects of projects that might reflect everyone having an opportunity to compete but that would um reflect on the excellence of the quality of the applications we submitted with maybe getting a couple more points which might raise a couple farms into yeah if anyone's preparing a motion i think it makes a lot of sense that we um suggest with our federal legislator some legislation to that effect it's similar to when you have a local match you rank higher from the state perspective for more funding so those that do well and have local matches they get more of the funding the federal it's like the opposite here like we we should be if we are preserving farmland we should be incentivized to continue to serve farmland and because we have programs in place to do that and we should be accessing federal money for that i think because that then incentivizes other counties to step forward and do that and um i know our our congresswoman in this district you know believes in this mission believes in agriculture sits on i think she sits on the farm committee yeah and so she could carry that type of message with our support of her um with regards to that and i think that's um when when you tell me this over the weekend when we were going through kind of i was like this makes literally no sense at all so anyways sorry you're the expert here so i'll defer to no i think it's just it's just a it's sort of a convention that our cultural easement programs tend to prioritize development pressure because it's like if there's no pressure then the farms are fine and the pro the idea of being proactive i don't think it's really been a thing for very long that's been historically yeah we've been we've been talking about food as a national security exactly initiative and if it truly is a national security initiative we want to help lead that totally and preserve it not only for development pressures because we got other things that can protect in our code for that but this is really about saving farmland and and anyways i'm on my soapbox and you haven't even gotten to this so go ahead okay thank you um so i will say just maybe to put a bow on the nrcs discussion um they did just open up a nationwide project application cycle that's essentially running through the month of may and what the local staff has told us is that our highest ranking projects will be submitted to that cycle and also those highest ranking projects will be carried over into the next cycle and we'll have the opportunity to maybe try and scrap for a couple more points on those projects as well particularly since we've done already the heavy lifting of preparing the applications for the previous cycle so we do we're not uh lacking hope there but we do recognize that funding with the federal government it's likely to be as i said maybe one or two of our best farms getting into the bottom of the funding um each year in terms of how it's been represented to us so far okay um and uh i think some i know that some of those landowners that we submitted applications on behalf of are here um so we are we are definitely working on behalf of our alachua county farm landowners in the ways that we're able to um four of those nine applications that we submitted four were submitted by us but with the partnership structure being rural and family lands the state and the feds so with the county just doing the application lifting and then the partnership should it be awarded the partnership would be between the state and the federal government for four of those farms uh this slide just shows what the um usda's minimum easement deed term document emphasizes the rights that um are represented for the federal government and again those minimum easement deed terms are attached to any easement that the federal government partners on so those are things like third party right of enforcement being reimbursed for a proportionate share of the easement should the easement be terminated due to you know what unforeseen future circumstance like a um large highway going through the middle of it or something that you know is kind of out of the control of the landowners um the the right to approve any amendments the right to um not be held liable for environmental issues or other um issues that may came come up that could make uh could make uh the federal government exposed in terms of liability with regards to that property so those are the general terms that they reserve typically though we would know if there was an environmental liability like a cattle dipping site or something like that yes um on any acquisition that is done through alachua county forever whether we're a partner or we're the only entity doing that um we we do do standard due diligence and so um we do title search we do uh phase one environmental site assessment we do for easements a baseline documentation report that documents takes locations and photographs of conditions and key locations on any easement property and we also of course complete a boundary survey as part of any closing that we complete we should know hopefully yeah i would think so just curious so now uh moving on to potential state partnership and the main entity that that partnership would exist through would be through the florida department of agriculture and consumer services what's called their rural and family lands protection program uh this is a program that um has been funded in the past was not funded well for a few years and then recently has had a tremendous amount of um focus and support uh at the legislative level um and so it's doing a really amazing amount of work statewide on agricultural easements um it's a state managed program and i think that's a key point to retain or walk away from here is that this is the state's program and they're looking for other entities to partner with it whereas in the federal example i just presented we were using our program and having the feds and having the feds come in as partners to us in this case this would be us coming in as a partner to the state are there any other counties that are operating under this program um i'm aware of um a small number of counties five that i'm aware of that are either engaged in discussions with this the state department of agriculture um about partnership and i'm aware of two that have actually closed easements um in partnership with the state um each of these county programs is funded by a different like language structure in their funding source so whereas we're funded by an infrastructure surtax some of these programs are funded by property tax a couple are funded by an infrastructure surtax but the enabling language for each of those is different in terms of what it allows um the expenditures to be what are the two counties that have closed these volusia has closed on one and sarasota has closed on one just one yes but are negotiating um others so or thank you not sarasota polk there's six there's six counties i think yeah well the the boards of those six counties have not yet um adopted um adopted like fully adopted the uh the easement structure okay yeah but are actively moving forward with negotiations yeah so um again in this structure then the base easement document is the state's document um it's highly flexible for landowner um agricultural use and protection for um changes in agricultural use in the future um it includes some specific conservation value protection uh but that's not the emphasis of of the um in looking at at partners especially as the state has really expanded that program in the last few years um they have offered two options for what what are two different templates of easement deeds that they'll offer to a partner the first option which is their long-standing sort of traditional option is that the state would hold title and their partner would not share in title um and their partner in this case alachua county um would be allowed what's called third party right of enforcement um now that state holding of titles solely has been a standard for um any lands owned by the state board of um internal improvement trust which is like the state entity that holds property um it's not just something specific to rural and family lands it's also true for florida forever acquisitions uh and other lands held by the state so um they just for um a very long time not shared title um when we were presented with this option uh on first review we we took it to the um infrastructure surtax oversight board and to the county attorney's office for their opinion and it was determined by both that um the language in our surtax ballot our surtax ordinance um the things that set forth the structure for our funds to be utilized for land conservation acquisitions um require that we acquire a property interest and um that third party right of enforcement alone did not qualify as a property interest so that made option one not an option for us um the right to enforce isn't an interest we have a legal memo from patrice boys that oversight okay and that that memo did reference um uh other legal decisions that have um been made we can provide other counties that are using this are operating outside of uh they don't have a surtax they don't have a requirement that's specified yeah so we have to go back out on a ballot if we want to do this and change the wording potentially under that under that issue i am what the ballot says is infrastructure so it's an infrastructure surtax yeah i mean i just i know we added rose and we added this wording uh with the intent of doing easements in 2022 and it's always been my thought you know whenever we go to renew this again which will probably be 2030 or 2032 i may or may not be here but if we do we should kind of bookmark today's meaning at this point so that we if we want to move forward under this scenario if we change allow us i think if you have the right to enforce that's an interest that's probably a better interest than actually owning the property because you're enforcing the easement as you negotiated with the landowner it's a really strong in my opinion stronger i mean i mean we could have a whole debate about that but i guess it's new option one's all stable that's what i'm hearing so option two well so in this this slide just references the surtax board meeting date uh where that discussion occurred and that decision was provided which was initially discussed in september 2025 and then um kind of finalized in january 2026 so option two as you said um so we we took that feedback to the state and we were not the only county that took that feedback to the state um and they said okay let me hear you um let's let's consider that and um after some time they uh came back with a alternate version of their easement um in which they do provide their partner in in this case alachua county um with co-grantee status but they also went through the document and removed um the right of enforcement um and and they had also affirmed that the county was essentially deferring all of those rights to the state um so it has an active it's not just that it's deleted it has an active affirmation that those rights are deferred to the state um subsequent discussions after we read the document and um noticed that edit um led to them agreeing to provide a seven-day notice to accompany their staff on monitoring site visits um because we indicated we we had no right to even enter into the property let alone inspect or enforce um and um other all other reference to rights of entry and monitoring on behalf of the county were removed so that's the option that is kind of before us right now so we own it but we can't access the property without seven day notice to go with their staff on their staff's regular um monitoring visits so um thanks yeah okay and there might be of course well i mean yeah the state and alachua county don't have this really awesome working relationship that great right okay so i think any questions on this point um i think to me you know in in pondering this and reviewing this it comes back to that point of that this is a state program and they're the opportunity is for us to partner in their program so um so how does this different from differ from easements that um the acf has worked on in the past um in all of our previous easements um we we have the title and right of enforcement so we have the two things that are kind of considered the two base components of an easement uh in this regard uh so that would be a difference and can i ask a question about that yes do we have any funding partners that work with us on our easements that don't that hold title but not enforcement or but but in any situations that are just funding partners solely not that i'm aware of we do have funding partners on fee simple properties that didn't gain any rights um of that type um but not on any of our easements and is that like is that like on the big water management district properties or um we have received i'm just running through them in my head we've received north american wetland conservation act funding for that we have to record a what's a document it's a notice of grant requirements on parcels that their funding helps contribute to that establishes a right for them um we've received florida communities trust funding they these programs have like a right where if we undo the conservation values they have a right to come in and take ownership so that is one where they there is an external right the dep springs protection grant funding is probably the one that doesn't have an actual recorded document um it's reimbursement funding for land acquisition that's probably the one where we have just funding and no affirmative document recorded and of the five or six other counties that have closed easements do any of those counties have closed easements where their only right is the ability to give them money and then ask for permission to access the land with the safe with seven days notice yeah so um i have the sheet where i jotted those down so they haven't all closed easements but some of them are in negotiation and haven't taken the easement deed to their board yet to to your equivalent your peers um so i'm aware of either two or three that have closed easements um volusia has closed on one that had um the third party right of enforcement hulk has closed on wait they did have the right of enforcement where but no title yeah so they closed on option one are there any counties that have title but do not have the right of enforcement okay sorry um talking about option two yeah so on option two i don't think anyone has closed on one yet um but they're in negotiation um we'll get to y'all in a minute i just want to know so perhaps one yeah perhaps one may have closed on one um but the others are like about to bring it to their board i think so they're probably close to getting board approval one if you guys mind if i ask yeah i'm gonna come up and answer that question you want to hear that yeah come on up here just introduce yourself and if you can answer that question from your real quick and then we'll get back just a question what other counties have closed on easements whether they hold title but do not have enforcement so um dean saunders saunders real estate um representing several of the landowners here and doing this i've been doing these easements for 34 years ever since you can just answer the question i'm sorry okay you're going to have a chance to speak okay fine i just answer to that question um i'm not aware of any that have closed without i mean with just the deed of title uh however since your staff raised that issue in request to fdax they actually have changed their position um and prefer to do deed of easement as opposed to third party enforcement and it's my understanding they're they've got six counties they're doing easements with now and there's nine more that they're working that are developing programs and or working with fdax to develop programs to do them but they've informed me that they really aren't going to offer the third party enforcement at this point they really prefer the deed of title and that was frankly an issue y'all raised and requested thank you dean okay so no right uh at this time yeah uh so um another difference is that the fdax easement cites to a different statute it cites to 470 it also references the statute that our easements cite to 70406 um four or 570 i'm sorry if i said 470 570 is um a florida department of agriculture and consumer services like specific statute and it's the one that establishes um the ability to do rural open space easements and and that's the type of easement that would be done through the rural and family lands protection program as opposed to conservation easements which is what 70406 allows so that's a a difference that has um you know maybe different implications um um but in general they both allow easements to be done an additional difference uh is that and i just referenced this that the fdax um rural and family lands easement because of the way it cites to statute it allows that any type of agriculture that's referenced in statute in the future and future changes to the statute would automatically be allowed on the easement except within areas that were designated as the their um special natural areas equivalent to what we have presented to you in the past as preservation areas and then their easement language allows the state to assign to another entity um a governmental entity so around our county we have lands that were previously agriculture that aren't developed yet that we might want to preserve they might fall low on our list because we require them to be in some sort of agricultural use typically would that change how the state would view those properties because they could be used for future agricultural use um the you know the state has their own ranking criteria that they utilize and um having the ability to be in current or future agriculture is a key part of that that's also a part of what we envisioned for the agricultural land strategy here in the county um i'm not sure that that would raise their opportunity on its own it would have a lot to do with some of the other key ranking criteria one of the ones that the state emphasizes very strongly is falling within the florida wildlife corridor it wouldn't serve them though that's my i don't i don't believe so okay no um but again i'm i'm um not the one implementing the state program yeah no i was just curious because that's a little bit different than what we would be looking at yeah that last bullet to me a crease to open up the door like could we require that for a last four county partnering with your program state and the only way we're going to do it is if we can enforce it so i know your language only allows you to it but assign us that right do that i mean our our attorneys have already tried to have that conversation and they've essentially go ahead well i think the chair was saying that the state would assign us their rights under it rather than us having co-enforcement rights we close we close on the property state has the enforcement rights before we fund it though we have a separate agreement that says you have to assign us the rights to enforce now we have the right to now we're good because now we have the right to enforce that's what we want we want the right to enforce um that's what all of our other easements are that's the that's the that's the to me it's a more important right than actually the ownership right because they it's enforcing the easement that we negotiated and it would still qualify if they have that ability so at least on the staff level they declined our offer to have us also have enforcement rights so that would be co-enforcement rights i think we might have people that may have influence above their staff i mean that's that's really under state law i would be okay if we could get enforcement rights i would be more apt to to want to proceed under their program if we can't get enforcement right so i don't see how we can well my point was is that if there was um if there was an opportunity for us to put land into protection that wouldn't qualify under our program because for instance it's not currently in agriculture that was why i asked that question oh sure i think i think that the the key thing that is important to understand of this is well there's three things one is that rural family lands is funded at levels that's never been funded before right right primarily in the past it's been big big ranches in south florida that are at high risk for development like at the headwaters the miapa river et cetera that are tend to attract this funding also through the wildlife quarter that's a primary like focus and objective and we don't we have a very little part of our county that falls to that so we haven't ranked very well but properties that have partnership funding kind of fall into a different ranking right so that's why if they don't qualify for ours then it doesn't really matter doesn't really matter they're looking for partnership funding so that that sort of like bumps their score up and they have more of an opportunity to negotiate with the state also these are really large properties that would be very expensive there's no way that we could do them alone or even probably do a majority of that part that part i understand right so it's sort of like how do we how do we figure out how to be a small part of this to to me i guess what i i'd love for us to just talk about is the idea of like one i do think that the state should at the very minimum give us right of enforcement should they not enforce and because contract law basically says if you don't if you don't enforce within five years then you don't then like you've basically nullified the contract right and so for me it's that five-year point so like i'd love to see the state but you're still relying on the state i know but they said they're going to do it and they and they you know and this is their program and so to me like let them enforce it and let us have secondary right of enforcement should they not enforce right so within five years and i guess or like be a funding only partner but at a much smaller level like we'll be a 25 partner you know we'll be a smaller partner like we're not coming in with half the deal if you're not or or some large significant portion of the deal if you're not going to let us have equal rights but if you but we can come in with some portion of the deal so they get their partnership check box right and we get that land protected in our county but we're not we're not such a big partner that it's like a huge chunk of our budget it's not a huge chunk of change for us and it's also like a low risk high reward right because if we put in 20 of a project and we get 1500 acres in our county protected right right i mean that's a big deal and i mean i have to realize like these farmers like they want their lands protected it's why they're doing this to begin with they're not like out there doing this and then trying to go like i appreciate you framing it that way that makes a lot more sense to me than the way that i've been thinking about it so i guess i'm thinking like either we go well i mean or we do both right we ask for both right well that's why it's a small percentage partner yeah it'd be a funding only partner like some we've seen in some other instances i think that there's been instances where there's been like a 25 or less partner and they like don't really have a lot of rights or just like coming in with some money to like make a project happen right or we say you know if you want us to come in with larger amounts of that funding like we want to see that we have that that right of enforcement and i mean i personally am okay if the state says we'll enforce it but if we don't enforce it and you can come with us some days right we can go with them we can check it out but like if they aren't enforcing it within that contract law terms of five years like we have the right of enforcement so that we're never going to be in a situation where suddenly that contract is void because there hasn't been enforcement of the contract within a period of five years number one i'm just thinking um is it that the state is afraid uh to lose the enforcement rights because if they gave it to local government that local government might put uh for stringent enforcement on the properties is because the reason i'm saying that because they have done a lot of preemption bills to stop us from doing certain things right that our local citizens want us to do that's why and we can't do the five years so that's i just made that is that we could get into an agreement but i think but the agreement itself is actually a contractual agreement so what they're enforcing is already in that contract that the landowner is going to sign and that we're going to sign too right so the terms of enforcement are only based on what's in that contract to begin with it's not like we can add things to it like willy-nilly it's sort of like so you don't envision the state saying um we preempt local governments from ever enforcing uh lands and just preempting us just like i don't know take a utility for example i'm not saying i think that the state should couldn't preempt us from but i mean if we have a you're saying like generally yeah i mean but then that's not gonna that's not gonna solve that's gonna ruin our entire program period that's not gonna change just this one contract that's gonna change everything we do but it can but isn't this just like the real estate that is owned by the university of florida like in it's like that same kind of process like the state has control over it and they're contracting that out to an entity but the state has the ultimate like right of enforcing it so this is kind of the same kind of thing just completely different because we're talking about agriculture and not other state lands so hold on so i got back to chuck i just wanted to make i just think that that's probably might be some of their reasoning i think their reasoning primarily is because they they feel i'm just going to throw this out there i mean i'm i'm presuming but i think that oftentimes counties particularly ours which is focused in conservation and land management in a big way how do you have do have like more of an aggressive approach sometimes like in their mindset when it comes to how we do enforcement and they're trying to develop relation well but that's different than like that's different than adding things that they wouldn't i i think we all are going to be enforcing based on the contract right the contract is going to have terms and we're going to be enforcing based on those terms we can't just like add terms but i think what they're saying is like we might be on lands a bunch more and i think that they feel like they don't want to bother the farmers like i think that they're trying to create the conflict happens when a county person goes on with the state person and the state person says no issue and the county person says yeah there's an issue and now the state's saying well we disagree and you can't enforce anyways so we're good right so that with but our county staff is saying but wait a minute you said x y and z and so that's where the conflict happens the conflicts happen and look we're putting the money up just like they are we should have the same exact rights as they have and if the landowner no not maybe if we're putting the money up it's our taxpayers money we should have the same rights in my opinion maybe your opinion is different but my opinion now if our staff doesn't think it's being informed or doesn't think it's being followed and the state staff does now we have a conflict and if we've given away all our rights at the beginning we've given away all our rights at the beginning we don't have any rights in because the state is the arbiter of that conflict and while i i we are subdivision of state and i and i generally have great relationships with our state i can see where this could create a massive conflict if it's not done on the front end versus on the back end that's that's my one i think i hear what you're saying i haven't really thought about the late enforcement i need to think about that a little bit but you know i i don't know it's our it's our taxpayers money it's not it's not so we have to represent our our taxpayers right and i guess what i'm saying isn't that the right of enforcement isn't important believe me it i think it's ridiculous that we have the whole title but not have the right of enforcement when the right of title gives us nothing if we don't have the ability to enforce the easement it's like bizarro to me but i understand that that's it's how we wrote the ordinance and it's the legal opinion and i did you know i i talked to a couple of other attorneys i know just to sort of get their general take on this idea and like they they did some homework for me and they were like yeah so they actually totally agree with patrice's position like there wasn't any wiggle room in that position i feel like we're pretty much stuck with that situation like you're saying the way that that language is written you know when we do go back out hopefully we can renew this program and we would be able to maybe change that so that we could just have enforcement and have that check our box but right now it doesn't and so you know to me it's like what is the risk and what is the reward right and to me the risk is that you know we have 5 000 acres or more of land right now that we're talking about that could be turning into housing developments you know like clustered quarter acre lot housing developments in our agricultural areas full of septic tanks and you know and like not what we want at all right or we can have the preservation of these farms long term in act helping to protect potential food economy and at least protecting the world character of our county right and the reward is we could do it with very little money i mean from my perspective like i'm not interested in being a 50 50 partner if we don't have enforcement like i i i get that like it doesn't make sense why would we come in as a 50 partner with money but not have 50 of the rights but if we're coming in as a smaller percentage partner we get the reward of protecting that much land with a pretty low risk because the reality is the whole reason these farmers are ending in this for entering in it from beginning with this because they want to protect their land right if they wanted to develop it great it's really great great great thank you all for and if and the state has had this program in place for quite a while and they've continued to do it now i do know i mean we're seeing them potentially there's conversations about removal of easements on water management district planet like we're seeing these kinds of things happening in real time right now so i don't i'm not deluded that it's not possible that you know the easements could be dissolved somehow or the state could sell like designate some other entity that could change the terms it could we write into the contract if anything were changed we get our money back i doubt it i'm not going to land on it from state i mean michelle wants to talk and then back to chuck and i think so i did too but um i will say that this is a policy discussion right so we're talking about the policy of prioritizing things that have a cost share you certainly can make the decision to buy to pay for these easements outright just we need to have some more money designated to this pot and you don't need the cost share and you don't have that issue so you do have other options available to you if you don't if you believe we have more properties on the active acquisition list that i mean these people haven't even made it to our active acquisition and i'm just saying that what we're talking about is how cost share is handled and who has the enforcement rights and who has ownership but that's because we're doing it as cost share so the option you know you always have the ability under the policy to say we're not you know cost share isn't the only way to manage this if this is what we want to do okay chuck and then um sophia and then mariel i don't want to be the bad guy today but from what i'm thinking that if if we did it with the state and say the farm owners agree is that a deal killer because we want that um rights do we help the farmers or do you require the right we stick on our rights to for the cost share for the money from the state but i'm just talking about the enforcement part so is that really a deal killer yeah talking about that's what the state is uh right now the question is the deal killer for you all you have to make that policy yeah but i'm just saying but but but it'd be a deal killer to the farmers yeah i don't think that they know yet because they haven't gotten a deal yet right now they're in a place where they're trying it's like a ranking list and they're ranked pretty low like say in the 300s or 400s on a list of a thousand properties or maybe not even i don't know but they're somewhere in the middle of the list right they're not high ranked they're not low ranked the partnership would rank them higher would move them actually into a different pool so they would be able to start negotiating but they don't have a deal yet struck with the state a specific deal struck with the state and we will hear from them after before we get to a motion i'd like to hear from you yeah as soon as we're done with the discussion here we'll open it up did you have anything before uh did you go to sylvia mr chair our experience has been that we have pushed back quite a bit on the language in these documents and we've gotten nothing again that is on the staff level this is on an attorney level but we have not been able to get them to come off any of the language my my question had to do with um the whole discussion of enforcement activities in my head when i think of an enforcement activity with respect to agricultural land i'm thinking about a requirement for best management practices for instance is that the kind of thing we're talking about we should have provided the easement so you can see the language that we're yeah that's that's what's in my head and i can't remember all the different things but in my mind i would rather have a farm in protection from development that might not be following best management practices to the county standard and still doing it to the state standard that i would then not have the farm at all that's sort of where i'm at yeah if i may other examples um would be dumping materials on the property which has happened on one of our county held easements before the significant amount of road material that the landowner acquired that we detected on an enforcement or a monitoring visit and then had to require the landowner to remove acres of fill material it could also be these easements will sometimes have building envelopes or set aside areas where the landowner can build additional infrastructure and it could be building outside of that building envelope so functionally developing the property is another example um that has been seen in different easements around the nation um and then a hazardous material sort of incident would be another thing that but but those are things that i think the state would agree with us on on an enforcement action and i think what we were thinking about is where you were talking about the the part where a stated person and a county person would both go to a property and disagree about something and i think they would most likely be apt to disagree about something like the best management practice when dumping of hazardous waste or development would be pretty obvious uh yeah that was my thought yeah let's get through our slides and then we'll open up to the public and then we'll come back and have okay this is just a note that um you know we have the the county registry of protected public places and in general easements whether they're agricultural or not are not going to be placed on that registry so um they wouldn't have that additional protection um so we just listed some options that you've already discussed several of so options to consider um modifying the objectives of the agricultural land protection strategy as it had been originally laid out um only seeking partnerships that retain the county um rights and interests primarily in this case has been discussed title and the right of enforcement um establishing funding limits when county the county receives fewer rights that's also been brought up um just going ahead and partnering with rural and family lands under option two um and and accepting that we do not get the right of enforcement that's an option as well and uh other options if um there are creative ones that come to your mind as was said earlier um you know part of why this discussion is is happening right now today it was a request by your board but also this this is the time period where the state is ranking their 2026 um applications so projects that were submitted for consideration potential easements this year and um so they they have reached out to um any entity partner entity as well as folks that represent the landowners like brokers um to just ask for confirmation of partnership um and on specific properties and so there's that's an aspect of the timing um you know for this year of course there are other years to come as well so um that is just you know a note about the calendar aspects of this okay so commissioners do you want to hear from the public first or do you want to i just can i just point out one other thing i want to say one of the things that i also want to point out is that we've part of our sort of structure of the program back in um slide four is that we direct staff to prioritize projects with cost sharing and so you know this is one of if not the major cost sharing opportunity for agricultural land investments yeah so you know i mean we have the usda asap and then they also have a grassland that's like a little like there's something else but that's the main one and then this one you know and so it's like those are our two major partnership opportunities and so if we if we preclude this program from collaborating with lager county or we can't find some common ground for secondary right of enforcement with the state or something then we've effectively killed it killed our ability to do those partnerships i mean we can still do projects like hitchcocks or you know we can still do projects that we would prioritize but we would effectively kill the agricultural easement partnership components of this or the majority of them so i do think it behooves us to at least try to find something that we can all agree on with the state that works for us all i just want to point that out yeah and that's a great point the policy language that doesn't prior that allows these to right have equal priority to caution yeah and i what i would ask for those that are familiar with other county programs that are actually working um if you could let us know how under our surtax wording we could structure something that's similar that would be helpful for me um because i i i am not inclined to proceed with relying on the state for enforcement unless um unless it's under one of your kind of proposals of reduced uh cost sharing or some form of enforcement after a period of time five years seems like a long time to me well i would yeah i mean i guess it would be if it's if they haven't enforced it in four because we wouldn't want to hit that five-year threshold so my thing is that they haven't enforced yeah so anyways all right so what we're going to do is we want to hear from all of you and we want to give you ample time to speak uh we have a three minute uh clock so the green means go yellow means 30 seconds red means let the next person speak if you need to speak for more than three minutes and someone's here that you can use their time from if you want to announce that at the beginning and just that person kind of they're going to claim the time that'll give some people maybe a little bit more time um if that works because sometimes that's helpful when we're in these types of situations and so with that if you'll come up introduce yourself up here and then uh give us your thoughts we want to hear from you you are if you need ada you can also sit at this chair or the podium whatever works and i know this is mr dean saunders because i met it here just a few minutes ago yeah so as previously discussed my name is dean saunders saunders real estate um i actually was in the legislature once upon a time and got the state to start buying development rights so i am incredibly familiar with all these programs and have had the privilege of representing some three or four hundred thousand acres uh being developed being protected since my 34 years of getting out sort of with cynthia as you know um but and i i understand the struggle y'all are facing and that's why you get paid the big bucks to be the policy makers but just so you and and you'll hear from some landowners here there's about 8 000 acres represented by our farm one of the landowners is not here uh all on your county acquisition list it's a matter of resources um there are over 500 applicants for the rural and family lands land protection program and they um again i've represented a lot of landowners and i've these are really good phenomenal projects that y'all have in alachua county they just did not for some reason rank highly in the states the f tax program when they when they did it so that's unfortunate but where y'all have an advantage is that you have a phenomenal program and the state is willing by the way paul norfleet has said he's yielding some time to me so so so i'm i'm trying to i'm trying to hit some of all your points but um the um your staff has done a phenomenal job uh working with landowners trying to get partnership funding find where it is working this program the state has said if you have a program that will bring forward money and a partnership we'll take that project out of the cube and move it to the top of the list so effectively which is a great way of leveraging money dep does not do that with the florida forever program and while andy and her staff have worked very hard to get nrcs get us teed up for nrcs they had four million dollars to give out in 78 applicant and as previously noted by by andy they do it by priority of farmland loss alachua county is number 50 out of 67 on the farmland cap uh farmland loss category good for you you're not losing that farmland but it's just doesn't it's again it's a policy decision they've made mr chairman i understand you're thinking well let's protect as much land as we can but they do tend to prioritize those areas that are growing and and fastest so that so the chances of getting nrcs money is remote the best opportunity is this program 250 million dollars last year the legislature is talking about that again that at that level this year uh unfortunately they are not talking about very much money for florida forever at all but and so this does offer an opportunity for you to protect at least up to 8 000 acres that are already on your list um and and and i i understand i mean listen i get the political process i get the junk you know the back and forth we've tried jessica and i norfleet have tried to work with ftax we've both had conversations with them and they've just said one time they told me one or the other right either right of enforcement or joint title but we understood that you all were on joint title and that that was you had to have joint title we were both told pretty pretty sternly uh me more sternly than jessica but but that no we're not we're not going to do both we're not going to do joint title and regard enforcement and so here we are at this conundrum and a policy decision that y'all have to make is it a greater risk that the state won't enforce their easement or that these properties are going to one day be developed if not protected because i can't promise you or my landowners that i represent that we're going to jump to the top of the list suddenly when they do a re-ranking by the way they have a whole new set of applicants and a whole another ranking process and this thing will get jungled again so if we can move quickly we could probably preserve some of those opportunities and so that's really what we're here today for and i want you to meet our landowners and i again i get it's a policy decision you all have to make which is the greater risk take the money and not have the enforcement because we don't do you really think the state's not going to enforce the easement and most of these are very minor violations if they are at all and so you know how the process works every time when when they do the easement they go and do a baseline documentation so they go and uh verify everything that's on the property where it is what it is put all the roads on there the wells all the stuff right so that's the bible that everything if there's an enforcement action it references back to that baseline documentation most of the violations if there are any i mean i think they've had maybe two and i don't think they ever filed a suit against anybody it's more of a hey you know what you you kind of built that shed over into the area that was not in the server i mean that was uh you got to move it so they've been pretty minor i'm here to answer any questions if you have any anyone else that want to yield time to dean or just if y'all have any questions i'm here as a resource okay we'll call you back up if we do let's hey mitch nurse thank you my name is sarah younger and today i'm speaking on behalf of sierra club swanny st john's conservation committee first off i want to thank everyone for their leadership in alachua county forever program this community has long recognized that protecting our working lands and natural systems is essential not just today for for many generations to come and we strongly support the agricultural land protection strategy the goal of leveraging partnerships to expand conservation i want to acknowledge that pursuing partnerships with both federal and state programs is both smart and responsible approach but i'm also here because we believe there is a critical issue that deserves careful consideration you're all aware of it really comes down to this protection only works if it's enforceable under the proposed state partnership structure the county might might contribute funding and even be listed on the easement but would not retain rights to inspect monitor and force the terms so i have to ask if we can't enforce it should we really be funding it because at the end of the day ownership without authority is not really conservation and i want to be clear about how we got here the county did exactly what it should do it sought out partnerships to stretch local conservation dollars and but in doing so it's now being asked to accept a structure where the state controls the easement and limits the county's ability to act so this is not a traditional partnership really it's a situation where the county is being asked to contribute funding while giving up the ability to ensure the conservation actually holds these easements are meant to last forever but forever only works if someone's able to ensure the terms are actually upheld and your own materials acknowledge that easements can be weakened over time without monitoring and enforcement from our perspective this is about public trust and accountability and these are taxpayer dollars public expects that when we invest in conservation we're securing a real durable protection not arrangements that depend entirely on another agency to enforce we also have to be honest about the broader context at the state level conservation funding has been repeatedly sidelined programs like for florida forever have not been funded at the level voters and communities were promised and that's not just the budget issue it reflects a lack of political will to prioritize conservation so when the same system offers partnership funding but only under the terms of limit local control it raises serious concerns are we being asked to fund conservation while giving up the ability to ensure it actually happens because in tallahassee they're not prioritizing conservation it makes it even more important than alachua county does and it does with full accountability and authority much of the land under consideration sits within car systems and aquifer recharge what happens on these lands directly affects our land groundwater springs and rivers we do want to acknowledge and appreciate the board for already taking that importance that by incorporating sinkholes and cars features into the ranking criteria that's exactly the kind of forward thinking we support but those protections must be paired with the ability to monitor and enforce them okay so we'll keep our message straightforward conservation without enforcement is just a promise if we can't enforce we shouldn't fund it and on behalf of the sierra club swanee st john's conservation committee we respectfully urge you to reject any partnership structure that removes the county's enforcement and inspection authority prioritizing the partnership models where the county retains meaningful control and accountability and strengthen the easement criteria to protect ensure protection of water quality springs in our sensitive car systems alachua county has been a leader in conservation for decades this is an opportunity to continue that leadership not just in how much land we protect but how well we protect it thank you for your time appreciate it tell me your name joanne all right thank you joanne all right next speaker please danny hall operation based in evanston florida which if y'all don't know where evanston is it's a suburb of micanoke it's got a over a thousand acres on the banks of orange lake and kind of pinned between there and highway 441 so if you go down towards ocala and look left towards orange lake you'll see our see our farm see our cattle and all our green space but i just wanted to come today and introduce myself and try to impress upon the uh the board of county commissions and mr chairperson and also andy and her team how important that this is to to me and to my family to be able to conserve this land moving forward i also wanted to thank all of you all um formerly mentioned for having the wisdom and the foresight of funding such activity here in in alachua county and and i think um as far as the particular issues that we're discussing today it would just it would be a real shame not to be able to take advantage of this partnership and and i understand mrs younger's concern with the enforcement side of things but you know the enforcement by one entity versus the other in my opinion would be a whole hell of a lot better than track houses as far as you can see from 441 to orange lake and unfortunately as the generations go on richardson brothers has been in business for over 100 years the more the generations that come in between the first generation the the ownership is fractionated and we have myself my family i have four boys and some of them which would no doubt like to work on the farm at some point in time my cousin ray's here with me he's over there sitting by dean with a funny looking shirt on and he's got a son also that that would like to participate in the farm so there's a legacy component to this and as residents of alachua county you know we feel very strongly about it and the last thing i kind of want to leave y'all with and that when my time's up is that if you have ever traveled i know you have from here to south florida you get to that intersection where you go down towards the turnpike used to be beautiful cow pastures and orange groves and rolling hills and now it's houses and bulldozers and for as far as you can see and that that's what we're trying to to prevent so you know our family farm corporation is willing to take a hit on the value of the property to not have to sell out to developers if if at all possible so that that's the core of what we're we're here for and i really hope that y'all can work out the political legalese part of all this to take advantage of the programs that you put in place and allow them to operate the spirit that they were into thank you very much thank you thank you next speaker please mr chair mechanic commission i'm brad etheridge i represent uh whiter's cattle company um we any and we've done quite a bit together through the years with the family in lockswood county and had a presence here for a long time we appreciate uh the conversation today uh as i listen today we look at a lot of things that you have to understand that after about 120 years in between mary and levy and lockswood counties this is a huge decision for a family to make this forever decision we appreciate what you all have done in conservation for lockswood county uh we're here to listen and work our way through this because as adam and i represent today generation four um the decision to do this affects a lot of generations ahead and just last week we did a strategic planning meeting with our family uh to look at the next hundred years and we want it to look a lot like it looks now so i think our goals are probably all the same how we get there may be two different things than what we discussed through and if we're going to make decisions that last forever they're worthy of the discussions that we're having and probably not quick decisions so i do appreciate uh what lots of counties doing and and the things we've done in the past too thank you thank you thank you next speaker please good afternoon my name is scott eubanks and i'm part of brain stock farm located in mucanope uh i'm the seventh generation uh to be raised and work on our family farm and i'm proud to say uh i'm raising eight so we're very excited about it uh i'm blessed yes sir eight generations i'm blessed uh another 20 years we'll see 200 years in lodge county uh for my family this isn't just about land it's our livelihood our heritage and hopefully our future uh i've been on farms across my state or across the state from escambia to day county and i've witnessed thousands of acres of farmland and open space disappear and once it's gone it's never coming back i'm not against growth but if we don't manage it right we'll lose more than land we'll lose local food production open space wildlife and a way of life i appreciate the direction this commission has taken to protect that i really do uh it matters a lot i also understand there are still details being worked out between the county and the state but from landowner's perspective delays have real consequences and missed opportunities don't come back this directly impacts whether families like mine can keep our land in agriculture so my ask is simple i encourage this commission to move forward with a partnership approach that allows these programs to work together because alignment between the lodge county and the florida department of agriculture will put more land in conservation faster thank you uh what this opportunity is here right now so let's not miss it thank you mr chair members of the commission uh thank you so much for having this conversation with us said you know the state of florida is losing about 45 000 acres of farmland statewide we got a thousand people moving in here and the pressure uh to to sell is just tremendous the price of land is tremendous and it's just it's hard now these conservation easements are just one of the tools in the toolbox you know we producers have to see profit it's a business it's not just a family operation it's a business they have to make money to pay the taxes to pay you guys uh for the roads and the things so they have to make money if they don't there has to be other options and these conservation easements are just another tool that they can utilize you know you have a rare and great opportunity in this room just right here today with over 8 000 acres that you can put into that conservation if you can find a solution uh whether it be a you know a joint effort with the state or with federal whatever we we would encourage to join effort with the state because there is a large pool of money there and you can do a lot more with what you have by partnering with them but i think if you think you know one of the speakers mentioned you drive down i-75 i was born and raised in sumter county okay it was about as rural a county as there can be i'm a fifth generation or excuse me sixth generation cattle producer in that county and my boys were sixth to seventh generation and we want to remain in the cattle operation as well we just wish our county commissioners had the vision you guys had and the funding you had that could have potentially stopped some of that by putting it in conservation in perpetuity you know some of those pastures that that you see nothing but rooftops and pools and and those god-awful water towers i used to spend my summers in high school and community college running cows through there on horseback and it's just it's horrible to see what has happened but you have a tremendous opportunity i encourage you to to find a way to either partner or to make this deal work because time is at the absence there is funding from the state right now and i just would encourage you to try to utilize your resources to the best of your ability so that we can stop some of this growth and continue producing food and fiber as a national security but also in this region water is a huge issue these places provide tremendous water uh aquifer storage and recharge uh wildlife habitat green space all the things that people move to florida aside from the beaches so it's it's extremely important again thank you so much um for your for listening to the producers uh for listening to us and having this conversation today thank you thank you all for for having this meeting thank you for being so flexible um good afternoon y'all been great so far and given us a lot of your time i am jessica norfleet and i'm here with my husband and we're coming in strong support of your partnership discussion and as was mentioned earlier really a discussion for a solution some middle ground in terms of your partnership with fx and rural and family lands in that project as you all know we're in west alachua county and it's changing fast newberry's urban service area which our farm is in it's filling up faster than ever projected the question is isn't it will grow it's really whether the agricultural areas within that area and our heritage survives the growth and i would like to add i don't know if the other families here represented have received development offers i know we've received multiple development offers for our property so i did want to make sure to mention that as y'all know conservation easements keep land in private hands on tax rolls and permanently in production it retires those development rights and the land continues to function as the green space as wildlife habitat and aquifer recharge for the florida um every acre of easement that's protected really counts towards that really broad big 2030 goal that i know was talked about earlier it also happens without the county taken on i know it was discussed earlier too the fee simple ownership or the maintenance costs to my fiscal folks in this board the most the best bang for your buck a county effects partnership leverages the state's nearly 250 million dollar rural family land budget and every county dollar brings in several state dollars to be transparent as was mentioned our family is a property that has applied for this program that's why we're here speaking publicly for it we believe in this program we want the county empowered to use it for the dozens of families that are going to come behind us the families who are here this afternoon we respectfully ask for your support with fdax what that partnership might look like obviously we're supportive we understand it's going to be a heavy discussion we really just want to see that partnership we understand it may be partial we understand you might have enforcement joint trips most of us are all good with that we we really have nothing to hide and was mentioned earlier we want to protect this property as well too so furthermore we want to thank the team who's presented these applications who's put in so much work um that was all we just want to really keep it green and cows and agriculture help keep florida green so um thank you guys for your time we appreciate it good afternoon everyone i'm tom k i'm the executive director of alachua conservation trust i've obviously worked with a number of you all uh checking with you and talking about conservation easements on your property we're also the contractor uh with alachua county forever for helping you do negotiations on deals um want to give a little context of where we're at here um i got here a little late but i was listening to you all as you're coming in but one of the things is in back in 2021 and it was wonderful to come after ms norfleet is because we talked about uh partnering with a lot of different organizations so alachua uh alachua county uh act the feds um uh and when i say the feds i mean usda nrcs and um the folks from flor forever uh dep and fdex we're on a call about how we can merge all our agreements we kind of came to an agreement that we could work together and the feds said we'll allow you to put your minimum d terms on the back of these conservation easements so whatever easements you come up with we'll put those on the back at that time fdex was sort of good at the same kind of concept and so that would be in essence if we funded these things if the county funded it if the feds would kick in money they could still hold the easements it's much like that way still with both ale the agland easements and rcpp i think that's the thing important remember we talked about agland easements there's rcpp there's gonna be another proposal to be here shortly which would be cost share 50 up to 50 percent of conservation easements we're talking about seven million dollars coming on board for partnering with those fundings things have changed though even right now we we've had a number of fx easements coming in uh with where we're going to partner daily and fx said no thanks we'll do them on our own they're trying to move them through but also didn't want to have the minimum d terms that nrcs had that and so from my perspective it raises a lot of concerns for us about whether that is and i think we've talked a lot about being fiscally responsible and as somebody else who's got a farm if i was going to buy i think all of us could appreciate this we were going to buy we're going to buy a tractor together or i was going to buy an ag easement which is by i would buy an access easement into my farm would i be willing to kick in 50 of that and not have my name on there or the right to ensure that i sort of had that going long term i probably wouldn't and so that's my real big concern with this and the fact that there is the the problem right now with the state's conservation easements which is the escape clause and so i think that needs to get figured out i mean i'm certainly all for caution and trying to make that work and probably more than anybody particularly my role at act no one's ever pushed more for ag ag easements and i've got a former board member that would vouch for that but i think when we're trying to do this stuff and being responsible for this and somebody who can't paying for a while spaces public places to get this funding in place i do think it's important that we have some kind of right enforcement on these things or ownership would be the appropriate thing i mean on the flip side i mean basically what they're asking to do and someone else shared this with me is like they're asking you all to fund their program right this is not a partnership in the same way because if it's a partnership in the same way it'd be like what we're doing with the usda and rcs where you know we're both getting on and we both have the right enforcement okay let's bring you back to the board um i've got a couple questions but i'll defer to you all first uh go ahead uh commissioner alfred and then commissioner tom mentioned escape clause yeah i'm gonna just kind of pull that up i mean it basically allows the the state to get out of a conservation easement just a land or protect land on the conservation meeting continue to limit use of property um i'm sorry i'm pulling up something here the release of a state held and all other land held in conservation easement there's just a there's language currently in the in 70406 subsection 4 that allows them basically to get out of conservation is that same language in chapter 570 only by judiciary sorry i jumped into your role and i was told that 70406 only applies to subsection 11. terms of sorry the terms of the easement can only be you can only abrogate the easement if it no longer meets the goals and objectives which it was met and that has to be decided by the judiciary if you have joint title this is an issue it has been an issue for other regulatory con use of conservation easements in mitigation banking and in other programs that rely on the placement of a conservation easement as a restriction against the land but not on the purchased easements those purchased easements are a contract with that landowner and the entity entering into it if you partner and you're going to have joint ownership and let's just let's play it out the the doom day scenario somebody wants to get out of their easement and fdac says hey we agree with that let's go to the court but if you're on joint title they got to go to you too so you get a say in that as to whether that ever were to happen but it's really the courts that make that decision so that is a real misunderstanding and mischaracterization of the use of conservation easements tom i'm surprised that you would say that because it's because it's no no i i get it but it's but it's a problem and it's so yeah i don't i don't want to misrepresent have things misrepresented understood if i might i do want to say that it's that that isn't coming from tom k the national organization tax watch which is a non-partisan organization that checks how taxpayer dollars has been calling into question 70406 and the fact that conservation easements may or may not be permanent because of that escape clause so i do think it is a matter that's being discussed at a national level and at a state level it's not just at a local level i think i do think that it's some republicans i'm sorry i either get elected and sit up here or if you you know thank you thank you all right do you have other questions um mr chair may i speak to that yeah sure these are what we're talking about is called a rural lands protection easement we've been calling them conservation easements it's a different statute that it's under yeah it's under uh 570 rather than anything else um i can come back does that chapter do we know if that chapter also has i haven't seen one we're looking at it now okay all right no i'm good i'll wait let me go you go um i mean i i don't know where we're if we're still allowing for public comment or if we're still comments closed until we have a motion then we'll come back okay so we open it up if we get a motion for public comment that way you have another shot i guess you know i've already stated in my position i feel like i i do agree we need enforcement authority i'm really frustrated that they that there's this law like or some kind of you know judgment somewhere that made it so that enforcement isn't authority or isn't title or isn't an interest in land that's the right word isn't an interest in land but it isn't and so we're in this crossroads it's also really frustrating to me that fdx doesn't want to come to the table with a county that is obviously shown a commitment to protecting our ag lands and working with our landowners to try to do that um but i what's the typical share cost share well most of the land i mean most of the projects i i've seen in a lot of our projects or a lot of our cost shares tend to be 50 50. 50 50. so 50 from us 50 from the state right i mean no we haven't done one of these we haven't done one i mean what's the typical what are what's that that's typically looking for i don't know that there's i don't know that there's a typical i mean i don't know the answer ask the staff that question so annie what's the typical cost share percentage with rural and family lands um the counties that i've spoken to again some of them have not taken this to the board yet and gave me comments like we hope to work this out or we are still hoping to get that language included so some of these things don't reflect the final version but at least two counties said that the state had told them 50 percent was the cost share threshold to get that ranking bump and the others were so on a million dollar easement the county does 500 000 and they do 500 yes for those two counties yeah and so um what did we do can i jump in here because i'm jumping your time okay i'll come back to you okay what what did we do with the hitchcock where we actually ran that program to michelle's point we applied for a grassland of special significance um easement through the nrcs that was federal through it was federal in the end uh due to various challenges with getting that finalized um we ended up buying that without partner so we the county paid the full portion of that easement right so you know one way is to continue to continue to talk to fdacs continue to say look we got to have enforcement rights um but we could do our own collateral county rural and family lands program um right now we've allocated 10 of 150. we take basically we could we could double that number or we could take we could try it for a couple of years but we continue to negotiate and we could take control of this process ourselves to the sierra points uh sierra clubs point uh and this is where i'm leaning um we can negotiate directly with our citizens our landowners um and we hold the easement we hold the enforcement we hold the title and we continue working with fdacs until these other nine counties figure out something because i i want to work with my citizens i i i really appreciate the folks that have spent their day with us but there were they're really talking about protecting generations of land in line with what alachua county's attempting to do i think it's going to be so successful that we're going to renew it in 2032 i won't probably be here but i think it's something that will continue and i like um alachua county leading and not relying on the state because for me the state is complicating something that shouldn't be complicated and i don't have a lot of faith that in a year or two years or three years or a new administration that something won't change again and here we are with no enforcement and title and we got to wait on the courts if we ever have an issue i'm just not interested me personally right now but i'm very interested in proceeding with our with our landowners under our own program really it's just a matter of allocation of funds how much money do we want to put into this and we originally said 10 million of 150 you know we could try this for a couple of years and keep that number the same and then have another policy discussion about that just like we did in 2022 when mary ellen said we need more parks and rec plan and we went from 90 to 80. you know that could be what this board decides and come back in two years and see how well we're able to negotiate directly with our citizens that we care about to not worry about prioritizing fdocs 250 for statewide i don't know how much in alachua county we'll get of that anyways we'll probably get how much 10 million five million maybe it's hard to say but um last year they did two easements in alachua county um currently in in terms of what remains on last year's ranking i think there would have been potentially four more that could have gotten bumped up the number of acres though is not um not necessarily tremendously high there there were a handful of kind of 100 acre and 300 acres that were right on the line versus this board could prioritize that list this board could prioritize what's the most what's the most important one and we could make those decisions and it would be hard because there's more there's more easements than there's money we know that even in just in alachua county but what we're really arguing about is a 50 percent cost share and losing total control which i don't i thought it was a 25 percent cost share we're talking about so the two counties right right yes have reflected what their experience with the state has been and we let some of these other red counties work out what does what happens with fdax why we just proceed with the last four county and do our thing that's where i am commissioners i don't i don't know i haven't heard from mary helen i heard from chuck i don't know where you two are but i i want to do something that allows us to move forward with our citizens continue talking to the state but i i'm kind of not interested in conceding to the state on the right to enforce i just don't think that's what the our taxpayers approved when they when we added this i mean thanks anna i mean this wouldn't even be a discussion if we hadn't added it but they added it and while i don't necessarily agree with the legal opinion it is what it is you know and so until we can either change that on the ballot i think we move forward with an alachua county program and that's where i am i don't know if i have enough consensus on this board but let's do mary and then chuck and anna i have a quick question what is the um average cost per acre we're looking at for ag lands i know that that could vary considerably but uh you know 30 000 50 000 um it really depends on where it is in the county right west versus east um and how dry or wet it is but um note that for an easement typically this is not a hard and fast but typically the easement value is going to be somewhere around 50 percent of the total total value probably in the easement yeah i so it could really vary probably right now from 2 000 an acre to 10 000 an acre depending on where you are and for some unique properties it could be higher um it's very variable so 10 000 you know times 8 000 acres is easy math that's you know 80 million bucks half of that half of that would be 40. we wouldn't be able to do it right now we'd be able to do 25 percent at the 10 million allocation yeah yeah i've just tried to place the value on on you know what are what is sitting in the audience but it's a budgetary you know long-term thing if we're talking about trying to do it you know we would have to look at which properties are at the highest risk of turning into development right now and and and the others could still be doing the f tax program yeah yeah chuck well you know i've been kind of conservative a little bit sometimes and this one is a tough one i'll just be honest with you not really understanding where the state is really coming from in terms of what their side is i know what our side is we want to preserve that farmland but i'm sitting here and i'm thinking 8 000 acres is it worth taking a chance to get the 8 000 acres or to lose the 8 000 acres to develop yes that's that's where i'm at i'll just be honest with you uh well i think that if they're going to meet the criteria i'm just saying some of the farmers if they meet the state criteria they get selected but they haven't so far right so if but i'm sure these farms are real great farms they're going to do it by the book and all of that stuff so i wouldn't have an issue there but i would have an issue with other farms that we're not sure of you know what i'm saying and so and i don't want to pick and choose either so it's been very difficult for me to sit here but you know i've heard anna talk about the food economy uh talk about uh preserving uh the farmlands in in our community and um and trying to prevent development in our community and protect those farmlands so so i'm one of those guys that i'm conservative but if if i'm willing to gamble on trying to keep the 8 000 acres but i don't want to give all our rights to the state either so that's that quagmire i'm in right now is how do we go about it or we just go about it and spend the 10 million dollars a year uh with local farmers and trying to get it but i'm just heard that that's not a lot of money to be honest with me so i mean i just don't understand how how we get there but i do want to protect those eight thousand acres and we have most of them in the room i think today so i think they're willing that majority of them in the room yeah right so i think that we can figure out a way to really do this and kind of protect some of our rights too i think that but well if we do it then we can protect it right it's going to cost us more money right 50 more money so i guess what i want to say well first of all i want to know how many of those acres are actually in alachua county because that 8 000 acres includes farms that are on like multiple counties so you're talking about you know maybe at least two of them right aren't all yeah all 8 000 is in alachua county so the 8 000 is in alachua county then they have additional acreage and other okay great um and how many of those firms have succession plans do we know are successions plans part of our application process um it's succession planning is something we definitely talk to the farmers about but might actually ask gene to inform our our senior planner who's implementing the strategy taking the lead gene willoughby is over here and gene come on up come on we're going to ask you a question that you don't know the handle too and then see how you answer it yeah uh northfleet richardson ramsey whitehurst which ones have succession plans as far as the ones that have actually filed one i know um jessica northwaite sent me hers and so we forwarded that on to nrcs with their application um for the others they may have one in place or maybe a draft but it wasn't one that we submitted so that would be a question actually for each individual family they may just not have sent it to me so i don't want to support them okay okay well no i just what i want to say i guess is a couple things one is that the state isn't the state's rural family lands program is not the only game in town right there's also springs protection money there's the rcpp money he talked about there's the usda ale money that they have applied for or asap money that they've applied for there's also some other funding opportunities that have been utilized i think by act and by others in our community to find partnership on conservation easement so i don't think we should give up on partnership opportunities for these projects just in you know and just be like that's it now we're going to fund them in in total um not because i don't want to do them i do want to do them but i also recognize that we have other properties for conservation that we've already put on this list you know and 10 million dollars would be wiped down and then something you know what i mean and so i just i want to be cognizant of the farms that we've already committed to like i'm really excited that these farms want to commit but i also recognize we have other farms that have applied and we have farms every day that are applying so if we're going to do this and we're going to expand the program like i'm all in i'd expand the program in a heartbeat but we're we're competing with the conservation priorities in the active acquisition list that we've already created the farmland concert the list ag easement list that we've already created and then these lands that you know and so doing this means like a really big deal so i guess before we just like go there i would just like to know what that looks like like what are we talking about in terms of total budget and be able to have that conversation because it it matters that we don't just bump all the farms that have already gotten on the active acquisition list and spent the time with our staff to like move their properties along in order to fund these properties and i want to make sure that these properties have the opportunity to get that funding as well if that's where we're going if we're saying we're not going to partner with the state and we just want to move forward then i want to you know i want to have a good solid bucket of funding that's going to work for the number of farms that we have and recognize that that also means that we're bumping things potentially you know if you if you make that motion refer that to staff that's going to do a couple of things it's going to signal to the state we want an interest we want to participate with you but we want an interest you keep negotiating with those other counties i'm sure they want an interest too meanwhile we're moving forward with our own plan and maybe that brings it back to the table maybe it doesn't i don't know um but that's where i i i would support that motion um i'm not at a place where i can support a motion where we're giving up our two floors can mary do you have something to say and then i'll thank you yeah go ahead mary just one more question so we we already partner with the state on conservation lands how do those risks compare to the risks that we're talking about here with farmland right so um we partner with primarily the water management districts in undivided interest on fee simple acquisitions a handful of acquisitions the structure of those is that we're both um recorded as owners of the property um so i think the risk is lower um because right so when the state was talking about uh changing the rules with the water management districts conservation ones how would that have affected it in that case so you're not talking about the conservation easement bill so that would have just been the conservation lands that they own outright it would not have affected our easement the the bill that was um didn't make it through um for signature about um exterminating conservation easements held by the water management districts would have only applied to conservation easements that were held solely by water management districts for example there's an easement over the murphrey well field the grove park water or wildlife management area is a conservation easement in alachua county both held by st john's river water management district those would have been the types of lands where that could have happened but it wouldn't have affected the watermelon pond or it wouldn't have affected the flatwoods whatever longley flatwoods reserve right because in that case we own the title it's undivided so we're like i don't know like a married couple right yeah yeah and so that's the kind of relationship that we're looking for here is to have that same kind of relationship that we have with other conservation lands in the state um yeah i mean ideally just based on our conversation that's kind of what ideally we would like to have i'm trying to clarify this because i've got a couple of texts in public and they're really confused so i wanted to it is confusing yeah yeah um the watermelon pond uh properties since you referenced that the properties in watermelon pond that are held by the county are held solely by the county um that's the fee simple as well as the conservation easements there but they're adjacent to lands held by the fish and wildlife conservation commission and those are actually held by the state board of trustees of the internal improvement trust that's the entity that typically doesn't share title i mean to simplify this from my perspective we're basically saying here's 10 million to the state for your program or we want to keep that 10 million probably do less less but it's under our program we did a very very rough assessment of all of the properties on the active acquisition list that are agricultural lands and um all of those properties the ones that have been submitted to rural and family lands and ones that have not um a very rough estimate of that total cost was more than double the 10 million dollars that it's like 25 it was 28 27 including due diligence estimates so um that includes small farms that have extremely direct local food production connections and much larger farms that are producing regional locally i mean we've got 250 million dollars to solve a 400 million to 500 million dollar project program and it's going to need to be renewed to solve it kind of the same situation here we you know we either allocate more of the conservation money which i'm not prepared to do today but um or we renew this thing in a couple of years and we tick off the ones that have done their succession planning and are ready to sell their easements and are the best ones for us right now and we continue this program but to but to that same point ken if the state were to come and say well we're willing to pay half of that that road cost if you um you know allow us to be in charge of i don't know speed enforcement would would you go for that uh depending on which road yeah i absolutely would they can take all their roads back that they gave us uh 20 years ago absolutely yeah i mean that's yeah i would i mean because i i'm i'm really on the fence about this because i i really feel like we we need to we have an opportunity now there are folks in the audience ready to take advantage of it and you know and and we already are partnering with the state on so many things the state owns so much land in our county and for the most part they're pretty good stewards of that land right whether it's state parks or whether it's university or whether it's conservation easements with the water management district it all boils down to the fact that they've done a few things that have made us distrust them whether it is putting you know golf courses on state park property or or trying to pass bills to remove conservation uh easements from the water management district but you know so far they haven't done that and i understand that you know we're getting basically in new orlando every year with the number of people moving into our state there's going to be more and more not just development pressure on the land with respect to um you know just wanting development but there's going to be more and more pressure on the state to try to change the rules to take advantage of these lands that we have placed preservation so i guess you know so that's that's my quandary so i'm curious from anna's perspective what what you're saying in terms of the risk i mean i guess my question i mean like i mean i've sort of expressed it i mean i think that if we're i think i guess this is what my motion would be okay and you tell me i mean like basically like in a second maybe we can make it work number one that we continue to explore and negotiate with these existing landowners with partnership opportunities that would allow us to close on the conservation easements that are currently on our activist acquisition list number two that we talk to the state about a four-year secondary right of enforcement that they're so essentially if they're not enforcing the contract within four years that we would have the opportunity to enforce that contract could we reduce that to three i mean three to we can just talk to them i mean i mean they might i mean they know if it's a conversation let's like make it better and then we have room for sure to negotiate a secondary right of enforcement should they not enforce because that's the big question right i mean if they're enforcing ideally they're enforcing the contract that as it's written and they're enforcing it and we don't need to enforce it the problem is should they not enforce it that we have the ability to come in in four years is just a really long time so i i feel like trying to tighten that up would be better and then i guess the third part of that motion would be what is the um would they accept a you know a 20 partnership opportunity for a title only um easement well if you made that motion i would second it and the fourth part of that motion is to work with epd and the federal delegation to request changes to usda programs for asap and others that would better position excellent applications across the state of florida that one i really like okay so we have a four part motion and a second comments yeah just as a reminder the state is prioritizing these lands um that they have to have that notice on the eighth so these properties may not that's not totally true but i mean yes they're doing it now but they when our staff reached out to them about something last week they said that they could i don't know i don't know what's i don't know what's true but i know that i guess the question is continue the conversation after we tell them we're going to that they prioritize it when they prioritize the other ones they'll continue to have the conversation or they'll boost them up on the list if we say we're going to do it after somewhere down the line we tell them we've been happy with the um yes excellent question so the the state initially indicated to partners and brokers etc please respond by the eighth i followed up with them because the meeting was currently planned to be for the 12th to have this discussion and asked for the 13th they said no problem um but what what i would expect is that they are asking for that partnership um affirmation they're also asking for supporting documentation for the initial ranking of their 2026 projects however during the year if they operate the way that they did in 2025 they will also increase the ranking of projects that come forward with partnership throughout the year but this would be for the initial ranking um which they do you know once annually um so obviously anything that they do to implement their program is going to depend on their funding and how much those top farms are cost uh if they run out of money they run out of money they don't have the option of raising or lowering certain projects so that's that's similar to our situation but this is for the initial ranking for the 2026 year which they'll publish you know once they complete it they'll provide that statewide for the entire list okay so we've got a motion in a second any further discussion from the board before we open it back up to the public i just have a question these are one-time payments right this is a one-up you're requiring these you know and if we ended up doing it ourselves is there any possibility that we could divide those payments up over three years but i mean you know do our own uh i didn't work it work our own deal it's an interesting idea where would that money come from the wild spaces publicly got it anna if you would add a part five which would be to ask staff to prioritize the 27 000 acres that they currently have books and work on uh i'm not interested in that we have lots of farms that are interested in this program and i do not want to limit those farms ability to get into this program because they're part of that i thought i thought the small farm was part of this not all the farms that are interested in this program have applied yet yeah we had this program open for three years i mean i'm excited that we have such an interesting program but like my goal is to protect as much farmland as we possibly can i'm not going just for prioritizing no offense i love all of y'all i'm so excited that you are the forefront and the front runners of this project and want to be sort of the model of what's possible but our county the majority of the land in our county is still act and i want to protect it and so i guess it's like i don't feel comfortable just saying like we're going to do these projects and no other that's 15 farms that are currently on the active acquisition list that make up the 27 000 that you talked about 27 million dollars dollars yeah 27 million dollars and how many acres um 9 200 approximately mr chair i still have a question about the timing of all of this if there are time it's a there's a time frame right that we're looking at right now so we're going to leave these farms that are we we have applied on that list and see what the state does with that yes and then we were offering a 25 20 partnership for title only okay or secondary right of enforcement or we continue to pursue other partnership opportunities and to continue negotiating with landowners for our on our program that we would have to design that we right that we either do solely or that we look for other partnerships like the springs money or the alternative water supply money or the you know those sorts of funding sources that exist out there or the federal money like rcpp yeah but while working on the budget now for the next year this would put this on next year's budget and if we decided to do this for two years from now so our wild spaces money is for the next for the next eight years right so they come in in the budget based on when the opportunity to present themselves okay so that's all right away or it could be over the next okay so that would to be determined as to how we actually get all that done it could be done in a year it could be steve could you put that motion up on the on the screen while we open it back up for public comment all right so does everybody understand the motion if not we're going to get it up on the screen here shortly and let's hear from the public as well how they support or do not support the motion come on up yeah come on up and come on up thank you but need your help in hi again sarah younger with sierra club swanee st john's group um first off i want to thank you all for taking our comments into account i do believe you're responsive to our needs um our group as you probably already know uh like to focus on how those tax dollars are being apportioned for the benefit of the entire alachua county um that means preserving and considering all of the piece pieces that go into land conservation um i understand that your pressures right now are on financial concerns and who who does put the bill for these things um i know that the state has again um mentioning again that they have not made it a priority in this session and in the past several years since florida forever was established with the directive to set aside funds for conservation um i'm i'm encouraged though by the fact that you're looking at how you could yourselves conduct these activities and think of uh future generations i would add also the state i'm not while i know they're not always bad actors i'm not trying to suggest that the state is our foe but they also have different priorities and our values within alachua county have been clear with the voters for some time so i appreciate that you're trying to find a negotiated solution here um i would urge you to uh consider um anna's proposal as the negotiated settlement it's let's say to to arrive at a working solution that um i think our voters here in alachua county would stand behind um i know how important our agricultural resources are i've come up from south florida where uh in palm beach county they had an ag reserve which was actually designed for some very unique farming conditions in palm beach county and they have allowed now a death by a thousand cuts let's just say there is no longer of a preserve that one could call ag land out there in western palm beach county so the pressures are real when it comes to development and i get that you want to make sure these lands are set aside um let's do this together and i appreciate that i i support anna's motion as it reads right now i think that she is trying to find a solution that would arrive at that middle ground where you can retain your control over the enforcement but also get as much land uh acquired in these easements as possible so this is a matter of clarification so it's or or or so you could do if the state would agree to 20 as a partnership you can move forward or we get them to accept the secondary i mean the right of enforcement and then you would do 50-50 i think i you didn't say that in the motion but i think it was kind of implied in the discussion and and then or pursue other partnerships i just andy you asked a question about counties i'm pretty sure pope county did 25 i don't know if they would go as low as 20. i know i'm pretty sure they've done 25 so i'm pretty sure they would do 25 but they do 20 i don't know but the real enemy here guys is i'm just telling you because i'm a real super i do this stuff all over the state i track every large land sale in the state i publish every year the land values since the state passed florida forever i mean uh preservation 2000 in the 1990s pasture to pasture farmland to farmland okay not pasture land to development land just just same asset lines five times the values have quintupled we don't have enough money we need at least a billion dollars to stay even with what we did in the 1990s so that's really our enemy in all this and so i would encourage it again there's there's so many applicants for this you're going to help landowners in your county being a competitive advantage by being able to partner so i would encourage passage of the motion i would probably encourage an amendment to make it 25 as opposed to 20 because i'm pretty certain they would do that but y'all's call all right next speaker is to the motion to the motion the motion is then go sit down you'll be able to speak later no no no no to the motion mark your public comments in a minute we got and half this room is going to clear out okay anyone else want to speak to the motion show of hands who supports motion to design sports motion back to board uh for discussion what was the show of hands i couldn't see it wasn't effective a handful raised their hand the rest didn't and then they realized what i was asking so it didn't matter screw your decision basically yeah yeah all right any further discussion i have a question about the 20 to 25 percent yeah i know that they would hate 25 it's been done before in polk county according to dean would be i don't know if that's true or not but i i believe that makes sense i i reached out to the state with that specific question they didn't respond did not respond so they didn't want to so we don't have the answer they didn't want to tip their hand then maybe or yeah they're busy okay okay what can i can i ask what uh your reasoning was for 20 versus 25 percent i guess my reasoning is i want to be as small a partner as i possibly can i want to be as small a partner as i possibly can in a situation where i can't enforce that partnership right right so you know what i mean so it's sort of like it's it's trying to provide enough funding that it that it gives the state the incentive to support these farms and being on their list like they are getting something and it helps them to spread their money further across the state to other farms while at the same time recognizing that if we can't enforce that yeah that's kind of where i was going for it so it feels like if we're going bigger you know it just starts to get to be a lot but i you know i'm not i'm agnostic as to the you know the amount i would lean on you know our our staff and the experts that know these project programs better it was just sort of felt like 20 seems like you know like sort of where we usually go when we're talking about these things you know and we're like okay like if we start to get into your half the project or your core project you're like that's a big stake in the project you know so i just find that middle ground yeah the 20 percent 25 seems i i'd be willing to go up to 25 percent i would too i would too amend the motion i can amend the motion to 25 percent partnership we can talk to up to up to 25 percent up to you know yeah all right i see commissioners know how to get three votes in this uh all right uh so i so i'm actually going to support the motion um i very much though would like for us to be thinking about moving forward with our own program um because i i have less faith in the state than maybe some of you all do and i but i'm willing to give it a try i really want us to be able to enforce uh anything that we ask our taxpayers to pay for this is a compromise when i hear the sierra club say thank you anna for the compromise that was impactful so sarah thank you for being here um and if it doesn't work out in a year then we can always re assess it next year at the same time and make an adjustment so that's that's kind of where i am all right all those in favor of the motion say aye aye any opposed that motion's unanimous okay so mr chair we have to the end of the wild spaces public places so we need to get all that done before all spaces is scheduled to expire 2032 2032 you know december in terms of trying to get some of that or we just need to renew it it's been renewed every year so it's renewed every time we've done it since yeah it would be my hope that the large landowners and farmers and the folks that are participating here is loud and clearly we got to renew this thing in a couple of years if you want to if you want to stay on the leading edge of conserving land and farmland so that's exactly right all right thank you all for being here you're welcome to say if you want to hear the evaluation and review report um that's what's next on our agenda it's not a light item um it's a it's a pretty big item thank you all for being here thank you adam manager you're uh next uh mr chair you have uh ben chumley coming forward to go over the evaluation and appraisal report all right mr chumley welcome thank you for uh being bumped on the jeff is here as well for and may have been patiently waiting yes i have so jeff just as a item about how long do you think this agenda uh mr chair two weeks that it can be as long or as short as you would like it to be um i know ben has a presentation we'll try to go through it expeditiously um what i would say is that this is transmittal so you know if there are language we don't have to have every word perfect because we can have a chance to make some amendments at adoption if all the concepts are in there for this review if if we have a specific change that we've talked to a citizen about for instance do you want to hear that as we go through it or do you want to just know about it now yeah this is transmittal um if ben's going to sort of go through the element so if you pinpoint which element it is that would probably be the best time to highlight it it's that tell us now it is actually um uh policy uh 1.3.6 so it's on like the beginning right at the beginning so that's where you're dwelling unit um yeah yeah it's about the adus any any comments so the comments were um it says that uh where municipal potable water and sewer services are available to primary residents the accessory dwelling units shall also be required to connect to municipal potable water and sanitary sewer services and the question that i got was about um if someone has a composting toilet in their accessory dwelling unit and they are recycling their gray water and gray water for the purposes of the state includes um all water except for kitchen sink water or toilet water um i believe if i'm remembering correctly so if that all went into a composting toilet system why would they have to connect to a sanitary sewer system um mr chair uh i i guess my follow-up question would be is that what what is the primary residence connected to well i you know these are folks that i've talked to somebody out in archer that wants to put up an accessory dwelling unit that's as off-grid as possible and so they were asking about that particular question okay yeah um i could answer that but if if you look at um subpart b under uh 136 it talks about if municipal potable water and sewer services are not available um then the accessory dwelling unit cell right can just be on whatever well and septic type system right but if they so um so archer is connecting to a sewer service service right and so that's their question they want to keep this off grid so they were um i i you know that this is a thing and it could be in the city of gainesville right where somebody might want a composting toilet for right for for environmental reasons so yeah and and this would be um for the um this policy applies to the unincorporated area so if it's in the city of archer um that would be i actually don't know if it is or not it was just somebody that lives out that way but it i mean besides that i i have the question because i used to do sustainable housing and i designed houses with composting toilets and they are allowed the state so or at least they were the last time i practiced i i just thought that was a good question so sorry to get into the weeds at the very very beginning but i figured we'd get that over with and then we could fly through the rest yeah mr shared that is an element and we've been having some discussions there is a state law related to the requirement to connect to sanitary sewer if it's available um i think what i would say on that issue is that something and i don't think that would be significant enough if we we can do some research on that between okay so we don't need to worry about it we could just go forward that's fine that's fine i um i mean the one that i did was in the city was in the city of tampa i believe and they allowed them to go forward with it but that was the last one i did and the sink and was on a gray water system yep everything else was on a gray water system which they um reused okay we can research that yeah yeah okay i have a couple okay you want me to go through them all okay it's not changes it's just a few questions like number one is a policy 1.3.7.1 i didn't know that we were allowing home mobile homes and low density residential land use is that always been that way i thought we i thought they were only allowed in certain manufacture well a recent bill um now requires that um what they call well what's essentially a manufacturer yeah not manufactured homes i'm not talking about like a stick built home that's built and then moved on property and then tied down i'm talking about a mobile home that's like on a chat right and this is this is the low density residential land use category so then they're within that there are certain zoning districts right limit that so if it's r1a for example that would not allow a mobile home but r1c would allow a mobile home okay we have to include it in the big picture so that we can include it in the sub zoning okay okay and mr chair on that issue as ben was stating and we're going to come back to you and at the end of the month with a discussion of that um bill because we will be required to treat all homes regardless of whether they were manufactured modular or site built the same the same yeah yeah so that will be a that will probably be diving a little bit more into that issue then okay um okay and then uh i i i wondered why the um under the 1.3.9.2 we had stricken and then 1.3.10.3 like in all of them it seems like we struck b which is provide natural and landscaped open spaces or transitional developed design practices to adequately integrate the development along the edges of different land use categories is there a reason why the the reason for that is that issue is addressed more generally in our other policies um for example open space policies that are buffering policies and things like that so there wasn't really a need to repeat it in every section okay and is that the same with one policy 1.6.2 the public participation for tnds uh we struck the public right yeah and i know that that looks a little odd that we're striking public participation but it's we we have more globally applicable public participation policies so there wasn't a need to necessarily call it out in every single section like that okay okay um do you want me to keep going past land use yeah yeah okay i think if it's okay with you all if we can make our changes or discussions and then he can breeze through anything we didn't discuss that we want to hear okay um in policy seven point one point two six it talks about minimum required public notification and participation methods um and it just includes the surrounding property owners by mail um but we had talked about like expanding that boundary and like what that boundary meant and i'm just wondering if all of that is in another and forgive me it's sort of i'm kind of you know i'm reviewing these changes not the whole document so i think i might be missing some of that context but we talked about sort of how we were going to kind of try to increase the ways in which people were being notified and and the the boundaries of what people were being notified for what policy number was that again i'm looking at seven point one point two six twenty six twenty six okay what page is that uh page it's on page flu 52 thank you flu 50 on mine but yeah and and we have in recent years um expanded the radius for mail out notification um that was a couple of years ago um in the urban area i think it's what 750 yeah 750 feet now and in the uh rural area i think it's 13 20 feet okay and mr chair i think the issue the for the purposes of the comprehensive plan we're just having the concept that it's surrounding property owners and then the code gets into the details okay thank you um i'm an objective uh on page in the economic development um chapter under policy one point nine point six um i just wanted to encourage us to perhaps not um outline the purposes for which those small urban farms might be operating we talk about for personal consumption or direct to consumer sale but i don't really know why it matters who they're selling to if they're a small urban farm i mean they're not good they're not going to have the kind of production that would allow them to sell you know to major multinational corporations or anything but i i don't know it just feels a little heavy-handed to say like you have to only be selling direct consumer and that would be hard for us to enforce um so i thought maybe we would just strike for both personal consumption or local direct and just keep shall encourage urban agriculture such as small scale cultivation of fruits vegetables plants flowers and herbs within the urban cluster okay object to that change no i don't either okay um and then can we make that change man yeah absolutely okay and then um under d uh the economic same economic development 1.10.4 d it talks about partnering with ifas elatra county extension to promote local programs relating to community gardening food safety nutrition i just wanted to elatra county extension and other community organizations there's other groups that are working pretty hard on those types of issues right now um a couple non-profits that are working specifically so i want to make sure that we have the opportunity to collaborate with them as well anybody object to that change that was in what section one point uh the same economic or element uh d uh 1.10.4 d 1.10.4 d at the very end of the economic element okay yeah yeah though that makes total sense i see what you're saying okay uh okay i think my comments in there and then i just that objective was moving again oh i didn't it's you have on this chart that you guys created number 71 where it talks about adding the protection of groundwater and surface waters into our potable water and sanitary sewer element i didn't see where that got added i i guess i might have just missed it but i think i don't have that chart in front of me but i believe we've added that language into the goal for the element okay um so i believe it should be um potable water and sanitary sewer element i think uh the first goal of that element if i could find it yeah i couldn't find it but i thought maybe yeah it's in the goal okay thank you and then the last question that i have is um number 95 on this chart for recreation it says support the installation of public charging stations for mobile phones and e-bikes i wanted to just say and electric vehicles at county parks i know we can't do it for other developments but we can do it for our own developments and i think having distribution of electric charging stations across the county is important so i thought we could also add electric vehicles if everyone's okay with that i think as long as we're dealing with a park that has that good access to electricity if we're in some super rural area where we yeah no of course like this is just like where it makes sense obviously right yeah i think we have language in that policy talking about where feasible where fees yeah that makes sense okay just to make sure we weren't running lines okay i i move that we transmit the ea r with those proposed changes second motion a second then you want to give us just kind of an overall process and then we'll move absolutely um i i do want to um at least get on the record some um process related things um this item uh is item number z26-3 um this is a proposed amendment to multiple elements of the alachua county comprehensive plan based on the evaluation and appraisal of the plan as required by section 163.3191 florida statutes um and as per the motion you just made uh the requested board action today is to approve transmittal of this batch of evaluation and appraisal uh plan amendments for state review the state review process is about it's not about it is 60 days um and so these amendments will come back to you for adoption uh in a little more than 60 days from now uh just a little bit of background on uh our state requirements for the evaluation and appraisal every seven years all local governments must evaluate their comprehensive plans to determine if amendments are necessary to uh reflect a minimum planning period of 10 years which ours does also to reflect any changes in state statutory requirements there were several of those changes which are included in this package uh and also to update the plan to reflect changes in local conditions uh and uh board directions so there are a lot of those type of changes uh in this package as well uh on march 31st of last year the county notified the state that it had reviewed its plan and that updates were necessary for consistency with state statutes so that uh started a one year clock for the county where we needed to transmit amendments for state review within one year we're a little bit past that one year time frame now but there's no real penalty for that the only consequence is that we can't we can't transmit any county initiated uh amendments to the state for review until we've transmitted these so um there's no real penalty there um just a brief word on uh senate bill 180 um as you know that uh we're we're kind of limited right now uh from proposing any changes to the comp plan or the land development regulations that are considered more restrictive or burdensome um so we have made an effort here to avoid any amendments that might violate senate bill 180 as part of this package we do know there are some things that we're going to have to bring back after or if that limitation expires or it's revised through uh future legislation i just want to just briefly kind of uh talk about the the scoping and the update process um and what's gone into this there were several things we did over the past year um including reviewing the comprehensive plan relative to changes in the comprehensive planning statutes um that's our that's what we're required to do under uh the state statutes um we've had internal review of events by different county departments with operational responsibility over the specific elements we've had several public workshops of this board to scope the issues that you wanted to see addressed as part of the update we've had discussions with different county advisory committees on topics that are uh specific to their uh their area of expertise uh there's a project web page that's our zen city page where we've posted uh information about the process uh and we've also uh we have an email list of a few hundred people that we've emailed out to about things that are going on with this process uh back at the beginning of the process we had a public questionnaire using zen city to kind of just get an idea of the things that people were interested in as far as our comprehensive plan and we also have reviewed other county plans that have been adopted in recent years things like the climate action plan the parks and open space master plan the bicycle pedestrian plan uh safe streets and roads for all and the affordable housing plan so all of these things have kind of gone into um the package of amendments that you have uh in front of you uh i just yeah i just want to say thank you for that because you know i know that there's a minimum standard that's required for this process and i really appreciate that you all go above and beyond sort of the minimum standard and really try to make these opportunities to update our comprehensive plan an opportunity to have it really reflect be the strategy in a way like our strategic plan for how our community is being developed and really think about how we incorporate our overall strategic plan goals into this document um and so i just want to say thank you for the hard work it's a lot of work and it is the plan of our community so yeah i just want to say um you know i'm i'm rarely disappointed in our community but i did try really hard to get more public involvement in this whole process of the cop plan but i i heard a lot huh well i mean that's what it came down to it's like we like our comp plan and you know we we think it's staying where it needs to stay and um but i do you know whenever somebody says that they don't like a particular direction the county is taking i said well you need to get involved and we revise our comp plan and um i don't know about you've been but i didn't see a whole lot of folks showing up wanting to change things so i i i do think that says a lot about the work we've put in it in the past and i want to commend previous commissions for the hard work that they did to get us where we are and mr chair i would say we've we've pushed out a lot of notifications on about not only this meeting but um the workshops you had last year um and you know we've we've gotten we get questions internally or emails internally from people um but they're just i think they're just not showing up at the meetings for whatever reason yes sir i'm i'm looking on um page about objective for safety and i think it has to do with transportation do we in any way address safety issues in our waterways like post springs we had drownings and i didn't know if we have merely now it's jibson who has run 138 out there recommended to me and it's something she's working on right now a project like throw me a lifeline so at some of our public parks that are on waterways that we could have something there a safety ring or something attached that could be thrown out um that there might be some way that anybody you know who sees an issue with with someone in trouble could throw out a lifeline like it's required to public pool yeah yeah i don't know if we do anything like that you know she even recommended that you know we could have i mean this is something she's working on but it it brought to mind that i don't know that we address in here about you know safety in our water areas at all if that's even appropriate but uh and i know it's something it's a campaign that she's working on right now um i literally had to dive in and save somebody at rainbow spring state park a couple months ago and the ring the ring wasn't there might be something to refer to sam okay yeah not for this but no but i just didn't know because we're addressing safety issues here you know i didn't know if there is something that we need in parks in our section in our parks and recreation anywhere there's water that um that you know that anybody could throw a ring to i mean she even suggested you know having life jackets that could be borrowed you know to use which is really um if you're on the water a lot as much as she is i'm sure you would see more than the rest of us who are not there so much and i could just respond to that briefly the the comprehensive plan does not currently address um safety on our waterways um although it is something that the comprehensive plan could speak to um in the general sense so we can certainly follow up on that we have surface water you know the lakes we have at the western end in the the the springs you know where we're late yeah mr chair what i would say maybe um mr the managers off we can we can bring that issue to especially as it pertains to county parks and county facilities we can bring that issue up with park staff okay yeah yeah definitely and we are already adding eight aeds so what you call them two oh nice two parts like great great because i know there's a big push too to teach children our children how to swim you know because there's been so many drownings of our children that okay that's it thank you thank you mr chair okay you're welcome all right anything else and okay the one other thing i did want to highlight um is your uh planning commission's recommendation on this um they uh they heard this item on february 25th and march 11th um and they had a two-part recommendation uh the first part was to transmit the uh evaluation and appraisal amendments as presented uh with a few additions or changes um one was to articulate something in the general strategy of the future land use element about the idea of promoting growth where growth is in other words in the urban cluster uh so staff has gone ahead and added that language in the the package that you have in front of you uh secondly adding a policy calling for the county to pursue interlocal service boundary agreements with municipalities to address annexation issues those are the uh chapter 171 part two uh agreements that i know we've we've talked about and we've had discussions with some of the municipalities about already so that language has been added into the uh intergovernmental coordination element policy 1.1.3 and then with regard to accessory dwelling unit policies uh the what you have in your package would remove the requirement uh for proof of homestead exemption and permanent residency for an adu in the urban cluster and the planning commission recommended that that that those limitations be removed in the rural areas as well we did not make that change in this particular package because the board's direction was to just do that in the urban cluster so i wanted to at least point that out um as part of uh the hearing i like that change okay um and then also uh the planning commission had several other uh i'll call them discussion topics that they would like to discuss with staff at their future meetings uh those are listed here you can kind of read them uh discouraging or or disincentivizing gated subdivisions in the urban cluster which we in a way we effectively do that already um although we don't necessarily say as much in the policy language um b is eliminating minimum and maximum requirements for parking within new development um that's something uh we've made some recent changes to our uh parking requirements in the code but i think we probably need to take a look at those again but we can we can discuss that with the planning commission more um also facilitating more mixed use development by providing greater flexibility in land use categories that was about the idea of just creating a mixed use land use category which we don't really have now you can do mixed use with tnd and tod but we just don't have that mixed use land use category also they wanted to look at increasing allowable residential densities for development within the urban cluster so maybe raising the standard density ranges for the different residential land use categories as well as the allowable density for tnds and tods so they we got some recommendations from them on that but we'll be having a follow-up discussion with them in the future on that issue mr president yeah i guess i thought i mean i guess my question on that last one is up until recently we weren't even seeing people using the maximum densities that they had allowable that we already have so i guess my question is like why what is there what is there you know what i mean like are they getting a lot of are we seeing a lot of applications now that are wishing they had more density and don't have it or mr chair i think there's two that comes from two places for so and i've heard that we heard that both from the planning commission but we we've also heard it from some of our private sector partners um i think and i'm just you know speculating somewhat from the planning commission perspective it was these are just too restrictive whether or not there's demand or not up the densities and allow them from our folks that we work with in the in the development community we have heard that um the existing both the density the base densities as well as the bonus allowances and tnds and dods tnds specifically they say that there is that i have heard that there is a market for additional density and that we would get projects um with additional density i think the conversation and it is something that we're going to look at um my response to some degree has been that we just adopted inclusionary we have some other some other techniques to get additional density where there's some incentives involved and so i'd kind of like to see how those play out first before we went wholesale and just up the density um throughout the cluster but it's something we'll we'll look at and and could be um yeah i think overall though i think that their um recommendations were are fairly forward thinking they had a few others too um on the list um so um so they uh would like to consider expedited development review for affordable housing developments i think we have that that's something that we do already um but i mean i i think we can look at that and just see what the demand has been or how it's worked um i don't know that there's a lot more that we can do on that mr chair we do have expedited building permit review for affordable housing units to be quite honest our development review is i feel like it's expedited for everyone we have a very i in my opinion a very tight turnaround um but um the planning commission also wanted to discuss considering requirements for clustering of development to reduce impervious surfaces and increase green spaces um to that one as you know in the rural area subdivisions over uh nine lots are required to cluster um and in the urban cluster i mean i think between our open space requirements and our stormwater requirements and other natural resource protection requirements developments end up being clustered anyway without saying they're required to cluster so um but again we could that's something we can look at and see if there's um any room for improvement on that um urban tree canopy was something they wanted us uh to look at uh re-evaluating tree protection standards relative to tree removal and replacement requirements um and also that the county should measure and track tree canopy trends within the urban cluster and i know that's something that we're we're looking at um and i think and correct me for a moment i think we have a tree um a tree discussion coming up with the board in right july july so that'll be part of that discussion um and then also they uh had some comments on the county tree planting program uh wanting to uh prioritize tree planting along streets and around pedestrian pathways and transit stops and increasing overall tree canopy so um that's another one we can uh we will be looking into further mr chair i think that's all i had um to tell you if you have specific questions on um any aspect of this i'm happy to can we go to the next slide because i think some of these are yes um so there are um given the kind of constrained timeline we had on this there are some things uh well constrained timeline but also senate bill 180 there are some things that we did not include in this package that we know we need to continue working on um that includes uh incorporating the climate action plan into the comprehensive plan the economic element we are working on a full rewrite of that element with our economic development staff so that's something we'll be uh vetting with advisory committees and bringing that back to this board hopefully this year there are some additional updates in the community health element that we think need to be made just from discussions with the health care advisory board and other community health stakeholders the data centers is another issue we're looking at we think there's well there will most likely be code updates to address data centers uh data centers uh coming in the near future possibly that might include comprehensive plan amendments um and we'll also need to um deal with the recent data center uh bill that passed in the last session which said what the the data center bill um it it essentially reinforces the local comprehensive plan and land development regulation ability to um regulate those but i think it also uh talks about um i i can't remember the term but essentially really large data centers that draw um that use a lot of water and a lot of electricity and kind of put that drain on local resources um and how that will be dealt with in the permitting process the ones that have regional impact like i know this is something that we brought up like or i brought up during the process i guess i'm just wondering why it hasn't made it in already i guess i just like i'm just cognizant of the fact that there's active like sort of economic recruitment efforts going on in our county and so i just want to make sure that we have the language that we need before mr chair the way we've been pursuing it is is to to bypass specific language in the comprehensive plan but to adopt it into the code directly as a use um and i think through some of the definitions the state has put into this bill we'll be able to do that um it could be in the comprehensive plan as well so there's you know no no magic there but i think we'll be in good stead waiting for the legislation to finish and adopt into the code um can we modify the motion to add the accessory dwelling units removing the requirement from state exemption permanent residency in rural areas that was the only one that there was a specific recommendation on i thought i mean we had a pretty extensive conversation about that like six months ago and i thought we said we were going to do it in the urban cluster first and see how it played out yeah but i mean i because i i mean i do think it promotes investors coming in and buying up properties to do like short-term rental type stuff i i just could i get concerned in the rural areas that that sort of promotes sprawl airbnbs and airbnbs in areas that you know what i mean like i i i hear you but on the other hand we just had like several big landowners here that you know might want an accessory dwelling you know well they could do it but they're not all homesteaded some of them didn't live here but they could do it under the agriculture oh that's true they can do it on direct that's true they can do it under act you're right all right i forgot that yeah i'm just thinking like let's see i mean if it plays out well in the urban cluster then i think expanding it makes a lot of sense i just would hate to just do it full stop without thinking about the unintended consequences of it i think if i would if if go thinking back on it i kind of wish we'd done it in the other direction first but oh i guess in the rural area first because i think we're less likely to have that airbnb and stuff issue gotcha i just think urban clusters where we need rentals right it's like oh near services exactly but it's also but that's also where we're going to get the most abuse of it right so i i you know so in that sense i'm like why why are we restricting it yeah yeah okay do you conclude all right so we've got a motion to approve the transmittal to propose lots of kind of comp plan amendments for state review with minor changes that we all discussed about and object to anyone any further discussion from this board all right public comment to the motion it's kind of welcome to share jim connish out there in the real world where there's a lot of small farmers large farmers are very important but there's the small farmers and there's a lot of them and i'm one of them and one thing in your codes in your practices and your plans is you fail to realize that agriculture is not developed agriculture is not residential it's not commercial it's not industrial it's development and if you're operating under state of florida best management practices you have no ability to regulate anything now you can ignore that but the farm is entitled to attorney's fees to address nuisances from your code enforcement people in terms of human waste to attack a farm by making people believe that the farmer improperly disposes of their human waste first of all is slander second of all is indefensible and third of all is ignorant of what the rules are if you have ag land with no residents you're allowed to sanitary if you just go in one place that's accessible and you can't do that but an allegation from a miscreant neighbor is not a basis for your staff to run over to the department of health trying to get them to attack a farm which is what i've been going through for two years i don't know anything about composting toilets i know a lot about my land i know what's happening to the spring i know what's happening to the river i know that i have a right to excrete into a pale and convey it to gru which is what i've done for years and i'm not ashamed of that that shows my commitment to protecting the spring in the park and if you want to keep doing what you're doing then we're just going to be an all-out legal assault on the county because i am doing what is lawful first of all what is right for the spring what is the right for me and what is right for the river now i don't know about composting toilets i know mirage boat builders are putting on their yachts but if you look at the rules first of all innovative systems are contemplated there's incineration there's spray fields there's injection wells but i'm a simple person i'm entitled to segregate my gray water from my toilet and sink put it in a tank pump it out nothing is better for the river than that it's cheaper and so you know leave our farms alone thank you any further discussion for this board all right all in favor say aye aye any opposed all right the motion is unanimous thank you mr chumlee a lot of work uh has gone into this over the last year didn't mean to do it but it's reflective of the fact that no one came to speak against it so well done good job and anything else on this item before we move to the next one which is public comment nothing for me it's yes thank you thank you thank you all right closing comments we got public comments mr chair um i went out on 36 acres next to post springs park and picked up 300 yards of trash it cost me 5 000 and i bulldozed an acre and a half and um was very disappointed with the outcome so i started just doing targeted killing of invasive species native and otherwise and i created over a 30 year period an ivy uneven growth longleaf pine timber farm next to post springs park your failure to manage your hundreds of acres around me is demonstrated why you have to look at my land and look at your land and ask yourself well why are you trying to beat this guy down why are you mowing a field attack cactus the way the law has evolved a one acre timber farm has the same rights as the thousand acre farm with the stables the airstrip and imagine i'm sorry that's just the way it is a dwelling a dwelling does not exist if there is no bathroom and no kitchen in the building egg buildings egg support structures on timber farms are immune from your regulation and try to portray an egg building as a dwelling is a losing proposition you have no chance of doing that it's it's impossible anybody can do what i did anyone can clear out the scrub oak open it to sunlight have the native plants come back can plant your longleaf grow your shiitake mushrooms put yourself in some kind of shelter you're not hurting anybody you're doing good for the environment and by the way it's affordable just like my 11 bedroom house in the duck pond where eight roommates pay me seven thousand a month to share my house with them so if you're going to try to take a 71 year old man that's doing right for the environment and run him off his land with an array of bogus code violations because you don't like his politics or you don't like his political beliefs you will be held accountable and people doing it misusing their position will be held accountable personally let people have the rights the legislature has given them to clear their land grow their pine trees and be able to hang out there with some level of security not worrying about trespassing county code enforcement slapping ugly notices on their building thank you thank you miss kosh okay next speaker mark this is your time no come on up no come on up you're next thank you i just wanted to let mark know because he's been waiting commissioners distinguished guests my name is kimberly allen jones and i'm i'm coming i'm asking for you all's um assistance i guess um with obtaining affordable housing um i see i saw in the news that you all purchased the hotels on 13th street i'm i'm not homeless now i was a year ago at grace marketplace but i moved into a meridian rooming house that's where i've been but living under the roof with eight other women almost makes me want to go back to grace grace marketplace most of the time but i'm grateful for a house but i just need i wish i could get a place on my own um and i'm not asking for a permanent place because um i i got my certificate i do i this is from meridian um where i i receive dual diagnosis um for substance abuse and mental health um but i've signed up for santa fe college where i'm gonna take their recovery coach class and the meridian's director of peer specialist has offered me a job if i get that two-year certificate so i'll be able to get my own place and so i won't thank y'all so much thank y'all so much so i'm just asking if you all would find it in your heart to let me move into either force edge or tumbling creek or um another option um on last month on on on the 15th of last month um the gamesville housing authority which haven't accepted applications in a long time they accepted 750 online applications for public housing and i was number 743 and you believe that but i got in um but um i do have a bad criminal background so i probably won't get approved but if you all know miss pamela davis and could put in a word for me um i would really appreciate that um is and my name is kimberly allen hyphen jones is hyphenated and if you could send me a referral or something i'll give you my email address is kimberly allen jones all one k-i-m-b-e-r-l-y-a-l-l-e-n-j-o-n-e-s-5-5-5 at gmail.com and um i'm a very good person i belong to upper room ministries on 15th street i was just there this morning i volunteer at our food country and on saturdays i do my own evangelism i i spend my own food stamps on sandwiches and water and i pass them out around the rosa parts transfer station so if you all you know with money give me a chance i would appreciate it thank you thank you for being here thank you thank you get your information to jeff or to i've got it we'll get in touch with yeah we'll be interested thank you you did a good job thank you mark come on up wow is there a leading place heartbreaking all right miss markman susbergen hi i did not know exactly what was on the agenda but i do know that 10 years from now food is going to be the global commodity and every acre that you got of every ag acre that you got to hold off in the meantime you're going to be grateful for it um so so pollinators so these really cool creatures and they want to like fly around and in springtime they need food so we have this habit of mowing because it's aesthetic and also there's a status symbol if your yard is overgrown then you know people think that you're poor or you're a slob or something like that so there's a cultural thing and if i go around and i look at these water retention ponds this at the other and it's all like sandy it's just like literally up here this is like a d by the way so the mowing is like too frequent there's all these things that you can do to improve and if you lead by an example we can actually triple the amount of pollinators in like five years just by doing it differently and there's various places around the world where they do this professionally and if i don't know what's his name is but if he needs to go to europe and you know hook up with like the latest and the greatest people that do it over there let him take his wife i'll chip in a thousand bucks i mean come back to the four pager or you know and it's the same budget it's the same people it's the same machines they just do it differently and so um it's something you could do and if you start and then you've got taught you've got to have a party with this hoa people you've got to get them to like a barbecue or somehow like get close to them because if your climate action plan comes out it's much better if you really like i don't know said hi to them socially and the same goes for priests and also for you know pastors you got 400 churches if you just saw one a week each one of you saw one a week in 20 weeks you would have uh basically a hundred of them you know what i mean like you've like created personal bonds and that they probably have questions and things that you'd never even imagined they had or vice versa they're learning you know who's on the second floor but if you have a personal bond with these people it's much easier to later go back and go to them and say by the way you know what i mean they got your number your their number it's much easier to say hey about this church can you do some like wilding or you can get some grow some food as an example because every church has like a hundred people you know churches like 40 000 people could could see that in action like oh wow it's a new thing so it is possible it's just a cultural thing and you can you can push it this way and then this it's the same thing we're not like telling people mowing is bad it's not like that it just do you do it differently because these critters with these wings they do it man for free they're like oh where's my food where's my food they want to run around and like you know it helps our not just food for us but food for other critters and also food for uh plants and so it's our whole ecosystem is going to be like much better off because when that white thing up north goes away oh it's just it's you know if you think three months of drought is it's like bad wait till you have three years all about five years in sumatra what about your papers oh shoot i redid these you should hang me hand these out they're only two dollars and fifteen cents you get another copy another six okay here oh all right next any other we get to have one yes all right okay move to commission comments chuck do you have anything mary helen you have anything uh yes i do very quickly um our board directed staff to do some work towards a document uh that was requested from the community the last meeting of right regarding ice in the community and i i think in light of some new information that we've got coming in we could hold off on that for a while before we put it out to the public i think we've all seen the document i haven't seen it yet but i go ahead it's it's it's you know it's i think it's beautifully written but i just feel like that at this point uh there's some um some issues that are coming forward in the community that would be beneficial to the community if we would hold on i don't care on it um we would need a motion as a direct i would i would make that motion hold on till when um until further notice i think until the sheriff department gets has a chance to um um and that's well until we yeah i i that's one of the first i guess i would say that i'm i'm open to holding off but i don't want it to be one of those things we're holding off in order to let it die so i guess i would hope that we would hold off until the fall and then we could revisit the conversation and see if there's you know because i think it's about editing it and making sure that it doesn't you know jeopardize like or violate laws or just like we need to just do all the full investigation and make sure that it i think it's not even only it's not only about um it's not only about our law enforcement oh i understand what it's about okay but it's mostly symbolic so yeah and i do and right it's mostly symbolic i mean we know we don't have enforcement authority on most of this and we have the sanctuary laws which sort of preclude us from doing a lot but i do think we have i think postponing it until the fall gives us gives our staff time for this over the summer to do that homework and sort of see where we are legislatively and um and have conversations with our other stakeholders to your point the sheriff and others so i would be willing to second a motion if it was to certainly no no if that would make it if you if that's but it's we have a real vulnerable population here not and that's not just farm workers it's students and you know the people who come here because we have a special status in this city um that has invited folks here and so i just want to make sure that we have all our ducks in a row before we um commit to to broadly okay all right so we got a motion and a second to just hold off i'll bring that back to the next meeting uh to fall right now i met with some folks from june i'm meeting with them tomorrow uh the other day and um i was kind of informed that it would be coming back our next meeting so we probably need to i spoke with them and i'm having a meeting tomorrow night yeah i've been speaking with them actively the ones who brought the the policy forward and let them know that that you know that i had spoken with our attorney i had spoken with some of our other stakeholders i've spoken and that i felt like we needed some more time to look at the language and to think about a substantive you know resolution that would meet their goals and needs and also meet the needs of our like our other stakeholders in the community and they so and they said that they were okay with that so i i gave this yeah i didn't want them to come next yeah our next meeting and it's not not happening yeah yeah they know all right okay any for discussion anyone from the public which speaks to the motion back to the board all in favor say aye aye aye any opposed all right that motion is unanimous thank you all right anything else mariella that's it all right thank you uh i just wanted to say it's always really nice to end our meetings with bark's really nice comments about pollinators and sort of bringing us back to what's real yes yeah and you know i would love for us our public works department on those areas where we do maintain wildflowers to actually work on some signs that say pollinators homes i mean i i liked his idea about that and it's a small thing but it's a nice idea so it's not even just homes it's the importance of pollinators in our area pollinators i mean to that end i just want to say i mean i think one of the things we keep we we talk about i think we tried it unsuccessfully once as a county before i was a commissioner to try to have food gardens out on the front lawns um you know i i i honestly feel like that was abandoned prematurely i think it was abandoned because there was unhoused people taking up residence there and there wasn't a good the county didn't have a a good way to manage those pieces of property right um but i don't know i guess my feeling is in addition to that idea of sort of signage and promoting more pollinators in our rights of ways i mean i don't know that we're really actively planting them in our rights of ways and i don't know that we're actively thinking about the ways in which we manage our facilities like we kind of have mow and blow contracts and so i would love for staff to bring back our contracts for our landscaping services and our right-of-way mowing and to have a conversation about how we might encourage more pollinator friendly and native landscaping and to the to our planning commission's ideas of how we put more trees in those areas as well of where it makes sense i mean i know that lacy already does a lot of that but yesterday i said second to your statement okay that's a motion okay this is a motion okay do i hear a second sure second i i absolutely agree with that because and it doesn't have to be i know that i know that that's facilities that's and that's growth management and that's apd like that's a lot of people so i it doesn't have to be quick you know we're not looking like for it to be in the next 60 days but you know sometime next few months i have a field it looks fine i know it four times a year yeah okay so we are making your referral to staff on pollinators missing and it is um it has been mark's uh public comment and mission at least for a year at least for a year um so we're looking for staff's ideas on how they can how they can do it we could do some of that further pollinator habitat forest ridge up there there are several yards that are doing that up there have you been up in forest ridge to see all that there's really a lot going on in the yards up in that area all right uh all those in favor say aye aye any opposed that motion was unanimous mark hold on all right okay um you have anything in no i was going to bring up postponing the all right all right uh then i think we are done and we stand adjourned thank you guys you