so we will go ahead and call our meeting to order welcome to the joint water and climate policy board for those that are here to join us today we have an agenda that's been put forward does anybody have any comments or changes to the agenda if not i'll entertain a motion to approve the agenda as presented move to approve the agenda as presented second all right motion a second are there any comments to the agenda from the public or from any of the board members hearing none all those in favor say aye aye any opposed like sign motion carries unanimously we now have an agenda next up is our minutes we do have our minutes in the backup from the june 2nd meeting does anybody have any comments or changes to the minutes i'll move approval second great we have a motion and a second to approve the minutes are there any comments on the minutes hearing none all those in favor say aye aye any opposed like sign motion carries unanimously hello welcome mary sorry i'm sure mary mary would you have voted do you want to record your vote for the minutes yeah i was listening okay great excellent all right so next is our business discussion item so very exciting we get to approve our new municipal member so um we've had four um nominations you have your voting sheet in front of you um i think the agenda actually failed to mention one of them so please refer to this um when you're thinking about it um david massey from micanope shannon bull from waldo jacob fletcher from the city of alachua and katherine whites from the city of high springs and i know we have at least one of them here today um and so i thought maybe we could let any of them that are here i wanted to come up and just share a little bit about why they're interested in the committee they can do that and then we'll have our vote does that sound good to everyone okay katherine do you want to come up and share anything yeah we can just do them and i i don't know i just grabbed her first and then we'll move up okay great just grab that microphone there by brian welcome thank you you can sit there and that mic should be live yeah you can sit down i wasn't expecting to have to do this no worries it's okay um well i mean i got nominated by our commission um and i think mainly they looked at me because i'm a chemist and thinking that they're like we got a chemist we're gonna want you so i mean they i think they know that i'm pretty passionate about water particularly and i think i know commissioner alfred knows very very well how passionate i am um and i think i'd be able to use that to really augment what uh the goals are here so i appreciate you uh considering me excellent thank you so much okay anybody else sir please come forward and share with us why you'd like to join or your interest in the committee you can sit at that light there water wait wait till you sit down because they're recording you so we want everyone to hear you david master here from mecanopia and of course i mean i was when they asked i just said okay it's water that's a critical issue in mecanopia and that was why i was interested but if she's a chemist she's more qualified than i am mine's at my degrees in mathematics so you never know when you might need math yeah i'll do any equations for okay excellent well thank you thank you for being here i'm not sure if the others knew this was on the agenda today so they may or they because we kind of had to push it back a little bit so they may not have been able to be here but i know um we did get a letter um from jacob a while back with his let me see if i can find that for we also have a youth member that's the next item okay this is separate from all of this okay you can find jacob's letter um not but we did have a letter from jacob with regards to his interest in the board and his passion for issues of the springs he's a member of the speleological society and um and is interested in it from the perspective of all of the things that are happening in a lot of development and the impact that it has on our spring sheds so um those and then we have shannon bull of waldo so with that i guess we will um i guess we can just do a roll call vote stacy does that make sense you could just not your nominee and then um if we have a tie we'll loop back around sounds great do you want me to i'll call it off so we've got commissioner alford um well this is tough so many good choices um i i need to go with um i need to go with david massey because it's my district commissioner eastman um yeah well one of the things on this selection is that i mean we have trouble making quorum quite a bit i um i the one i've spoken to the most is jacob fletcher in alachua i know that he he has a very serious job at the university he doesn't he works during the day nine to five so i doubt i think this would be a hard meeting time for him to make right um and then i met katherine before florida league of cities so i um and i think and she's obviously very passionate about this so i guess i'll go with like katherine commissioner engel i feel like these are all my district they are they really all are but i think as uh as passionately as david said he wanted this job i think i'm still going to go with uh katherine whites thank you chair presia um katherine whites ward is not here wheeler sure really but these are two from this the district that is most crucial i think in terms of making sure we've got good representation so i i had really was urging jacob because he's young and we need some youthful representation on our board but i also know that he's conflicted too and katherine is also very good she's also part of my district and uh is also representing an area that's very vulnerable so i i would vote for katherine excellent all right well looks like we have four votes for katherine so with that katherine you showed up to the meeting on purpose because now you can actually participate in the meeting i believe if you'd like to join they'd like to join us today you can that would be fantastic and thank you david for your application we do have other joint boards where we love having the other municipalities from our county participate so please look at some of those other joint boards and we would love to have you feel free to stick around and enjoy the rest of the meeting one excellent okay so um next up we actually have um the members of our alachua county citizen climate advisory committee and we're um are we doing three citizens at large and then one youth right i thought it was is it two oh one one there's two the alternate and then the youth yes we have three citizens at large then one alternate and then a youth member okay so do we have any of the folks here that are applying for our joint water and climacy board that would like to say a few words if so you can come up to the microphone by brian and introduce yourself and then yes please tell us your name and a little bit about why you want to serve uh hi my name is oliver flanagan i'm currently a student at santa fe high school in alachua and a proud member of the academy of agriscience i'm also a proud member of florida fay organization i'm both an agriculturalist and an environmentalist this past year i was a state finalist for environmental science for the state of florida in the proficiency category what this really means for me as someone who spends a lot of their time hiking volunteering i was previously a member of keep alachua county beautiful as a volunteer coordinator i went out did scrub day surveys this year big mayor at alachua audubon is i really care about the environment in many ways and i really want to be able to make that investment for my future as a youth member i want to be someone who can communicate with other youth and bring that position to the table uh you know i'm still in high school and a lot of this is like what my future is going to look like in this county i've lived here my entire life i've always lived in gains i've always been here this is where i've grown up this is where i want to pursue my education going into natural resource management and being able to make those improvements as well so this is somewhere where i'm able to have a lasting impact in my community and really change things that's amazing can we have one i know that's awesome well oliver i also i just want to quickly also tell you we also have a land um like an agricultural lands board that it doesn't have a youth membership but it does have it does have a citizen advisory board so definitely also look into that one it's all about protecting agricultural lands for conservation all right can we open up another seat on the uh the actual policy board hello sir good afternoon after that i realize i haven't drank enough coffee today my name is richard deverell my family and i have been residents in unincorporated lodgewood county uh since the mid to late seventies uh in the past year of my life i've had the opportunity to explore both with the city and the county uh through my employment um where we currently are here in the city of gainesville and lodgewood county in terms of greenhouse gas emissions waste recycling specifically i'm involved in food waste collection for the purpose of composting um not telling anybody on this committee anything about uh how that plays into uh climate change a little bit surprised in this day and age that we still have people that are quote climate change deniers but uh what i've learned in the past year is there are great opportunities here in the city of gainesville and lodgewood county um to be the pace setters for the state of florida um what we're involved with at o-town compost is still a little bit foreign to the state of florida but is very commonplace on the west coast in the northeast and growing more and more in the large metropolitan areas um if i could wave a magic wand and make food waste collection universal in alatwa county of the city of gainesville this afternoon i certainly would however being realistic um if the city of gainesville partakes 100 and lotswood county partakes 100 we will contribute to addressing climate change caused by methane and greenhouse gas emissions we're not going to save the earth however this is an ideal situation to set an excellent example for other parts of florida a great place to have a template for this will work this can work if we put our minds to it and that will go a long ways to motivating other municipalities and metropolitan areas in city in cities in florida uh to to follow suit um so with that being said um i think i can bring to the table um a lot of hands-on experience in the past year or so that didn't sound a long time i've covered a lot of tracks in city of gainesville lunchwood county since we began and i have the support of the company i work for behind me small company but we don't do anything without absolute passion so thank you for this opportunity to visit with you thank you for anyone else who's applying come on up my name is sandy vardaman and i am retired i worked formerly for alachua county for the last for 19 years before i retired in the alachua county forever program um before i really tell you anything about me i just want to say thank you so much for all you do for the environment and whether or not i get on this board thank you for for doing this cap um it's it rocks and the city and what they're doing rocks and it's a hard time to be doing things but y'all are doing it so thank you i'm proud to live in alachua county because of actions you guys um but that being said i um like i said i'm retired i have a strong background in natural resources i worked with the alachua county forever program for the last 19 years of my career um also i um prior to that worked with martin county and alachua county and their resource programs in a small period of time and regulatory work so i've got a strong background in that since i've retired i've tried to increase my knowledge of climate issues because i feel strongly that it is a very kind of it is the problem of this generation of our of our lives really um so i would be really excited to help and work on climate issues with the county and do what i can anyways thank you thank you okay anybody else all right you worked with ellen siegel yeah no no oh you worked with us okay support yeah yeah oh she okay okay you know her okay she wrote a letter of support okay okay okay just just checking to see if you had worked with the the um with the climate reality project all right okay so we have a few of our applicants in the room we have to um get three let's do the first do the three citizen at large positions um i am to understand mr devore that you only applied for the alternate position is that correct it's probably too late i think it might be too late for this round but we can definitely let you know since you're the alternate you'll be eligible like for the next round that we have the regular okay just wanted you to know if you didn't hear your name the first round that's why okay so we're going to go with the three citizen at larsa we'll take nominations of your top three please um and i guess we'll start again with you brian oh skip me i would like to hear i mean okay yeah great we'll go with some some catherine you want your first official duty do you want to go oh yeah don't make her she probably hasn't had time to read all this okay well i haven't seen it all so i mean i'm here i'll go you go it everyone's denying it like no no no monroe quinlan and vardaman for monroe part of it okay i'll go with uh monroe quinlan part of it okay monroe cornland and vardaman so that is um yeah well uh quorum of votes for monroe quinlan and verdaman so welcome martha and sandy and um william to our board um we look forward to you all serving move it forward move we accept that right it's like excellent any second second all those in favor of the motion signify saying aye aye any opposed like sign all right motion carries unanimously all right next up we have our alternate and we um i guess we need to cross off martha and um quinlan sandy since they've already been nominated so the rest of our options are not just busco richard devereau jim harper katherine ray dustin stephanie and hannah williams for the alternate for a one-year term so i'll motion that we appoint mr devereau ma'am okay we have uh she's devereau we usually go around and take our votes so oh i i'll go with devereau i think that's fine i'm devereau devereau yeah devereau all right yeah i'll second katherine's okay we have a motion to approve richard devereau as the alternate for the ccac all those in favor of the motion signify by saying aye aye any opposed like sign motion carries mr devereau welcome as an alternate member and last but not least we have our youth member and i guess we have two applications one by a terry ann d aristotle and oliver flanagan who came and spoke with us today and wheeler uh flanagan engel oh flanagan flanagan flanagan flanagan i'd like to be like flanagan when i grow up all right and with that i think it's unanimous for flanagan so move oliver flanagan for the youth member thank you second is there a second second all right we have a motion in the second any comments all in favor of the motion signify by saying aye aye any opposed like signed motion carries welcome oliver as our youth member it's very exciting and and if i could say we it's an amazing pile of candidates all the candidates that i read were really really impressive so it was really hard to actually come up with the um recommendations today it was and i do think we have some seats we a lot of our boards are looking for seats like i think epac had some seats available lcb had some seats available at some one point planning commission had seats available so there's lots of points that you can have impact on the environment because all those make really big impacts in the way we decide to plan and develop our community and the way we protect land in our community and the way we make decisions about environmental programs here at the county so even if you didn't get on this board please look at the other boards that we have available and keep your your application active so we can consider you for other boards all right i think that that is all of our business today it was a very short and quick meeting but i know we may have some um citizens that want to comment and perhaps some of our members have comments we'll move to public comment are there any public that wish to share with us any information today once going twice okay i know she doesn't want to say something i was like surely sorry i had something to say drive all the way over here come tell us what you know this is a new thing where we hi i'm sorry lindberg um if you don't know me as a gainesville commissioner i'm an enclave of the city of alachua so i'm not knocking on your doors really to talk to you that much um i missed in the beginning who was the municipality um recommendation oh hi how are you i didn't recognize you like your paula um yeah no i was just i just wanted to come and listen in here i haven't um watched any of the recordings of the previous ccac meetings so i was just curious to see what kind of business you guys do and be in the interim um i was curious like what is something that you're really proud of as a product as a group you've done or what is something you're really looking forward to because i've never this is my first time attending um like a joint meeting between municipalities and the county so i don't know if that's something you can mention or you can tell me i'm just here to listen yeah thanks for um asking me to come up that gives me some confidence we all should have practiced well i'll answer that question briefly and just say i think that our climate action plan is probably the thing that i'm most proud about with the city and the county have worked really hard on their greenhouse gas inventories and on developing a climate action plan um and you know we're in the process of finalizing our climate action plan so citizens will have an opportunity to learn more about that at our festival on november 15th so mark your calendars for that event that's coming up um really soon and more information on that will be announced in the not too distant future um but that's a project i think that was it's been a long-term project um for both munis both um entities and i i'm very excited about that work um if um yeah if i could jump in i'm i'm also proud of our climate action plan but i'm mostly proud of the fact that we really utilize the expertise of our staff and our community in creating that it's not um i've seen climate action plans from other places around the state i think ours is really comprehensive and really um it really speaks to who this county is and in terms of what i'm looking forward to i think that um going forward one of the big challenges in addressing uh climate disruption is all of our mental health um this is it's a really hard time to be in a world and be concerned about the world because there's just so many things happening and um going forward i believe that we're going to see more emphasis on how to take care of us as we approach those changes and as as we go forward so that we can work stronger together and not suffer from you know climate despair or disillusionment or you know all the things that i i see happening sometimes with folks as they burn out over all the things that you can be concerned about today i would say too that um we have such a strong environmental group here that we often lend them across county lines which is oh our guys can do that here call our guys our people can fix that and so they do and we cross county lines and we involve ourselves in projects that endanger the whole water system for everybody and uh i'm real proud of this staff they get out there and they do it without complaint at least not that loud uh we don't typically do double dips at the microphone but since we don't have very many folks go ahead this is a one-time opportunity not to be repeated no i just asked i remember at the last meeting but i can't reference my notes real quickly um would there be opportunity for uh the board to grow for other municipalities if they wanted to join i said i don't remember if there was the way the board is the way the board is structured is that we have um members from the city board members from the county board and a municipal another municipal representative so all of the other municipalities have the opportunity to nominate for that municipal seat um and then it rotates every two years is that right the interlocal i think says it could be a rotating between um municipalities um it says that people's membership is actually one year but we typically have been keeping people on as long as yeah so every year you have an opportunity to nominate and then um so if the other like she's like i'm tired of driving in gainesville for these meetings or i'm retiring or i'm not running anymore or you know or wants to give another municipality a chance every year every year a different municipality will have a chance to receive it and members of other municipalities are certainly welcome to sit on the citizen advisory committee we do allow anyone from the county at large to sit on the citizen advisory committee and nominate themselves for that all right any other member comments there ought to be i mean this is big you know you know what what we've got in our hands is um water issues all over the place catherine you guys do up there i know we're looking at mill creek i don't know what the progress is on that if we have any we got an email from a concerned citizen the other day that seemed to say that there was some administrative structural changes in the way that the application was moving through and so i didn't know if that affected our party status or what other um updates we had of any yeah madam chair steve hostetter with environment protection um um we we're meeting tomorrow morning uh with legal team to try to figure out what the what the status of that means for us and how we want to move forward and one of the other things across the levy county too they're still building this support for the desal or the you know pumping water from bronson to cedar key so there's that debate that's going on over there and i don't know if that would impact us at all as a neighboring county that close to bronson i don't know um if it would make us an effective party in that conversation or not but you know i i have some real questions about desal personally and the folks in bronson keep encouraging me to come over and meet with them too so they can convince me that it's an okay thing so you know i don't know how much we need to be involved in that or not but it's right there um yeah madam chair we'll continue to monitor that as well and see what direction they're going and how much they're going to consider pumping if they head in that direction versus the desal option it's not the cheapest thing to do it's very expensive any comments i'll just say kind of reading what you mentioned before you're looking at all these advisory boards and so often you have a hard time filling them so to see we're in a position where there's that many people that want to be involved and that many people are passionate about lending their voice to it i think very encouraging and anytime we get together as a city and county i kind of enjoy it i'm going to come hang out with my friends over here do you think the time is an issue again for us being this i mean in terms of being able to get you know do all the boards meet during the day or are there words that set a different time do you all see an advantage one way or another i mean we've we've tried shifting this one around it always ends up landing here based on all of the city and county commissioners calendars and kind of where they're able to the city we haven't had a municipal member participating in a while so does this time work for you so we should be good i mean we have all of our folks here we always have forums so i don't think we have a whole lot of issues for this meeting and then the ccac i believe they are moving to at least having some evening meetings so that the youth participant can participate given that they have school and things like that yeah madam chair the uh citizen climate advisory committee six o'clock mondays um once a month and it's actually next monday is our first meeting i know you all knew so if you can't meet next monday that's okay the october meeting would be your first official but if you can make next monday's meeting six o'clock in this room then um you know that'll start your your membership off and we do validate parking and we could probably write a note for school we could probably write a note for school too brian any comments well soria knows a lot about my passion because i've been poaching on city of alachua meetings because of mill creek sink issue and i have to call out these two individuals here they've been nothing short of phenomenal in terms of you know communicating concerns of they've been a wonderful resource so i mean living in high springs obviously we have unique geology there and protecting the the spring water the groundwater is pretty critical so it's a passion of mine always has been excellent sorry you have to keep the i i don't mean to be like whatever but like we start to get that way with every meeting people i'll get in trouble for nothing keeping my meetings in control okay mary any comments oh yeah just you know if anybody showed up to this meeting or is watching and disturbed about the lack of content um i would encourage you to go to last tuesday's county commission meeting and go to the evening meeting which is when we reviewed our entire our climate action plan and um it's a it was actually a really good presentation a really good discussion so if you're interested in getting an update on the climate action plan it's uh you know almost a couple hours i think of really good content and you can always fast forward through the part you aren't interested in but it's it's all pretty good so i i'd highly recommend taking a look at that if you want an update on on where we are with the county climate action plan and i'd cheer if i would add to that if you would from this plan that we were talking about too we were also discussing the availability of experts in our community that we could invite in maybe to help give us some ideas of what's happening in the academic world you know as that we can maybe use some of that you know to help guide what we're doing here as well well and and two one of my favorite parts about the climate action plan is at the end of every section there's a what can you do kind of action oriented section and so if you know you are uh concerned about water or concerned about waste or or if you have an idea that you would like to submit about something that you know citizens can do themselves in order to make an impact take a look at at that section so you can find the climate action plan on our county website really easily just by searching electro county climate action plan and i i i'd highly recommend taking a look at that and and if you have suggestions please submit them where we are it's an ongoing it's not ever going to be finished it's it's an active document yeah and just a reminder november 15th is the date where we're going to be um sort of ceremonially ratifying that document and sharing and having kind of a festival where we'll have lots of organizations and groups sharing um information about ways that they can change their own personal lives as well as get involved with the work that we're doing for the climate action plan as a county um i know our next meeting days october 6th um i don't know if we have any major items on that agenda i will say like climate action kind of absorbed a lot of our agenda for a while i was wondering if we will have a b map update by that meeting possibly or we could do that there was also a suggestion from a member that of potentially inviting the florida springs council to give an update on um their their perspective of the b maps and the water supply plans if there's interest there i'm seeing some shaking heads i can reach out and see if they're available that would be great the other thing that i was hoping that we could agenda for a future meeting and i wanted to take your temperature is ecotourism so the county has a new economic development department and ecotourism department which sort of combined our tourism department which focuses on all kinds of tourism and our economic development department and we've kind of really beefed up the staff and the support for that group and so some of the focus obviously from us for economic development for the county is around tourism and ecotourism is something we've talked a lot about in terms of something we want you know our natural resources and our natural assets are something we really care about and we're really proud of and so there's there's the good and the bad right of ecotourism there's the good of sharing these resources and celebrating them so that they continue to get funding and support and attention but we can also love our resources to death so i was hoping maybe we could have a conversation about ecotourism sometime um this year it doesn't have to be the very next meeting but sometime in the not too distant future just kind of a conversation about our ecotourism strategies and get some input from this board and from our ccac about the ways in which we approach that to be sure that we are being protective as well as kind of you know advocating for ecotourism as a as a focus for our work we could shoot for that for december if there was interest yeah absolutely if i could get some best practices because things that necessarily seem like a good idea to me probably right practically don't turn out to be yeah for sure excellent strategies to get people in here to spend their money but then to go home plan strategies for how do we like you know how do we create like quotas or you know or rules associated with interacting with those resources you know such like i see some parks and groups do a really good job with requirements in terms of what you're allowed to take on rivers or how many people are allowed into a resource at any given time so that you don't overload them things like that excellent any other thoughts or agenda items i also i know we have a we have when the bike pedestrian master plan comes up i i don't know i just i feel like that would be a good one for this group to also learn about since it's so tied into our climate action plan i think that'd be a great idea so i know that's coming sometime like in the november time frame or something like that so perhaps that would fit for the november meeting but there was the movement at one point from high springs for rails to trails and katherine i don't know if you've had any nothing more okay okay have you guys heard anything more about rails to trails out of high springs somebody had called me you know yeah to say you know this is moving again yeah they were working on it with csx they were trying they actually just contacted me to set up a meeting in the next couple of weeks so they must have some new information but i i think there's actually a lot of overlap between rails to trails and ecotourism too oh it is it is yeah it is for sure okay well our next meeting date is october 6th so until then we are adjourned