6-2-26 Special Meeting @ 10 a.m. - Jun 02, 2026

He said you sit there. Thank you. He didn't want to be on TV. They just have my badge on. You can see that. And whatever you're drinking, they're reanalyzing. Missy, I owe you an answer on something. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. But I mean, it's fine. What's that? I don't know. I don't know what it is. It's the transit. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I need to check to see if it's whether we put in special expense or we put it in Claudia's budget. One of these. I just couldn't remember. I don't remember either. Which transit? The para transit? I don't remember it being in 100%. So it's got to be in Claudia. I'll have to look at that again and see. And I don't know. Should I send it all over here? That's right. This ain't the first time. We'll buy this element. And then just tell her if she's got questions, she can call me. I'm glad we're done. Okay. This is becoming a crisis. It's not necessary. I'm not going to make it up. It's making a crisis. Yeah. For the reason. Yeah. Just because I can. You know, I can. You know. Yeah. And I only have three days. And they only have agreement. Right. Yeah. I saw a list of, like, 50 amendments. Would you say they went to 9 o'clock last night? They went to 9 o'clock last night. Wow. Yeah. They were. Yes. I mean, the gist of it was let the citizens decide, you know, put it on the ballot. But a lot of it from the Senate, the Democratic Senate's perspective is you keep changing all the rules in, you know, the 75 words. And, you know, you're only telling one side of the story. Cities and counties should be able to tell the other side of the story. Right. You know, I mean, they're all valid points. But to me, the bigger issue is the fact that they skipped over the revenue conference thing and or their economists to give analysis. And, you know, one woman was funny because she was asking the guy from Miami. He's from Miami-Dade. You know, where's the information? And he's like, well, I don't have any. How does that pass? I mean, you can't make a decision without information. Right. And that was a good hour's worth of discussion back and forth about what type of information it is and how it's presented. And the fact that, you know, they have no trust fund or what's the levels. Well, we don't know. You know. Yeah. But then they took the vote and, you know, it was going. Already voted? Just to go now to discussion today. Oh. I was like, oh, my God. Is it done? It's still going. The chaos. I know. I heard them yesterday talking about TDT. That makes sense. And one of the senators tried to introduce an amendment to the bill saying, like, if this goes through, it's totally going to TDT. Because they want to talk to any local county program. Because they talk about it. Well, they talked a lot about the special districts, too. Yeah. And what those impacts were. You don't want that. Invited all of northerners to the state. They got on. And now they bought all of these houses. Allowing cities to choose MSTU. The guy didn't have a good answer on that. He's like. And now you want to do something. Somebody had asked. June 2nd. 10 a.m. Special meeting to order. We've got. Move approval of the agenda. Second. We've got approval of the agenda. And a second. Three major items on here to discuss. Any. Or three items to discuss. Any discussion from the board on the agenda. Any public discussion. Back to the board. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed. That motion is there. I think we'll have Mary Helen and Mary Apple joining us shortly. I know folks were circling finding parking spaces. But with that. The first item is the West End Community Park Master Planning Update. The recommended action is listen to the presentation. Authorize staff to continue with A&E and permitting. Pursue potential grant opportunities. And revise the CIP as presented to make necessary funding available for the next phase of improvements. And Ms. Lieberman. Who do we have presenting on this one? Yes. Ms. Bauer. Jason. Jason. Welcome. You recognize. Thank you for being here. Thank you. Extra copy. Oh good. Thank you. That's mine. I left mine in my office for some time. So I don't send a clicker. I thought you took it. Mary did take the clicker. Take too many clickers. I'm on it. A million times with this. One more. One more. One more. Where's Dan? Oh. Sorry. Hi. Do we have the presentation? No way. There's a lot of files. We're trying to find the right one. Oh okay. It's very good. The agenda. Can you see it John? We see showing. Yeah. Which one is the one for this one? One ed since the 2026 agenda. There you go. Sorry. There you go. There you go. Sorry about that. Okay. Want me to just clicker? Nope. There you go. All right. All right. So we made some revisions based on the last meeting. that we had when we were at the presentation. So if we could skip. Jason. Yes. We have to get close to that microphone or Mark will be in here. All right. How's that? Is that better? Yeah. Much better. Thank you. Can we skip forward a couple slides? Keep going. I remember at the last meeting we were really the first phase was basically the infrastructure. Yes. There was nothing active. So this is what we came back with. So what we've done is changed it around to where we could add the playgrounds, the shade sails, adjacent pavilion, event lawn, nearby restroom, dog park, multi-use trail, and add a lot more bang for your buck in the first go around. And then phase two would then be adding in sports courts and the other supporting, the arboretum, fitness stations, pickleball, basketball, so on. So that's the changes that we made based on your feedback. So we wanted to get your input if this is what you were looking for and if this is something that you're more willing to move forward on. Okay. Commissioner Prisio. Yeah. Thank you. I'm really excited to see that it's a more comprehensive, like, you know, kind of let's get it done approach rather than so many phases. I think the community's been waiting a while for this. So having a lot of the elements kind of get moving at the front end is great. A couple of pieces of feedback, I guess, I have is that, you know, in our community meetings, in all of the conversations that were had with the neighbors and with, I think there was a lot of feedback that golf was still something that folks were really interested in seeing. And I understand that, you know, setting up, like, a golfing entity is probably too expensive for us to either put together or to manage. And so we were looking for the potential of a public-private partnership. But I don't see that spelled out anywhere on this. I see disc golf taking up a lot of the space that might have been a golfing area. And I see a lot of other sports that we've made investments in in other parks. So I'm just interested if you could speak to what the steps would be for a public-private partnership to include the golf element that everybody really wanted and sort of how that would fit in with the other elements that are on the west side of the property. Okay. So we do have some interested parties that want to partner and come in and know, they know up front that they're going to be paying to build, operate, maintain for the long term. The county will not put time into it. So we would work with procurement and that team to put out an RFP. So we do have interested parties. And that would, you just take disc golf off of there, which was more of like a placeholder just to kind of show. So that's the same area. Now, I think what I remember most on when I spoke to the gentleman that was interested was he was looking at more of a chip and putt versus a nine hole. But I think he, plus maybe a driving range, but I don't know for sure. But I know there's an interest in that. So it would be a good plan of action for us to go ahead and get with procurement and kind of see how that process is going to work. And then we can see what we get as far as proposals. And then we can come back and go, these are the proposals. We would bring it to your, for final decision, of course. Okay. They're listed on the last page at the very bottom as future discussion. Yeah, I saw that at the future. I just didn't know how it fit in because the disc golf was sort of in the location that I thought we had talked about for the pitch and putt and the driving range. And so it seemed like they would conflict with each other if we had both. So I just wanted to be clear that it could be either or and that we wouldn't necessarily, because that's in phase two, be actively putting in a disc golf course in that location. No, I was going to ask for clarification today because the partnership did not come up during the last, we were going over so much during that presentation that I think we just kind of glanced over that. But with the emails we've gotten that there is interested parties out there, I'm happy to try to pursue that and see if that's the best use. It's kind of a passive space that's set up for golf, anyways, at disc golf. And so the opportunity to present itself would be something we could look at. As long as it could pay for itself. Yeah. We had strong clauses in there regarding the management, upkeep of it, and a revert order to back to us if at such point it wasn't being kept up. Okay. Any other questions? Commissioner Wheeler? I have a question. Is this the site that Director Livingston was looking at for a hospital? Library? No. No. That is Jonesville Park at the back end of Jonesville Park. I got it. Okay. Thank you. So timing. What was the timing of Phase 1, Phase 1B, Phase 2? What are we looking at? So currently we are in the process of working on the standalone restroom and the utilities that are required for that to have that done before World Masters. Elizabeth from Kimley Horn is here. She might be able to give us a little more on the time frame of the other phases in engineering. So we would need to get approval to move forward and then we would start that process. So I would say on a rough estimate we would be looking at at least a year for design and engineering and then another six to eight months before we started construction. So I would say two years before completion. Okay. Elizabeth, is that correct? Yep. All right. Well, board, there's no other questions. Do you want to put a motion on the floor? Two years is a really damn long time to develop a building. Yeah, it is. I mean, is there a reason why design and engineering takes a year and a half? It's not a building. Come on up, Elizabeth. I understand that there's stormwater and things like that, but it's, you know, I mean, we're taking the same amount of time to build an animal resources building. So I would. Right. We will certainly work to put together a very tight schedule once we get kicked off. But yes, four to six months design permitting, overlapping that. So maybe we're looking more at, and because we've had great public input and all of these reviews along the way, I think we're kick-started versus if we were starting fresh. So maybe it's more of that six to nine months. Six months design, six to nine months, you know, another three months for permitting. We can talk about early release packages and other opportunities in that regard if we wanted to hurry things up even further. And then construction, yes, maybe nine months. A year is a better estimate given the amount of site work. But there also could be ways to tighten that up in terms of the types of work proposed. Okay. Well, I would move staff's recommendation regarding the funding initiatives with striking disc golf from Phase 1B at this point and including asking staff to explore an RFP proposal for a public-private partnership for golf on the western side of the property. Thank you. Okay. I motion and second. Would it be an RFP or an invitation to initiative? Or an invitation. I'm sorry. Maybe I shouldn't use the word. For a procurement process for exploring a public-private partnership. I think it's going to be something a little unique, so we're probably not 100% sure yet, but, yeah, there's a process for sure. I'll just say explore the procurement process for finding a public-private partner. You okay with that, Chuck? Yes. All right. Any further discussion from this board? All right. We'll open it up to the public now. If there's anyone from the public that wishes to speak to the motion, if you'll come on up. We've got a podium over here. If you'll just introduce yourself, and you'll have three minutes, and we'd love to hear your thoughts. Welcome. Thank you very much, commissioners. Appreciate the opportunity. And, first, my name is Paul Hornby. I'm currently the president of the West End Community Alliance for Recreation and Education. Just a general thank you to the commissioners for all the work these past few years, and also with staff, to get us to this point. It's been kind of a wild ride, but very... I would say, from a neighborhood to a park. But very encouraging every time I drive by there to see this beautiful property, and the potential that still exists there. I greatly appreciate the conversation and the issues you brought up, Commissioner Prizia, about clarity, about these public-private partnerships with respect to the golf aspect. It needs to be more than just put out there as a pitch and putt. I think the true interest is to have full nine holes and develop that driving range, understanding that that driving range is going to be shared space. I think this will truly maximize the property's potential. And I say this also, and I think this was also referenced, about the public feedback. So if you go back to the fall of 2024, the county did a survey of the needs or wants from the community. The top three vote-getters were a nine-hole golf course, walking trails, and a driving range. By far, that was the majority of the respondents. Just the nine-hole golf course, 96 responses. If you look down to disc golf, there were 17. Okay. So I think as these RFPs go out, there's some clarity around exactly kind of what you're looking for and what the potentials are. It could be a pitch and putt, maybe. I don't know that anybody's going to pay to go pitch and putt. But I think nine holes in a driving range would be great. Golf is not dead, no matter what people seem to think. There's just an article in the Wall Street Journal about golf is getting younger and cooler. I'm involved with the Gator Junior Golf Association, and we have, over the course of a year, two seasons, 400 kids participate. We have four summer camps this summer. They all filled up within a couple weeks. So there's a ton of interest. West End was our core location for our junior golf program, given its wonderful location. When it closed, when Uddeburg closed, and when Gainesville Country Club closed, we've kind of had to scatter out. We're still a very robust program. This would certainly add a lot to our community. Just in closing real quick, I mentioned the West End Community Alliance for Recreation and Education. That is our 501c3 that we established. We're going to kind of shut that down now. We've kind of run the course, so to speak. We do have about $9,000 left within our budget. And I had some initial discussions with Parks and Rec about potentially donating that money to the park. If there's an arboretum or a garden, something of that nature, we'd love to be able to put that money towards that. So that's in process. I know we've got a long way to go with that, but I just wanted to put that out there. Thank you. Thank you so much. All right, next speaker, please. Anyone else? Yeah, come on up. You have to come to the mic. Come on up. I do want to make a clarification. Introduce yourself and give us your thoughts. My name is Massimo Andani, and I'm the head of the wall in trying to push the community and the board of accounting commissioners to okay our plan to have a golf course. And thank you very much for listening to our voice. My question had to do with the RFP on the process of publicizing the public-private partnership funding. Do you have a deadline for that, and will that be publicized as a national RFP? Or is there a... We'll answer once you're done. We don't answer during the public comment. Okay, thank you. All right, let's bring it back to the board. So what would the... Oh, go ahead. Can I... Yeah, I just wanted to clarify that I... In a public-private partnership, the private entity, we would be... I think our part would be the land. Their part would be everything else. Like, we wouldn't be putting funding towards building the golf course or maintaining the golf course. Our expectation would be that that private partner would bring to us an idea that they felt like they could monetize, that they felt like they could make sustainable. So if that included, you know, holes, if that included driving range, if that included pigeon pot, I think they're going to have to do their market analysis and figure out what they think they can actually afford to build, and that will actually be attractive to a large enough customer base that they can make that project sustainable on the property. So we'll certainly, I imagine, have standards around maintenance and around capital, like, investments over time to make sure that things don't get run down and have expectations to make it accessible to the broader community and not just be, like, an exclusive club, things like that. But beyond that, I think our hope would be that we would leave it somewhat flexible golf amenities for the community and let the private sector tell us what they think is viable on that site, if I'm not wrong. No, I agree. I think we were just using Chip and Fudd as an example, but I think we would just... whatever they want to propose and it's, you know, fits our parameters, we'd be open to many suggestions or anything. Can you talk about briefly how we do the advertising for our procurements when we have them? Yeah, so it is similar to an RFP process. We actually release, we'll come up with a scope of what the county has available and where we're considering, the scope of what we're interested in receiving, any parameters that we would set on that in terms of operational viability, long-term viability, lease agreements, those kind of things. That would go out nationally. It goes through our normal process like we procure a lot of other goods and services which are nationally based. We would obviously allot enough time for someone to develop. That's not a low-cost RFP development as far as their responses go. If there's an interested vendor, they need to be given time to understand what resources they're committing and that takes them time to get their investors or whatever they're trying to put together. And then we go through that process. We evaluate those and bring them back to the board. The board will then review them themselves and determine if they see any that are viable and that they're interested in moving forward with. It is a lengthy process, but, I mean, that shouldn't be surprising. But that's obviously from the discussion today. It wouldn't just be nine holes golf. It would be more open to we have this former golf course available. This is a plot. We would provide maps. We would provide areas, opportunities, and then the private market then would determine what they see as viable. And to believe that's that western kind of order that's like the L shape. So now if you're going to go with nine holes, I believe you would need to go a little more up, kind of similar to where disc golf is. It wouldn't be limited to that lower section. It would probably go up into the tall upper part and in the up. So we'd have to look at would it impact where we put the dog park. So we have to look at that as well because if they're going to do nine holes, I know I've seen a couple concepts before how they can make it work in that space. But we'll have to look at that just to make sure we plan accordingly and adjust anything else in the plan. I guess I do want to be clear, and this is to be clear to everybody, it's like it is a park for the whole community, not just golfers. And so I do want to be clear that I don't want us to significantly impact the existing infrastructure that we have planned in order to accommodate golf. It would be how do we fit golf in with the other amenities that we have planned. I mean, if we have to make minor adjustments, that's one thing. But I don't want us to be like, okay, now we're not doing, you know, some significant portion of this plan other than disc golf because we want to do this. So I think we just have to sort of. So in the motion that was made, it was staff recommendation other than to strike disc golf for now and out of partnerships. So all these other amenities are going to remain. Okay. Thank you. And as far as a potential driving range that could be shared, would that be on the multi-use field space? That would be my – Seems like the only place. That's the only place they could do it. And we'd have to get taller nets. I mean, they would have to put up taller nets as well because it's not as long. Yeah. But you can do two-story. I mean, when I was down in West Palm for Summit, they had a county-run driving range, two-story. They do really well with it. So I see that it's a popular venue to still do these things. Yeah. Yeah. It would be super popular. I'm just having deja vu. My dad taught me how to play golf in 1972 right there. And we walked that course with the lights, you know, many, many, many, many years ago. I was a little fella born in 68. So, I mean, but I've walked that thing so many times. So if there does present an opportunity for us to do a nine-hole, I think it would be a neat opportunity. But like Commissioner Prizia said, the things that we are approving, I want us to move forward with post-haste. We've got to get a playground out there so that the kids start using it. We've got to get the walking trails done so that people start walking it. I think they're already doing that. Yeah. As I understand it, but just officially, you know, as far as an open park at the restroom is done. So thank you for the work that you did from our last meeting, Elizabeth. I appreciate that. And any further discussion, board? Okay. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Oh, oops. You wanted to see that question. Oh, come on up. Yeah. If you want to say, go ahead and open up the comment real quick again. It's beauty of having this room and having kind of this format as we get to kind of wing it. Wing it. Why not? Yeah, go ahead. Hi, commissioners. I want to thank you, too, for getting the park to where it is. It's appreciated by the whole community and being used on a regular basis by many people. There's one thing I'd like to bring up. A lot of people have been asking me about, can there be benches put in sooner rather than later? Or, like, a picnic table or, you know, something where people can sit down and rest? Yeah. I don't think that would take too much work. And plus, they're movable. And that's something people have been asking me about. And then, also, when we talk about golf, and I hate to bring it up and don't want to beat a dead horse, but to me, golf can be played with your grandpa, with your dad. I mean, it's very, very usable as far as interacting with people. You're interacting with the outside. You're walking, especially with the nine-hole situation. They wouldn't be riding. It would be a walking. And everybody, walking is important, whether you're young or old. And that would be my golf thing. And other than that, that's all I'd say. Introduce yourself to the staff. Oh, I'm so sorry. That's okay. I got overwhelmed. My name is Susan Pruitt. Thank you, Ms. Pruitt. Thank you for the bench suggestion. I think that's something we could probably do on the front end. Thank you. Appreciate it. Okay. You're welcome. Okay. Any further discussion from this board? All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes again. Mr. Commissioner Alford out of the room. Okay. Great. Thank you all for attending on the west end. Jason, good work. And we'll now move on to item two, which is the request approval of the Water Buffalo Act for the Wild West Revival event at Alaska County Agriculture and Equestrian Center. And the recommended action is to approve the- Move approval of the Water Buffalo Act. Okay. All right. Good presentation. Any further got a motion or second to approve it? Any discussion? Come on up. Give us your thoughts. Try not to talk us out of it. Hi, my name is Dr. Corey Chavall. I'm the Executive Director of the Gainesville Circus Center. And I was preparing to have this presentation on the 8th. I got the notice over the weekend that we were having a special meeting today. So I apologize for not having the audio-visual portion ready for this moment. But I did get a chance to respond to the questions that were in the email. So, first of all, I want to thank Dr. Doré for his thoughtful consideration of the health, well-being, and safety of both performing animals and the people who work with them. Animal welfare is a subject I take very seriously. I spent more than a decade as a vegan and an animal rights activist. Before I began my graduate career at the University of Florida, studying ecology, interspecies communication, and most importantly, the relationships between humans and working animals. In 2012, I published a peer-reviewed article on horse-human ecology in the Scientific and Educational Journal of Therapeutic Writing. Over the past several decades, the equine industry has experienced a significant shift towards natural horsemanship, Much like the movement towards mindful and compassionate parenting, natural horsemanship emphasizes communication, trust, and understanding rather than force or intimidation. And while these methods were first developed for horses, the same principles apply to many species of animals, such as working with cows, donkeys, etc., prey animals, specifically. Natural horsemanship is built on a few key ideas, understanding how animals communicate, establishing calm and confident leadership, using positive reinforcement, and respecting the animal's physical and mental capabilities. The goal is to create a partnership that is safe, fair, and enjoyable for the animal while allowing them to develop useful skills. Personally, I have been around horses and cows for most of my life and worked with them professionally for the past 16 years. The team involved in this project also bring extensive experience, with several of the trainers being third, fourth, and even eighth generation animal trainers and performers. The head trainer of my equestrian facility, who also works with cows, donkeys, camels, and a variety of other animals, she is Canadian and first came to the United States 20 years ago on an artist visa specifically to preserve Wild West Entertainment. Regarding banjo and harley, the water buffaloes featured in this production, it is important to understand that water buffaloes are working animals throughout much of the world. In their native regions, they are commonly used for agriculture, transportation, cultural festivals, and in some cases, riding. Similarly, many North American cattle breeds have long been used for hauling, ranch work, and occasional riding. It is true that cows and buffaloes are not commonly ridden in the United States. However, that does not mean that riding them is inherently harmful or cruel. Like any working animal, their welfare depends on whether activities remain within their physical abilities and whether they are trained and handled responsibly. Can you wrap up your comments? Oh, well, that was the intro. Now I was going to get to specifically answering the questions that were given to me. I'm sorry, I didn't know I had a time limit. I'm trying to address the questions that were posed in the email. They asked specifically how many animals. Would you mind doing that for us? Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, so there are two water buffaloes, to the first question, there are two water buffaloes and ten performing horses in the show. The water buffaloes belong to Shane Kuhn and Callie Sue Edwards, and they reside at Triple Cross Ranch in Micanopy. They live on 20 acres of pasture land, and they do have access to a freshwater pond for wallowing. Their diet consists of coastal hay and Missouri livestock feed from Chieflin Farm Supply. Six of the horses reside at Tuhok Equestrian Center, where they have ten acres of pasture and are fed stock and stable feed, with coastal hay from Spar Feed Store. And the other two horses belong to Tina Veder and Bruno Gonzalez of the Caballos de los Cristiani in Ocala, and they are the producers of the Ibericon Iberian Horse Festival at WEC each year. The water buffaloes personal veterinarian does plan on attending the event at the Lodge County Agricultural Center, but the county is welcome to hire their own vet if they would like. I also want to point out that my horses personally receive acupuncture, chiropractic care, and massage on a regular basis from Lotus Veterinary Alternatives and from Mike Dobbs Equine Body Works. As to the question of safety and how the animals will be dealt with at the center, we are performing at the Agricultural and Equestrian Center. It is quite literally designed for the safe and comfortable temporary housing showing and performing of livestock. Banjo and Harley's, I'm sorry, moving down. As far as how much work they will be performing, their first act consists of walking around the arena. Then they will have a 45-minute break. Their main act is three minutes long. It consists of walk, trot, and lope. Then they will have another 30-minute break. And then finally, they will appear one more time to walk around the arena and present for bows. Their total time at the Agricultural Facility will consist of about four hours, where they will be handled in the same manner that any other livestock animal is handled at the facility. Yes, they are large in power for animals. I just want to remind everyone that at livestock shows, six, seven, eight, nine, ten-year-old children regularly handle 1,200, 1,500-pound cows. I actually, I don't know if you all received the email, I sent a photo of my five-year-old and my 70-year-old mother sitting bareback on Banjo. So just to say, he's very, very docile. Also, his trainers have asserted that he receives far less training than the horses because he just doesn't need it. Happy to trot around the arena. As far as who will take responsibility, I personally will take full responsibility for compliance with animal welfare laws. And as for what penalties should apply, I leave that up to the board. Okay. Thank you so much for your comments. All right, anyone else? Yeah, come on up. Alan Evans and my wife Carly is here. We're the office managers at the Alaska County Agricultural and Equestrian Center. And I think this is going to be a pretty cool event, first of all. But we do have some concerns as facility managers, and I'm going to convey also the concerns of the grounds manager. And that is that what we have around the covered arena where this performance would be is basically track rail, which is a flimsy plastic track rail, which horses go around for horse shows. Not knowing anything about these animals and how they're trained and how docile they are, I'm not questioning what Corey's saying. We just have concerns that if one were to get loose, the track rail that's there could not really contain them. So it's just kind of that safety issue. But if she can kind of prove that these animals are docile and are trained properly, we wouldn't really have any problem with it. But that's our main concern is if they were to get loose. And you've got a crowd of people there and kids running around. So we just need to bring that safety issue up. Thank you, Alex. Okay, appreciate that. Thanks for being here. Can I respond to that? Because that was a concern that was not in. Yeah, come on up. So in 2023, Banjo and Harley and their act received the Southeastern Rodeo Association's Award for Best Specialty Act of the Year. That in and of itself attests to the fact that they are regularly performing in large crowded environments. Like I said, I just had my five-year-old sitting bareback on him. Again, they're cows. They're cows. And I know you all host livestock shows. Cows are, you know, presented on a lead rope by small children on a regular basis. So this is not an uncommon expectation for a cow. Also, I want to reiterate that this project is already approved by the National Endowment for the Arts, regardless of your personal feelings on the current administration. The National Endowment for the Arts is an organization that I have respected and admired my entire career. Being recognized by the NEA is something I have worked for my entire adult life. And this project is going to happen in Levy County. It would really be a shame if Alachia County misses out on participating in what will be inherently a historic production by the very nature of being part of this national project because of this discrepancy of having a water buffalo perform. Ever had a water buffalo get out and damage and hurt anybody? No. Okay. That's all I wanted to hear. Thank you. All right. Appreciate that. All right. Anyone else? Okay. Back to the board. Any further discussion? I would just like to say, in the beginning, I thought we were saying water buffalo when we really meant that we were talking about buffalo, you know, wild buffalo. No, no, no. I was really – I am a big fan of the water buffalo. As a matter of fact, when we were looking at the canal being clogged up with water hyacinths, I thought it would be really smart for us to find somebody with a water buffalo we could turn loose, you know, to help clean our canals. I didn't even realize there were that many people in Alachua County who had that relationship with a water buffalo. So, I'm excited. You know, my only – my question, and you've answered it already, was, you know, the structure of the animal, the backbone being strong enough to hold a body. And you've – yeah, you've explained that. Because I know that there are great family pets in many parts of the world, and they live in the houses with folks. So, I'm anxious to see what you guys have got you. I do have a question not related to this specifically. I still very much support it. I just – what is our policy and procedures with regards to anybody that rents our facilities and if the facilities get damaged in any way? Or do we have clauses in those rental that – or do they have to have insurance and that they would be responsible for replacing any equipment that gets damaged? Yes. That's all covered with the insurance requirements. Great. Thank you so much. Okay. Any other discussion? Okay. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? That motion is unanimous. What are the dates of your event? Okay. July 25th for those that are watching. All right. Thank you so much. Okay. Next up is the fiscal year 27 budget development, capital, budget, and financial plan and preservation and sports event center operational plan. I think we've got a calendar and then a couple of presentations. So, Mr. Crosby, you're recognized. Yes, sir. The calendar was for your reference just as we move forward this process. Obviously, what's going on in Tallahassee impacts how many times we need to come back and conversations we're going to have to have in the future. We have pushed the manager's budget to July 7th to be presented to you for your initial set of millages on July 14th, which is more of a traditional timeline that we used to have. So, after tomorrow, I believe, special session ends tomorrow, we will pick up, start having conversations with you as soon as June 9th for the next board meeting, at least kind of tell you what we foresee as the impact of whatever gets passed over the next couple of days. So, just kind of give you some parameters of what we are looking for in the future. And then the manager's budget will become, again, July 7th. From a capital plan, the capital plan, a little different format this year with the implementation of the infrastructure surtax and the departments have obviously been working hard at expanding what work they're going to accomplish and the jobs that need to be done. You have, the board has independently approved most of those plans. They've approved the TCIP. I think Ramon has a revised TCIP based on discussions he's already had with you, the parks plan as well, the facilities master plan. That's all been incorporated into the capital budget plan. This went to a group of individuals with financial backgrounds and the different constitutional officers and legal department to kind of review it from a financing standpoint and viability standpoint. That happened two weeks ago. So, what you have in front of you is the budget impact and the different areas that we look at. One thing we want to talk about today, Ramon is here. If you wanted to go through the TCIP again, I know he has, again, revised the plan based on the conversations you already had with him. We can bring him up. Fire rescue services has a lot to do with, well, each category, I'm sorry, is listed on the following pages. And we can start with the facilities master plan. Are you, are we looking at that with you or you just, are we looking there? So, you can look up here. Would you like us to print your hard copy out? This was in a backup. We can print a hard copy. Oh, no, no, no, that's all right. I just was wondering if it was already. No, we have extra. Yeah, pass them down. Please. Happy to. I can get my laptop. You're going. Thank you. You've got another one up there. I might. It's all right. If you don't, Anna, you take it. I've already looked at it, so it's okay. You go ahead and take a look. They have an extra one. He's got his. Okay, go ahead. I just left mine in my office. It's literally right there. I mean, we've approved all these projects before. This is really just an update. Yes, sir. So, one of the things that the board has asked us to do, and we'll go through in a minute, is the downtown area, and that was kind of a discussion. So, and on the facilities master plan side, the large construction projects coming. The plus minus in the middle. No, that's just for your 28 through 31. There you go. Perfect. There you go. Thank you. Right. So, you have a column for 27 proposed, which you'll see in the 27 budget. 28 through 31 is the next four years, and then the last column is just an addition of those two. The facility's master plan includes the animal services complex that we've been preparing for right at $30 million. Court complex is $94.6 million, and that's the parking garage, the new energy plant, the new building, all the stormwater issues we've had to address. Then in 28, we have been asked, the sheriff submitted requests to review and make improvements to the complex, his complex. Space-wise, I know that we're moving out emergency management whenever the armory is done, and they'll have that space available for expansion to the CCC and maybe some of their digital and technology areas. But they've asked us to do an entire improvement consideration for their complex, so we're looking at that and expansion for 28 and 29. That is when we're talking about existing civil to administrative renovation. That's what we'll talk about, the downtown building plan today. What we have today for you is really a layout of current assets that we have downtown, the number of office spaces we currently have in need, people, et cetera. So we'll talk about that a little bit so we can plan ahead if we want to take a different direction on what we would call phase two of the plan that we talked about a long time ago. So that's probably a minimum of two years out until we start doing the planning phase. The planning phase will probably happen in 29 with any type of renovations or construction or whatever the board intends to do in 30. Real quick, so animal services complex, we know will not all be spent in fiscal year 27. So that's going to get carried forward into the next year, but it's in the current year budget. Yes, sir. And is there any thought of kind of spreading that out? So the reason it's here is because that's what we're going to, we'll have to borrow the money for it. So we're approving the entire project even though it may take two years to build it. Correct, because we're not doing a pay go on it. That's correct, because it'll be a bad issue. I think we're going to have to... Do you have a question, Anna? I have a couple of questions, but I'm going to let Tommy finish and then I'll... It'll be easier to handle them as we go. Okay, so I guess you mentioned the roads and then the possibility of bringing Ramon up. I did think we were going to be having a discussion about a few of the roads that Ramon had wanted to potentially move up in the scheduling due to deterioration factors and things that we didn't have the information of when we originally developed the plan. So I was hoping to hear that today and have that discussion. Is that planned for today? Yes, ma'am. The other question I did have, it's down further in the facility preservation, so I can wait until you get there. Okay. Again... Go ahead. Tommy, these projects, that we have some of these projects that are already in operation and going. Yes, ma'am. They would have priority over the ones we haven't broken ground on, right, in case we do end up in a situation where we have to look at our budget. Yes, ma'am. So right now the core complex is... It's moving. ...down the river. I mean, you know, we're getting ready to bring back a... We're already building the garage and the energy plant and the... Getting ready to have... Bring back the cost of... And the contract for the actual construction. So that was down the river. All the rest are obviously, depending on what happens over the next three days and discussions this board has to have, there will be some difficult decisions that have to be asked. Might have to be put on hold. And we'll be... We could include some of these. Gotcha. That's correct. Okay, yeah. I think we need to be clear about that, too, going forward. We'll also impact the function of those departments as well and whether those departments will even exist in their current format in order to justify certain facilities would be a question mark as well. Commissioner Prisci. Yeah, I guess since you already chatted about it, the sheriff complex improvements, I understand that we had the conversation with our sheriff that we're moving out of the CCC. They were going to move into the CCC. There were some renovations that need to be made. $13,500,000 is a lot of money. That's like basically a construction project. I understand it's not the $30 million we're now seeing when we have to deal with construction projects or $90 million like we are with the court complex, but that's like three buildings. But it does feel like a significant amount of money that wasn't really discussed. Like we haven't had a presentation on what those renovations are going to be or how long that investment is going to last. You know, because there have been discussions in the past about the sheriff wanting to move. I know that the current sheriff hasn't necessarily had those same interests, but I would like to understand what that $13 million investment would be and what it would mean for the sustainability of the sheriff's operations on that site before we make that kind of an investment. It just feels like a lot of money. You know, when we said, you know, some renovations, I was picturing in the $5 million range, not, you know, not more than double that. So I guess I'm just interested to understand what that would entail. Yeah, I think that this was put in with the intent of vetting out exactly what that would entail, obviously coming to the board with that before we move any forward at all. It was in their budget request this year as a side item. So this is really Travis's attempt at kind of walking through it with them and seeing his needs. Unfortunately, $13 million is kind of, it does seem like a big number. It seems like a big number to me as well. But in this world, unfortunately, it is not a big number anymore. You know, like you just said, $30 million for an animal shelter, that's just phenomenal. You know, what we've been talking about. When we built the Sports Event Center just a few years ago, and we were talking about $30 million to us, that was the largest project, the largest funding project we had ever done. I mean, that's like half of that. That's half of the new building. Right, now it's routine. Well, look at our fire stations. Which are a fairly small building. The board house was less than $50 million when we first started talking about it. Right. Right, yeah, exactly. Now, 94. Right. Exactly. So I understand that. That's with port services now and the parking garage. I know. But that was all in the original plan. And it's doubled in price since we started the conversation. And, yeah, so I agree. Sticker shock, sticker shock, no doubt. Yeah. So we will build that out and come back to the board before we start implementing anything. Okay. This goes back to the presentation we had at McEnopey last night. Yeah, I mean, I understand prices have gone up. I'm not a moron, but that's half of a new building at that point. Like, you know what I mean? Renovation costs are traditionally half of a new building. That's about the cost. And that's okay as long as it's a long-term investment. You know, like this is the plan to make this work for the sheriff for the next 30 years. You know what I mean? Like if we're going to spend that much money, I hope that it's in an effort to make that complex something that the sheriff can be proud of for the long-term and not— Yeah, it's a good comment. Yeah. You know, we have had discussions about finding a new space. And if, in fact, that's where we went, it would be five times that. And so, but understanding what that improvement does and how long that lasts is really important. Yeah. Okay. Understood. Same thing with the civil to administration renovation, obviously, is this is a placeholder because of phase two we talked about long ago. The board has since requested we come back and discuss the downtown area. So that could shift completely and change. So right now, those are places to hold to see the long-term infrastructure needs, I guess. Facility preservation plans. This is an area where we've broken it out. And through Travis and my conversations, this is an area we need to be more committed to in terms of these are—we need to take care of our current infrastructure. We need to make sure that it lasts. And we continually are battling a lot of issues because of age of facilities and the long-term maintenance in the past of deferred maintenance in facilities that we're still catching up on. And you'll see a lot of jail issues right there on the first page. One of the discussions, when you're talking about sticker shock, and we've talked about what a new jail costs, I don't even know if that's going to be viable. We have a study out there, but, you know, to talk about half a billion to three-quarters of a billion dollars for a new building, we are going to probably have to look at renovations and what that can—how we can best use that facility. So we're in that process as well. In the meantime, we're committing a lot more resources to improving and maintaining the current jail. They've got a lot of dishwasher problems. Those are high-cost items. We've had a lot of plumbing issues that are constantly happening. Those pipes are old. So we are committing a lot of resources to that. Tom, the way this list works is the bold number is the total of the numbers underneath it. The bold number is the function. So 519 is a general maintenance function. And then 46 is maintenance. 62 is more of a capital renovation-type number. Right, but the 665,000 is the sum of all those items underneath it. That is correct, yes, sir. No, that is correct for all those numbers under that bold number. That is correct. Correct. Just for my colleagues. The public safety repairs is $665,000. General repairs are $665,000. General capital is $1.4 million. Public safety renovation repairs is $713,000. Public safety repairs is $1.2 million. And that's just in 27. Then the courthouse on the next page, 712, your court system, 712, general repairs is $265,000. Court capital outlay is $965,000. So total for 27 is $5.2 million. Can I ask a question on that? I guess on the jail side, again, I know we were having a consultant do a comprehensive review of the jail to provide us with an update on those renovation needs. Does this reflect that? It is not. That still has not been selected and come back to the board yet. It's on the street. We actually have, they closed May 27th. The committee is going to. Four. Yeah. Four proposals. Four proposals. Depending on what happens Wednesday, the board is probably going to need to consider, I mean, it's going to be a couple hundred thousand dollars just to do the study. Right. We're going to have that conversation about if we can't afford a three-quarter billion dollar jail, are we really going to go through this process? Are we going to kind of figure out what the renovation needs are? Well, I guess I thought that was part of the conversation with that consultant. Was that in there? We have to do the proposal. The RFP talks about we need to determine whether a renovation or a reconstruction is the appropriate and how do we go about doing that. So that's part of the. But it will have to identify what that renovation is as a part of this. Right, exactly. Yeah. I mean, I think there, you know, as it's no secret that I'm not in favor of or a fan of the idea of a new jail. So I'll just put that out there. Me neither. I don't think it's necessary. I will say, though, that we have a very antiquated jail. And it is not serving our goals for non-recidivism either because of the way that they have to manage populations and how difficult it can be. Those people with mental health disorders are often being in solitary confinement, which is the worst possible outcome for them because that's the only space in the jail they have available to be able to manage those populations. So we do have situations in our jail that we need to work on that aren't just about the renovation of the building because it's ugly or old or not working, but also because we have a very different idea, just like our animal resources facility was built as a pass-through to basically move to incineration of animals and euthanization of animals. We have a jail that was built at a time when there was a very different philosophy with regards to how we manage the people under our care while they're incarcerated. And so I do think we need to be thinking about those things. And I do think that some study is important so that we can understand what's possible with the facility that we have and or additions we could make that would help us to get the most out of the facility that we have. So I wanted to say that. But I did notice, you know, there's a lot of things on here. Some of them are things we knew, like the air conditioning system, some of the bathrooms, the doors, which we keep hearing about. HVAC is a necessary thing because I get calls literally weekly about it being freezing or burning hot in there. And I know Travis is working his tail off to try to fix those all the time. So it's a waste of time and energy and staff. But then there's things on here, a bunch of stuff in the kitchen, which kind of excites me because the equipment that's in here makes it look like they're going to do more scratch cooking. But it's over $100,000 kitchen equipment, for example. I'm just wondering if that's just – is that replacement of old equipment? Is that purchase of new equipment? Yes. No, it's mostly replacement of old equipment. I know the dishwasher's been a big issue and some of the equipment in there is – It's just really old. Breaking down. Okay. Okay. Thank you. That's easier to finance than a new building. Oh, absolutely. I just – it just feels like sometimes there's – it's, you know, much like the Sheriff's Complex Improvements, like that's like a big bucket and it's going to be like a massive renovation and you kind of get this overarching view. Sometimes when we do things in fits and stops, like we're going to fix this little thing and then we're going to fix this little thing. It's like each of those things is a couple hundred thousand dollars here and a couple hundred thousand dollars there and then we come back and we have to renovate the whole thing and we basically undo all the things we just spent, half a million dollars here and half a million dollars there, to do a $13 million renovation. You know, like we did just do some renovations for the Sheriff and the Sheriff's Complex not that long ago to make, you know, rearrange the chairs on the deck, if you will, in the existing building and so it's, you know, I just don't want to throw good money after bad when we, like, already are doing renovations. So I just want to make sure that we are thinking strategically about the ones in here that are necessary, like equipment and air conditioning and doors and which ones we should hold off on potentially until we get that overall concept of, like, what do we want to do with the jail. Fair enough. So the fiscal year 20 through 31 facility preservation projects right now, those are buckets of an ongoing, to identify an ongoing need. Travis is in the process right now of implementing or beginning the implementation of an asset identification system, so we go through everything in there, every air conditioning system, agent systems, boilers, lighting systems, et cetera, to better prioritize and manage this process. That's great. So it's not about just break-fix. So he's in the process of doing that now, and he's actually at a project management course today. So that's why those are more just an ongoing commitment to those processes and not identification-specific projects. He's going to be prepared during fiscal year 27 for 28 through 31 to have a better outline of exactly where they thought it was. Parks and open spaces. I think Jason covered the West End issue today. I think that was really the only outstanding issue from the last meeting he had. I think the rest of this is consistent with the presentation the board accepted and move forward with. The city park at the end of Noonan's Lake, Palm Point, I believe we were receiving that from the city of Gainesville. We're working with a private partner on a dock potentially there and things like that. I didn't see anything in here for that park, and I imagine that there'll be some trail upgrades and things like that. Will that be in next year's budget? So a lot of that general improvements can probably be absorbed with our normal. Okay. Yeah. I mean, we'll go in there and clean out and do this stuff. It's not going to be that substantial. And the dock, I know they're ready to go. We're still not final, final. There was just some issue with the idle, but I think we were pretty close to having that completely done. How about bathrooms at that location? That would be a long-term because we're getting the property. It's also the property across the street is part of that parcel, and we'd have to have EPD come out and look at it, see what we can develop and not develop, because I think there is a lot of wetlands over there. Low. So we would need to look at what space we have that we could put something out there. So we're kind of early stages, but that could be a possibility down the road because I know Commissioner Cornell and I walked that neighborhood and they really wanted to pocket park out there. So that would be nice to add some place for the families to go. Okay. Thank you. We're going to get through there. Then the housing, again, there are place marks for the infrastructure, infrastructure surtax that will be coming in. The only commitments we currently have are sunrise in and the tiny homes project. The board should develop over. We've been talking about through the performance management discussions and all those things, but the board is going to need to address this over fiscal year 27 to talk about exactly how we want the bulk of these funds, you know, what direction we want. You want to go policy decisions so that we can get the departments implementing infrastructure projects at a quicker pace. So I know that it was asked of the affordable housing advisory committee to approve funding from our affordable housing trust fund for some of the sunrise and renovations. Is that number included in this number or that being separate from this 2.8 for sunrise? That's separate from this 2.8. So it's in addition. Right. And also some of that money was asked to, on the housing trust side, was asked to, if you're talking about the million we're contributing every year, was to help operate it after it opens and to deal with the issues after it opens. You know, they specifically brought to us what they were spending the affordable housing trust fund on and part of it was renovations. Right. And that is not in this number. That's not in this number. That's not in this number. So it's going to cost us more than 2.8 million in renovations. I see. Can we pause just for a second? I believe Commissioner Alford is on Zoom. Mary, could you? Yes, I am here. Thank you. Okay. I've been on for a while, but I didn't realize I wasn't connected and couldn't comment. Could I go back to the jail for a second? Mary, can you hold on one second? Can we move approval of Mary Alford to participate remotely due to emergency circumstances, medical circumstances? Is that what's happening? I'm actually traveling and I don't need to vote. I just want to comment. Yeah, she's just participating remotely. Oh, okay. Mary, go ahead. You're recognized. Oh, thank you. I wanted to say, you know, regarding the jail, I know that a new jail is out of the question, but if we are going to look at any kind of modifications, changes, or additions, I really believe that it would be in our best interest to look at a comprehensive mental health wing to the jail or something that is focused on mental health. We don't have anything like that and too many of our inmates are there due to mental health concerns, and I feel like that's something that I'm hoping that the folks doing the study will look at. Mr. Chair, may I respond? Yeah. We got Commissioner Wheeler and then Commissioner Frizia that would like to respond to that comment, Mary. Yes. Thank you, Commissioner. When I was on the CGM SAG committee there for the few years before you all came on, we really were promoting the idea of trying to partner with Takachali to have a place on that campus to serve the folks that you're talking about. We have, we do have the resources in the community if we can actually make the powers that be understand that we need the facilities that are sitting there empty. When we talked about it in the CGM SAG, we had HUD there who said that they would help us repurpose the buildings in order to be used there. It's a big enough campus that it can serve a lot of special needs populations, and there's no reason for us to be in our community and not accessible to us when we have those needs. And it wouldn't hurt to take one dormitory or one cottage or whatever in order to serve the people that we're talking about now. We have the resources in this community. We just need to make sure that they are activated to address those needs. Thank you, Commissioner. Commissioner Prizia. Yeah. I mean, I agree wholeheartedly that Takachali needs to be something that's a resource for our community, and I don't have designs on that, and I love your thoughts of thinking about the ways in which we could use it to support the needs of our folks that need mental health support because we're way oversubscribed in terms of the number of beds that we have for mental health support. And I would just say, I agree with Mary as well, but I honestly feel like a majority of those people, they don't even belong in the jail. They belong in a mental health wing, but there isn't a bed to serve them. And so, you know, I think that's a bigger conversation too, Mary, that we need to have, you know, with UF Health, who just built their psychiatric hospital, a psychiatric facility. Like, how do we best serve and provide the facilities that are needed so that we're not using our jail as a mental health hospital? Right. But yes, I 100 percent agree with both of those statements, and I don't – but I don't know that the answer is we build a wing on our jail as opposed to we find other locations or partnerships that allow us to expand the spaces and the facilities that are needed for those individuals. I mean, the point – Mary, let me just comment quickly. I think the point on the jail is that I view those as two separate things. I view what Mary Helen's saying and what you're saying as preventative. No. I am literally talking about 30 percent of the people in our jail right now have mental health diagnoses, and of those many, there are people sitting in our jail waiting for a mental health bed somewhere that can't get a bed, so they're in our jail. Right. And so that was going to be my second point is that once they're in our jail, we have to have facilities that can serve those individuals and either transport them out or, like Mary said, when we renovate the jail, renovate it in such a way that serves that population differently. I think that was my point. If we're not going to build and redesign a new jail like Animal Services, then we have to think – when we're renovating the jail, we have to think through what does that population need, recognizing that I thought it was actually closer to 60 percent of our jail population was suffering from a mental health diagnosis. And so I completely agree with all of your assessments. I just – we're talking about capital renovations, and so I think our staff just needs to hear, as we're renovating the jail, if we're not going to go the route of three-quarters of a billion dollars to build a new one, how can we renovate what we have to serve that population that time and time again we've been told is largely, if not the majority, suffering from mental illness? Yeah. And if I can respond to all of that, I would like to say this is one of those cases where there's multiple right answers and we need to be doing most of them. I think that we do need better mental health facilities in the jail, and we also need facilities outside of the jail as a preventive, as an anti-recidivism idea. Anyway, I think that all the answers are right, but I do think our jail needs a mental health – more of a mental health focus, so that's all I have to say. Okay. Thank you, Mary. All right, Tommy, back to you. Let's keep moving. Okay. In the environmental protection conservation lands, we have the projects listed for 27 – or 26 that are going to carry forward that are completed, $33 million that are in process. Again, the board clearly understands that process. It goes through the different review committees to look at it and bring back recommendations. And then we bring in option contracts for negotiation, et cetera. So you all know that process. We don't list all those future ones out. We have a master list of scored programs. Fire Station – or Fire Rescue, fiscal year 27. We have Station 25, Tech City is scheduled for construction. And the fire training facility, we're still working on exactly what that looks like. I know we've been in discussion with the City of Gainesville and some of those lands. I know that we are moving – the process of working on moving the fleet – fire fleet maintenance facility part over to the warehouse and be a part of where Travis and them are in that back parking lot, which will free up property to help us with this training facility. So we don't really know exactly how it's going to look right now. That's why it's not better laid out or moved farther away. And I understand $350,000 is currently in the legislative budget for that facility. Which I would gladly give up in exchange for. Yes, we'd gladly give up for the – yeah. Okay. Yeah, we talked about that last night. Okay. So on the way, the Rural Collection Center in Newberry is the only immediate project that they've identified. Roads, and I think Ramona's here. Ramona, do you want to come up and talk about roads? Ramona, come on up. Yeah. Thank you for being here. Mr. Chair, while Ramona is coming up here. Tell me, have they broken ground on the Collection Center yet? No. No. Okay. There's actually an event coming up that I think I saw next week, I think. That's right. Here. Somebody else is flying for me. All right. Welcome Ramona. I guess we'll do our best. Would you have your hand us out? Yeah, please. I think I got barely enough copies for the table. Oh, big spreadsheets. All right. That's exciting. That's cool for me. Now I'm like, ooh, do you want to email it and I'll put it up so I can get it up for you. It's still driving. Yeah. Gotta get it up there, please. Give him the bells. Yeah. Lots of work. Goodness gracious. Nope. You can get one for the clerk. The clerk will need one. I have one extra here that I have for me, but I can look on the computer, so. It's fine. We're good. We're good. All right. Good. I'm just going to you right now. Just send you a PDF and an Excel. I don't know how we're going to make this work. You tell me. She pulled up and you can drive it after that. Oh, that's not what it is? Okay. There's your mic. I haven't got that yet. Sorry, Commissioner. I haven't used this system since they did this, so. It's okay, Ramon. Get the hang of it. It's all right. No problem. While we get to the screen, just let me say, I'm Ramon Gavarrete, Public Works Director. The good news is that we, even with the revised revenues that we were given before what's going on right now, we are not losing any projects that were originally approved by the board. That's the good news. That's great. The bad news is that in order to get to that point, my staff actually went road by road, and a lot of the estimated costs that we had for future years were revised, and a lot of them actually were revised downward. So that allowed us to actually have to actually not eliminate or propose to eliminate any projects. So that's the good news. The bad news, like I said, is we're tight, extremely tight. Like, when I look at the revenue projections for future years and based on the projects that are allocated to each funding, there's about 12 different funding sources, by the way, in this program. There are some of those lines in years that you're down, like, to $12,000 for the year after the projects are done. So that's part of the challenge right now. Do you want the spreadsheet or the PDF up? I would say the spreadsheet. If I can write the spreadsheet, it's easier. When we get to the discussion of County Road 234, because I know it's coming, I do have a map that's PDF in that file that I would like to show. And you might want to include 83rd and 15th. Yes. Yes. And the one in front of Santa Fe College. Yes. 83rd. 98th. I'll get to that. While they're still working on it, let me get to that right now then. One of the biggest moves that we are proposing is to move 83rd, which is the road by the college, forward to start in the following, in this coming fiscal year, FY27. Hallelujah. And that's only one year. Amen. And I will tell you that at the 60th gala, which was Saturday night, President Brody spoke very, very highly of this board and Mr. Gaberete. And we got a rounding applause from well over 300 to 400 participants. And they had prepared jokes. I guess that's an annual thing. They eliminated all the jokes and instead recognized this board. And so, Ramon, I know it's not just the college. I know it's not just your commissioners. It's the entire community, all the students. That's a big one. And I want to recognize you for doing that. Thank you. Thank you. We are already working with the college. We're assuming the board is going to want that move. Yep. So, my staff last week actually met with the college. They are requesting that we remove the on-street parking. That's my concern because I know what happens. There's a lot of parking. There's a lot of parking and that's the issue. They're not using the parking inside of the property. Yeah, I think that's okay. So, we're asking us to remove the on-street parking. So, as part of that, what we're going to be taking care of. In addition- Do we have a separated bike lane? That's a possibility, but we're still working on items that we have to do. So, I see something that looks familiar on the screen, but- That's the one on the west side. Ramon, did you want to talk about the one on the east side? Fifteenth. Fifteenth, yes. It's also being proposed to move all the roads around the Kincaid Loop area forward to the Kincaid Loop construction, which by the way, if the funding stands, were fully funded for next year. Next year, starting with October 1st. Wow. The Kincaid Loop project itself, after the public meetings that were held, the consultant actually took what the community wanted, and with the assistance of growth management, they were working on a design that would accommodate everything. What I call the Cadillac, the Cadillac design, and I'm dating myself because Cadillac is not even the best car right now. So, unfortunately, that cost was extremely high. My staff has looked at the design, still providing what working with growth management, the minimums that we need to be providing or should provide based on the community comments. And we believe the estimate that we have now in the TCIP being proposed, starting with October 1st, that Kincaid Loop is going to be fully funded. Great. We are bringing the design of that project in-house. It's going to be done by your staff because we cannot continue to pay the consultant. Yeah. We're going to be terminating that contract with that. Good. Good. Excellent. Also, our maintenance crews are going to be doing some work in advance of the project. There's quite a few. There's a few culvert crossings that need to be extended. And what I told my staff is, I'm not going to be extending. I'm not going to attach a 10-foot extension to a culvert that's 50 years old already. So, we're going to actually be replacing a lot of the crossings. By the bullet ones, move forward. It's something that hasn't been done in decades and decades and decades. Yeah. 40 years minimum. Yeah. 40 years and so. I know. So, those are the, but I am like Southeast 15th, and there's a list in the file that you got here. But, let me, I can hardly read what it's going to say down here. Maybe Ramon, if you're able to like highlight the big changes you're requesting. Yeah. Are they the ones in yellow? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, everything that's in yellow, but I don't see yellow here yet. So, everything that is in purple is new projects being added, by the way. So, most of them are going to be funded through grants that we already know we have through the state or the feds and your staff, including growth management, they're working together and hopefully getting even more grants. But, we're not going to place those projects here until we actually know we are being awarded a grant. Okay. And then, when the project actually happens, when we have an executive agreement, then the TCIP is going to have to be amended every time we do that. We want to keep all these projects in the TCIP. Because the problem is, one of those projects just get approved here and approved there. Right. It's very hard then to manage the money. Which is one of the challenges that we have to, for this type of revisions, figuring out the money. So, everything that is in purple, you see a lot of mid-block crossings being added. A lot of these also came from the work that was done through growth management on the safety side. So, we're adding a lot of them. Most of these are being, again, they're being funded from other sources, most of them. So, those are the purple ones. Everything that you see in yellow has to have a little bit of a revision. Like most of them, some of them were moved like maybe one year. A lot of them are rejuvenation projects that we had at one time. But because, like Arredondo, for example, we already did that subdivision. In a lot of those roads, we did already treatments. Because the roads, we figured out that they were not to the point that we had to completely build and resurface all of them. So, there are some roadways in some of these subdivisions that the rejuvenation is not an option because you already did one or something like that. So, some of those are being removed. But, I don't know why I don't see the yellow here. It's just not showing up, I think, on the screen. Ramon, other than 83rd and Southeast 15th, any other major changes? Actually, no. No. Okay. But 234, there is one section, by the way, that is in your program for 234. Okay. But right now, it's in the program on a specific year. If we get a grant that we are applying for, because grant cycles are, like, further than two or three years, that section of 234 might have to be delayed so where the grant comes in so that we can do it all in one time, and also to be able to use the funding that you are budgeting for the project as a matching for the grant. Got it. Okay. We're doing that, trying to, so that's about, because we have not received the grant, I haven't moved that project yet. So, that's going to be another amendment that might come to you all once we get the grant. I am optimistic with the grant. Is that the 3 million? The conversations I've had. Is that 3.7 that's highlighted? Yes. Yeah. Is that 170? No, 234. 234. Yeah. 641860 on the second page, on the board page, the back of the second page. So, really, those are the, that sheet that's called, and I don't know what page is in your packet here, but I'm also emailing you this, and I'm having a little con index when I email you. It's going to have the page numbers, but there's, this page is actually going to be in your package again, with all the revisions. It was a lot of hard work from staff, and not just my staff. We also use them on my staff. Okay. Commissioner, any questions for Ramon? This looks great, Ramon. It really does. If we can, if I know, I know Coney Road 334 is a hot topic, but I also want to show one map for the board. Yeah, please. Can you bring, can somebody bring up the PDF file? Yep. It's on there. Where? Go on the little yellow down below. Okay. See that yellow? That one. Click on that. The folder, you see? Yep. Click on the folder. Then you're right where you are right now. Click on that. Oh, cool. Okay. I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll work on the zooming. Don't worry about it. Once you get down there. I actually, what? I did have a question. 235 seems to appear a lot of times. A lot of times. A lot of times, but there's a $6.1 million project. There's no page number, so I'm, and then like, and then it, it pops up again, and there's a $2.4 million project. I didn't know if that was. Yeah. Those are two separate sections. It's like one was added. You should be able to go to the specific page here. Top. Where it says 10 and 52. That's okay. It's up there in here. The other left. I cannot type. So can you go to page 51? Whoever has the keyboard. Can you make those numbers any smaller? Yes, I can. I already lost my eye. All right. That's the map I wanted to show. Okay. Great. Your plus. Well, I am going to zoom, but I'm just going to zoom, but I'm just going to speak first about this map. This is 234 remote. This is, this has, this has County Road 234, 346, some major ones, 235. Yep. And what I wanted to show to the board is the sections that are included and those sections that are not included in your current program. So if we go to 234, for example, it should be for. I drove home on that one yesterday. Let's get this one here. It was so nice. Right until there. Yep. Exactly. So this is County Road 234, I believe. Yep. Yep. So the green's been done. The green has been done. Yep. The red is not on your program right now. We did put estimated costs here for each of those sections. When you look at the sections, for example, 4.1 plus 3.7, that's already. And there's another 800. So to do from here, let's say to Windsor, which is one of the things that we keep being asked. It's, it's going to be around nine, around eight and a half a million dollars, $9 million. And then you're seeking your grant, you're seeking your grant for that. Uh, the grant is actually for the sections, for one, someone's section, the section that is actually in the program. Um, the reds are not in the program right now. Right. So we're not asking for grants for the pro, for the, to do milling and resurfacing. Unfortunately, the federal grants currently right now are, where they do not allow us to use what they call maintenance. Right. They think that a milling and resurfacing project is a maintenance project. Uh, even though the restructuring. We can actually back on other items, like we're doing right now with them, uh, for the section 234. They'll let you use the money as matching funds. But it's your money now, as matching funds. So that, that's, that's what we're doing. But again, I just want to show the board that there's, it is not just kind of. So if we put it in there with a bike trail, we could get half of the eight million? But you don't have the sections that you want to be done. Those are not in your current program. So you could not use those sections as matching funds because you don't have funds right now to do those sections. Right. But assuming we dedicated separate funds to that, just for the sake of argument. Well, if we can come up with a few million dollars, you can add them. But then the question then becomes, and I want to go to. If we got the grant. I want to go. Let me see if I can do this. That 234 road has no room for a bike trail. It's just mills. So I want to talk about this other item that are here. No, I ride it all the time. You ride your bike? No, I ride, I ride it all the time. I know. I call them Richard. They want a bike path that connects to Prairie's bike path. So County Road. But it's all wet. There's other major roadways that are not in your program that carry a lot more traffic than 234. Yeah. Yeah. And again, you all and myself and everybody gets emails. Some emails are, quite frankly, on the nasty side sometimes, which I'd rather not answer to. But again, 234, I mean 235, 235A, again, look at all the red sections that are not included in your program for now in these roadways. This section of 235A is in your program. That's the section north of 441. Good. Frankly, we do not have that in the program. We will be returning back to Lime Rock Road. Yes. Pretty soon. Yeah, it's awesome. So that section is in your program. It's so bad. But everything south of 441, the section where the distribution centers are, are not being used. What year is the, what about? I believe it's 28, I think. 2028. Hmm. Will they make it that long? I'm hoping. There's, if you actually look some of our roadways, there's a lot of questions about all of our, about most of a lot of our roadways. That's true too. There's a lot of truck traffic on that road there. It's 20 million. Look at the cost of this section, commissioners. That's 10.8 plus 6.6. 16 million. Is it, I know we've talked about bonding and then we talked about the fact that we don't have enough road crews and blah, blah, blah. Is that the situation? The thing with bonding is that if you bond, you still have to pay it with interest. So unless the board then dedicates other sources for, to pay the extra amount, you have less money than your program overall. You can bond and you do the projects forward. Yes. But then you have to pay the bond. And Tommy can speak to this. Pay interest, but you don't pay increase in cost. Correct. There's not a cash flow problem as quickly as we can build them. Yes. That's not what's holding up. Not cash flow. But like I said, you still have to pay it. You're going to lose some money because of the bonding and of the interest. But I guess he's just saying it's not a cash flow problem. So could we bump it? It's a cash flow. I have to work with the revenue that I was given. But like I said, if there's another revenue source out there that pays for the increased cost to pay the bond, I would say go for it. But I mean, I guess what I'm hearing Tommy say is cash flow is not an issue. If we can forward pay for roads that are in this program that are at the point of where you're telling me it's going to literally have to turn back to Lime Rock and we have the crews to do that road earlier and pay ourselves back out of reserves or whatever. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm not doing this kind of work with in-house force. Yeah, we can. We don't have. Right. I'm just saying road crews, period. I'm talking about like people that hire, contractors that we hire. Yeah, yeah. You can do that. But again, the funding sources that I was given, I'm using all the revenues they told me. I'm very conservative. So if there's another funding source that we can use to pay interest on the bond, that's what we can do. Right. And let's share if I might. And we are using a model that calculates a lot of different factors in the order that they're falling in. So to try to get the most bang for the buck on that. Yeah. But we do recognize some of the issues that go along with, you know, the roads that are rapidly deteriorating. I think we understand that. But we're trying to also utilize to the extent, you know, we can the objective formula that we put in place. Right. These changes are really because from a financial standpoint, it makes sense if you're doing a road right next to another road, there's a savings and mobilization cost. Right. You know, things such as that, that Ramon has looked at. That's how, you know, 83rd works into that. And I want to let the board, I'm going to remind the board in 2028, we are proposing in your, in this program, and that's the way it was approved also in 2023. But in 2028, after we finished current paying the current bond that you have from what's called the Elms Nickel, we're going to bond for another $30 million to continue the program. And even though, keep in mind, the infrastructure surtax, we only get, and I want to say around the $12 million a year, plus or minus, your program is spending right now currently around $25 million a year on the average. But there are other funding sources, like I said. So the gas tax is one of those funding sources, which is the, the last five pennies that you can actually execute, and we have them all. Currently, a lot of that revenue is bonded for to pay for projects that have already been done, like the 8th Avenue extension and other projects. The last payment on that, I believe it is in 2027, 2028-ish, somewhere in there. Tommy gave me that exact year, I forget right now. But I know in 2028, in this program, I'm assuming to bond for $30 million, the Elms Nickel, again, to continue the program. Because if not, you would have a lot less roads here. Mary, I can't see you. Are you on? Did you have any comments on roads? No, I'm here, but I couldn't see most of the presentations because I was driving. But no, I think I'm okay. You're good on the 83rd and the Southeast 15th? I did have a comment about removing on-street parking. On-street parking definitely lowers speed, but that's all I had. Okay, thank you. On-street parking lowers speed. Yeah, so we'll have to account for that with the college. Actually, that's something that we are also looking at. Maybe include some choking points in the roadway to lower the speed limit. Definitely not have 12 foot lanes. We're going to go down to 10 and 11 foot lanes. Protected bike paths also can lower it, you know, if you have a little raised edge. Keep in mind, your funding that you gave me was for payment management program. So I do not have really extra money to start doing detached multi-use pathways and stuff like that in a lot of these programs unless there's other funding sources. And that's something that we can continue to talk to Jeff about that too. We're working with Allison on that right now. Awesome. That's great. And see what can be done. Yeah. That road is very wide, really. It is. I mean, I think I'm encouraged that you're in conversations with administration at Santa Fe, and I know they know their needs better than anyone. And so as long as you're coordinating with them, I'm happy. Yeah. Well, I told my staff, I am not removing anything until I get something in writing from the college too. Because previous experience tells me you're going to remove the parking from that road, and then five years from now they're going to come back. You're going to come back with wanting. Well, to Mary's point, you can remove the parking except for at certain areas to slow the traffic and have parking at certain. Or just have chauffeurs in your thing. Right. So that's what we're going to, that's what the staff is doing. Again, they're already assuming you're going to approve that. Yeah. So they're already looking at that project. And we are trying to do a lot of this work in-house right now when it comes to the design part. Yep. Good. Saving that kind of money. And when we do that, that money comes back into then the transportation trust fund. We're not as expensive as consultants. Excellent. No, that's great. Good. But it's a very dynamic program. And like Michelle says, if I change one number in one project, it affects everything automatically. And there's a lot of benefit to certainty and what we've communicated to the public is what is happening. Mr. Wheeler? I would also encourage you, Ramon, to speak with the village across the street. I've been contacted by some of the folks there, the elderly, that are also using that roadway in addition to walking across crosswalks. But also, they have their own special needs, you know, in that area, too. I understand. Gotcha. But again, keep in mind, budget is budget. No, no. But just, you know, while you're talking to Santa Fe. If there is an HOA there, we'll contact them. Gotcha. So we'll see what we can do. Yeah, I just want to, I get budget is budget. And this job, your job is paving and milling and resurfacing. But I do think, I mean, we as an MPO have a responsibility to also thinking about the bigger picture. And we have a Safe Streets for All plan now. And we're almost got a bicycle pedestrian master plan now. And I know that the corridors that are around major universities, that are around schools, it's a priority for us to make sure that those are walkable, especially that when it's near an activity center. So I just hope that even if it slows the project down the tiniest bit and even if it means we have to wait on grant money, that we really prioritize our bicycle pedestrian corridors there because we will be very short-sighted if we just repave that road. It's already really wide. We have some pavement available. And I think that it could be eligible for grants. I just hope that we won't, you know, I mean, especially in this instance. In the instances, many of these other roads, you know, we don't even have the sidewalks. We don't have the pavement to even be able to do anything like 234, for example. If pavement doesn't exist and it's a wetland on either side, it'd be really hard to put in a bike path. And it may take years and years and years to ever make that dream come true. But in this instance, we have the pavement. It could be a reality. It's just a matter of will. And so I hope we'll. Again, bike path is looking at that on Southeast 15th. We're looking at that on 83rd. I personally do not want, I want to be honest, I don't like bike lanes that are adjacent to the travel lanes. I would like to have some type of separation for that. And you may have the right-of-way on the campus there. Yeah. So we are looking at that. Good. Awesome. And we'll be working with growth management, you know, when it comes to impact fees and MMTMs. Even though they're in this program, they're the ones that I've worked with them on that to see what we can use and cannot use. Great. So we can be looking at those things. And I guess. And is Allison then coordinating with the notch? Is that how it's working? Yeah. Allison is the one that's working. Allison works the notch. They are all in. Okay, great. Allison is the one that works directly with my staff on that. Super. Can I ask one more question? Yes. I see Fort Clark Boulevard in the budget in 2029, but it's only $40,000? I believe that's the rejuvenation section that you call them talking there because Fort Clark is this year. Okay, great. Yeah. Fort Clark is, we're doing it actually waiting for the school. Okay. To get out? Like now. Okay. So hopefully this month, this month or in July, they'll do it. It'll be a fast job. And 98th is also or no? 98th is October 1st. Next October. That's when that fiscal year starts. And I. 98th and 83rd are, I've been proposing to doing them. Fantastic. And 83rd. I think those will really help with relief of some of the traffic congestion we have too, because a lot of people sort of avoid those because they're in bad condition instead of using our parallel corridors. And keep the sign shop going, Ramon. Tell them the public. Yeah, those are important roads to put the signs up on. Yep. What signs? Sorry. Wild spaces, public places. Brought to you by. We put those about a month in advance of every project. And so far we have kept them up. Yeah. Even after the project is done. Well, it's true. I mean, it's important that we tell the public what we're doing. Yes. We do that. We do place those signs up there, so. Okay. Do you need a motion to approve this? That would be my preference, yes. Okay. Move to approve the revised TCIP for roads. Second. Second. Any discussion from the board? With a request to please prioritize our, if you're okay with adding this, our safe streets for all on bicycle pedestrian projects when possible. Yes. Okay. Any public discussion? Okay. Hey guys. Bring it back to the board. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That motion is unanimous. Thank you. Mary, you can't vote, but I presume you would have been a yes too. Yes. I would have voted yes. Okay. You got five of us that are really happy with the work. I know it's been a lot of work to get to today. I've had a lot of folks that were planning to come and I said, you're welcome to come, but we may hear from them in the coming weeks with gratitude. So thank you very much. You're welcome. Okay. Tommy, back to you. Let's keep moving. Okay. So next we'll go over the Lachua County Sports Event Center operational plan and business plan. Yep. We've worked hard on, just we've taken it over, getting our feet under us and Jessica's team's worked hard on developing this operational plan and we look for you to approve this plan today. Okay. Jessica, you are recognized the hardest working person I know in this space, at least from the state, what they tell me. Well, thank you for that, Mr. Chair. And I sent one person away to go do so. I know. So he's coming back momentarily when we were on the air. Oh, yeah. Sure. His procurement training, so he's, but he'll be coming back through. Okay. And we left materials at everyone's space. I'll be emailing this to you after today's presentation, but this is the business and operations plan. And then I wanted to provide all of you just examples of the marketing collateral that our team has developed to sell the facility. So we have one, this piece is kind of a dedicated, what we use to market the destination to meeting planners and conference organizers. Within that, we have a pullout insert for our support center. And then we developed a freestanding sports center marketing piece that can be taken to trade shows for one-on-one meetings with events rate holders. And I know Commissioner Wheeler has seen me. So I just want to start also by saying I really appreciate the board's faith and the manager's faith in our department to transition this facility. We had so many departments that came together. And I really felt such a strong unification of whether facilities, OMB, legal, contracts, everybody knew we had one mission set forth before us. And that is to have a successful and smooth transition of this facility into county operations. So thank you for that. This is a great piece. I want to come here. Look at this. Even we'll book you right now. This is the impact that Jessica has had on our market. And that comes from our tourism team. I know it does. It's all over it. So we take great pride in the materials that we make to advertise our county. And we're in a competitive landscape. So we've got to be up there on our game. So before we get specifically into the sports center, I wanted to just kind of bring a little situational awareness about our tourism economy in general. Every year we conduct an economic impact study with a third party. They're based out of Tallahassee. They're experts in the field. And I like using them because it gives credence to our numbers. It's not just we're saying this. We have a vetted process. These are these important numbers. It's three quarters of a billion dollars of impact to our local economy through our visitors that are staying here and spending money. Over half a billion of direct visitors spend. Fifty four hundred jobs supported, creating over two hundred and thirteen thousand. I'm sorry, two hundred and thirteen million of wages. And it's a total of fifty eight million in tax revenue. So not just TDT, also gas tax, also sales tax. And it saves every household in Alachua County four hundred and fifty eight dollars a year. And I always like to say if your household is like mine, that's about one GRU bill in the summer. And I did want to really talk about visitor spending. And I think I know Chair Cornell from the years that he served on the TDC and of course Commissioner Wheeler. For years that there had been a heavy focus on heads and beds, heads and beds. Our board, I believe, was very in front of the curve and really thinking more broadly about our visitors and our visitor economy. What we are really looking at is the importance of the visitor spending to our businesses. You know, whether they're a day tripper, whether they're here for an overnight stay, they are spending money in our businesses. And I have new numbers to report on that. We have always said that twenty five percent of consumer spending for restaurants, retail is a visitor spend. So we've always known for years. But when we were looking at the visitor spend, those were visitors from beyond a fifty mile radius of the border of our county. I now have new numbers which show that these kind of close in visitors, they're most likely not staying overnight. They're coming in to dine, shop, go to events, participate. Oops, we have to go back. So of that twenty five percent, seventeen percent is actually close. We can stack those. So it's actually forty two percent. Oh, got it. Got it. Of spending. So the near end visitors are seventeen percent. And then our beyond those visitors are twenty five percent. So we're really looking at over forty percent of all spending in our consumer facing businesses. So, you know, we're not talking maybe construction projects and, you know, businesses that are based in biotech and things. We're talking consumer spending. Forty two percent is a visitor spend. So how our department is looking at marketing visitation. We're looking to market for those heads and beds because that's what replenishes and grows our bed tax. But we're also just looking at how are those day trippers. We need more of them to just come here and shop, go out to dinner, enjoy their day in Gainesville, Alachua County, head back home. Their dollar is just as valuable to our businesses as the farther out. I know. So with that, I don't think I've brought kind of a full update to our board recently of our bed tax and the growth in bed tax. So this chart is going back to twenty ten. We can see back then we were around two point four million of bed tax annually. We have their years where you can clearly see twenty twenty and twenty twenty one with our covid impacts. And I always tell people we didn't bottom out during covid. We obviously, like every other destination around the world, saw the impacts of covid on overnight stays and the ability for people to congregate in large ways. But we have a lot of stabilizing forces in our visitor economy. Number one, U. Number two, our exits off I-75. So those stabilizing forces kept our bed tax still painfully, you know, depleted from covid. But we didn't go all the way down. Coming out of covid, you can see twenty twenty two was a record setting year at its time. People wanted to get out and visit. People needed things to go and do. And Florida remained open for business. And obviously, since then, we've grown. Twenty twenty five was the first year we went over nine million of bed tax. And the exciting thing about that is it gives our board more money to reinvest into the acquisition of new visitors and into the capital programs like we're talking about today. So, oh, can you can you talk more about that? I'm really interested to understand what we're doing with the growth. I I understand investing in the things that we've already put forward. And I know that's a lot of what we're talking about today. When you look at I mean, I just keep pushing this because we spend so much money on sports and we have still have a huge arts and culture component to our tourism. We're trying to work really hard on the outdoors and the nature based tourism and the agritourism side so that we can bring more opportunities for business development and and tourism in the eastern part of our county and to our rural areas without having to necessarily push, you know, big. And so I'm just interested to see as we continue to grow redefining or readjusting sort of like how we're we're putting money into those buckets a little bit so that we are prioritizing. I mean, I looked at your presentation earlier and I saw that almost 20 percent of visitors are doing it here for outdoor recreation. So it's it's not just sports. In fact, they it it trumps sports really in terms of the number of, you know, like visitors coming for one specific thing because you've got sports split out into multiple categories. And I guess I just want to hear a little bit more about that. I know today is about sports and events, but I just constantly want to champion the fact that our arts, our culture, our outdoors, our ag like those are as much from my perspective an important place to invest as as our sports. So it wouldn't be an event center presentation if we didn't hear that. So it's good. She can go on and on and on. She can she can address what you're talking about. How much time do we have? That's exactly right. Um, I will say this as the bed tax has grown all of the funds that I know each fund grows like each penny grows or each whatever. So, um, even with our arts, nature, culture grants, um, those have gone from being maybe 500,000 a year. Um, this year we have budgeted 1.4 million for those. Um, we have budgeted over 250,000 for our event sponsorships. Um, we have conference grants, which are always coming in before the TDC, but conference grants are for conferences, meetings, things like that. So, um, I, I would say with the growth of the bed tax, um, it hasn't just gone into one area that what we call the third penny of bed tax, which is where all of our grants come from that has grown right along with it. And so we can talk about that. And I do want to also say, um, we have eight state parks in our county. So when it comes to where our advertising resources go, our advertising resources go into the things that we can control. So a great deal of this visitation are things outside of our control. UF will continue to be the number one driver of visitation because of all the activities that they have going on on campus. Um, what we try to do is say, we can't, they're driving visitation all on their own. We highly, we know outdoor recreation, um, has really taken off since COVID because those were things people could go and do. And we're putting a lot into, um, supporting that, but we'll get to that next slide too. Tommy, are we increasing the amount that we're paying on the, like, are we advance paying on the sports and events center debt as opposed to reinvesting that? Okay, so we, um, we have been collecting. We have a, depending on the terminology used now, bullet, balloon payment, whatever you want to call that one's coming up. We have been, we have saved about half of that and put it in a fund to earn interest so it can pay whenever that's due. We, um, we have an advanced funded that would probably, according to Todd, that will probably be advanced funded in the future or refunded in the future. Um, the question becomes right now though, it's a lot of money and it depends on what other projects come up. If it needs to be used, like you just said, there's some, a lot of growth. So if the county decides to use it for some other project or some other initiative and obviously it won't be there and that's fine. We were just holding it back for the time being until the board makes those decisions. But if it is available at the time the bullet is due, we can make that then or it can be refinanced by the clerk's office at that time. Okay. But yeah, about half of that has already been set aside. Okay. What's the balloon payment time? It's 12? I knew you were going to ask me. 16? 16 million. 16 million. The year, I can't remember the year. 20. 28, I think. No. It's in like 12 years. I think it's 12 years. It's halfway through the bond issue. I think about 12 more years. Got it. Okay. Sorry. And have we concluded paying for the equestrian center? That's, I believe the equestrian center is this year or next. We get a wrap around of this debt on that. So we've been paying a lot less on this debt because of that. So the equestrian center that's coming off the books pretty soon. All right. So we have a 1.30 meeting. While we get through the presentation and then we'll try to hold our questions. We get asked this question a lot. You know, why do people come for spending time in our county? Obviously, number one is colleges and universities, just like UF is the number one employer. The big reason why we have all of the visitation we have are it's not just UF sports. It's also preview and move-in weekend, graduation weekend, retail is there, outdoor recreation. People will sometimes say the medical. Well, UF medical has a larger marketing department than we do. And being one of the premier medical centers throughout the country in the southeast, they're driving their own service to patients and their families that come through. Even the UF Veterinary College, we get people coming in our office saying they're here for treatment for one of their animals and they're going to spend a week or so. Arts, attractions, entertainment, and events, big driver. We heavily invest in that through our sponsorship programs, through our nature culture program. So that is something that the board, every single time you hear funded in part by Visit Gainesville, Alachua County, you know that they have their funding behind us. I always think it's important for when we discuss sports to break out the difference between a spectator sport and a participatory sport. Those are completely different clients, completely different reasons for visitation. Somebody coming in for a football game weekend or to go to Gator Nationals is different than really a lot of the people we service at the sports center, which are traveling volleyball teams, traveling basketball, our athletes who are there competing on the track. So we break that out and then food. Okay, this is this. Yep. So sports ETA is the trade association for sports events and tourism in the United States. And sports commissions and DMOs are all like members of sports ETA. And each year they put out a state of the industry report. And they just a couple of weeks ago put out their report of the state of the industry of sport tourism nationally. And just one little fun fact about sports ETA. It actually has its roots here in Florida because the original name of the organization, National Association of Sports Commissions, actually got started out of an effort that Jimmy Carnes, our own Jimmy Carnes, and the Governor's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports put together, which was a business of sports symposium. And then NASC grew out of that and now it's called sports ETA. But a couple of key takeaways in regards to the sports ETA state of the industry report is that sport tourism generated nationally $275.5 billion in total impact and $111.2 billion in direct spending and supported 1.6 million jobs and generated $20.5 billion in state and local taxes and also generated 124.3 million room nights. 65% of destinations regardless of budget indicated that sports was the top room night generator in their destination. In regards to rights holders, the people that have events and bring them, venue costs and host bids and financial incentives were the most important factors when making a decision where to go. And in regards to services, venue sourcing was the sports commission or DMO service that provided the greatest overall value to rights holders followed by site visits and marketing. One of the biggest challenges facing sport tourism programs over the next three to five years that DMOs responded to or indicated was venue availability, funding concerns, rising costs and increased competition with other destinations or venues. And one other important key takeaway was parks and recreation was the most popular partner for bids and event delivery and 60% of all sport tourism events occurred in public parks. So shows a great value for our park systems throughout the country. This this this report really reinforces the value of the commitment that our community has made in investing in facilities and talking about the sports and event center today. And and and really showing that with more and more communities, understanding the power of sport tourism and the value that it brings, the competition's growing and we need to continue to innovate and find ways to set ourselves apart. And not only is that investing in the venues that we have and and but also delivering first class service. We just wanted to bring a slide to refresh for the public. We know you all know this, but our board has been able to invest over 50 million dollars of TDT into capital projects. The beauty of doing that is this is not something that our residents are paying. These are all projects that benefit our residents and benefit our businesses, but that are completely funded through taxes paid by visitors and short term accommodations. So I see that as you know, it's nothing that places any kind of strain upon our general fund, but we're still able to reinvest and the purpose of that reinvestment is to continue to grow our destination and bring in more revenue for our businesses. So you all are aware for our public to know we have our sports and event center. Years ago, Champions Park was the first major capital investment of TDT. Since then, we acquired and renovated the equestrian center in Newberry. And then in the past couple of years, we've provided 500,000 to West End and 500,000 to Jonesville. The Jonesville is for the soccer fields. So both of those have also gone into county infrastructure. And then we wanted to just remind the board of the investments that we have on a recurring basis and our partnership with the Gainesville Sports Commission. So this is FY26 budgeted numbers for all of our bid pools, all of our sports commission funding. As you know, we successfully won the bid for WMA. So that $750 for WMA is split over two fiscal years. We have some allocated now because obviously we're in heavy planning for that, which takes place, you know, that's only, what, 10 months away. Yeah. So we're working on that now, but we have funding for next fiscal year. And so the impacts of the sports commission are on the right hand of the screen. They reported just under 36,000 hotel room nights. That represents about 2.6 million of, I'm sorry, 2.6% of the total hotel room activity of the 1.4 million that were booked in that fiscal year. Of that, Champions Park is about 62% of the reported room nights that are funded through our bid pool. And that's administered through the sports commission. When we opened up the sports and event center, we created a dedicated bid pool for the sports center. So we have the bid pool that's run through the sports commission that supports activities at maybe about 14 locations a year, you know, 62% Champions Park. Then I did want to just share, for the sports and event center bid pool, that too was administered through the sports commission and we truly value and appreciate their efforts in that. That supported nine events which generated over 16,000 room nights and an estimated 140,000 of TDT. And I did want to just point out for the public that in addition to creating Champions Park and, you know, paying to have that created, we annually do provide operational funding support to Champions Park. Currently, that's going through that 210 bid pool. And so since 2019, we've done an additional 312,000 of bid pool directly supporting the tournaments and those large scale events that Champions Park is known for hosting through the summer. Go ahead. Go ahead. Would you just explain bid pool for the folks that are listening? Yes. For the, thank you. Yes. Or maybe Stephen. Where that money, what that is. Right. So events rights holders, when they're determining where do they want to bring an event, there might be multiple locations that would love to host them there for all of those positive benefits that we saw at the beginning. So bid pool is our source of funding to be able to say, you know, we have X amount to place the bid when they go through. It's almost like applying for a grant to that, a reverse grant. We're saying, here's what we have, here's our amenities, here's how we can host you, and we have, you know, $10,000 to be able to underwrite some of your out-of-pocket costs to bring your event here. Did you have anything else on that page? No. Okay. Can I just say, can I, yeah? Go ahead. I guess I just, like, the slide that you showed with the outdoor recreation and then the sports and stuff like that, I guess I just, again, I want to reiterate, like, and you talked about parks, like, one of the largest investment, like, one of the largest places that attract people are the parks. You know, and I, you know, we did put $500,000 at West End, but that was specifically for the sports and event thing that was happening there. It wasn't just infrastructure at the parks that make the parks an amenity for everybody necessarily, you know? And I just, I guess I just want to continue to reiterate, like, when we did the infrastructure grant with additional funding that supported arts and culture being able to build, like, Dance Alive studio and give support to our local theaters to be able to upgrade their elevators or their facilities so that guests have a better experience. To me, that's as important of an investment as what we're doing here, and I would really love to see us do a presentation as fantastic as this one about our arts and culture and nature tourism and understand how we might be able to invest some of those additional dollars in those areas with continued infrastructure support. I know the Florida theater is getting ready to renovate downtown and looking for support. I know that we have a lot of our local farmers that are looking at investing in infrastructure to be able to have more tourist programming and events. And I know that bid pool for arts and cultural and nature-based events would be just as appreciated as attracting our sporting events. So I will stop after that, but I just really want to put that out there. To that point, I think we are going to get that presentation when they bring back the $1.4 million of capital that's going to be available for, I presume, those types of organizations like we did for Dance Alive. Is that $1.4 million this year? It's not for capital. That's the It's not for capital. That's for the arts and nature and culture grants. Those are existing. Yeah. It's a grant program. It's like CAP is just growing a little bit. So the $1.4 million for nature culture, 25% of that is required for them to use to out-of-county marketing. Okay. The other 75% of that they can use to create the event, say for the Hippodrome, they use that to license a play, pay what they need to pay to get that event up onto a public performance. So the $1.4 million, I just asked Stephanie yesterday, maybe we could do $1.5 million this year. That money goes to about 30 groups in town. True. That's, but I would be more than happy to bring back kind of- We have the trail in High Springs. We have the canoe outpost that's not, that the city of High Springs is getting ready to sell. It's like a major access point for the river. We've got- We can't sell it. We can't sell it. But you know what I'm saying. It's like they've got, we've got like arts and cultural destinations that are trying to develop in our downtown, which we need to focus on from a redevelopment standpoint. We've got farmers and we're pushing agritourism that don't have the necessary infrastructure to be able to support the tourists that are coming to visit their farms. And I just, I just want to continue to be the voice for those groups because we put one penny to that and the other four pennies is like in administration and in sports and in bid pool and in sports and in a sports event center. And so, you know, it's, it's like three pennies to sports and one penny to arts and culture. And from my perspective, that's sort of how I look at it. And so when I see growth in our tourism development fund, I want to see us investing in the parts of our tourists, I mean, our tagline is where arts and culture meet, not where sports and universities meet, you know, and while I appreciate that those are really important investments and we've made this massive investment and we need to keep it operational and we need to keep it supported and we want it. And I'm super grateful to you, Steve, and you, Jessica, for all the amazing work that you did to dive in and do the work of like five people, I think probably to keep the sports and events that are going this year. And I do want to make the investments we need to make this happen. I also don't want us to lose sight of what we also should be investing in and to potentially think about how do we, how do we balance that? Because we've got all these small communities in our outlying areas that are trying really hard to think about how they get their gig, how they do the work that they want to do. And we want to drive economic development in those places as well. And that's, that's never going to be this. And so I just, I just have to keep saying it. Yeah. Where nature and culture meet. That's all you have to say. Yeah. It's done. It's done. You just didn't bring the other flyer, right? The thing is we're doing all of that. No, it's not done. What I'm saying is a bigger investment. Wait, let me, let me finish. We have billboards out there that are representing the arts that you're talking about and the culture. They're not sports billboards. There's nothing on them that has, do we have, we don't have any billboard that, these are all marketing up and down I-75. Oh, I see them, yeah. Okay. Well, I'm just saying this is only one piece of what it is that this group has been doing. There's a whole nother bunch of beautiful flyers like this. Oh, I think our group is doing an amazing job with the resources they have to tell the story. But these are in the tourist centers that come through into Florida. Yeah. These things are out there that market it. Yeah. Yeah. All of these things you're asking for. So let's plan on a separate meeting. Yeah. Just focus on non-sports related TDC. What I'm asking for is the increase in our TDC being invested in arts, culture, and nature rather than in sports. That's what I'm asking for. I'm not asking for the amazing work that they're, I think they're already doing amazing work to tell the story. I think they're already attracting the tourists in. What I'm saying is that we're making investments in outside businesses to come here and bring people here for sporting events. And I would like us to see us doing the same thing for other types of events. Let's bring diving groups here to High Springs so that they can come in and get big pool. Let's let them stay in our local. Let's bring in arts and culture, big events that would stay at. But that's a sport. Diving is sport. Diving is sport. I mean, you know, let them, let her, let Liz. I'm advocating for the thing that you're always saying at every small city that we go to. It's being done. It's being done. The money is not there, though, for those groups. The money is not there. That comes from what we're trying to do to support. So when Liz brings that, you'll see that that money is being spent in a way that you will be happy with. Kine Manager. I just wanted to make sure that the public and everyone understands that there's a difference between grant funds and bid pool. Bid pool is money we use to apply to for a, to put in an application for an event. Correct. And it's required by that event to make a bid to attract them here. We also use grant funds to attract events when somebody wants to come here and we say, we will give you X amount of dollars for X amount of heads in beds or towards your event. So I just wanted to make sure that the public understands the difference. I'll drop it. Grant and bid. I think it's another, it's an additional conversation to the one we're having now. I don't want you to drop it. I just don't understand why when I bring up this, this topic, every single time I bring this up, Commissioner Wheeler, you argue with me about the fact that I'm advocating for more money for our arts, culture, nature and agricultural programming. I'm not saying our staff aren't doing an amazing job. We have some of the best staff that I've ever seen in this area across the country. Like I go to other places, the work that they're doing with the amount of resources they have is phenomenal. I have nothing but full respect and accolades for the staff that we have and the work that they're doing. What I'm advocating for is how we split that tax money. We have a pool of over $9 million worth of money. And right now, huge chunks of that money is going to sports and events and very small amount of that money is going to arts, culture and nature, even though arts, culture and nature, from my perspective, brings in more people and is a larger part of our county. It is the tagline for our county. And it is, from my perspective, something that we need to spend more of that money on. So I'm not saying that staff aren't doing what they're supposed to be doing or that they're not doing a great job of attracting those people. I'm saying that with more money and more resources, instead of giving it to all the sports, we give it to arts, nature and culture means that we would be shifting some more people and more spend in those areas, which I think is really important to our to our county. And I just every time we have a presentation about tourism, almost always. It's about sports and the sports event center. When I came on the board, I told you all like I wouldn't have been voting for that thing. I would have never voted for it. It wouldn't have been something I would have ever picked. But it was put in my lap because I was here when it came up and it was already 90% done. And I wasn't going to be a thorn in the side of a project that had gotten so much momentum. But I continue to see it absorbing and absorbing and absorbing money and resources and time from our valuable staff. And it's frustrating to me to see like now we're going to put another $2 million into this thing. And now we need to hire more staff. And that's staff that could be in other units and other divisions doing other things, focused on other things. But we can dump it in sports and dump it in sports and dump it in sports. And I know that it's not just going to be a sports center. It can be events too. And I really appreciate that a lot of the focus of this is coming up with other ways to use that facility. So it's not just sports, which makes me really excited. But I just, and I don't have anything against sports generally. It's just that I want to see us put our money where our mouth is. And when we talk about the trail that we want in High Springs and when we talk about wanting to support Hawthorne with aquaculture and events and programming out there that's going to bring people to the lakes and the rivers and the streams that we have. And we talk about wanting to support agricultural economy. We need tourism money as much as we need, especially as general funds drying up potentially. Right. And so I just want to see it move in that direction. Well, and let me just say too, this is, it's not to argue with me, you. It's, you know, we're just having a discussion. It's not, you know, you're teaching me and I'm trying to share with you what I've learned eight years of being on this board. And I'll be coming off this board in November. And you guys can jostle for position to be on it because it's a really wonderful board. It's an amazing board. All right, let's keep moving. Let's at least finish the presentation. Okay. And then we can decide how we want to continue this conversation for allocation of the TDC money. Perfect. Thank you. So the beginning was just sort of where are we big picture, but now we just want to dive into our sports and event center and what's been happening over the last eight months since the county took the reins on October 1. All right. So the event center is really our premier indoor venue designed to drive tourism, attract visitors, and generate measurable economic impact. And this is important because you'll see as we're making decisions on the business operations of the center, we're focused on those items and really mission focused on the purpose of the facility. But the next couple of slides are going to highlight the first six months of county operations, but also we're going to take a look into the future. And as we continue through this transition and our stabilization period and really look at the plans for growth in leveraging our key assets and delivering optimal results and driving economic benefit for our community. As a reminder, we all know we took over management October 1 and we really focused on aligning to those broader tourism and economic development goals. And but also being conscious and recognizing the importance of long term stability. So we really prioritize the stability and continuity and avoided disruption. So we were proud to say that, you know, we really honored 100 percent of bookings that we're in and kept business as usual. And just in the most simplest terms, we kept the doors open and kept operating. So, you know, that the fee schedule was was approved December 2025 and allowed us to continue to contract new events while honoring those commitments made by the previous management. So I will say to you that I am obviously new as a government employee and a county employee. And whenever anyone asks me how things are going, I tell them that it's amazing the team that we have here in the county. I mean, every department has been so supportive and really understand the priority of making this a success. And it couldn't have happened without that teamwork. And I wanted to really recognize procurement contracts, risk management, facilities management, the county attorney's office, information technology, human resources, finance and accounting, communications, fire rescue, public works with road closure for one event that we did last minute. And in the sheriff's office and obviously tourism and economic development. And did I leave anybody out? Did I just name the whole county? I hope not, but I think everybody, you know, we were holding weekly meetings and then we did bi-weekly meetings and from a person from each of these departments. It was what do you need? What do you need? How can we get you there? And so again, it's been a real collaborative effort all across the county. A lot of great support. So, you know, understanding that the center's funded through TDT revenues and tax exempt bonds. And that's our primary purpose is to attract out of county visitors that really drove our decision in a different business approach. And really, we went and focused on a rental based model versus creating, you know, local programming for the facility. We really focused on delivering outstanding services and to events. Right. So and obviously our events time are the weekends. So we really, again, focused on honoring commitments, bringing in new events. And we have some great new events that are coming up next year. And again, supporting those event rights holders and what their needs are at the facility. So which really aligns with our tourism development model for the facility. So next slide. And really, we've already addressed a lot of the points on this slide, but I did want to emphasize one important one. And well, actually two of them, the eighth and ninth bullets on here. And that is that we recognize our goal is to reach that 80 percent cost recovery through earned revenue. So we've been very conscientious of our decisions to be thinking about A, tourism, B, driving revenues. So that is very important. And really, the remaining 20 percent is coming from planned, you know, investments from TDT. So to operate the facility. So moving on to the next slide. Really, we had a lot of early operational wins in the first six months. You know, thinking about the fact that, you know, we're we're in an agency that historically has not operated a facility of this type. And the fact that we could pick up with very little transition time, keep the doors open, honor commitments, book new events. You know, to me, that's a big win right off of that. And a huge win. I mean, it's really a huge. Yeah. And then the fact that, you know, we got through procurement and contracts and so forth, and we were able to bring in our vendor geosurfaces to get the track built on time, have a successful track season. So we were able to have track season starting off with the Jimmy Carnes event hosted by the sports commission and ending with the NAIA championships. But within that period of time, there were six events that we ourselves as the county operated that we owned and operated within that track of field season. So again, another thing that historically not running events ourselves, but now we were able to come in and run events as well to keep the season going. So the other thing that I think is important to recognize is that as we dig into the operations of the facility, if you look at the calendar, there are basically 10 weekends that we can consider, you know, dark weekends, right? So you have six home football games, you have major holidays, a lot of this is in the fall, right? And then you have a period of time when track construction occurs where you're not going to book an event, right? So really, we have 42, you know, 42 weekends out of the year that are viable weekends for booking events and projecting forward into the rest of the fiscal year. 38 of those weekends are booked, so we're operating at 90% capacity, right? That's great. Really great. Moving on. Jessica, you're going to handle this one? Okay, sure. So we kind of started from scratch with the marketing of the facility. We had to rebuild our social media presence and we had to rebuild all of the digital assets and the website presence. So we're just sharing some top-level things. We do have our own dedicated Facebook page now. I think we're up to about 2,000 followers. We have our own Instagram. We expanded all of our digital content through photography and videography. Everything is now integrated into the visitgainesville.com website. So we are building out the presence for the facility onto our website, but initially we thought what better way to kind of not only let them find information about the event they may be coming here for, but also see the restaurants and the breweries and all of the other things to do. It's all housed in one place. These materials that we left with you, these are what we bring when we go to trade shows. So our staff went to Visit Florida Huddle Encounter, which is the largest and official trade show for the state of Florida, where we introduced the facility. That is not primarily a sports audience. The audience at Visit Florida and Huddle is meeting planners and people who want to do trade shows. And we're really looking to activate and grow our Monday through Thursday business, that daytime corporate type of business. And that's who this was geared toward. We have literally hosted dozens of site visits at the center. Everything we, you guys all know, we had the Florida Association of Counties there. We had representatives from all 67 counties able to tour through and see what we have. We hosted Alachua County Hospitality Council. I did a walk through with Visit Florida because as we progress, one of the opportunities we have is to convert the lobby into an official Visit Florida welcome center. And that would pull people off the highway. And that would pull people off the highway. We can have that staffed and they can come in there and get information about all of the things to do. And that would just be a great feather in our cap to actually have this signature tourism product that this board has developed as an official welcome center. And so moving forward, we're continuing with expanding our website and digital presence, strengthening our engagement with the visitors who come through and continuing to push our brand out there. So understanding being a tourism driven facility, measurable results are very important. And you're seeing here the results of the first two quarters. Now a reminder that the first quarter were essentially that's out of season for our facility, which actually was a blessing during transition. But then as soon as we got through those first three months, we went straight into what is in season. And we saw that the first two quarters generated $10.7 million in direct visitor spending, $16.7 million in total estimated economic impact. And track and field season really spans the entire second quarter, right? So it really drove most of the direct spending and economic impact. And in terms of visitation, we estimate that more than 43,000 visitors came to Alachua County for events at the event center with over 53,000 guests walking through the doors of the center. So that's a lot of, a lot of people, a lot of cleaning up. And then the next slide shows the, the hotel impact related to, to those results with an estimated 23,000 hotel room nights and 3.5 million of direct hotel spending. So at this time, we are, we're gonna move to the next slide. So at this time, again, projecting forward through the rest of the year, we, we, we're seeing that the current bookings are gonna re, require 240 public facing days. So the doors will be open to the public 240 days out of the full year. And that we have a total of 76 total bookings in, in the, in the books right now. And, and that continues to grow. We keep booking days. So, so our next report will show. And, and, and this weekend like tell about the jujitsu and. Yeah. Yeah. And then we have multiple, we, we have multiple events as well that happens on day. So, um, with, and we're gonna talk a little bit about some of these rooms that we're opening up, but, um, opening up new spaces and, and utilizing them in a different ways, allowing us to build capacity. And, and, uh, this weekend we have booked, uh, two different events happening. One is in the room that used to be the cheer room. We've been calling it the Springs room. And, uh, and then, uh, the main arena has a major event going on as well. And we have that again later on this month, um, with, with a historical fencing event. Uh, that, uh, that one of our county employees, uh, is very active. Yeah. The fire marshal is, um, a historical fencer and he's bringing his group here for an event. Um, so that'll be in that room while there's a basketball tournament going on. So if I need security, I can get the fencer. Yeah. Um, so, so in order to really generate business though, like we're talking about, we've got to build capacity, right? And, and, um, and really looking at what are those opportunities, um, in repurposing space and reinvesting into the growth, right? And, and again, continue to driving success and that success, the plan for it does go beyond sports, right? It's, it's about events as an event center. So, uh, and there's a lot of opportunity, uh, that we're identifying, um, you know, and, and really if we look at, um, um, if, if we look at the spaces that historically we looked from a lens as just a sports facility and I just named off the previous cheer room and there's also a strength and conditioning room that was built to really support local programming. Um, to me, that's 6,800 square foot room and a 2,500 square foot multi-purpose space. That's complimenting the 90,000 square feet of uninterrupted floor space or expo space, right? So now we start looking at a totally different market and that market is historically weekday business, which is much needed in, in the tourism landscape in, in any community and in our community. So, uh, so again, there's those opportunities there, but moving on to revenue growth, though, and thinking about expansion, um, of, of our, of our business and our revenues that we drive from those business. But also, you know, we've been very focused on keeping the doors open, operating, managing events. Um, really the next step is to get into other areas of earned revenue, such as the sponsorships and, and advertising opportunities and so forth. Um, really investing in staffing and sales capacity, uh, furnishings, which drive incidentals and revenues, right? And, um, and really taking a look when, when you're operating at 90% capacity, we have the opportunity to start analyzing business, right? And, and how do you make a shift in current business and looking at more high yield, you know, event opportunities? Steve, have you looked at naming rights? This was a discussion that we had at the very beginning of this facility and we opted to not go down that road. Like how, what are we talking about with regards to potential revenue? I'm going to look at Michelle. So, one of the things we would need to do is determine the, the, um, I guess for lack of a better term, the market rate. What, what is that value? Yeah. Um, because when people look at the, there's a whole area that just deals with naming rights, because of course this is something all over the country and all these different facilities use. So what is the value of that right would really need to be determined. And a lot of that has to do with what is the visibility of what the building is. Right. Clearly it's very visible from 75. So that's an important factor, but also how many people outside of the people driving down the street will also be seeing that name. So how many visitors do you get? There's this whole, um, so we would need to look to somebody to help us value that and put that opportunity out. I know that the prior operator did have a few that were interested, um, potentially, um, at one point. So I do think there is opportunity. There's always opportunity without taking a more extensive route at valuing that to just approach some of our local people and say, is that something you would be interested in? Um, many, many of them do like three year, three to five year agreements where that's what you'll see the lettering change on, on these different facilities. It's the exact tech center, and then it's the overall center. Correct. Because they will do three to five year agreements. Does this board have an interest in that? Because we originally kind of opted not because we wanted to get it established as the Alachua County Sports and Events Center. But I, I feel like if we're looking at some capital improvements, this is a perfect time now that we have 90% utilization. People know that it's there, that we ought to be at least exploring what that might look like. Sure. And international exposure. And I think that helps the, the, the sale. Yeah. But, uh, Mary, do you have a, are you, is Mary still on? Okay. Uh, I just wanted to, Chuck and Anna, do you have a, an opinion about that? I hadn't really thought about it, to be honest with you. Yeah. I mean, I, I feel, I, I probably feel 50-50 about it. I do feel like leveraging private sector investment to be able to make some of the improvements rather than having to spend taxpayer dollars on them always makes sense. You know, I always am concerned about associating our brand with another brand. It may not be private, it could be a UF Health, another institution, it could be, it could be, you know. I just think we have to be careful and I think we're going to have to approach it very strategically because it is us, right? It's a local government brand associating with another brand and it, and you know, there's been plenty of stories of the PR crises that you have when suddenly there's this name slapped on your building and then they do something that doesn't align with our values. Yeah. So I think it would just be key who it is. It's definitely like not a yes or no, it's more of like a, it depends, you know. Okay. So it's not a no. I mean, it's been a, it's been a, it's been a, it's been a no. We haven't done it. Right. Right. And largely because we outsourced the management of it to a different vendor. Right. We've given those rights to the operator as part of the agreement and now they're back to us. Right. Okay. And I do have, I do have something to say when you got a second. Go ahead, Mary. Yeah. Go ahead, Mary. I agree. I agree with Anna. I believe that whoever, I'm okay with having somebody's name on this, but I believe that whoever that is needs to align with the values that we have here in Alachua County. So I wouldn't necessarily want it to be, I don't know, certain big developers or a necessarily an alcoholic beverage or something like that. I think we need to just be a little careful about, about who we decide. I mean, you know, we get to share our name. I don't know. I mean, I know that there are. That's all I'm going to say. Okay. Thank you, Mary. Can I ask, I guess I'm interested. Like, I do feel like there's two ways that this happens, right? Like in the university world when we do naming rights, there are millions of dollars and there, it's like, that's it. That's the name of the building. You know what I mean? Like it ain't changing. It's not like it's the exact tech center for a couple of years and it's, it's not a sponsorship. It's a name and that's the name of the building. And I think there's that opportunity. And then there's, it's essentially a long-term sponsorship that allows you to slap your name on the building. That's what I'm more interested in, like a five-year agreement to see how it works. Sponsorship agreement that includes your name on the side of the building. Yeah. I mean, we, we built the building. It's our building. Right. So I think we have to, I think we should be clear about that too. Like it's not actually naming rights. We're not giving them the ability to name our building for in perpetuity. It's like, it's a sponsorship opportunity that includes the opportunity to advertise on the outside of our building essentially. Right. And we wouldn't necessarily call it, I guess I feel better about that. Like we wouldn't necessarily call it the exact tech center or whatever it would be. I'm just using that because that's the one that's coming to mind right now. It would be, you know, it, it would, they would have their name on the outside of our building, but we wouldn't start calling it the UF health center, if sports and events center or the whatever sports and events center. So that feels to me like that starts to get into the name and then people brand it that way. People get used to thinking of it that way. And then it's like confusing when it's constantly changing and things like that. So I guess just thinking about that is important to me and understanding what that looks like. I want us to have that discussion so you could hear from the commissioners. Cause I don't know if we've ever had that discussion. We've kind of deferred it to the previous operator. Yeah. There are examples out there. Yeah. The Phillips center. Right. Of governments that have put these opportunities out. And so we will certainly not have to reinvent the wheel. I'm sure Orange County probably has quite a few. I would imagine. Okay. All right. Let's keep moving. 1235. Okay. And then, and then really the last thing with revenue growth is when we approach track season, we got it done and we got it done well and saw an increase in, in actually participation numbers. Uh, but obviously having more time, there's a lot of opportunity there to build participation and thus revenues. So, um, the next slide, really, I, I kind of already blew this one and talked about the meeting space, uh, in advance. So really, again, just underlining the fact that, you know, we are looking at this from a different lens and really want to build more opportunities and they're not limited to sports, but it's anything that drives tourism and, and really in order to drive, you know, these revenue opportunities and building capacity and so forth, there are a number of improvements, uh, that, that we've really dug into to look at, um, that a drive revenue, B drive events, help us increase level of service in building capacity. Um, looking at safety and security and also preservation. So, and there's a, there's kind of a very summarized list here on this slide show. Um, and then looking into the next slide here, um, looking at just renovating the two spaces for. Oh yeah, go ahead. I'm sorry, Anna. It's okay. I, I guess I'm just interested in understanding more about that first, where would that $2 million come from? Is that general fund? Is that the growth in tourism tax dollars? Is that sponsorships and outside revenue? Is that grants? Like, are you asking us to come up with that $2 million? It's TDT. It's TDT. Well, we were thinking TDT reserves. Um, so. How much do we have in the reserves right now? Well, we've said, so when Stephanie and I talked about this, she's, why don't you answer it? I mean, we had maybe $5 million in reserves and then we set aside the $2 million. We have, we have the $2 million that we've kind of set to the side as you consider this proposal. Um, we have a couple of other capital projects we're still paying out. And then, um, with all of that, we would have about another million, I believe, left over when these, if you approve, you know, if this is a direction the board wants to go, we would have about another million. So we are running it on a basically $7 million and with 8.2, 8.7 and 9.4, we've really built up our reserves. Yep. We've built up our reserves. And what are you anticipating for 2026? Well, that's a good question. So the first six months of 20, our FOA 26, um, we've seen a decline in TDT. Um, that being said, our April was amazing. Graduation this year took place in April. So it spiked that up. And then I know with Morgan Wallen coming here in May, um, we'll have a much better May than we had last year. So I'm cautiously optimistic that when we end the year, we'll be up around that 9 million again. Um, you know, every year. Every year. But not 10 million. You hate to say it. Don't jinx it. Every year. I'm waiting. We're going to hit that 10 million and celebrate that. But I think this year will probably come out around nine. And of that, let's just say of that 9 million, how much of that is adding to reserves? Several, a couple million dollars. That does not include the 8 million that we talked about that we'd set aside for debt as well. So that's out there as well. We have. So I think, I think before we can give you a decision, at least from my perspective, before we can give you a decision on this too, I kind of need to understand what we are, what staff is thinking with what they have and what's coming. Um, because really it's a question of paying down debt, investing in operations or adding to the facility. That's, and this isn't the only facility as Anna kind of mentioned, there are other potential things that you may want to think about. So that's where I am. I don't know where my colleagues feel. Um, yeah, I mean, I guess I, I wanted to understand. I mean, we have talked about using some TDT funds for the rail trail corridor project. I think that's a really critical one and it's not one that was budgeted. So I know it's going to have to come out of reserves. Um, you know, I, I want to understand how we might be able to do another capital grant opportunity for arts and culture, um, nature and agri tourism facilities so that we could see what sort of needs are out there. I know for a fact that there's interest, um, in some of our downtown facilities and, um, in some of our outlying areas that are trying to do more tourism related agri tourism activities, like little farm stores and things like that, that could be interested in a, in a grant like that. Um, I, I also would really like to understand what the million dollars is for. Like, what are we doing to those facilities, those rooms? You know, like, I'd love to have more detail to understand. I mean, most of this I get like security, obviously. Yeah, I mean, I like that list. I don't think that's a bad list. I just kind of want to make the decision in totality as opposed to individually. I just also want to understand better what the million bucks is. Like we already put $32 million into this facility. And I understand we want to keep going to make it a really great facility, but putting another million into it and in the rooms, $2 million into it, a million in stuff and a million in capital construction type stuff it looks like. So this document has more detail on pages 23 and 24 where, you know, we shortened it for the slide just for the ease of the presentation. Got it. And these aren't, you know, we haven't gone out and solicited quotes. We've solicited like our best current estimation, but this is what would go into it. There's a million right there, sunroom, lighting. I mean, how can a space that was just built a couple of years ago need to be modernized? Well, the perfect, so the prior operator had one of those spaces as a dedicated cheer room. So it has just concrete floors. It has cinder block walls. The whole entire floor was covered in a spring floor. And so that room actually, Steven just had it rented for a UF medical school graduation celebration. So what we really want to be able to do is take that room and make that a place that, you know, a 400 person banquet or a 400 person conference could come through. The room that we refer to as the sunroom used to be a strength and conditioning room. It has a padded floor right now. And it is one of my favorite rooms because it has the big bank of windows that looks out. That's a great place for people to have corporate luncheons. We can host rotary clubs in there. We can host a wedding reception. Yeah, it's a very pretty room, and it's been only used for strength and conditioning before. So that's where I think the shift from a true sports-centric focus in the facility, we will always be sports-focused because we have the only indoor bank track in the state of Florida. Yeah, but this could expand the non-sports-related items. Exactly. That's what we're thinking because our hotels are telling us, and we know from tracking hotel utilization, our hotels do very well Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Yep. We're trying to bring business to our county Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Yep. And this is how we do it. We have parking and we have amenities. I'm not opposed to this list. I like the list. Okay. I am more interested, though, in understanding more of what Commissioner Prizia was mentioning with regards to other opportunities around our county and understanding with all of the reserves in the TDC, kind of what staff is thinking about with regards to utilizing those. And I do want to utilize them. I don't want them just sitting there. I do like paying down debt, Tommy. You know that. I've always liked paying it down early. I also want to get it into the community. Money is cheap right now, though. I do not. It's a better investment. I do not. I was going to say, I don't actually think that's the best use of money. Okay. That's fine. We have low interest. Exactly. We have low interest. Let's use it on the things we need. Let's get it into the community and use it. Let's make money. Yeah. Okay. Let's make the economy. Well, that's the difference between this versus, yeah, this is actually reinvesting in an enterprise fund, kind of. Yes. And I do, I hear you loud and clear, Anna, but I do want to make sure that this $30 million facility is self-sustaining. I do, too. Long-term. I just think we're going fast. Yeah. Like, I get it. Like, you know, it's like, okay, do we have to do all $2 million of that this year? Like, do we have to do the main arena? Like, we just built the main arena. Do we have to upgrade the main arena right away? Like, can we do some of the, can we do a million of these upgrades and take a million of this and invest in other parts of our county's tourism infrastructure? That could be really helpful to supporting our small local businesses and our rural economic development and tourism industries rather than $2 million in a facility we just spent $32 million on. And, you know, like, is there, what are the priorities, you know, here? If we were to prioritize this list or if we are to do this $2 million, do we still have the money to do the trail? Do we still have the money to possibly do a grant for capital infrastructure and other arenas of tourism? You know, like, what is the reality of the possibilities? And I think right now it feels like a black box, like the carry forward and the reserves and the funds that we have feel a little bit like a black box. Just something. Commissioner Wheeler. Well, I don't say much really, guys, to be honest with you, but for the success of this sports center, we have to make those investments because it's going to bring in more attractions to a lot to a county. So, I mean, I don't want to get into the logistics of it, but I think it's important that we do make those improvements to bring those events to a lot to a county. That's what's going to make us successful. And then free up money for other organizations to get funding. So, I mean, we got to put our money where it's supposed to go to improve things at the sports center to make it better, to enhance it, and to bring more activity to it. I think that that's the most important part at this point. And then when that happens, we have extra money to give to others. I mean, we got to make this successful first before we make other things successful. And I think that this is a huge investment we have made, and we have to make it successful. I'm sorry. We just have to make it successful because it's going to look bad on us that we built a sports center and it failed. I don't want that to happen. And I don't want to have that label at least on my legacy here. So, I mean, just to be honest with you. So, I get what they're trying to do, but I think that we need to make that investment now so that we don't have to make it later. There are a lot of things that we did, I thought we did on the cheap initially, in my opinion. That's just my personal opinion because we could have had it really, really nice, but we didn't because we were thinking about taxpayer dollars. So, I'm just saying, I think to make this- You're ready to move forward on this decision today? I think so. Okay. Personally, and then that frees up money in the future for other things. That's what I think. So, I mean, that's just my personal opinion. Okay. Commissioner Wheeler? Just a couple of questions. The building's lot in front of there, have there been plans for that lot there in the empty lot? Have you- So, Ms. That you're able to talk about. Right. Oh, okay. We are all tied up in the current happenings and legal issues with Celebration Point. We are monitoring those situations and have taken some actions with regard to those situations, but there is nothing we can tell you today on any certainty. It'd be a nice place to put a concert hall if we were- There's nothing I can say with certainty regarding those parcels. So- Mary, do you have an- No, I just- Go ahead. No, no. And landscaping for what's there now, it still looks like a construction site. Is there anything we can do to make it look at least pretty on our part? So, we plant some trees, you know. I mean, it really looks- So, we do not have control of the parcels or any part outside of our footprint. But we have had conversations with others who may have some of that control to please try to work on that. But again, we do have some current issues with regard to the legal standing of things that we are working through and working with the people who do have those abilities right now. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Mary, did you- Well, let's get through the presentation and then we'll have some discussion and questions and discussion. And I would say that- And while- If we do come back on discussion on this, I think it'll be important to look at the generation of the sales tax and what creates- what historically has created heads and beds. And that's not to say that investments in other areas don't or haven't. But the percentage of what generates heads and beds to regenerate the fund also is a- She just did that. Right. Is an important background. At the beginning of this presentation. Yeah. Okay. Keep going, Jessica. And really this slide just lays out an example of just looking at the old chair room and the strength and conditioning room, converting that into meeting space within the three years. That's what your revenues conservatively can be in terms of getting into that meeting space business just for those renovations alone. Go to the next slide. I did want to bring to everyone's awareness just what the staffing has been at the facility since we took it over October 1. Today is actually Steven's nine-month workversary. So he joined the county on September 2. Oh. Yeah. We celebrate him being here. But I do have to say the level of dedication that has come from Steven and he- I jokingly tell him, you know, should I share with the board that you've moved into the building? And he- But he- He's always there. I mean- He's always there. He's there seven days a week. We have had truly one staff person, which is Steven. We had a building mechanic for a short time. We hired recently a new employee named Matthew Kelly. He started about a week ago. He has substantial experience. He used to work at the O'Connell Center. He knows how these facilities run. So we finally have a little help for Steven. You're never gonna find a more dedicated employee of this county and somebody who puts his heart and soul into everything he does and has led a team of temporary staff. So when we took over operations, there were a lot of part-time employees. Because when you have 4,000 people in the building, we need one staff person for every 250 people for crowd control. So what we initially did was reach out to all of the existing over-hires that were employed at the center. We wanted to give them an opportunity to have continuity in employment during the transition. We said to them, if you come sign up with Spherion, the county's temp agency, we want to look to you first. They know the building. So we've got a lot of people coming through our Spherion, helping Steven. And with that, we operate this building seven days a week. Most of the span of day on the weekends is about a 16 to 18 hour span of day, and that needs to be staffed. So the two FTEs that we're looking at are both revenue-generating FTEs. These are people who we need a booking and sales coordinator. That's a person whose sole job is to go out and get those meetings, close sales, bring those events and activities to the center, and then an event service associate. So both of those, we're not looking for additional, like, non-revenue positions. We're looking to really operate this as a business model with as close a margin as we possibly can for additional county support. And for the public listening, again, this is not locally produced tax dollars. These are taxes all paid through visitation. And we don't, to the point of sponsorships, that's a real opportunity for increased revenue. We just haven't had the staffing bandwidth to put together a robust and comprehensive sponsorship program and then have a salesperson going out doing those one-on-ones with our businesses to meet with them and say, you know, be a part of the success we have going on, and this is what it looks like. So those are the two positions we're proposing. I believe both of them are about $170,000 combined. And Stephen and I have projected that they would be able to make up their own salaries through revenue that they would bring into the center. I will just say to me, this is where we need to invest. To get to what you're talking about, I mean, when we look back at the ETA report, when we look back at the data and information that you have, it's about service, and it's about sales. Like, those are the two areas that are growing and that are the most challenging and that are the ones that these, whatever you call them, people who want, who have events, that want to come here, want. They want specialized attention while they're looking for a place, and they want service once they get to a place. And I think we're going to achieve that with staffing much better than we are with, you know, some better sight lines in the main arena. Like, you know, I mean, I know all those things are important, and over time, as the facility begins to generate revenue, I think that's when we should invest that revenue. Like, for real, that's when we start really investing that revenue back in the building. But I feel like this is a really important space to invest because, I mean, frankly, we don't need to save sleeping at the facility center, no, no, just in all jokingness. But, like, you know, we need to staff this so that it can actually operate the way that it should and could operate and not, like, burn out the key staff that are the ones that have the vision to be able to make it possible. And we need our tourism and economic development manager back so she can focus on all the areas of economic development and tourism. And I know that so much of your time has been absorbed here. So I am in full support of us expanding the staffing components to make this facility happen successfully. We have one more slide, and we have literally, like, 12 minutes. Okay. We have to break for 15 minutes to reset the room. What's the name of the slide? Oh, this is just a summary slide of things we've covered, so. Okay. All right. We got through it, Steve. I wasn't sure about an hour ago, but we got through it. All right. Discussion. Commissioners, are you looking for a decision today? Yeah, we're looking for, yeah, we would like you to pass the operational plan for the Sports Event Center so we can start. Move. Second. We have a motion and a second to pass the operational plan. So that would include the hiring of the two FTEs and utilizing the $2 million for reserves as laid out, Tommy? Yes, sir. Okay. Discussion. I know, Anna, you don't want to do that. Mary, do you have any comments? It's not that I don't want to do it. It's that I want to do it in a phased approach. I want to understand where all of our reserves are and how we're planning to approach them. We've promised other priorities. We've talked about that trail system for a decade. We've talked about other tourism needs. We've been pushing with our small communities that we want to invest in ecotourism. We've been pushing on agricultural economic development and tourism. We've been telling our community at large and they've been telling us that that's what they want from us. And yet we keep investing in the same facility over and over again. And so what I'm saying is that I want to see us prioritize multiple things. I think we can walk and chew gum. And I would like for us to look at an overall plan for those reserves and how we're going to do that before we just decide we're going to spend $2 million. It's not that I don't want to do it. I just want to understand how it all is going to work. I understand. Mayor, do you have any comments? Mayor Helen, would you add to your motion that we request that SAF bring back for a future discussion the remaining reserves that exist as well as recommendations on how to potentially utilize those? Goodwin. Yes. Goodwin? Okay. Do you want to interpret that to mean that you're passing operational plan with a caveat? Not a caveat. In addition. And I mean hold the $2 million until the... No. No. Okay. Just bring back the reserves beyond that? Yes. Yeah. Just what the balance is. Sure. Yeah. What I heard and what I believe exists is somewhere to the tune. So you have $8 million that you put aside. Exactly. And there's... It's available. In addition to that $8 million there's but actually another $3 to $5 to $6 to $7. Not including this too. Correct. Yeah. Another $3 to $5. Another $3 to $5. And so I feel like we can... I'm going to support the motion. I feel like we can support what Anna wants to do while continuing to move forward with what I feel like we need to move forward with because like we can't lose weeks and months on this. And I know you didn't make the decision to build this but we... This room, we turned the 40,000 square foot facility into a 120,000 square foot facility with not less than 60 people in that meeting. I'll never forget that meeting. Perry McGriff was here. And so we're committed. You know, we're... Can I just say something? We are successful. We are a 98% book for weekends already. Yeah. 90%. 90% of 42 weeks. I mean... Right. That was a good way of getting 90%. But I want to ask you to keep going for those other 10. You know? And I think that we do need to do some things to get... I think you have done an amazing job of taking over something that we have outsourced. But I hear and feel the strains of what's going on. And I feel like we can enhance it and continue the momentum. And I want to continue to do that. And impact it. Yeah. And... But I also hear Commissioner Prizzi is loud and clear. And I want... I look forward to that next meeting where we can have that broader discussion. All right. Any public wants to speak to the motion? Back to the board. Any further discussions? Okay. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Aye. Motion carries. 3-1 with Commissioner Prizzi in dissent with Commissioner Alfred Oliver. Mr. Chair, can we bring that back during budget discussions in August? Absolutely. Would it be a good time to do it? Yeah. I think that would be fine. All right. All right. So we got closing comments. Any public comment? Open up the public comment. Close public comment. Any commission comments? Save mine for later. I will save mine for the next meeting. Other than... And I will say this, but I'll ask for a motion. I believe that we have gotten as much comments and public input on data centers as I've seen since I've been on the commission. I would like for us to have other... I've talked to some other counties that are having a special meeting to hear from the public. And then I know staff is coming back with a recommendation, but I would like for us to have a special meeting where we hear from the public and then the staff can incorporate the things that they hear in bringing back a recommendation. If y'all don't want to have that, we're going to have a meeting when staff brings it back. But I think it's something I'd like y'all to think about and we can discuss to that commission comment in the next meeting. I mean, I don't necessarily think we need that. We've asked staff if it's even possible and literally in our current conference plan it's not even possible to build a data center without a committee that would come to us. So it's literally a foregone conclusion that it's a moratorium on them because they can't be built. It's not a use. It's not a use. I don't think our... I feel like our public wants to lean in. I think that's Mark's job to get the community information out. Like we have a public relations person, a communication person who needs to get the message... So you don't have a special meeting? No. I don't want to be yelled out about data centers when we're not building a data center. I think that's... I mean, I think we need to continue to communicate to the public that that's not something that's a priority for us. We're not doing that. I don't... I think advertising a meeting about data centers is going to make them think that there's a chance that we're building a data center when there is no chance that we're building a data center. You know what I mean? I don't want to scare the public with this idea that they could come to us and tell us they don't want something that we have no intention of building to begin with. Do you agree? I'd rather communicate that we don't have an intention of building. Well, I just want to say I don't support data centers. I just think that they're bad. I think there's pollution. There's a lot of things I don't like about it. And so I'll just be... Right now, I am a no vote. I'll just be honest with you. Yeah, Anna, you make a good point. No, you make a good point. Okay, I'll drop it. But you're also the chair. Yeah. And if you feel like this is a strategy that you need to make it. No. I feel like there's folks that feel like this might be happening and I want to give them the opportunity to come and tell us what they think and for them to hear that it's not going to happen. And we've instructed staff to go that route. Right. But I also... I think we just... I agree what you said. Like it's... Yeah. Maybe we can just get with Mark to come up with some communications about it's not a use right now. It's not a thing. It's not a use right now. And there's a big concern. Oregon's path of moratorium. Mr. Chair, Mark Sexton, Communications Director. The only thing I would recommend is that there be a thorough discussion that includes legal growth management about the legality of what you say about the board's policy on data centers. And I don't feel like from a communications point of view we have that that is clear. And the worst thing I could do would be to jump the gun and do something that would create legal issues for the county. Okay. So don't want to have a meeting. We'll wait for staff to come back. I hear you loud and clear. I don't disagree with that. Maybe we could... I don't think... I hear you, Mark. I guess I just feel like Mark's always abundantly cautious. And I understand that he's got the risk management and the legal like rattling around in his head. But I think there is a pathway where we can come up with simple language that says we have a comprehensive plan and a land use development set of rules and regulations right now in Alachua County. And under those current rules there is not a pathway without a plan development that would come before the commission for rezoning approval that a data center could be built. There is... Could we refer that to our communications and legal and growth management staff to come up with something? Second. Got a motion. Second. And a couple of seconds. So, Mark, that's kind of the pathway I think you were asking for. I think so. I'm just saying communications is not equipped to understand the complexity of this. Once we have that clear direction from risk, legal, whoever needs to chime in, we can certainly do an effective campaign. Any further discussion? Any public discussion? Are we going to be... Is this coming to the board? Eventually. I mean, it was... But we haven't said anything yet. No. Okay. All right. So we've got a motion, Missy, to refer to you all to come up with something that we can communicate to the public that gives clear direction on the fact that it's not a permitted use. And for those that are worried about it be coming to Alachua County, that there would be a very long process before it ever got to that. And maybe we could come up with, you know, like on our... We have a current situation where on growth management people can like click a button to be notified of an issue and then they get an email whenever it's going to be on the agenda. Maybe we can just add data centers to that or add some language that if somebody wants to be notified when it's going to be on our agenda, we can... And we can include that in the press release. So people that way, you know, like when there was the... Any time there's a major development thing, we have a little listserv that we basically create that we can send out emails so we could have a place where people could just put their name on that list so we don't have to get all the emails in order to send them to growth management to get on the list, they could just go opt in. Okay. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Okay. We are adjourned. We will reconvene back here at 1.30. Thank you, Mr. Chair. E-5. E-5. E-5. E-5. E-5. E-5. E-5. E-5. E-5. E-5. E-5. E-5. E-5. E-5. E-5. E-5. E-5. E-5.