policy discussion meeting for August 5th 2025 at 1.35 p.m. First item is the approval of the agenda. So moved. Second. Got a motion and a second. Any further discussion for the motion? Are there any citizen comments to motion? Back to the board. Those in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. All right. First item is the advisory board discussion. Good afternoon. Gina Beals, assistant county manager, chief of staff. As you may recall, the board had a conversation about advisory boards last September. So staff have been diligently working on filling positions. As of yesterday afternoon we have 22 vacancies and you have filled 66 vacancies since last September. So it is something that I, in my opinion, we've made some great strides in routine advertising and trying to get the word out. We've tabled at our forward focus meetings, just trying to, again, encourage people to apply for vacancies and try and reach out to different audiences who maybe otherwise would not have been aware of advisory boards and just the breadth of advisory boards that we have. Staff has created an advisory board handbook and once finalized, whenever you're a newly appointed advisory board member, we'll make sure to provide that to them. And if you have not met Neftali Duspin, she is our, basically our quasi-advisory board. I was pointing to Neftali. She's the reception. Oh, got that. Right. So she's our advisory board coordinator for the county. So she'll enter in consistent agenda items for routine advisory board type of actions. She's also working with HR on a volunteer appreciation event. So that's scheduled for October of this year. And as of last evening, more than 672 volunteer hours have been tracked since we've been tracking that as of October 1st. In consultation with all of our advisory board liaisons, we are requesting the board to consider some changes to our guidelines, which I do have up here on the screen. So the first is just the cover page with the new number and just adopting the new resolution with the new dates. Hey, I know that guy. Updating the chair, but then really getting into some of the more detailed parts. So as far as county employees serving on advisory boards, what staff is recommending is if the enacting ordinance or resolution clearly indicates that it is for a county employee, that that would be permitted. Otherwise, you, for example, if it's an hourly employee, you may have some overtime issues. You know, are they on their time? Are they on county time? So you do end up with some of those types of issues. Cindy Sanders, she actually has one of those designated seats and she served five terms on rural concerns. Yeah. And typically, the way that's worded now is that it is my discretion. And I have, there's only been maybe two that I can think of since we've put this in place. But I have not approved those and discouraged them. I think there is some, unless there's a designated seat, it almost brings an inherent conflict where you have a staff member who is making, who is making either direct or recommended actions where you have a higher level as the employer, you know, to the employer through this board. I guess if they don't, if it's not an area that they serve in, though. That's kind of what I was thinking. I mean, like, if I'm an animal resources employee and I want to serve on the Environmental Protection Advisory Board. See, I like this, though, because what this does is this puts the policy in our hands when we develop the advisory board as opposed to the discretion of the manager. And even if they're working in a different department, they still have undue influence within county government. So they're still citizens, and if they want to serve their county by being on an advisory board, like, I mean, we have a lot of, we have almost 1,000 county employees who are dedicated people who care about government. They want to serve on an advisory committee. I don't know. I guess I just feel like it's. Some of them do occur during the day when there could be conflict with them at work. I mean, I think if we want, if we don't mind that, then we should say that when we do the resolution. Or, like, if there's an expertise or there's vacancies that we can't fill and we want employees that want to serve, we could always allow it or bring it up. But this puts it at our level as opposed to at the discretion of the manager where she has to make a judgment call that she could be criticized for or she could not be criticized for. So I like that. But you've only had to do it a couple times in the last three years, right? And you said no? Yeah. There's only been, like, I think two. Just a handful. Yeah. I think maybe two people. And tell Anna about where we were. She missed the beginning. Did you hear the beginning in the back? The beginning in the back. The beginning in the back about vacancies? Oh, so that we currently have 22 vacancies as of last evening. However, this board, since September, whenever we had our initial advisory board discussion, you have appointed 66 people to fill vacancies. Yeah. I think it's hard to do the odds after your efforts to make this a thing. Yeah. So do you not like only, or do you rather go back to her discretion? I mean, her discretion's always going to be no. It doesn't matter. Right? She's the manager. There you go. No. Good point. Six to one half dozen of the other. Well, I didn't even think about this until this meeting, though, because if there are committees where we want employees to serve, we should make that part of the resolution. And there are probably somewhere it would, you know, make sense to do that. For example, with Cindy on Royal Crisodes. The other part of it, though, particularly where you're talking about a circumstance where it's somewhere in the purview of that employee is you have sunshine law considerations. Yeah, I wouldn't want that. I would never want an employee to be, like, you know, in planning and on the, like, development review board or something. Like, that would be, you know. Yeah. But there are also projects that overlap. And to the extent, you know, that person may have to call somebody, you know, maybe there's an engineer, for example, that sits on something and we want to call and have a discussion, but it's something that may come before a board that our board. That's a situation where I could see it. Like, if Mary has a certain specific expertise, but Mary works in animal services, but she wants to contribute in building construction advisory board or something, then that would be a situation where we should allow that. And they can still serve on, like. Right, but this isn't saying that it would come. We should allow it. But that doesn't say, that's not what it says. This says only if the board's founding resolution or ordinance specifies. It doesn't say that if an employee wants to do it, they could bring it to the board and the board would make the decision. Well, we can address that as well. Yeah. So I think there are other, you know, I've said no, but there are other considerations. Either it's an area that they're already kind of work in some way, or it's an area where, you know, the board typically meets at a time, you know, at 3 o'clock in the afternoon. And so is this employee going to be taking vacation every time there's a board meeting? You know, how are we handling some of those things? I mean, there's just, you know. I just want to, is there, do we have county employees that serve on city advisory boards? Do we have, you know, and so that's, and I seem to remember that. So I feel like there's opportunities for folks to serve within their areas of expertise that are outside of this. So this may actually. We have city employees that serve on our county. Right. And I know, and I know that. So it's, you know, so there's. Well, I thought they had a policy that they couldn't. Oh, did they change that? I thought they had a policy that they couldn't. No, we. On the county boards? City employees can't serve on a county advisory? That's what I thought. I mean, maybe, maybe it's changed. I don't know. No, I think we have that. We have. We do? Okay. Yeah. And I know what some of our staff do serve on other. Yeah, I know that because I talked to somebody about one of them. So I guess, you know, there's opportunities to serve in meaningful ways that are, you know, not in conflict of potential sunshine law or whatever issues. I guess, you know, I'll just say this last thing and I'll leave it alone. I guess I see, like, at University of Florida, for example, we actually, like, reward people doing, like, service to the institution or the organization, and, like, this would be considered service. Like, you serve on a committee or you provide service by, like, helping out with a program that the university runs that doesn't have anything to do with what you do. But you use your expertise for the betterment of the whole organization. So it actually is, like. 16 departments are 16 different organizations, really. I mean, it's a little different, you know. I mean, each dean kind of is a CEO of the school. Yeah. And so there's not the, I mean, it's just the, you know, it's this one. So next up is attendance. So this one is something that might be fresh on your minds. Currently, the policy, once you miss your third meeting of six, you're automatically removed from the board. And in a prior version of this document, we did have that the manager could waive an absence due to an extenuating circumstance, you know, maybe I missed two meetings for whatever reason, then I was in a terrible car accident or I had surgery or there was a really good legitimate reason why. So this would be brought to the county manager and then at her discretion she could say, yes, this rises to the level, not just, you know. That's good. So my concern with these things, and I'm glad we're having this going, isn't that this is the policy, it's how it's handled. And, like, in the most recent case is a great example. Like, that person just got an email that said, you're no longer a member of this board. And, you know, these people are taking time out of their day and they're committed and they care about these issues. That's why they joined the boards to begin with. And maybe they're not attending regularly and maybe they do, it's time to open up that seat so we can get somebody else in there who can attend. But I think we need to have, it's not in the policy, but we need to have an approach of doing something a bit more kind. It's just kinder, like, you know. And I see you all have missed two meetings, what's up? Yeah, like, hey, yeah, exactly. Like, before we get to three meetings, like, once you've gotten to your two meetings, you'll get, like, a heads up and, like, a, hey, how's it going? Are you okay? Do you still want to serve? Like, you know, just something that would, yeah. Because I feel like it's, like, they get this email. It's, like, a very, it's a very terse email and it's a very, it's, like, a form email that just, like, goes out. So just something. It says they're supposed to be noticed when they're approaching removal. Is that happening? I can't speak for all of the advisory board liaisons, but it is in the policy, so it should be happening. Okay. Well, maybe it's just a conversation about approach, you know. And I don't know if we're going to, like, centralize this now that we have that person and they'll be keeping track of attendance. Will she be, is it she or he? So, it's NAPTLE. Oh, it's NAPTLE. Oh, awesome. Yes. So that is something that we can talk about. She also handled those communications. So at this point, she's handling more of the agenda item. You know, we have a vacancy and the board needs to appoint it. So some of the routine, the advisory board presentations to the board, so she's entering those. But we can certainly talk to her about handling these. I mean, I think I need a staff leader. Whoever it is, I just think they need to have a soft touch with it. And a consistent approach. Yeah, and a consistent approach. It hasn't been consistent in the past in terms of enforcement or in terms of communication, having served on a advisory board. Yeah, that's true. And that does make a difference. Because they're like, well, he's not fired. He didn't get fired from the board, but I am, you know. Yeah. And I think in all the circumstances, I think I've said that it's come to me. But, you know, it's been, you know, extenuating circumstances. The only ones we've had are ones that haven't responded. I think things got weird after COVID. It all changed because it went from remote, and then they passed the rule that you can't do remote. Oh, there you go. So this is completely plagiarized from your rules. But up to this point, our advisory boards have not been able to remotely participate. And so the thought is, is I've just had surgery. I can attend, like I can participate. There's nothing wrong with me in that regard, but I just can't drive to the meeting. So those present, we would need a physically present quorum. They would vote to allow the member to vote and participate remotely. They just paid anyway. They just can't vote. So this is exactly how you handle it whenever one of you is unable to attend a meeting. That's good. I like that a lot because I know when I was chair, we would have folks traveling for business, and they'd want to participate. This allows for that. Not for convenience. What's that? Not for convenience. So they can participate for any reason. It's not convenience if they're required to travel for their job. Well, then that's an extinguishing circumstance that a majority of the board must find. Right, exactly. Yeah, so they have to make a fine deal. The board has to decide, yeah. And then they can vote. Right. So the board is up to the board. They're just on vacation, but they want to participate. They participate, but not vote. We want professionals. We want folks that have responsibilities, that have the knowledge and background to be able to make, you know, to provide good information. And with that comes the responsibility of sometimes of travel, of extenuating circumstances. And I think allowing for that is really smart, frankly. Yeah, that's good. And I believe that's it. That's it? Oh, and then also where a quorum is set by the founding resolution or ordinance. So you may recall probably six months ago I had to bring forward the infrastructure surtax oversight board to make quorum 50% plus one because the resolution said four. And then at that point we only had five members and we conducted a meeting with only three physically present. So we were in violation of the resolution, had to redo all of those motions. And so that's the clarification in this and that it tells you what a quorum is unless the enacting ordinance resolution says the quorum is a different number. Is there, I didn't see it because I'm sorry that I was late, but is there anything in here about when you all bring applications to us? Because that's one thing I keep pushing for is like, I would prefer that unless it's been like a long period of time that a position's, the seat's been open, that we not just get one application and then we approve it. Like it just feels like it's not, you know, I mean, I guess if it's just like, if it's only been open a couple, like do we have a set of time that we have to keep it open? So currently no. If that's something that the board would like to enact, then, you know, we can certainly include that. Do you think it's appropriate for the resolution or it would just be a standard operating? So Mr. Chair, these rules are set up to be how the advisory boards conduct themselves, not how you point to the advisory boards. That's direction of staff. I will move approval of proposed changes, resolution 25, and authorize the chair of the board to sign. Yeah, we get a motion, yes. Second. A motion and a second. Any further discussion? Oh. Okay. Are there any citizen comments to the motion? Yes. Because I'm not ready to conclude the conversation about advisory boards. Okay. Great. I can speak again, but just particularly on this. Yeah, on this item, yes, ma'am. I'm Kathleen Rupert. Hello. I'm the thorn in your side. No, you are, Kathleen. Hopefully a soft thorn. All right. Part of your idea here is the attendance, less than 50% of the last six consecutive meetings shall automatically be removed. Animal welfare meets every three months. So, in other words, it could be vacant for a year and a half before you remove someone. That seems. Don't you think that seems a lot? It's unfair. So, they can miss the first two meetings, right? And then six meetings would be a year and a half. So, it would be after, in that particular case, they would miss about six months of meetings. Two meetings. Two meetings, yes. And then they would be notified that they must attend the upcoming meetings or else they would risk being removed due to attendance. So, they would be notified by you guys? Yes. All right. So, they knew to do that. Okay. All right. We're just addressing these things. If you go to 3-3. Okay. It says public comment. Second sentence. Members of the public shall be given a reasonable opportunity to be heard on a proposition before advisory boards and committees. Does that mean each item on the agenda? So, Mr. Chair, this language is minimal language as far as the chairs can decide if they want to give more public comment. But this tracks the statute that allows for public participation on a matter, not necessarily on that matter in every meeting that that matter is discussed at least once. So, this is a minimal amount that's necessary. Advisory boards can certainly give more. So, in a meeting previously, commission meetings, there were some comments about some animal abuse potentially occurring at animal services. And you referred them to go to the advisory committee to bring that up. What's the protocol to bring that up? And if you can't speak to it, once it's on the agenda, what's the public's role in this? Because as it is right now, the public's animal welfare meetings, right now, it can only speak at the very end. And then you don't even have to be addressed. You don't even have to be commented on whatever you say. It's like you weren't even there. And they're actually there mimicking you guys. In fact, they said it. One of them said it. We're just following how commissioners do it. We try to respond to everyone. Yeah. And we have our thing at 1230. It's like at the beginning of our meeting. We have general public comment. Then we allow comment on action items. Yeah. They don't. It's one time. You've got three minutes. And then bye. Have a nice day. They don't have to make any comments. So, you're saying you can't speak on an item. You can't speak on an item. You have to ask the liaison to address that with the chair. So, you have to wait until the end of the meeting to speak on that item. Or several items. And it might have already been voted on and the day is done. The day is done. I think if it's a motion, a proper motion in a second, they have to take public comment. No, they don't. Not on every motion. It's at or before the decision, the final decision is made. I was chair at EPAC and we took all our comment at the end of the meeting. But we never had anybody request. She just said at or before. The end of the meeting would not be appropriate if it's at or before. If you're making the decision, it's at the end of your meeting. I think the distinction is that the statute has changed. I see what you're saying. And now, it requires public comment on a proposition. And it's very clear that you don't have to do it at the very meeting that that proposition is going to happen. Just some time in the process of debating a proposition. Maybe we should add a sentence that the advisory board should follow the procedure of the current kind of commission as best they can or something like that. Best they can is kind of an open... Or just current... How about just the current public comment procedures of the county? And why is it different? Because then it would be beginning of the meeting and then it would be on items and then at the end... And the risk is that we have a policy on how we do it. This is a minimum statute. We go above and beyond. This is an issue with the school board and the city right now. But our advisory board should be following, in my opinion, what we do. Right. Well, we have certain set comment periods because we have longer meetings. To give that number of comment periods, I think, would be difficult on an advisory board. Right. So, I think... One and one items. Yeah. So, my suggestion would be something like that the advisory board shall provide at least one open public comment opportunity during the... And we take comment on action items. And follow the procedure of the county commission on action items. We don't have a policy that says you have to take comment on every... We... Mr. Chair, we do have a public participation piece in our rules. It is very detailed and it's very specific to the way you run your meetings. So, it talks about if you have multiple meetings, you only need to have one open public comment period. You know, we take it a half hour after the beginning of the morning meeting. And then, you know, at the end, unless you don't have a night meeting and then you take it, you know, at the end of the business of the day. And it has 1130 in there. It has... What does it say about action items? It tracks a statute. It's like this. It says that you must take comment. Because we have the open public comment is one piece. And then public comment on propositions is another piece. Oh, I see. And the public comment on propositions, it tracks a statute. Which is... It is at or before? Or... Certainly, it needs to be done before the final decision on the proposition is made. Which means that they need to take comment at the motion because people won't have known that they get to comment. But they... But... Okay. So, that is an option. But they can also comment at the beginning. There are other public comments where they say... Yes. Like, you know how at the beginning we say you have so long for open and so long for any item on the agenda. You know, we can just say an opportunity, at least one public comment period where... Prior to action being taken on that meeting. I think it should track ours. I think it should... I mean, maybe we should ask... Refer this to stuff that it tracks what we do as best as it can. And with the... With the... I think... Sorry, Chair. Go ahead. With the discretion of the Chair because having chaired advisory boards in the past, sometimes you have community experts that show up and you want their comment. You want that feedback. Prior to taking action. Prior to taking action. So, I think that at the... You know, a minimum amount and then like we do, but then at the discretion of the chair of the committee. And I would just hesitate to make it too complex. Ours is a little more complex. One, because we have longer meetings and more, you know, things that we deal with. But also, you have Sylvia there. You have me there. Not all of these advisory boards have anybody other than the liaison, which we do our best to train. But I don't want to make the process too complicated. I just think if all of our liaisons know to put the public comment period at the beginning of the meeting, that way they can speak on any action items. That would be my suggestion. Before the action happens. Yep. So that that comment could be taken into consideration. Or on an issue that it maybe is concerning those now. Right. It's not on the agenda. The only issue I see with that is that you may have people that are going to assume that the board is going to take a specific action and they comment to that and not to whatever the motion is going to be because they know that something's on the agenda. They take their energy to comment on something that is completely different from whatever the action may be. That's the only issue I see with that because I've been in that situation. I think the presumption is with doing it, and they can take on the motion, but the presumption is as long as they get the opportunity that their say has shaped whatever that motion is when it comes up. So even though they're not maybe commenting on the exact motion. So maybe it should be something like public comment would be taken at the beginning of the meeting and then at the discretion of the chair or something like that. Do you have a suggestion for this item or send it back to you? This item. So yeah, Mr. Chair, I think you should send it back. This is too detailed, I think, for them to even understand. You've got some things like pooling time. They do only legislative items because they only do recommendations. They don't have the quasi-judicial side of it, so I would put in just the piece regarding legislative. But like the three minutes, for instance, you're trying to efficiently run a meeting. Those advisory boards can potentially take more, and that should be at least at their discretion, I think, how their meeting is running, how many people have shown up. Sometimes it's just one person that shows up. They just run a bit more informally than yours do. They have a lot less work to do, so they have a lot less of an incentive to kind of push your way through the meeting, and they don't do anything final, really. They do advisory. They get into the weeds. That's what we want them to do. Yeah, exactly. I think our intent is just that we give the public the opportunity to speak, similar to what we do at the county commission. And so if we can make another motion after we dispose of this one, we can just refer this to one item for y'all to bring back. Well, maybe what we can do is rather than just approving the proposed changes now, let us take in your comments, and we can just, we'll put it back and put it on a consent agenda. Yeah, this is the only one. This is the only place. It focuses what you've said here. May I speak? Yes. The advisory committee, my understanding, was set up to help the public express their concerns or problems, et cetera, with, I'm giving animal welfare because that's the one I'm most familiar with. When you go and you speak and you're a public member, and they don't even acknowledge your presence, and they don't even address your issues, so what is it that the commissioners are trying to accomplish by telling the public when they have a complaint to go to the advisory committee? Yeah, that's a tough one. And it's very frustrating, and you are familiar with some people who used to go to those committee meetings and said, why go anymore? Because nothing is accomplished, nothing has really gone any further than if they came and spoke with you guys, and you referred them to the advisory committee, it's like going back, circle, circle, circle. Good point. Thank you, Kathleen. And the one last thing on the, talking about this, is county employees, you have a sheriff's officer running that program right now, as the chair of that committee. Isn't any of your county employees? No. It's not a county employee? Oh, okay. And there's a designated seat for a lieutenant or hire on the animal welfare. Okay. So I guess on that, on her note, I do want to say, like, we have that animal welfare committee, especially, like, we set it up because of the issues that we were hearing, that people were concerned about the welfare of animals in our shelter and in our community. And so I think that we need to develop a mechanism for people to be able to bring complaints. If it's a form that they fill out, and then that form goes to the meeting, and then the board brings up that, you know, brings those forms to the meeting, and then they address the forms that have been filed or something. But there has to be some way for somebody to file a complaint with the animal welfare committee. It's a goal of the animal welfare committee is to review welfare issues. So I think we'll have to take a look at that in the resolution because of the scope of what they can do. And also, they really don't have final decision-making authority. Is there any sort of expectation of conduct for advisory boards with respect to citizen comment or citizen participation? Because, you know, that's, to her point, I have seen citizens not be treated particularly nicely at advisory board meetings. And I've seen other advisory board meetings where citizen comment and citizen participation is prioritized. And it's not very consistent at all. And I've seen citizens trying to disrupt the advisory board meetings. I have seen that, too. And I think that probably has led to, you know, some people having that kind of an attitude. But I think there should be some minimum expectation of conduct with respect to the public, you know. Well, that's what I was going to bring up. I was like, I'm not sure that this is the place that we put it, but maybe it is. But I guess I was thinking that there maybe needs to be some level of training, at the minimum for the chairs, that if you get elected chair, you get a small handbook that's got a few of these things, like expectations, you know. We're working on it. Okay, good. Are you good? Yeah. But for all advisory board members. All advisory members. And then there would be a special section for the chair, and it could have information about expecting to, like, at the end of the public comment period, acknowledging the comments that have been made and, you know, like, just certain basic things that would provide for decorum and for sort of, like, a sense of general. Are minutes required of these meetings? Yes. Okay. Where are they turned into? So it's on our advisory board page. Okay, so it's public. And then we get a lot of our agenda. And we get a lot of our agenda. Yes. Yeah, and we approve them. We have four information sessions. You're not actually approving them. They're in the four information sessions. They're in the four of our consent agenda. Yeah, got it. Okay. But I will say, though, and that's another thing, is, like, you know, those minutes are way all over the place. Like, we've had that discussion because some of them go literally, it's, like, line by line, every verbatim transcript. Well, it's because they turn their phone on. Versus a summary of the meeting. And so we are, again, that goes back to training from our staff liaison side and as well as, you know, the training on board members and chair. We can look at that. We've got some ability to develop our own training through our training. Yeah, there's going to be a little three-minute video. Yeah, so we'll look at. And we're doing, like, a thank you thing now, right, for advisory board meetings? Because I served for so many years and I never heard of you. You said, yeah, so Nath has already started sending out whenever your term expires. Thank you for your service. Also, we're doing the thank you event in October. Is there a number? It seems to me that this committee that she's talking about, it meets every three months. Is there a minimum number or is it just for the board? So their resolution in particular says that they have to meet at a minimum quarterly. And so that particular, those that are appointed, they have that discussion early on and they've decided amongst themselves that they only wanted to meet quarterly. Okay. But if something does rise to the level of calling a special meeting, we will absolutely do that. I betcha. And if the board wants them to meet more often, you have the ability to change that resolution and tell them we don't, you know. But that was the choice they made. They meet the minimum. And they can always change it. You know, if they have some special project they're working on, they can say, hey, we're meeting every two weeks, you know. And it's up to that particular board to make those decisions. Are there any that meet monthly? Oh, yes. Affordable housing meets monthly. I think most of them do. Okay. That's right. It's been a while since I've been in one of those. Okay. So, Commissioner, do you want me to withdraw the motion and refer this back to deal with public comment? Or do you need, or do y'all need a motion to move forward with this part of it and you want to bring back the public comment part later, or mean the other part later? Probably. I would rather just do it once. Yeah. So, withdraw the motion. I'll withdraw the motion, Chuck. Okay. All right. You care about that? Yeah. When is the thank you event? I think October 1st. Can we make sure it's on our calendars with Latoya? Thank you. Yeah, that's a really good opportunity for us to say thank you. You didn't move because of your comments. All right, so I have an opportunity to make more public comment? Well, there will be. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now that we're done with this item. Well, we don't have anything to vote on now because you went through the motion. We'll bring it back, taking consideration of everything we talked about there. Really good discussion, though. Yeah. I'll put it, we'll put it on consent. Yeah. And as long as it has incorporated everything that you're happy with. I'm happy with everything else. Y'all, are y'all? Yeah. Okay. I'm happy. Okay. We'll move to our next item, which is closing comments, so it would be public comment. Okay. Your big chance. Welcome back. All right. A couple other things about advisory committees. The meetings are held for animal welfare only during the daytime, one o'clock, and they will not, they voted not to have any evening meetings, which precludes people from attending, you know, people who work eight to five. Is there any way that you can say maybe every once a year have an evening meeting for some, like during the summer where it's still daylight and travel, it's not an issue of darkness or whatever, but it's just kind of sad that some people can't attend who want to attend because it's only during the day and they work. I mean, that just, to me, doesn't kind of, doesn't sit right. That's one thing. As far as complaints about county employees, let me give you an example. A long time ago, there was a former director who, there was one particular home he visited or his group visited 56 times and the animals were suffering at this location. And they went to the person who was above the director and said, you know, can you investigate this? And that person said, they talked to the director and the director was doing a fine job, outstanding job. At any rate, that director resigned, took another position, I think, with the county. A new director came on and in three months, that issue was taken care of. The animals, they were found dead animals in the backyard, not buried. They found animals that had to be put down inside the home. They were so sick, but that went on for years. So it was kind of like the fox watching the hen house. So how do you handle something like that? I mean, the person above said, everything was copasetic, everything's fine. This guy's doing a great job. I just want you to be thinking about that because that's unfair. And that's kind of like, I don't think a lot for county should be a part of that kind of a situation. I really don't. I think we're above that. That's all I want to say. I agree. Thank you. And y'all have a great day. Okay. Thank you. We should have comments. I mean, I've already brought up this idea. I guess I just am interested to understand it. Rather, it's animal. I mean, animal welfare seems to be the place we get it the most often. Someone complains that there's some kind of animal welfare issue. And then, you know, now I think we have an animal welfare director that's addressing them and, like, gives us a robust report in an email about everything they've done. And if an employee needs to be let go, they get let go. You know, everything is, I think everything is being handled. But I guess it brings up a good point. Like, if somebody has an issue, oftentimes I think our nature, because we are a good organization that runs efficiently and well 99% of the time, is to assume that that person is a squeaky wheel who has the problem, not the other way around. But I guess, is there a process for them to formally submit that complaint to you or to who, how does that happen? If somebody has an issue or they feel like an employee or an apartment? Personally, I got, I was contacted personally and was regularly involved in watching, you know, so there were more than one story that goes with these things. I know. You know, and that's the thing, you know, you get, you get several people involved in these issues, like this one in particular that Kathleen's talking about. And everybody's trying to fix a piece of it. You know, it's not like nobody's watching and nobody's trying or that we're trying to make excuses for each other. We're just trying to work as a team to make it happen, to make, to fix it. And I was involved in a lot of that personally and contacted personally and tried personally to work alongside with that director, with our boards, you know, to make it work. But there was more than one side of that story. And that tends to be, and we can't, of course, we can't talk about it publicly without, you know, blowing it all out of the water. So there, there is a formal process when it comes to, what, Sylvia, what's the, the, the... Ms. Chair, whistle, we have a whistleblower. It allows for complaints from employees or other persons. And it has a process and it has the protections for employees. And that kind of tracks the state statute. We adopted that, I think, 20, 2020. And we have had some things fall under that, so there is a formal process, but there are also, you know, I get calls, I get emails, and they email you all, you all come to us and we have conversations or have you talk to staff or whatever and provide you the information so you can hopefully relay that to your constituents as well, you know, what information you can. And so, and we, especially when it's something significant, we do our best to keep you, yes, we do our best between Sylvia and I to keep you apprised on a regular basis of a lot of these cases. We, we, we talk to you all often individually on many different fronts for many different things and questions and just keeping you apprised of day-to-day and big issues. Yeah, it's not only about me. It's more about how the public knows to interact, so, so there's a formal process in there, but there's also just coming to the board, emailing their commissioner. So, there's always the three-minute public comment opportunity, you know, if they have complaints that they don't feel are being resolved. I mean, there's lots, there's lots of opportunity to reach out to, you know, various levels of the organization. What I'm hearing from her, though, is in the animal welfare instance, we're referring those people to the animal welfare committee, and they're not getting hurt at the animal welfare committee. So, it's, it's creating this round robin. So, I think we need, we probably just need as a board to do a better job of when it comes to the board of referring it to you as opposed to referring it back to an advisory committee. Well, we're going to work on the, on that language, on public comment, and then we'll look at, we've also heard you say something about a process for those types of complaints. Yeah, something that just the board can address. Does everybody understand that? Commissioner Alpert. I also want to ask, is there a method of, so we can get, we get communications from the public outside of our public meetings that we can address at the public meetings, for an advisory board. That's what I mean. Is there a way for a citizen to write, so I can't be at the 3 o'clock in the afternoon advisory board meeting because I work till 5. Is there a way for me as a citizen to contact, contact that advisory board and make a statement, make a request, make a, you know, what is the mechanism for that? And that's, well, you can contact the liaison. Is that clear in our policy? Is that clear on our website? Is there a way to do that? Because I do feel like. Well, it's that public record. What's that? And it's that public record. And how does that become public record? Because I think it would need to be. And so I feel like that's an important, you know, to Kathleen's point, I think that, you know, we have these advisory boards that are made up of a lot of professionals that are taking, you know, time out of their day that are getting, you know, that have a billing rate of hundreds of dollars an hour or whatever. That, you know, we want, that's one of the reasons I feel like that their meetings are designed the way that they are. And, but I do think that there has to be this mechanism for the public to be able to give feedback. So it sounds like they would email the liaison and the liaison would speak to the chair about that being on the agenda. Or provide backup. Or even just email it, you know, I received this communication from a citizen. You know, I'm sharing this with the entire board. So there's several ways that that could be. But I think that needs to be really clear. I think that that needs to be something that we make easy to happen. If we are going to have meetings where the public can't attend, and especially if we're going to have meetings that are designed to discourage public comment, then I think that there needs to be some mechanism for the public to interact with that board in a way that is productive and helpful. And I think that might be as easy as, like, a little. Maybe add a 10. Or it could just be a form, a drop-down, pick your advisory committee, and then put, right, email a board. You drop down, pick the board, and then. Or to go into ideas. Yeah, I think that works really well. Send communication to a board, and then it would go to that person. Yeah. So, yes, I mean, I think that's a simple thing. And we can make sure that these pages, or at least the advisory board general page says, if you want to communicate on an item or in general with a board, click here or whatever. We can make some simpler things there. Right. And are the agendas to most of the advisory boards available in advance of the meeting to the general public? There's supposed to be a minimum of one week. So, as you can see, I just have the Arts Council here. You can see, just for this calendar year, our five meetings with the agendas and the minutes are listed there. And then whenever we have an upcoming meeting, it will be listed here. Is there a mechanism for members of the board now to be communicated with and given that agenda in advance of the meeting? Or do they have the WhatsApp? How I handle it is the week prior to our meeting, I email them and I say, please click, and I send this link. And I say, scroll to upcoming meetings to view next week's. So, that was the other piece I had on my list was a consistent process for how the liaisons handle dealing with their board members to get them agenda, backup materials, and minutes. Because it's all over the board and it's definitely. And that was going to be my suggestion, though, is if that mechanism is in place, then a citizen who has a particular interest in a particular advisory board could also be on that mailing list. Absolutely. So, they could always get the agenda. They could always see what's coming up. And then they could have the opportunity to send in that communication in advance. That's great. And that really, I think, would enhance the ability of the public to get involved in the right way in some of these advisory boards. And I think the more the public interacts with the advisory boards, the more the public is going to be willing to volunteer and get involved and become members of advisory boards because that's how we foster that, those relationships. And that's how I initially got involved with the county is by getting, going to an EPD meeting and going, oh, I could be on this board, you know. So, anyway. So, under the staff liaison section four, there's nine paths. Under four, it says prepare the agenda and agenda backup materials and provide copies of the materials to the members. And we could add something like which would include but not be limited to emails received by the public. And instead of a process, we're by the public. Right. I should also have a timeline. I should say at least one week in advance. At least one, yeah. Right. So, maybe we could put some of those changes in that section. Right. But I think that, you know, you should be able to sign up to, like, always get communications about the Arts Council. Well, we already have the, like, if you want to do your top. So, we could just do advisory boards. Like, you know, we have that topic. Like, you want to be notified about certain issues that growth management set up. And there's that. Like, we were, so they could, I mean, advisory boards could be an option underneath that. Like, the names of the individual advisory boards. Yes. Because we already have that. Right. Exactly. We have that mechanism. Mechanism. We could just utilize that mechanism to have that same communication. Yeah. And I think that will really enhance the ability of the public to get involved in advisory boards and, therefore, volunteer for advisory boards so we don't end up having to replace, you know, so many people all the time in advisory boards. And, you know, I actually wanted to bring up something else because I had, I was contacted by a member of the public that was on a particular advisory board that they thought was going to do a certain thing. And they got on that advisory board and they got on that advisory board and it was completely different than they thought. So they dropped off a bit. And they were like, I thought we were going to be, like, making decisions or help make decisions to help people. And all we get is presentations every time. And so I dropped off because it was a waste of my time. And so I feel like, you know, the better opportunity we have for the public to interact with advisory boards and understand what those advisory boards do before they apply, the better chances we have of, you know, of fostering the right kind of relationships. Well, I also think that one of the things that I've noticed is that, you know, some advisory boards are better at the members feeling empowered to bring ideas forward. And then the advisory board works on it and then makes a recommendation to us, which is the ideal scenario, right? You have experts in environmental protection. They see an issue like the batch plan in Archer, right? They think it's going to be a big issue. They do their homework. They take a position. They send us a letter asking the county commission to take a position. And, like, helps us to make informed decisions and to, right, which is the ideal scenario. And I don't know that our advisory boards feel empowered that way because a lot of the people that are coming on them are new or, have it interact with government in a lot of ways. And they're, like, thinking that there might be more, like, guidance in that front. So maybe that's something that we can add to the training and orientation is, like, as an advisory board member, like, you can bring issues and ideas to the table, you know, regarding these issues and present them for the board to take up in consideration. And then if the board agrees and you will work with it, you can send, you know what I mean? I don't think people have a policy meeting where there was actual time for a presentation of ideas. I'm talking about the advisory boards. That's what I'm talking about. That's their meetings. That's what their whole meetings are. Well, that's what I mean to us with the ideas, though, is what I'm trying to say. Oh, well, they would send us a letter and then we would just, I guess we would bring it up. Or during their yearly presentation. But when I was chair, we took one meeting a year and we planned out all the topics we were going to discuss for the rest of the year and then we, you know, we researched it. We made people in charge of those things and it was super organized. But when I first got on the impact and it was a different chair, staff gave us presentations and we went home. And we didn't do anything. And it was really super frustrating to me. But I think that until people understand what an advisory board meeting can be, and that's, I think, part of the, you know, orientation part of it is here's what an advisory board can be. Here's how empowering it can be. Here's how we can affect change. Or you can sit back and listen to staff presentations. Well, the other thing that I guess that would be, and that's an agendating thing, is that, you know, an agenda item probably on the agenda should be, you know, are there, and they have, like, they'll have, like, member comment, but it's sort of, like, are there, it's almost like an issues dialogue. You know what I'm saying? Like, because it is, staff are generating the agendas. The staff liaisons are the ones generating the agendas. Well, not always. I always generated my own agenda, but I took that on myself when I became chair. Right. And I don't think that the chairs oftentimes feel empowered. Yeah. Right? You know what I mean? Like, I think they need to be empowered. I'll take them to my hordes, Dan. So, typically, the advisory board liaisons do coordinate with the chairs when they're creating the agendas to go over them and meet with the chairs before that, before they put out the agenda. But, secondarily to that, what I hear you saying is that some of the boards, or at least some of the board members, feel that maybe there's not, they're not meaningful items or discussions. Not just, that's a mis-meaningful items, but not meaningful. So, I mean, the reality is that we don't have something for these boards every month to make recommendations. And so, these boards, especially the ones that have to meet more often, sometimes there's just not anything for them to do, and there may not be anything for them to do for four months. So, I, you know, I think that's part of it. So, if we want to look at just, we only convene them for certain purposes, I mean, we can look at that also as something, what would that look like, you know? Well, I think, too, is this, as a recommendation that, as an advisory board member, you don't have to wait on something from the commission to ask you to do something. You can, you're familiar, you are citizens living in this county, you understand, for instance, their environmental issues. And so, here are, you know, that's what we did at the beginning of every year. Like, what are the ten things that we're going to talk about this year? That's our work plan. You know, and we made a work plan, and we addressed that work plan. And then, if the commission came to us with something else, then we added that to our agenda. And it, I, you know, that worked pretty well for us, but, you know, environment is easy, because there's always a lot of things to talk about. But I do think that, as part of the orientation, making sure that advisory board members know that they are empowered to bring, you know, to bring those discussions forward. And, and, because that was the discussion I had with this citizen. It's like, you know, did you, because, you know, she thought she was going to be on a very action-oriented board, and all she was getting was presentations, and it was all informational, and there was nothing action-oriented after three meetings. And she's like, you know, I don't have time for this. I'm, I'm here to make change. I'm not here to, you know, to learn about stuff I already know. So it was, and I, I took that with a lot of understanding, because I'd seen that before. But I, I would like to figure that out, like, in, in the orientation to sort of empower the members to say, you know, this is your opportunity. This is your advisory board. Like, we've asked you to serve, because you're someone who has either experience, expertise, or interest in this issue. And so, you know, if you have an idea, or at least bring it forward to the board. Yeah. And, and I think that also it should be, you know, in part of the orientation, it's like, hey, when you select a chair, it's like, not somebody that's just willing to do the extra work of being chair. It's somebody that's going to, like, lead the meeting, and help address, and bring out these issues, and, you know, work with such a meeting. I think it's, it's not, you know, it's, it's an active role. It's not just administrative. Huh? Do I have any time remaining? No, ma'am. There's only one shot at it. I'm sorry. Unless we make another motion. Yeah, you can grab us, ma'am. But anyway, I'm sorry, I sort of got super excited about that. I'm done. Any further comments? I, I, I, just very quickly, I've seen on our TV, votes for World Masters. What is that? That we've been nominated for something. World Masters was nominated for a kind of sports. Amateur, amateur sports event of the year for, I don't know which organization it was. Do you remember? No. We're supposed to vote somewhere. Are we for that? Are we in competition then? And is it just local? Is it? No. What is it? We already won one award at the state level for the event. Okay. So, sports travel magazine. Yep. Um, and so we're a finalist for the 2025 sports travel award. Sports travel. The amateur event was at the state level, right? Oh, that's cool. But do we need to put that on? Does Mark need to put that out somewhere? I mean, are we supposed to vote? Is that, it sounded like we're supposed to vote. I just wanted to make sure I did. I vote for us. There's many words on this email, so I'll have to, okay, that's okay, but you can somehow maybe get, because it went, it came across a crawl, you know, on TV20. Well, they both went that way. That's all I would hope. And then the other thing, I saw a questionnaire about, um, farmer's market or some kind of, what we were trying to do is to put a cooperative together somewhere, ideas. That is the food hub that you all approved, um, moving forward. We have a consultant. That consultant has put out a survey. Okay. So that is what you are, uh, seeing. Okay. Can I address that? I think there's, it's interesting, I have something to bring up that's not related, but I think that there's a challenging issue right now, because two things are getting confounded. Yes. One is that we have the food hub, business plan and feasibility study going, which is the idea of, like, creating an aggregation distribution hub and maybe some processing for our local farmers so that they can access new markets, like be able to sell to jail or be able to sell to the school district more easily or to UF or even restaurants. And possibly, the other is that our farmer's market is being moved, right? Because chief needs that space. And we all voted that we were going to move the farmer's market and, or close the farmer's market so that chief could put his training center and tower there. That's another year or so away. It's still in the planning phases. So I went to the farmer's market board meeting and made them aware that we had made that decision after we made that decision. I just went and told them what we talked about at the meeting and what the decision was. And that, and it cleared it with Travis and chief Theus and Michelle that we were sure that they would be able to stay there through the end of next season, right? So they have a full year, essentially, right? At least of time at the existing market before they're going to have to vacate. And in the meantime, Bailey and Sean are working on a survey with IFAS faculty that they're going to distribute to farmer's markets, to goers and purveyors, to see what are the needs of our farmer's markets broadly. Because Ken brought up a good point. Like, that's one market, right? But we have markets all over this county, and we can't really necessarily just support one market. So what are the needs of our markets more broadly so we can think about, if we do make an investment in farmer's markets again, how do we make that investment strategically in a way that supports all of our markets? And that's with the food hub. Right. Well, part of it. So they're combined, right? So there's the combination. One is direct... But the consultants are aware of that direction. Yes. Yes. They're aware of that, and there is a potential for a market to be attached to the hub as a potential that doesn't mean it would be the only one in the community, but what, for example, because what you all, first of all, you all talked about one more than one day a week, having a professional staff that manages food that is there would allow for more opportunity for that. But it also allows farmers, for example, to sell back what's left at the end of the day to the hub. And see, we have a facility, we have that big grocery that's been sitting there empty on the Hawthorne Road that's been sitting there empty for years now with a huge parking lot. We're going to have the farmer's market inside and outside. Where? It could be the big, the old grocery there on Hawthorne that is sitting there. The old food line? The old food line? Yes. Yeah. So that food line... Oh, okay. Well... Health department. Okay, so that food line is owned by a developer or an entity that owns strip malls, and there's been several attempts to buy that piece of property or to lease that piece of property to become a grocery store for the east side, and... He doesn't play. Well, he plays, but he wants too much money. He wants a lot more money than what's the value. I mean, he's asking for the kind of money that you would ask for the Hitchcocks in Alachua. When was the last time we talked to him, do you think? Not that long ago. No, no. No, not quite at all. There was a grocer really recent, after Hitchcocks. There was another grocer who wanted to potentially go in that space, but he couldn't afford to buy the whole plaza. He wanted to just lease, and the guy wouldn't play ball. And this was recently. This was in the past couple months. Okay, because it's the perfect place. Of course it's the perfect place. It's not always the perfect place, but it's already out for it. We're talking about, and I don't know, you know, if we have no people who have, you know, some kind of relationship to him that we can... He's down in South Florida. He's South Florida. Okay. I want to ask another farmer's market question. I just, it just seems to me... Well, I'll just say this. It's worth negotiating something. Well, the consultant's whole job is to put together a business plan of feasibility for the food hub, not necessarily for a grocery, but to look at the possibility of retail options, including, they've added farmer's markets, and we've connected... It could be an inside market, like the big Boston market. Yeah, yeah, totally. We're talking an inside market. Well, that, yeah, that's a different thing than the food hub, but yes, absolutely. I think that could totally be a conversation, but the CRA's also having those conversations. So we connected this, I connected the CRA, Mo, well, Sean and Mo were already connected, but I connected the dots on the CRA's conversations around groceries and around their food, their market that they're trying to do at G-Tech, and our farmer's market losing its space, and our food hub feasibility. So there's been, like, conversations being had amongst all of the stakeholders and players. It was just... It was just heavy, G-Tech, exactly. I just didn't know, you know, when you're talking about a lot of money, how much money are you talking? Do you know? They're asking too much money. I know too much money is too much money, but do you know how much money that he's actually asking for? I don't know. I don't know the details. I know that it was way more than he could afford, and before that, it was more than the city was willing. Like, it's been... It's just a lot of money. But if you put a group together, if you put a group together, who could actually, you know, make that happen? I know. That's... Mary Ann, I'll just say this. I've been working on this for 10 years. Well, let's work on it some more. I've got one more year. Yeah, 10 years. You know, I'll go down to South Florida. And I'm just saying that that site would be ideal if we had the whole plaza, but it's... Absolutely. So it's... That guy's just not playing ball. So if you want to get his contact information and work on him, I would love that. I'm with you. I'm with you on there. It would be totally... And I don't know why codes wouldn't be an issue, you know. I mean, I don't know what his code situation is over there, you know, in terms of... City, yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, there ought to be ways to pressure somebody like that. That's all I'm saying. But on the farmer... I think that the issues with the food hub and the farmer's market are getting cross. Yes. Because we put out a survey about the food hub, which is more about wholesale and supporting farmers to get wholesale markets. And then at the same time, we're getting ready to do the farmer's market surveys, but people are hearing the rumors about the farmer's market moving because the farmers are starting to tell their customers. And so people are getting the two things confused. Yeah, I was. I did when I saw the survey. I thought, this is perfect. Now's our time to jump in here. But it is. It's the time. I mean, I think this conversation about how our farmers market... Farmers get access to direct marketing, which means directly to you or to a family. And how they get access to wholesale markets. That's like selling to schools or selling to the UF. Those things can all be combined into one economic development plan, which I think is what Bailey's working on. Give me a name. If you would get me a name. Okay. Yeah, I will. Thanks. Can I ask a quick question about farmers markets as we were talking about it? Who's in charge of that whole token thing where you use your food? So that has been canceled. It has been canceled because I had a couple of people ask me about it. Yeah, double SNAP. It was double SNAP bucks. Double SNAP. Okay. So you could use your SNAP funding to spend at the farmers market and it would double your tokens. It would double your SNAP dollars. But that program was part of the programs that got cut. I thought it might have been, but I wasn't sure. There are still farmers at the farmers markets that take SNAP. So some of the farmers market purveyors, like the actual farms, have become SNAP accepted and they have like the ability to do that. I believe at least one or two of them does. And so some people can still spend their SNAP EBT at the farmers market. But they don't get double anymore. They don't get double bucks anymore. And it's not like you go to one booth and you get your tokens and then you go spend them at the market. It's like you have to, it's only the purveyors. And then the system was broken for a little while and then it disappeared. So I think people got mixed up, like got broken and then never fixed it. Not that it went away. Okay. The other thing I will tell you is that the farmers market board that runs the farmers market in Elantua County at our current market is already looking for other places and may be making a move. They have, they think they've identified another location. I don't want to talk about it because they don't have it nailed down yet. And I mean, if they want to share that with y'all, they can, but I don't know how public it is, but they're planning on potentially moving before our site is vacated. Although I know there are some vendors that don't want to go and some vendors that do want to go. So it may split that market, which is going to be unfortunate. So then there will be some unfortunate fallout associated with us having to move that market just because it's such a longstanding market. But I think ultimately the market is stronger than just the location and that location, but they were just outgrowing that location anyway. I want to throw out an idea. If, you know, it sounds like SNAP benefits are going to be cut over the next couple of years by a significant amount. After the 2026 electric, they've already been cut in the big, beautiful. Yeah. So with that thought in mind, it would be really interesting to know how many people took advantage of and how much it costs to do the double buck thing in terms of a potential program as a way. Well, one of our existing direction, which you asked about the last one, is how many people do we have on SNAP? Right. I think as part of that. I think we don't right now, one of the challenges, I mean, we get to know how many people we have, but I think one of the challenges is the way that they're structuring, it looks like the SNAP as it stands. And that was going to be my next thing, so I can bring it up to you guys, is that it's being structured such that the state would have to accept the funds and then the state would administer the programs. And they're going to have to, much like the Medicaid expansions, they're going to have to buy into it. So they're going to have to put money in. And so the states will be able to say they don't want to participate. And our state historically has said, when it comes to programs like that, that they don't want to participate. Like they've denied participation, like they denied the Medicaid expansion. So there's a chance that our state could say they don't want to participate in SNAP at all. That's a really frightening thought. That's a really frightening thought. I hope it won't happen. But there are two bills, the Strengthening Local Food Security Act in the Senate and the Local Farms Feeding Our Communities Act in the House. They're still looking for co-sponsors and they're looking for support from local communities. Federal. Federal. So I was going to ask you if we could refer that to our federal lobbyists to look at and support that and maybe explore talking with our senators. Yeah, just give me the bill numbers and I'll have a look at it. And then locally, the Farm 2 is a bill that's being proposed that would provide like 10 cents more per meal for institutional food programs so that they could buy local food. So that would help our food health, if that goes, and things like that. So we supported it last year. Yeah, I was going to say, we included it in the legislature. Exactly. So I'm asking if they're bringing it back if we can include it again. We'll bring back the legislative agenda and appropriation suggestions to you all coming up because we have an early session this year. Well, I had to ask you that. So we need to have those sooner rather than... That's why I was asking that. I was like, Tom is like, he wants to coordinate with the people who are getting ready to launch that bill, but I wanted to make sure you all were on board before I connected with him on that. So we'll be back to you. I guess I would move, but we support the Strengthening Local Food Security Act, Local Farm Speeding Our Communities Act, and Farm 2 Act, and refer that to our lobbyists. Second. Got a motion in a second. Any further discussions? All right. Are there any citizen comments? Put a motion that's on the floor. Back to the board. Those in favor of the motion will buy a sign of a buy. Aye. Aye. Those opposed, same sign. Motion carries. Further comments? We're getting good work done during Commissioner Conway. I know, sorry. If not, we adjourn. All right. Can you do those, please, while you're at it?