Regular Meeting @ 11:30 a.m. - Apr 28, 2026

approval of the agenda and consent agenda. Second. Okay, we've got a motion and a second. Thank you for those comments. Any discussion from the board? Any public discussion to the motion? Seeing none, let's bring it back to the board. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, we've got an agenda. All right, so the first item is the announcements and Mr. Sexton, I hear we've got two or three pretty pretty nice announcements today. Welcome, you're recognized. We have a diverse and wonderful group of announcements today Mr. Chair. To begin with, I'm going to introduce Chief Theus, who's going to give you an update on the wildfires. Chief? Okay. Welcome, Chief. I know you've had a busy couple of weeks. It has been a little busy. So, Commissioners, the lights are still doing their thing, so I'll do my best here, but if you just kind of, I'll be, you know, okay. Sorry, take me just a second to pull this up. So, good afternoon, Commissioners, Harold Theus, Alastra County Fire Rescue, and wanted to provide an update of what's been going on with the wildfires, what our current status, our current conditions are, and what we are doing, moving forward to prepare for anything that may happen. First of all, we remain in a burn ban. That burn ban was implemented originally on November 18th, 2025. This is one of the longest burn bans that I can remember. We're looking at six months of being in a burn ban. The sad part of it is, is that I don't know that we really have an immediate end in sight in this. Something we renew every seven days. We consider what's going on with the Florida Forest Service. We look at different weather conditions and drought-like conditions to determine these burn bans. And so, we take it very seriously, the evaluation process of issuing a burn ban. We know that it has an impact on a lot of people when we do it. So, we're very careful in doing it. But the burn ban, just to remind the public, it prohibits all outdoor burning. Any open flames, you cannot do in Alachua County. The only thing that you can do is you can cook on a grill. If it has a chimney or a pipe, you can burn through that. But you can't have any burn barrels, can't have any fireworks, can't have debris burning, yard burning, or anything like that. And so, it's very important that we adhere to that. And I've got to say that, for the most part, our public has been very conscientious of that. We've received quite a few 911 calls where we go out and investigate smoke conditions or investigate illegal burns that are taking place. And we extinguish those fires upon arrival. Mr. Chair, you helped us have a local state of emergency. You signed that document April 20th. We are in our second week of that local state of emergency. And really, for us, the local state of emergency lets the public know that we are taking this event very seriously. It does give us the ability to make purchases if we should need it outside the normal county process in times of emergencies. But we have yet to have to do anything like that. We want to be ready in case we do have a large hundreds-of-acre brush fire that happens in Alachua County to be able to get the equipment that we need. One of the big advantages that it gives us, and I've got to really thank Local 3852 in helping us with scheduling staffing. It suspends different parts of the collective bargain agreement so that we can staff up as we need to and gives both our employees and the department a little more flexibility when it comes to different staffing levels that we have throughout the department. The current wildfires, just to provide an update for the public, there are six or seven that are all somewhat contained, for the majority mostly contained, in Alachua County. North State Road 121 and North Main Street were both fires that broke out two Sundays ago, 25 acres and 106 acres. Northeast 15th Street was last week, and then Dignity Village was also last week. And those are a little small, one and a half acres, but they still are important to recognize. All four of those are within the city limits of Gainesville. And the city limits of Gainesville, the city of Gainesville, they're the authority having jurisdiction over those fires. They operate and run those fires. We assist them whenever we're called out to help them with either staffing levels or water or brush trucks. And so I've had some great conversations with Chief Hill House over the last couple of weeks involving the wildfires. We're working very cooperatively together to make sure that the public is served appropriately. State Road 26 was a 302 acre fire that took place. It's now 70% contained. That is within Alachua County and outside the city limits. I know that Andy Crisman Group has been working hard on mopping up that entire area with Florida Forest Service. And also South County Road 325 near the Cross Creek area had 134 acre fire. That started in March. I talked to Florida Forest Service this morning about that fire. That is all well contained within the borders that they've established through the plow lines. They're trying to let that burn out because it's in a mucky area and really just hard to make access to. Of note is our surrounding counties. Levy County had a 2300 acre brush fire that started last Tuesday. And we sent over, they requested assistance from us. We ended up over that afternoon sending an engine, two brush trucks, two water tankers, a battalion chief and also one of our assistant chiefs to go help with that fire. They had the large fire that took place, then a second fire, which is what we ended up going to in the same area. They didn't have any units to send at all to it because they were all committed to the first brush fire. Putnam County, I think that's approaching 5,000 acres now, the Putnam County, Clay County line. And then Bradford County had a 205 acre brush fire on also on last Tuesday. We sent a brush truck and a water tanker over there to assist them. This is the scary part for us. This is what we used really to determine a lot of our burn band thoughts and process and working with the Florida Forest Service. The Keech Byram Drought Index, KPDI is what we call it for short. Alachua County is in the 660 range. Maximum is 750 is what's considered. I haven't seen us in the 660 range in years. And if you'll look, red is not good in this. Red is bad. And you can see there a nice little swath there that's incorporating our county, Levy County, Gilchrist, Dixie, Bradford, Union. Those counties are the highest in the state of Florida with drought index, which means that things are ready to burn right now. To provide an example of that, we had a brush fire last week off of 2082 and it was about a mile along the side of the road of a vehicle that had a flat tire and was riding on the rim on the pavement and ignited brush spot fire brush fires all up and down 2082 for about a mile. And that doesn't sound very major, but that fire quickly extended all into the median area and then started passing through some fence line area. We were very close to having a significant brush fire just for something as innocent as that, as sparks from a tire. The Clay County, Putnam County fire, from what I understand, started from a rail car throwing sparks. And so I urge everyone to please be very cautious when outdoors and having any type of spark or open flame. The conditions are prime for wildfires. We have been very fortunate up until this point not to have hundreds of acres involved in a single brush fire. Very, very fortunate. We've done quite a few things to be prepared for this if we should have a wildfire outbreak in our area. We have upstaffed our emergency management. They are on standby. They are ready. They are the coordinators of all of our regional assets and they really help us with our public and private partnerships. We've had a number of big box stores reach out to us asking if we need assistance with anything with supplies or equipment. We're very gracious to them and to the public that has reached out to us to offer their well wishes and to volunteer to help us in different areas. Our administrative chiefs, one of us is on call all the time right now, getting ready. We're prepared in case we need to get called out for a brush fire. The statewide emergency response plan is something through the Florida Fire Chiefs Association. It's an automatic aid type of program and so when we went to Levy County that was through this SERP plan that took place and so we've been watching that very closely. I was the former Region 3 coordinator. I passed that along to Chief Cowart, one of our assistant chiefs, and so he is on the phone with the state of Florida daily talking about different assets in the area, what's going on from the wildfire perspective statewide and so at a phone call's notice we can get assets from other counties to come in and assist us if we have a major wildfire. Locally what we've done, I've talked about the collective bargaining agreement, we have upstaffed our brush trucks and water tankers. You know all of our fire stations, not all of them, most of our fire stations have a three-person crew that operates out of a fire engine and seven or eight of those fire stations also have a brush truck and a water tanker. And when we catch a call, depending on where that call is, what the type of call it is, those three individuals will cross staff, meaning they'll put the engine out of service and two will get on the brush truck and one will get on the water tanker and go to the fire. Well what we've done is we've upstaffed and staffed those brush trucks and water tankers with dedicated personnel and we're doing that three stations per day in each battalion and so we're trying to cover the north, south, east and west if something should take place. Our firefighters are well aware of what's going on and so I think if we sent out a mass call out we would have volunteers coming into work very, very quickly. I've got to really applaud the Florida Forest Service and their actions over the last few months. They have really been a very good partner and they've really been quick to respond to scenes with an overwhelming amount of dozers with air support, both helicopter and fixed wing and so they've really done an outstanding job in making sure that the wildfires are extinguished as fast they possibly can. March was the eighth driest uh month the eighth driest march in over 132 years according to NOAA and 2026 is the fourth driest year to date over the past 132 years. All this is NOAA statistics and I think what's scary is if you look at the bottom right there extreme drought conditions 67 percent of Alachua County is an extreme extreme drought and 33 percent is an exceptional drought and so we have some some concerns about that. I'm not a weather person but the forecast I do keep an eye on that hopefully we'll have some rain Saturday and Sunday. I don't know that it'll be enough to saturate or penetrate the ground that we need. We need extensive rain. We need heavy rain over a period of days to really help us. We are inches and inches below each and every month of what we normally should be at. I know this question gets asked a lot the Florida Forest Service has suspended all broadcast and pile burning permits. They're not issuing any permits in our five county region at all and spoke with them this morning. Their statement is they don't plan on providing any burn permits until we get saturated with rain. So what to do for our public first of all is please prepare. You know we have a alert Alachua is a app that you can have on your phone that you can get timely notifications when it comes to weather conditions, wildfire conditions and also evacuations if that should take place. Make an emergency plan for evacuation. I know that we think that that would never happen to our home but if you live especially in an area along wood lines or in wooded areas you need to be ready and that evacuation needs to be considered as far as where would you go if something should happen. Where would you meet your family members and what would you take with you and if I lived in a wooded wood line area those would be things I would have ready and handy to go. That's a go kit that you have that has water and some food with you and also your important documents and your important papers. We certainly don't want to have any loss of homes or structures. We definitely don't want to have any loss of life and so we ask that the public be very smart in how they're handling their yard work and things like that. If there's a brush fire coming to their area you know the Florida Forest Service encourages people to have hose lines in their property that reach all aspects of their property and that's great as long as the fire isn't too great of what they're dealing with. We also urge people to keep yard debris and dead yard debris pine straw those kind of things more than 30 feet away from their home. Have a buffer of their home so they don't have the risk of having their home ignite in a wildfire. That's the update that I want to provide to you. I'm here for any questions if you should have any. Commissioner Prizia. Yes thank you so much. I appreciate this. I think this is all really important information for the public. I was also hoping that we might be able to leverage some of our marketing resources and our communications resources to get out more information about what to do what not to do. You know there's some of those infographics that are coming out now that talk about like mowing and the sparks that can happen or cigarette butts and how quickly that can ignite. So I'm hoping if my colleagues are okay we could just refer to our team to begin to sort of up the I think we need to up the social media. I think we need to up the communications. I'm just seeing some silly stuff happening in our community given just how insanely dry we are and I think people aren't quite aware of just how dangerous this drought is. The other thing I was hoping is that we might ask our land management teams to post high fire risk signs at our kiosks at our conservation lands and areas. I was running in one of ours this weekend and I saw a cigarette butt on the side of the the trail and it made me really nervous thinking like all it would take would be one person deciding to throw their cigarette out and it could be you know a major fire so if if folks are okay with that I just wanted to refer that to our team to think about. Yeah Chief that's helpful. We'd be happy to. Yeah I think that. And Mark's over there nodding so yeah without objection let's go ahead and do that. Thank you thank you so much. Okay Commissioner Alford. Yeah I wanted to say thanks to all the community that responded during the fire that required the kind of evacuation of our emergency I mean I'm sorry our animal services facility and the hundreds of folks that came and took care of those animals I thought that was great and also when we're sharing information with the public I know Mark put out something but advising people on how to stay in their houses and deal with smoke because there's so many older folks or folks with asthma that have to deal with that smoke issue so if we're adding information sending information. Yes that's a good suggestion I'll tell you living in Melrose we've been dealing with it for weeks um yeah yeah so thank you okay Commissioner you conclude? I conclude. Commissioner Wheeler? I just have a quick question um it sounds like that you have gathered all of the resources we have to do the work we need to do to address the fires that we currently have would we ever engage with the National Guard I mean we have the facility out there now that has all this big equipment coming into store I just didn't know if they would be accessible to us or if that's even work that they would do in conjunction with what you all are doing for us. Mr. Chair they the National Guard wouldn't necessarily be directly involved with the extinguishment of wildfires but they would certainly at the time when we would activate our EOC and ask the state for assets and resources much like a hurricane but in a wildfire event we would certainly request National Guard to assist us with different other types of functions whether it's evacuations whether it's food and water distribution uh whether it's road roadway management with the assistance of law enforcement and their participation so we would activate and use the National Guard if we needed to. Great thank you I just want to make sure that you know we have this facility here in our community that we access it any way that we need to to make sure that it's part of our community thank you thank you Mr. Chair. Chief I just want to say you know I agree thank you to the Florida Forest Service thank you to Gainesville Fire Rescue and obviously to the men and women at Alachua County Fire Rescue we certainly appreciate their work and appreciate all that you're doing. Thank you sir. Okay thank you. Oh I have one more question please. You working with Florida Wildlife Care too uh fish and game because I know that we've got critters that are birthing right now it's the spring yeah the spring babies that are out there. Mr. Chair we don't directly work with them I think the Florida Forest Service being state agencies they work together uh more than we do with them. Okay thank you Mr. Chair. Okay thank you Chief. All right Mark announcement number one done two more to go. Okay Mr. Chair I hear you loud and clear about communicating more I will let you know though that through uh a JIC Joint Information Center that has been formed with Ludi Bonn at the for Florida Forestry Service we have put out information about dealing with smoke in your house about creating a defensible line around your house and with each burn ban renewal we put out the information about what to do and how to stay safe but we will up that effort certainly. Mr. Chair you might remember in 2020 we were dealing with another emergency and one of the things that Alachua County did beautifully during COVID was administer the emergency um the eviction program to keep people the ERAP program um and one of the reasons Alachua County did so well was the cooperation that staff had with an incredible woman who helped us administer a campaign that was so successful we were getting federal dollars that could not be spent by other communities because ours was was done so well and it is my pleasure to announce to the public and as you know when you approved your consent agenda today you um approved the hiring of a new uh finance and budget director uh April Shooping and I would like to introduce her right now April awesome welcome April uh thank you very much um I started my career more years than I'd like to say ago in this building on the fourth floor working with Todd way back in the day when we were babies um and so I'm really pleased to be coming back here um and it feels like coming home to me to be honest um thank you so much for this opportunity I we I feel like we had trial by fire together through CARES and ERAP and it really helped me um grow to admire and respect all of you and the staff um for it through a really challenging situation so super excited to be coming back and joining some of my old colleagues and new colleagues and um thank you very much well April I know I said this in the hallway but um I think we got the best staff in the state and I think we got the best staff in the country and with you coming back as the director I think we've got another upgrade so congratulations and welcome aboard thank you all right thank you for being here give her a round of applause yeah I know she hates this she hates it which is really great really glad that y'all all did that okay Mark uh announcement number three number three um as you all know we we had a momentous event the other day where we cut the ribbon on a housing project that will give over 60 people a place to be and uh Alan and Josh were were on scene working their magic and we'd like to share that with you okay the Elantra County Commission purchased both the former budget and and former Scottish in as part of a community-wide response to homelessness that prioritizes individuals based on vulnerability and need the former motels have since been transformed into safe stable housing for some of the county's most vulnerable residents Forest Edge now includes 31 efficiency style studio units and East Tumblin Creek features 36 one-bedroom units along with a laundry facility and a shared common area designed to encourage comfort connection and community yeah today is a good day for Alachua County for more than a decade this community has said clearly and consistently that housing is not just a social issue it's a public health issue it's an economic issue and a matter of basic human dignity today is more than just about buildings it's about creating spaces where individuals can feel safe supported and at home it creates not just a place to live but a place residents can truly call home while laying foundation for greater stability and opportunity this collaboration represents a strategic and innovative approach to expanding access to affordable housing in Alachua County when i was first hired prior commissioners as well as current commissioners gave me the charge of find affordable housing find something that our most vulnerable residents can live at that the county can own because we can't control the rents across the community but if we own the property we can control that these two hotels came available uh the vision of this board allowed us to say what are we going to do to reuse these facilities and the site couldn't have turned out better it looks really beautiful most of the units were completely renovated that means removing interior walls and replacing them all the appliances all the kitchen cabinets and countertops all replaced bathrooms showers all of that is brand new we had a couple good contractors that came in and were able to to dig in and to turn them over into something that is actually really beautiful right now it's an exciting day to be here for sure because we needed this housing as quickly as we can get it ready for the folks that are going to be living here having a place like this is so important for those who've experienced housing struggles because oftentimes their lives are very complicated when you don't have an address when you don't have a mailbox you can't get a bank account you can't get a driver's license there are so many things that people don't realize you can't do when you don't have a roof over your head i think that having these roofs that are also providing wrap around case management and support will give these individuals the opportunity to slowly but surely rebuild their lives and give them the tools that they need to ultimately be successful and become stable members of our community and mr chair those are the announcements okay thank you mark so um commissioners with your permission we've got four proclamations and a lot of folks here for that i think we should do the four proclamations and then we'll go ahead and open up public comment is that okay does anybody object to that no move okay so with that i'll take a motion to approve the recognitions so moved second got motion a second to approve the recognitions uh any comments any public comments back to the board all those in favor say aye aye any opposed that motion is unanimous okay so we're going to start off the first one um with commissioner chestnut presentation of a proclamation recognizing may 3rd through may 9th as a correction detention employees appreciation week in alachua county florida and i believe we've got the sheriff along with a number of our uh public servants here to receive the proclamation thank you all for being here today sheriff come on up thanks for being here you all nice looking bunch a proclamation declaring april 3rd through and i'm sorry wrong one hold on a proclamation declaring may 3rd through may 9th 2026 as correction detention employees appreciation week in alachua county florida whereas each and every day the alachua county sheriff's office detention employees provide a vital service for the citizens of this county and are responsible for the care custody and control of approximately 800 inmates each day and whereas these men and women are responsible for the inmates held in the alachua county department of jail directly supervising the incarceration and rehabilitation of criminal offenders and whereas correction detention employees protect inmates from violence and encourage them to develop skills and attitudes that can help them become productive members of society upon release and whereas we acknowledge that the correctional detention employees provide an invaluable service to our community and receive little recognition for their efforts and whereas the week of may 3rd through may 9th 2026 has been proclaimed the national correction detention employees appreciation week and whereas we invite all alachua county citizens to recognize these individuals for their commitment to the safety of our community now therefore through the 30 authority invested in me by the board of county commissioners of alachua county florida i do hear by proclaim the week of may 3rd through may 9th 2026 as correction detention employees appreciation week in alachua county florida due to proclaim this 28th day of april a.d 2026 signed by chair ken cornell and tested to by jess irby chair commissioners uh city attorney um thank you guys city manager county manager thank you thank you for recognizing us um like i tell my guys all the time is that there's no um our me it's us and we we're a team and the things that they do at the alachua county jail the department of the jail is amazing um they're very hard workers and that's what i call another zone of the alachua county sheriff's office they work very hard and i'm just honored to be here to to be recognized for them and with them captain swallows would you recognize these newly appointed acting sergeants and the officer of the year please well we'll start with our officer of the year captain swallows support services division um officer ratliff here was our employee of the year and he is currently an acting sergeant with us do you have anything you'd like to say real quick uh yes i just appreciate the uh support that you have for the jail thank you congratulations sir um acting sergeant stacy o and acting sergeant beckitt beckitt bernette i get it backwards sorry about that yeah okay we're very appreciative for uh everything you guys do on a daily basis and i know that a lot of times it doesn't feel like you're getting the the standing ovation that you probably deserve but you're greatly appreciated and hopefully this marks that for you all right let's get a picture i just wanted to thank the sheriff and his team for the hard work that you all have been doing to prioritize re-entry it really shows and i know that sometimes the things that we bring forward that are about creating more justice and opportunity for inmates can create real challenges in the day-to-day operations of the jail and we just appreciate you all working through those so that together we can create pathways so that people who've made a bad decision don't have to make that the rest of their lives thank you so much thank you commissioner well said okay next up madame clerk is presentation of proclamation recognizing april as child abuse prevention month in alachua county and i think we're going to have commissioner wheeler who's going to make that proclamation i'm going to rush these men though they were their moments in the april okay amanda i just hate doing it when i do it wrong i'm welcoming amanda damaria and her gang this is awesome this is what a group thank you so much for showing up all of you it's important um before i get started too i'm going to tell you all you may or may not know there's going to be a new baby box put in tech city fire station that's being built right now commissioner dana miller who was on the board and alachua at the time we were talking about this was important to her uh because of you know this abuse starts early and uh so i just want to make sure that you all know it's coming thanks to commissioner miller so if you all see her you thank her because she's the one who poked at it um i think we do have a baby box in alachua and no newberry and uh because newberry did it as a city they have one there so now as the county we have one at our tech city site there so you all thank you so much for being here and i'm going to read this proclamation now declaring april is child abuse prevention month in alachua county florida whereas prevention is possible with the right policies and investments families and children can thrive and avoid contact with child welfare agencies and whereas every family and child are filled with tremendous promise and we all have a collective responsibility to prevent adverse childhood experiences foster the potential of every child and promote positive childhood experiences and whereas families who receive the support they need before a crisis occurred are better equipped to provide safe healthy and nurturing environments leading to children who are safer healthier and more hopeful about their futures and whereas childhood trauma including abuse and neglect can have long-term psychological emotional and physical effects throughout the child's lifetime and impact future generations and whereas strengthening families through access to concrete economic social and community-based supports and services reduces the likelihood of abuse and neglect and ensures children have the foundation for life lifelong well-being and whereas effective child abuse prevention activities succeed because of the partnerships created between child welfare professionals education health community and faith-based organizations businesses law enforcement agencies and families and whereas communities must make every effort to promote programs and activities that create strong and thriving children and families and whereas we acknowledge that we must work together as a community to increase awareness about child abuse and contribute to promoting the social and emotional and emotional well-being of children and families in a safe stable and nurturing environment and whereas investments and prevention initiatives are essential to building safer healthier communities for children and families and whereas prevention remains the best defense for our children and families now therefore through the authority vested in me by the board of county commissioners of alachua county florida i do hereby proclaim april this child abuse prevention month in alachua county florida duly proclaim this 28th day of the april of may april we are in may april ad 2026 and this is signed by our chair corn uh ken cornell and uh tested to by jess or be our clerk so i'm going to pass this off to you now and you please introduce your team or tell us what you all are up to these days absolutely thank you commissioner so much for having us so this is just a few of the members of the child abuse prevention task force um and we get together all year long to collaborate on different um policies and different um programs for families to prevent child abuse as you guys are aware you know partnership for strong families we have been here for for almost 25 years and 16 years ago we started the first family resource center in gainesville and now we have two um but we're not just doing things um in gainesville we really are reaching the families throughout the entire county so i want to introduce china miller and she is just going to give you a little update about what's going on in the rural areas hey thank you good afternoon everyone um we're extremely grateful to have the opportunity um to receive such an honor and um reward for the work that's happening around child abuse prevention um as amanda mentioned there's a lot of amazing things happening in the rural communities that partnership for strong families has been a part of um and it's due largely in part two we want to thank the children's trust of alachua county who provides funds for us to be able to provide resources to these rural communities so in high springs and also in hawthorne and many other areas surrounding alachua county we've been able to extend those resources that are offered here in gainesville to communities that may not have access to them and so that's been a real honor and privilege for us um just to be able to provide those resources to families who may not be able to have access to them otherwise and so again thank you to you guys for this amazing recognition and then also to the children's trust for providing funds and making that happen for us thank you china and i do want to take a moment to introduce our chair uh you all know sherry kitchens she can say a few words good afternoon mr mr chair and county commissioners i really really appreciate the opportunity to speak with you all today the acceptance of this proclamation is critically important to highlight the need for prevention across our community i am the chair of the child abuse prevention task force i'm also the president ceo of the child advocacy center without some of the support for children who have survived abuse and trauma without the support of the county it would be really hard to help those children heal and reclaim their childhoods you may have seen the pinwheel planting all across the county there's a huge display in front of uf health children's hospital and that was because of this group and many others we had about 65 folks out there planting 2200 pinwheels and then we challenged all of our members to go out and plant pinwheels around the community so that it can be a visual representation of how important a safe loving nurturing childhood can be so thank you all so much for your support we're very grateful thank you sharing okay all right let's get a picture and next up is a presentation of a proclamation recognizing april as landscape and architecture month in lachsburgh county and i believe commissioner alfred along with some of our county staff will be doing this present proclamation awesome and for you all here for public comment thank you for your patience while we get through these proclamations um all right uh this is the proclamation declaring april is landscape architecture month in alachua county florida whereas landscape architecture encompasses the analysis planning design and stewardship of the natural and built environment translating vision into action to shape places that are healthy safe and resilient and whereas wednesday april 1st 2026 is recognized as professional landscape architecture or pla day celebrating the licensed professionals whose expertise in science technology engineering and mathematics known as stem is essential to the infrastructure and quality of life in alachua county and whereas during landscape architecture month celebrated under the theme landscape architecture in action we recognize the profession's tangible impact on parks streetscapes campuses and public places across urban suburban and rural communities and whereas the united states as as the united states approaches america 250 we recognize that landscape architects have historically shaped and continue to steward the american landscape creating enduring places that embody democratic values and cultural heritage and advance opportunities for future generations and whereas this licensed practice of landscape architecture is a critical safeguard for public health safety and welfare ensuring that outdoor environments from therapeutic gardens and playgrounds to complex storm water and transportation systems are designed with technical rigor and ethical responsibility and whereas the economy of alachua county is strengthened by the work of landscape licensed landscape architects and the accredited programs at the florida international university and the university of florida who together foster tourism economic development and environmental protection now therefore through the authority vested in me by the board of county commissioners of alachua county florida i do hereby proclaim april is landscape and architecture month in alachua county florida duly proclaimed this 28th day of april ad 2026 and signed by all the appropriate people and i just want to say as someone that has worked in this the field of architecture and engineering what we see and experience as we walk down a street or walk through a public place affects our mental health affects our our safety it affects how we see and interact with the world and it really is a lot more important than a lot of people realize so let's uh give a hand to these folks here in alachua county thank you for the continued support of our profession uh you'd be surprised how many that don't know about landscape architecture you guys know it because there's two accredited universities in the state of florida university of florida and fiu so in the college of design construction and planning that's where our landscape architecture school is so we we i take great pride in all the students lily crawford's with us she's one of our recent graduates and uh elizabeth manley miss wheeler commissioner wheeler we talked about the west end parks in the hallway elizabeth's all over it so gotcha so we we are licensed in all 50 states and and that's very important because we went to the capital this year with other design professionals architects engineers and we were advocating for a profession because we have to continuously do that to different elected officials because they don't know about what we do they think it's all about trees and flowers it's it's so much more but i appreciate you guys for your knowledge of our profession and continually supporting us thank you commissioner whaler i just wanted to say very quickly too i'm sure you know andy goldsworthy's work um it's one of my favorite artists and he uses natural elements from the environment to create beautiful pieces so this is this we may be having to do that with the drought situation that we've got going on is going to rocks and stones to to build our beautiful sculptures exactly it's it's um i'm listening to all the presentations today and how much we impact that whether it's with the the forestry department land management how many landscape architects are involved with that the correctional facilities uh crime prevention through environmental design how much we deal with that and and with safe healthy parks inclusive of parks that's we touch so many aspects of the community that people rarely have not have knowledge of that but thank you all right so let's get a picture and while we're doing that i will say that elizabeth was amazing when we had our west end meeting and we were kind of working on the fly here and she is continuing that work to create an amazing west end park so elizabeth thank you for that for that okay madam clerk the last proclamation is a presentation of a proclamation recognizing april as sexual assault awareness month in alachua county florida and our distinguished guest come on up hello everyone excellent yes it is my honor um to declare april as sexual assault awareness month in alachua county florida whereas sexual assault awareness month is observed annually in april to raise public awareness about sexual abuse and to educate communities on prevention support and advocacy and whereas sexual assault harassment and abuse affect individuals of all ages genders races and socioeconomic backgrounds with profound and lasting impacts on the survivors their families and our community and whereas it's essential to support survivors with compassion dignity and access to comprehensive services including crisis counseling medical care legal advocacy whereas alachua county victim services and ripe crisis center and sexual assault nurse examiners at uf health in north florida hca are a heart at the heart of the local response when sexual assault happens and play a critical role in supporting survivors promoting healing and restoring control back to survivors and whereas prevention requires a collective effort to challenge harmful attitudes promote respect and consent and foster safe environments where all individuals are valued and protected and whereas denim day observed april 29th tomorrow is a nationally recognized campaign that began in response to a court ruling that blamed the survivors clothing for their assault and now serves as a powerful symbol of protest against victim blaming and calling to stand in solidarity with our survivors whereas wearing denim on this day sends a clear message that there is no excuse for sexual violence that survivors deserve to be heard believed and supported now therefore through the authority vested in me by the board of county commissioners i do hereby proclaim april the sexual assault awareness month in alachua county florida i have a beautiful and i just before i give her the mic i just want to say a huge thank you to laura and her entire team these folks worked tirelessly to provide survivors with the support the wraparound services that we need we also have our domestic violence shelter here in the room today and we want to thank them for the work that they do to provide housing and shelter and coordinate with our team on helping our survivors to have the things that they need laura welcome thanks for being here thank you so much so i'm laura cult i'm the director of alachua county victim services and rape crisis center and i wrote down i have a few remarks that i prepared um want to thank you commissioners for your support year-round but especially having this moment to acknowledge sexual assault awareness month appreciate your support um the impact of sexual violence on the individual level is devastating but the impact of sexual violence doesn't stop there it affects the family the friends significant others of the survivor it affects co-workers it affects the entire community far too often survivors carry the burden in silence afraid they won't be believed or even worse blamed for what someone else did to them your acknowledgement here today sends the message to our community that we know that this type of abuse happens and we can talk about it so thank you for shining a light on this topic and the county manager isn't here but i did want to thank her because she is allowing all county employees if they want to wear denim tomorrow for denim day in honor of sexual assault awareness month so i really appreciate her being willing to do that with me today i have a few of the advocates from my team but also nurses from shans uf health so um these are the folks who are part of the 24-hour on call and will respond out in person to provide free crisis counseling free medical services like forensic exams um and it's worth mentioning because not a lot of people know this that a free forensic exam can be done for anyone within five days of experiencing a sexual assault and they do not have to report to the police this is for adults um minors of course there's mandatory reporting so i i like to put that out there because not a lot of people know that um so i want to recognize this team standing with me today they serve this community with compassion professionalism and unwavering dedication every day they meet people in some of the most difficult moments of their lives offering care support and a path forward their work is not always visible but it is essential and our community is stronger because of them so i accept this proclamation not just as a symbol but a call to action together we can build a safer and more compassionate community thank you thank you laura okay let's get a picture if you're a county employee tomorrow is jeans day so that you start the conversation so wear those jeans if you're not a county employee your county commissioners have said tomorrow is jeans day so go ahead and wear them talk to your boss tell them why you're wearing jeans it's an important day and it's important um proclamation so okay so with that thank you commissioners for allowing me to get through the proclamations it seems like it's about noon so we're going to go ahead and open up public comment um i see some of our amazing animal service employees that are here i see some folks with signs so i've asked the county attorney to just go over kind of our policies with regards to public comment and so miss torres could you just cover that before we get started sure mr chair um the board adopts rules of procedure those rules of procedure are for the purposes of efficient and orderly conduct of meetings regarding signs signs are allowed in the boardroom so long as they are not mounted on sticks poles posts or other similar structures so unmounted signs that said they shall not disrupt meetings or interfere with others visual rights so please keep your signs in a way that does not interfere with other people's rights to see and understand what is going on today regarding employees employees are allowed to speak to the board in their individual capacity they need to be off the clock so not on county time and they need to indicate that they are speaking on their own behalf and not on behalf of the county the board will not speak to any employee comments related to an active grievance or an arbitration an active employee appeal matter or a personnel dispute those issues we would ask you to address with staff i believe we have someone from hr here today okay thank you ms torres and so for those of you that are speaking today we've got a light system green means go yellow says you got about 30 seconds and then red means wrap up your comments so that the person behind you or over here we've got two podiums so we can line up on both we're very happy to see our public engaging with this commission we'd like to hear from them and with that if you could introduce yourself and you'll have three minutes welcome thank you hello commissioners my name is pam paris and i'd like to say that if there ever was a time to appeal to your humanity this is it you know that most immigrants are peaceful non-violent hard-working people that make our county better there is no need for the show of force that ice brings many citizens here today will express specific concerns and demands please have courage and listen to them and act accordingly remember your legacy and the impact your decisions will have act for the greater good not the fear of the moment thank you thank you ms paris thank you for being here okay next speaker and again we've got two podiums you're welcome to queue up on both of the podiums if you'd like go ahead mr chair commissioners my name is ralph partridge i live in cross creek florida moved there in 1978 after graduating from university of florida with my wife and have happily lived there 48 years approximately three years after moving there myself and three other residents of cross creek founded the cross creek volunteer fire department where i served as president of that organization for 28 years i say this not for any other reason to establish that i think i have a pretty good understanding of cross creek what we need and what goes on out there approximately 10 years ago county road 325 was repaved excellent job was done the county sent out a committee to talk to residents about the plan to repave 325 and several members of the community said they were afraid that the plan plan which called for the road to be widened to allow for two four-foot bike lanes as our uh comprehensive plan calls for in those rural areas would encourage truckers to come through cross creek i was not one of those residents trucks aren't allowed on the road the bridge won't carry them but nonetheless in a good faith judgment county transportation people made a compromise we'll keep the road the same width we'll reduce the travel lanes by two feet on each side and have a two-foot bike lane i don't know about you the older i get the wider i get two feet isn't enough on a bicycle on county road with a 55 mile an hour speed limit in 28 years of heading up the cross creek volunteer fire department my wife and i went to home fires rush fires and mostly emergency school or emergency of medical situations with automobile accidents at the yearling restaurant at marjorie rollins home never in all of those years was a single pedestrian or bicyclist hurt not once one thing i've learned in 74 years of life is a good intention some have unintended consequences we encouraged people to come to cross creek by building a better road and it worked bicycle teams from university of florida people coming marjorie rollins home now walk hike along that road because it was advertised with a bike lane that bike lane is dysfunctional i know the county is pressed with funds and you can't maintain the side of the road that bike lane is barely one feet wide now four years ago the god uncle to my children was killed exercising on his bicycle 50 feet from my driveway eight weeks ago i could return from grocery shopping with my wife to find a 26 year old gentleman from south carolina in a biking event killed in my driveway it's time in your plan for safety in the roads to not encourage people to use roads that aren't safe thank you have any questions about what i said i'd be happy to answer this thank you mr partridge thank you for your comments and for that information okay next speaker please mr chair commissioners members of the public jacob torner vice president at the task force for ending homelessness today i'm going to talk to you about life and death for children um you know my counterparts across the state and country have asked me how does alachua county keep its momentum going and i'm sure miss tuck can attest to this because she's on many of those same calls the answer is simple we believe we have leadership who cares and leadership who understands mr chair as an example i want to thank you for recognizing the impact of real estate industry leaders at the recent golden key awards those events are critical but today i'm going to highlight some facts and then i'm going to ask for two specific actions from this board allow me to start with reminding you that the florida department of education reports that one in every 30 students in alachua county where we're standing today is experiencing homelessness at the end of 2024 at the end of that school year there were 1026 students in our public school system without a home and that includes 259 who weren't living anywhere at all meaning they weren't in a motel or they weren't anywhere that could even be considered safe this school year it's reported that more than 700 homeless students in the alachua county school district leave the classroom each day without a stable place to call home that's unacceptable and if that doesn't concern you enough in just the past few months family promise who's here today and is going to speak to you has received requests from over 600 families seeking critical help now recently you may remember commissioners this board recognized and invited 580 students to submit artwork for an environmental department competition but the reality is statistically many of those same students one in every 30 in our school systems are housing insecure and that's not a contradiction but it is a call to action you're also recognizing sexual assault awareness month here today i would be remiss if i didn't take this moment to remind the public and highlight that nationally an estimated one in five homeless children are trafficked and sexually abused we know traffickers use violence threats and manipulation to exploit vulnerability and children who are homeless are prime targets as they desperately crave a stable home life the gainesville child advocacy center who was just here reportedly handled 76 child sex trafficking cases just this past year as well as more than 1100 sexual abuse cases and for anyone who may not know the continuum of care programs established under federal law 24 cfr part 578 it's reinforced by our state legislator under several sections and the charge is to promote a community-wide commitment to resolving homelessness while restoring self-sufficiency i see my lights on i'm asking for three minutes on topic and three minutes off topic if possible i believe that's what the rules permit commissioner alford commissioner i do want to acknowledge you you attended but not just attended you fully participated in the summit on family homelessness just a month ago with over 120 participants and when that single father of two who served our nation so bravely in the united states armed forces spoke to us about his experience and brought those two young boys who are homeless in our community that reminded us of why this work matters now more than ever so during a recent debrief with that planning committee on the summit on family homelessness there was consensus that expanded collaboration between local governments the school district is necessary and specifically a collaborative review of underutilized county-owned facilities and school board facilities should be explored to better serve our students and this is not only aligned with common sense commissioners this is aligned with performance the florida department of education goals state that each school district should achieve at least a 90 school attendance rate for students who are homeless and promote 90 of them to the next grade and we know and i'm sure you all agree housing stability is directly tied to those outcomes i would also suggest to you that the actions we're about to request from you could be viewed as one the county's compelled to take under florida statute section 125.0231 which is florida's public camping law that came out of house bill 1365 the county may not authorize or otherwise allow any person to regularly engage in public camping or sleeping on public property and when no alternatives exist for families with children who meet hud's definition of homelessness i believe a reasonable person would reach the conclusion that the county could effectively be allowing such conduct so as such the action that we're requesting should really be seen as a good faith effort by this board to comply with the statute but more importantly in that view a necessary one so our goal is not to address this in silos that's why we're here today and that's why we're going across the street in a week and a half with many of the people you see here today to to speak to you and support this effort this is also a practical consideration so today we're asking on behalf of the children who will sleep on our sidewalks and in our woods tonight while most if not all of us in this room will get to go home to cozy beds and enjoy our families that you take this simple meaningful step forward we're not asking you for funding as most of the people who stand up here and do we're simply asking and respectfully asking that you direct county staff to conduct a review for under utilization of all county-owned facilities in the commission's portfolio and additionally vote to approve a letter from this wonderful chair mr cornell to the school board and the superintendent requesting three specific things and i'm almost done one a convening of school district and continuum of care leadership to put our heads together and start really addressing this problem and stop talking about it the convening should also consist very much in a focused manner a collaborative review of underutilized school board facilities and explore opportunities which is consistent with the school district's obligations under the mckinney-vento act and third we're asking in that letter identification of coordinated strategies to improve access and educational continuity so i'll close by saying this is not about assigning responsibility it's about sharing it and if we act together with clarity with logic and with purpose most importantly we can ensure that fewer children have to choose between education and survival so thank you for your leadership thank you mr turner thank you so we so we may we may have a chair letter in our future um if i could ask that you all if you want to say that you really like it just do this we try to prevent people from clapping because if someone has an opposing view then it intimidates them so thank you for your comments and for your clapping that time but let's just do this in the future and we'll go to the next speaker all right mr turner thank you what we're going to do is we're going to let everyone speak then we typically have commission comments to the speakers and then if there's any motions or any direction of staff that's when we'll be doing it appreciate that all right next speaker over here hello i'm rebecca guthrie i am here as a civilian today um i just want to bring an issue to light in regards to gina peebles and britney dozzo they have constantly demonstrated professionalism dedication and a strong commitment to excellence in their roles their contributions have had a positive and measurable impact on both team morale and overall productivity they bring reliability experience and collaborative collaborative spirit that strengthens the workplace environment as a whole um unfortunately we as a whole have received death threats um which is you know makes it hard on our job um our job is already mentally emotionally and physically stressful and draining however we love it we come to work every day to help the welfare of the animals and to protect the public um from unfortunately dangerous animals sometimes um our jobs are hard enough truly we make really really tough decisions on a daily basis that we don't want to have to make believe you me i do not want to make them um however gina peebles and britney diazzo have been nothing but supportive they have been the backbone it has actually caused physically someone to be admitted to the hospital because of the stress that the community has unfortunately caused as a whole also i do appreciate everybody who has been supportive i really do but when we walk out into the field as an officer um it puts our lives in danger every day and people unfortunately don't want to call us anymore because they think we're horrible um so when i go into the field and i get a call about an injured dog or an injured cat that they didn't want to call us about and now it's too late to save because they were too scared to call us that causes an issue on our end um so i just want to show my support for my management team as a whole has been undeniably amazing thank you miss guthrie and if i could just ask the speakers to just speak through the chair that would be also much appreciated okay next speaker right here miss guthrie thank you for your comments next speaker right here and then we'll go back um the five of us are going to go in a row so we don't mind if yeah you don't mind that do you yeah no go ahead yeah okay you want to go first yeah yeah go ahead uh hi my name is aaron menden um i've worked at animal services since uh february so um but i am here on my own time currently and i would just like to echo what my co-worker rebecca said um in the three months i've known britney and gina they have been excellent leaders actual leaders not just supervisors or managers real leaders um the best supervisors i've had any job i've ever worked i've heard a lot of allegations i've with my own two eyes i've not seen anything remotely close to what i've seen floating around online or on news articles and just like she was saying it just causes a lot of stress for the community um it doesn't allow us to do our jobs properly and it's having a real effect especially on two people that really do not deserve it so again i would just like to echo everything she said the two of them don't deserve anything happening to them and it would be really great if this could just come to an end and they could both retain their positions thank you thank you mr brendan thank you for your comments okay why don't we go in the middle we'll do these five and then we'll go back to this side how about that that sound good thank you all right just introduce yourself and give us your thoughts hello everyone uh my name is ethan maya denny dell and i helped to coordinate the gainesville neighbor gainesville immigrant neighbor inclusion initiative or jenny on an advocacy alliance that fights for the inclusion and safety of immigrants throughout alachua county we have a history of working in our community for the past five years where we have successfully advocated for the implementation of greater language access initiatives at the city of gainesville alachua county and school districts funding and administrative support for immigrant inclusion efforts the creation of the welcoming guide a multilingual resource for new neighbors in our community and much much more over the past year and a half our mission fighting for the safety and inclusion of our immigrant community has become critical as we see the rights of our neighbors immigrant and u.s born alike stripped from us we have seen immigration enforcement officers invade our cities and tear families apart here in florida we are seeing immigration enforcement take on a model of our own our state leads the country in immigration arrests and this is done and facilitated through agreements between ice and our local and state law enforcement agencies and the creation of detention centers and offices for ice throughout our state when it came to our attention that ice is not only seeking to create a warehouse detention center in stark only 45 minutes away from here but also recently released a request for information into potential office spaces here in gainesville we created the following petition at this point we have gathered nearly 2 000 signatures from alachua county residents over 1300 of so are individual sign-ons and over 600 members uh represented from the 12 organizational organizational sign-ons which include the alachua community collective alachua dsa jewish voices for peace gainesville chapter people's progressive agenda psl gainesville solidarity network singing for resistance solidarity at uf you have students for socialism ydsa and 5051 gainesville before i let the other speakers um expand on the points within the petition i just wanted to read the initial paragraph which goes we the undersigned residents of alachua county believe in due process public safety and the dignity of every person as a diverse community that relies on and is made up of thousands of immigrants we care about all our neighbors our families and the places we call home we stand in opposition in the presence to the presence of a department of homeland security ice administrative office in gainesville or anywhere else in alachua county and we reject the participation participation of uh gpd alachua county sheriff's office and all other local law enforcement agencies to have 287 g agreements which deputize state and local law enforcement to carry out federal immigration enforcement thank you okay thank you ethan we're gonna stay on this slide for four more you got a lot of hands ethan on that one just so you know good afternoon it's good to be here my name is robin louie um i'm here just to put a little bit of an emphasis behind the great things that the county and the county commission has done previously for immigrants it's really important that we remember that there have been steps made especially over the last six years in order to allow immigrants and their families to feel welcome and safe within the community in 2020 the county recognized officially the human rights coalition's community id a step towards making all of us recognizable as neighbors uh during the covid pandemic messaging coming out through the county was provided in multiple languages um at the request of the community we now of course as we look at the wildfires the potential for upcoming storms at the beginning of the season that we also keep in mind the importance of uh continuing with this language access initiative we know that in 2022 you hired a language access coordinator and again recognizing that this was a great step from the county in 2021 the county did receive a copy of the new american economy report that outlined the positive economic impact of immigrants within our community i reiterate that especially for those that are listening today um there is a growing relationship uh with the community of immigrants and we know that it's necessary that we think about the future of our community that report by the new american economy made it clear that more than one in ten of us living in this county are immigrants that's about 30 000 people if not more they bring in nearly 60 million local and state taxes critical as we develop the future and respond to issues that have come forward today and they drive advancements in science and technology making up 25 percent of stem employees working in the county and of course there's 70 percent of agricultural workers key as we're looking at this is the top height of this of the uh harvest season but the encroachment of ice through state required agreements with florida highway patrol with sheriffs and the decision bias and local communities within the county to deputize their um agents uh to represent and carry out actions of ice completely jeopardizes the great steps that we have brought forward therefore we request that the commission publicly reiterate their commitment to immigrant community members that they reinforce the residents constitutional rights and expectations that immigration enforcement actions will be completed following those rights and we beg that you communicate well with those organizations that serve immigrants in order to figure out how to resolve the huge challenges that are impacting the community as of today thank you thank you for your comments excellent comments i remember each one of those items from 2020 forward welcome next speaker uh who hears about blueberries at the grocery store recently have you noticed that they're far mushier than they were about five years ago this is because instead of picking the berries by hand they are now predominantly harvested by a machine who do you think picked the blueberries before the industry switched to the machines that brews the fruit from my experience working in agriculture this was done by migrant workers many of whom were from latin american countries i know opposing ice just because you don't want mushy blueberries is kind of silly but every time you eat a mushy blueberry i want you to think of the immigrant people trying to live and take care of their families they're not committing a crime by doing so and i'm ashamed that our country is building concentration camps for them the attack on our immigrant community not only threatens to deprive our county of their major contributions to our economy and culture the expansion of ice into our cities and region would be a net loss for alachua county ice is covertly leasing office spaces in communities across the country without local input or going through required bidding bidding processes alachua county commissioners should denounce this practice is against the spirit of free enterprise and the local culture of welcoming all baker correctional institution the recently opened sister site of alligator alcatraz and baker county detention center are two detention centers close to our county which have been reported to be harmful environments for detainees who experience food and medical shortages physical and sexual abuse and will to no access to legal counsel if bradford county is able to transition a warehouse into a detention center for 3 000 of our immigrant neighbors we can expect to see these same conditions on a much larger scale such a detention center would cause greater strain on our region's water supply during a time in which we're expecting experiencing drought conditions and wildfires throughout our communities the community that would be most directly impacted by ice moving into our cities are the same neighbors who in alachua county make up 14 of business owners contributed 2.4 billion dollars to the county's gdp in 2019 alone are key to our education manufacturing and general service industries uh the there are communities across the county that have success or a country that have successfully blocked the establishment of ice offices or detention centers which we should look to for inspiration such as surprise arizona williamsport maryland duran oklahoma and roxbury new jersey orange county recently passed a resolution in opposition of a planned warehouse detention center in their area we expect the same leadership from our elected leaders therefore alachua county must publicly declare opposition to ice offices in gainesville or alachua county and the presence of new or existing detention centers in our region ask yourselves who are you as a floridian who are you as an american who are you as a human being and how do you want to be remembered thank you thank you thank you for your comment very good mr knight he didn't give you want to introduce yourself i'm leif jensen leif jensen yep leif nice to meet you thank you next speaker please we got two more here and then we'll come over to there good afternoon my name is irena schlan i'm a resident of mccanopy and a volunteer with jenny friends neighbors and members of the commission we have to ask ourselves a fundamental question what is truly driving the demand for more offices and more detention centers in our backyard the answer is not public safety the answer is a wave of enforcement actions that are systematically attacking our basic rights right now in this moment ice is violating constitutional protections that belong to all of us regardless of status we are seeing a complete breakdown of due process people including u.s citizens are being held in detention for prolonged periods without just cause take for instance a recent case of a u.s citizen arrested by flora highway patrol by simply being in the country illegally literally what it said think about the absurdity of that statement it is why ice is currently facing lawsuits across multiple states for rampant due process violations here in florida we are the national leaders number one in this crisis enforcement is happening through a web of 287g agreements between local agencies and ice with of course fhp leading the charge let's look at the state's own data less than 0.5 percent of immigrants arrested have any known gang affiliations at least one quarter that's 25 percent at least of those detained have committed no crime at all according to a recent aclu article florida highway patrol was recently reported to disproportionately pull over hispanic drivers even before the agency signed the agreement with ice the article reads and i quote even with the potential for hispanic drivers to be misclassified as white hispanics made up a disproportionate share of drivers arrested for traffic violations these findings did not even include any of the data from this past year when the crackdown of immigration went into full effect if this predisposition to target hispanic drivers is already in place just imagine what 287g will do to exacerbate that this is not targeted enforcement it is a dragnet the chair of flora florida state board of immigration enforcement sheriff grady judd which i'm sure we all know of pope county which is let's call conservative at least and a favorite of governor desantis even he and many other sheriffs on that board have even admitted that cast this is casting too wide of a net and that it is hurting the people in their communities who were never the target if those sheriffs can recognize this our county commissioners must show the same bravery we are calling on this commission to do the following one acknowledge the facts call out florida's role as the national reader in the 287g agreements and arrests to reaffirm our values reiterate this county's commitment to do process for every resident three empower the community inform our residents on exactly how you would hold law enforcement accountable if they are racially profiled or just or discriminated against by fhp demand transparency develop policies requiring that every ice certified official in this county to be unmasked and clearly identified no secret policing no more wide nets it is time to stand up for the rights of the people who call this county home thank you thank you irish thank you for your comments i'm gonna have to ask for where i where do i get a shirt you guys have some for you next speaker please hi everyone veronica robletto i'm here today with the as part of the ginny steering committee and i i know many of you are in agreement with a lot of the comments that have already been said and i want to present a tangible way for you to bring that forward as a commission as part of our requests and demands in this petition just to reiterate the main points is a public reiteration of the commission's previous and ongoing commitment to immigrant safety and inclusion publicly declaring opposition to ice offices expanding in gainesville or alachua county and the presence of new or existing detention centers in our region and to develop policies to require that all ice or ice certified officials working within the county display id their name and federal affiliation and be unmasked no secret policing so i present to you now a draft resolution that is modeled after orange county's recent resolution related to the similar issues and i will read through it if time allows and then hand you a copy for you to consider whereas on september 18th 2025 the washington post reported that the federal government has been actively seeking out office space around the nation to lease for immigration and customs enforcement or ice street level agents and attorneys in cities across the nation whereas on february 10th 2026 according to a report by wired magazine the federal government has serp and serpetitiously been pushing these office spaces leases by bypass any competitive process to help facilitate an ice quote national surge whereas alachua county is both a residential community and a home of the internationally recognized uf and placement of a no-bid office space for ice would go against the spirit of free enterprise in our county and negatively impact the county's reputation and trust for our neighbors whereas alachua county is committed to complying with the laws of the state of florida and ordinance of alachua county regarding law enforcement ensuring the safety of our community and preventing bias policing excessive use of force or any infringement upon residents fourth and fifth amendment rights whereas the reported manner in which immigration enforcement has taken place across the country and our state has infringed upon the rights and lives of many of our neighbors and come under heavy criticism including by the chair of florida state board of immigration enforcement whereas a new detention center in baker county and proposed warehouse threatened to increase demand for water usage i'm abbreviating now seeing the time whereas conversion of industrial warehouses within our region would place unanticipated demands on our resources whereas a primary objective of alachua county is to protect public health safety and welfare of its residents businesses alachua county expressly opposes placement of any no-bid office in our county or any detention center in our region finds the county and region to be an unsuitable location for such a space and emphatically reiterates its commitment to protection of constitutional and human rights afforded to all who live in our county did you finish uh no and it's just one more sentence now therefore i be it resolved by the board of county commissioners of alachua county florida the alachua county commissioners hereby unequivocally and categorically opposes the conversion of an office space for our county for ice the conversion of expansion of warehouses within north central florida for the establishment of ice processing and detention which would impose implant and unacceptable burdens on the region and the county's infrastructure public resources municipal services and further opposes immigration enforcement actions within our county that infringe upon legal and constitutional rights of our residents thank you okay if you will give that to the clerk then she will make sure that would be for all of you and the attorney thank you that is super okay um why don't we go over to here and there and then we'll come back yeah welcome hi uh i'm lee scott i'm the director of community engagement for family promise so i'm going to pivot us over to talk about family homelessness but i i do want to say uh that all of these things are interconnected it's kind of crazy when you think about it that uh we have all this space and resources for detention but not a shelter for homelessness we have 1300 beds at the jail we have 150 for individual homelessness but we don't have any for family homelessness it's kind of crazy when you think about that um so i'm the director of community engagement for family promise last year we served 1600 people um we have uh 431 on our wait list right now um and that's just in the last couple of months so our capacity um it far out exceeds um what we're able to do um family homelessness has reached a critical point uh the last mckinney vento numbers said that there's about 1200 people uh that meet the hud definition of homelessness that number can be as high as 2000 that number gets way higher when you talk about folks that are on the verge of homelessness uh folks that are living in their cars folks that are living in hotels uh couch surfing people that don't even meet the hud definition of homelessness that number is is increasingly higher and we need a shelter now last week alone we had to turn away six families that were just looking for shelter and we can do a lot at family promise we can connect folks to resources all of our staff is led by folks with lived experience i myself had to navigate these resources i was a single dad here in gainesville i grew up here and then i got married to my wife we had our daughter and unfortunately my wife and daughter passed away and i was a single dad having to fight for all these resources again it's incredibly difficult to do while you're grieving while you have trauma many of our families have children that have disabilities and we needed shelter so we're respectfully asking the county commission to submit a letter to the alachi county school board to do three things convene a formal meeting between the coc the school board and partners to address childhood and family homelessness a review of under-utilized school board facilities to explore repurposing them and the development of coordinated strategies to prove improve access to services housing and consistent care for our impacted students thank you thank you lee before you go were you recently awarded something what's that are you recently awarded something uh well yeah i'm i guess got named to the 2026 national represent justice fellowship so yeah thank you thank you lee yeah y'all can clap for that that's good he's very modest and so if i didn't ask he wouldn't have told us lee congrats on that go ahead next speaker please thank you commissioners for the opportunity to speak today um i'm really glad i was here and i'm not going to try to compete with these eloquent amazing speakers that are already shared so much information that needs to be heard over and over and i agree with the last speaker it is all connected um i didn't write something to say so i'll just kind of go off the cuff child abuse prevention well let's also put in gun control because kids are afraid to go to school i want to applaud the firefighters they've done an incredible job and then i think we should find people who are washing their cars in their driveways there's an underbelly that is insidious insidious about ice and what's going on and that is our peace officers bringing people in to deliver them to ice it was brought up before in a far more eloquent way but i'm going to say it is chilling to see this happening and it is happening so when someone is in trouble who do they go to and it's that simple i ask us to remember history of our own country i'm not going to bring up germany or anything else i'm going to remind us of the racism and the japanese internment camps read the history it never should have happened in our country and it cannot happen in gainesville i understand a lot of people are very afraid of losing their jobs because of our governor we've got to stop being afraid and if we band together and speak up we can get a whole lot more done and i will not apologize for being emotional i am emotional i am absolutely horrified and terrified of what i'm seeing i was born in 1950 and i've seen a lot i was active during the civil rights i've been active my whole life and i am terrified i have children grandchildren and great-grandchildren and i am terrified for every single child especially the children that are born with darker skin than i have i'm a privileged old white lady i can stand in the front lines and protect those of color those who are afraid and i look at the young people here and i applaud each and every one of them for coming here and standing up because that's what we need and i ask our grown-ups to stand up and do what needs to be done in alachua county and allow this to spread throughout our country thank you i yield my time thank you name name oh could you do you want to give us your name no that's okay after that speech we all my name is madeline austin i live in gainesville florida off 39th avenue and protest every single day i met you out at one of those thank you madeline i appreciate that okay next speaker over here hello good afternoon commissioners oh my time's up already no no no no that's our fault we're not perfect here go ahead all right good afternoon commissioners my name is rachel ryan and i serve as the executive director of family promise of gainesville in my role i work closely with families across our community who are striving to maintain stability while ensuring their children remain engaged in school at this time we are facing a substantial gap in available resources there are not enough family shelter and housing options to meet the current need particularly as we approach school breaks many of the families we serve are already on the brink of homelessness and without additional support some children who are attending school today may not have a safe or stable place to stay in the couple the coming months at the same time there's a clear opportunity to better utilize existing community assets certain school board facilities remain underutilized and current policies allow for reduced rental costs when supported by the county this presents a practical and cost-effective pathway to expand access to temporary shelter or supportive services using resources already within public control we must also consider the broader impact on educational outcomes the florida department of education has established clear benchmarks for students experiencing homelessness including 90 attendance and 90 grade promotion however housing instability remains one of the most significant barriers to achieving these goals when families are stabilized children are better able to under attend school consistently perform academically and achieve long-term success this issue extends beyond housing alone it directly impacts educational systems and requires coordinated efforts across sectors for that reason i respect respectfully ask the commission to support a letter from the chair to the alachua county school board requesting three actions first the formal convening between school district and continue continuum of care leadership to address child and family homelessness second a collaborative review of underutilized school board facilities to explore their potential use and supporting families consistent with the mckinney-vinto act and third the development of coordinated strategies to improve access to services housing stability and consistent school engagement for impacted students this is an opportunity to take a collaborative solutions focused approach it is not about assigning responsibility but about aligning existing systems to better meet the need of the families in our community the urgency is clear there are children in our community attending school each day while experiencing unsafe and unstable living conditions as we approach the summer months these challenges are likely to intensify this request represents a practical and immediate step that aligns policy performance and compassion thank you for your leadership and your continued commitment to supporting families in our community rachel thank you thank you for your comments okay next speaker right here mr chairman and commissioners and staff my name is dr joanne roberts i live in the village retirement community not the villages the village please there is a difference yes there is a big difference um based on everything i've heard today what i'm bringing to you it's not going to be not anything new but it's also inconsequential in a comparison probably to the major issues that have been brought before you i have lived in alachua county for 23 years and for the last three i've lived at the village retirement community across from santa fe what i'm here for today is to unofficially represent almost 15 000 people 13 000 students who go to santa fe and about 600 let's see it was actually no excuse me 850 employees 604 residents at the village as well as 350 employees i don't know if you've driven on 83rd street recently i have done that for a number of years and thank you for the efforts that went into resurfacing 23rd that's very much appreciated 83rd i if if a policeman were to follow me he would think i was drunk trying to avoid the potholes this past week i hit i had no choice but to hit one and i literally thought the front end of my car had been thrown out of alignment i really feel like this has gotten so dangerous if you've not driven on that road i don't encourage you to but if you it's just horrible i've never seen a road and it and on top of the safety issue what does that say about our community and that institution a lot of people come in from out of state out of town to go to the to santa fe uh it's it's just an embarrassment that that road is it's the worst road i've ever seen in my life thank you for everything you do thank you for listening and again thank you for all the people who are here to address much more serious issues but just stay off 83rd is all i can say thank you thank you dr roberts i appreciate that okay let's go over here to these two folks if we could and then we'll come back to the middle my name is with mal antoine i've been working as animal resource officer but i'm here today as a citizen i've been working at the animal resource department for a little bit over a year and a half i've experienced multiple leaderships through the department and i can say that since miss diazo and miss peoples have been in the supervisor roles that i've seen nothing of progress not only in my career growth but also in my personal growth in my day-to-day role and mental health and stress levels of staff also being able to find the animals homes fosters and shelters the working relationship with law enforcement and the homeless community have also improved i don't believe any of these things that's happening to them is deserved at all they've brought me through other things that i can't mention over here but they also have just made everybody in the shelter have grown i've seen just relationships with everybody just grown and i don't believe any of these things is deserved thank you thank you for your comment let's do another speaker over here and then we'll come back to the middle my name is amadis rodriguez i'm an animal control officer with alachua county i'm here today as a citizen though on my own time um i just want to echo what my co-workers also said um if i i also if i was a regular member of the public and came across these allegations i would have concerns i do appreciate those members dedicated to the welfare of animals however keeping in mind these allegations have only come forward in termination of certain long-time employees i don't know where those allegations were beforehand during all their years there uh new management has only been there to try to correct these issues and are now facing the consequences of previous already existing um problems that were there we're just encouraging the investigation to clear all of this all of the employees would much appreciate the investigation to just proceed um and we ask they stop being treated as factual these are real people whose lives are being altered before they've even had the courtesy of a completed investigation we're asking any decisions or actions being taken to satisfy the public be halted until we have results of the privately conducted investigation thank you okay thank you mr rodriguez thank you for your comments okay back to the middle welcome my name is abigail perett gentile and first off i want to thank you for your work in making gainswell a more welcoming community i empathize with the pressures from state and federal offices that constrain local governments decision making with experience in non-profit food systems homeless services and health care access i understand how limited authority and consequential decisions affect our most vulnerable i recognize the need for pragmatic approaches that balance urgency and process based on both lived and professional experience however i urge you to consider the harm caused by being overly cautious i have observed language censorship around life-saving medical care and funding cuts for those who dare implement evidence-based programs for the most vulnerable people in our community leaving them to the inevitable terrible outcomes i'm not being hyperbolic here when i say i am watching people die as a result permitting repression has real consequences i am a venezuelan american on january 2nd my family called in the middle of the night scared by events in venezuela bombs exploding near my family's home they have endured mandatory loyalty pledges for food kidnappings and dire conditions like many they still try to help others despite their own hardship so many immigrants here in the u.s are no different but i'm lucky my dad became an american citizen when i was young i remember the ceremony how he cried proud to be an american veteran i've spent years apart from my family sad to know of their hunger and suffering not everyone who is fleeing oppression in their country of origin has the opportunity my dad had immigration courts are a mess and backed up for years now my dad old with incurable cancer lives out of state though i want him to come here i fear for his safety in florida a state with the highest rate of immigrant abductions and more 287g agreements than any other 75 of detained immigrants have no criminal record my dad deserves care from his family in his last days how much harder must it be for immigrants who do call north central florida home my brain my work brings me close to them often and they are living in terror i have seen the consequences of police who act with impunity as ice i understand the gravity of your decisions and the broader implications they carry but once more i ask for you all to not be overly cautious the consequences faced by those i love and others just trying to survive are significant a strong unambiguous stance is needed to prevent worsening conditions please defend our community from repression fear and violence no ice offices in alachua county no gpd 287g agreement make a public statement opposing these harmful practices and decisions and no secret policing in alachua county thank you thank you abigail thank you for your comments hey welcome hello my name is patricia bluebaugh i vote that way but you know me as woody blue and i cannot compete with these people that are so eloquent about ice i have been um it seems to be chasing ice around because we don't know anything that's happening until after the fact and uh running out to stark about the detention center running running here for this or that holding a sign all of these things it seems like there's a lot of secrecy happening not transparent and i'm getting most of my information now on texts on on my phone rather than the media or the um newspapers and stuff like that because they only report it after the fact and they report it in a buried way so i am asking the county commission if you're going to make major decisions to please let the public know in lots of different ways not just through badass feminists i mean i don't want to get my all my my uh information from democratic women for democracy and all these things as my my voting rights get challenged as my um safety on the streets get challenged and as the funding for alachua county gets eaten up by agencies like ice i protest vigorously i don't have the statistics in front of me but you all know what i'm i'm saying because these other people are bringing that to your attention so just as a person that is a citizen of this county which i'm so proud of usually i just want to make sure that you understand that the public needs to know what's happening before it happens not afterwards thank you thank you thank you for your comments all right next speaker hello um my name is aaron bruni i'm a pediatrician who works here in town um i've also gainesville native um lived here for 33 years and raising my two daughters here um so thank you for hearing from me today um i felt compelled to speak today on behalf of my immigrant patients um i i see kids who seek emergency medical care here in town um and i'm here on my own as a citizen um concerned citizen um because the people that i'm talking to every day are terrified um they're terrified to come to the hospital they're terrified to come anywhere they have to sign registration paperwork where they have to fill out their name or their location because they're afraid of the consequences of that of family separation and deportation um they tell me that um and they come anyway because they care about their children right um and um i've had three personal instances over the last um few weeks where there were instances of child abuse neglect sexual assault um where there was a delay in reporting and seeking care not because the family didn't care but they were terrified of calling the police because they were afraid that they were going to be swept up in an immigration raid um and separated from their family um and then i had to make the really difficult decision of being a mandatory reporter um and then potentially putting those families at risk um and making decisions like that every day um and so i guess what i just came here to say is that the terror of ice is already here in our community it's affecting vulnerable people it's affecting our children i felt compelled to come and share that experience with you guys because i feel that i see a slice of the community that not everybody has access to and i just wanted to share their stories with you guys um and just let you know that these these kids are out there and they're suffering now already um because of ice and the presence and the threat in our community um so i urge the commission to continue its commitment to our immigrant neighbors who deserve safety dignity and respect thank you dr bruni thank you for your comments hi how you doing my name is sergio wheaties thank you guys for having me here um i wasn't going to speak today but uh i was sitting there and i was watching last time i spoke at anything like this it was uh um at the the police station and i spoke on behalf of uh trauma and mental health for first responders and veterans i'm a mental health counselor i've been doing this for um about 16 years i love my job um you know i help start help for uh heroes a transformations treatment center uh which is a program that helps first responders and helps helps us understand what their problems are their issues how trauma starts and the one thing we don't talk enough about is that trauma uh also starts when you're doing something against your own personal moral belief system and i i feel bad for the officers that are going to have to do some of those things um and you know i um i pay taxes we we all pay taxes here um you know i haven't had any help from you know i've helped countless veterans and countless officers um i've been harassed more times that i've been helped uh by the officers that i so help so and i also pay for their you know for their salaries in a way um but what i'm trying to say here is that i'm already we better be ready to open more mental health facilities uh we better be ready to to have more people talking about mental health and things like that because the trauma that's going to happen it's already happening i feel it i wake up in the morning i have ptsd i have trauma i do inner child work by the way uh so i work with people that have to change their perception as adults after they suffer trauma from being children um my kid goes like i'm already i have to tell my kid what's going on like he has to learn this like i i studied this on a day i love the mind and how it works and i'll tell you right now that these children um not only the children but me i already got pulled over in ocala for no reason and my name is sergio retis perez and i was like why did you pull me over and and he didn't really have enough to say um i didn't get a ticket or anything um but there are plenty of things um i will say that i'm already afraid um i really don't want this to be a thing where i also don't trust our officers i don't want to go to an officer now you know what i mean um because i don't know who's who um and who's got whose whose side um i'm afraid that as uh i brought my kids to gainesville to have the freedom of being uh who i am to have like like the the humanity and the things that i've seen here and the amazing community that we have the places that we've opened the music the culture and uh we're losing that a little bit little by little and i'm already i i've i've already seen it in mental health facilities and insurances good luck with that too you know um so uh my time's up but please consider that also thank you thank you thank you for your comments next speaker please welcome okay hi my name is chuck mcgin i'm a proud 48 year plus resident of gainesville in alachua county thank you for the opportunity to speak it has become clear that the department of homeland security under the current administration has become an out of control domestic cartel that acts as if it is unencumbered by the u.s constitution and the rule of law immigrants and citizens alike are often arrested detained sent to dangerous uh countries under dangerous conditions and in some cases murdered npr's morning edition today elucidated the story of 15 detainees to uh from central and south america sent to the republic of the congo this is representative of the total uns totally unserious policies domestic and international of this administration writ large recently there has been a disturbing adjunct to this trend the the purchase of warehouses for the purpose of establishing huge and extremely crowded concentration camps in arizona georgia maryland michigan new jersey pennsylvania texas and utah to the tune of 45 billion dollars often these transactions are perpetrated at absurdly and inflated race prices from land speculators at the end of a train of grift that is structured by our own federal government to the detriment of the american people including immigrants that live in our communities now right up the road in stark dhs wants to establish another warehouse detention center these centers are often built without regard to the environment and logistical abilities to absorb them icbp detention centers have been consistently found to provide poor living sorry poor living conditions nutrition and medical care diseases run rampant under these circumstances threatening the detainees and surrounding communities fortunately it is clear also that the establishment of satellite detention centers with enormous capacity are being opposed courageously by individual communities in the above states there has also been a bill entitled the ban warehouse detention act that was introduced into the u.s house of representatives last week we must continue to lend our unceasing support we implore the commission or i implore the commission to continue its commitment to our immigrant neighbors publicly oppose ice offices and 287g agreements in the county and speak out against ice detention centers in north central florida as a long time pet owner i'd also like to thank the animal resource workers that were here earlier thank you thank you mr mcginn chuck again thank you all right next speaker please good afternoon commissioners um my name is chris deutch and i'm sure you're won't believe me when i say what didn't intend to be here today um i planned on a hike in the woods instead but a letter dropped in the bocc email yesterday from another former acar employee i hope you all made time to read it making this the third whistleblower letter posted anonymously to protect from further retaliation the letter articulated uh articulately described what can only be categorized again as cruel horrendous behavior and corrosive mismanagement bullet points were used and substantiating statements were provided and i just i'm going to go through a few of the highlights i know you all got a copy of it today leadership misconduct and inappropriate behavior britney diazo remains employed despite numerous allegations regarding unsafe uneducated and harmful decision making her actions have contributed to employee terminations unsafe working conditions reputational harm and preventable animal deaths gina has been witness making racially inappropriate remarks i'm going to get back to that including references such as lynching ladies and speaking about animals in a cruel and dismissive manner particularly during euthanasia decisions britney has also made racially insensitive comments including statements describing reddick florida as a dark area and making remarks about black farmers number two toxic workplace culture and retaliation staff are pressured to remain silent about misconduct conduct conduct conduct excuse me and our employees who do raise concerns are labeled disgruntled number three is inadequate medical care and unsafe practices animals in critical condition are placed in medical kennels and left overnight without proper monitoring resulting in preventable deaths staff have been told to leave animals untreated until later shifts rather than ensuring immediate care number four questionable hiring reporting promotions and oversight particular employee kyle fell has been rapidly promoted despite lacking appropriate qualifications for his responsibility he has been observed mishandling animals and failing to follow established playgroup protocols there are serious concerns regarding euthanasia procedures conducted by kyle including failure to properly assess ocular response to ensure unconsciousness and absence of pain um probably the most heart-wrenching to me was number five inhumane and proper improper euthanasia practices britney diazo has euthanized animals inside their kennels while other dogs were present in barking creating a highly stressful environment she has used a catch pole during euthanasia and in some cases placed her boot on the pole to restrain larger dogs instead of seeking assistance kyle has tranquilized dogs and kennels and then forced them to walk on a catch pole to the euthanasia room these practices raise serious concerns regarding humane handling standards and animal distressed number six was staff conduct during and after euthanasia thank you chris may i um get okay go ahead okay officers carter and baker were witness making jokes during staff meetings about the sounds animals made during euthanasia including references to a dog wailing a staff member member requested the animals not be dragged using catch poles this request was ignored and britney was present during those remarks and did not intervene number seven animal handling and safety violations an officer was witnessed lifting a small dog by its throat and throwing it into a truck due to fear fear the dog's fear-based behavior a male kennel staff member has made repeated inappropriate sexual jokes regarding animals in his care organizational failure and systemic issues while some staff members are compassion dedicated and i totally agree with that i know several of i mean i know a number of them there that i would just say anything they said i would i i agree because they're very dedicated they're working in an environment that is under resourced poorly managed and emotionally exhausting volunteers are not consistently provided with a safe or supportive environment one statement that stood out to me in all of this was a quote these issues are not isolated incidents but reflect a broader systemic failure with acar the pattern of behavior lack of accountability and disregard for both staff welfare and animal care standards demand immediate attention action end quote i'm sure we're going to be told that we must wait for the investigation to run its course and that those named will remain in their positions until at least its conclusion are all three whistleblower letters going to be explored in this investigation i want you to think about the outpouring of support residents of this county provided with an emergency situation led to the shelter being completely emptied into foster homes what would these citizens think if these were the allegations of what their foster dogs had been through their outrage is pretty easy to predict and leads to a further lack of support for an already beleaguered shelter um one last point i'd like to make in regards to the lynching ladies comment what is county protocol when racially inflammatory remarks are made by high ranking county employees all three whistleblower letters make reference to it and one of the letters explicitly remarks on racial microaggressions affecting the work environment if cruelty issues are going to be disregarded until the investigation is complete the the rush could not the rush racially inappropriate language be addressed now um pretty simple interviewed by of staff if they ever heard the use to describe of to of whom by whom heads should already roll miss torres can give her opinion on on this particular point is clearly not predicated on interpreting standards of practice or animal welfare standards thank you chris how many more speakers do we have that are going to speak uh one two three four okay five and mark can you tell me how many we have waiting on the phone i just want to do some management here if it's going to be okay so about seven more speakers okay hi welcome hello my name is haley hall i'm coming to you today from swanee county previously lived in gainesville for eight years welcome i have three requests for you today thank you for the welcome um i want to reiterate the the gainesville um immigrant neighbor inclusion initiative and their resolution i urge you to please adopt that rapidly um and i'd like to i'd like you to also please take it a step further and consider adopting a moratorium against non-municipal detention centers kansas city has recently passed a five-year moratorium on any new non-municipal detention centers and so in addition to the gini resolution i will email you the language of kansas city's resolution please look for that email shortly and i urge you to adopt a similar resolution if alachua county can take those above steps you will be a leader in the region and it will be greatly appreciated by both your constituents and also the surrounding counties because then i can go to my county commission and some of the surrounding county commissions and say hey look what alachua county has done they've passed this moratorium you know this really aligns with our shared values for the region maybe the other counties can adopt similar resolutions so i will change yours completely now but still stick with a different moratorium uh commissioner alfred thank you for your efforts with the north central florida regional planning council and the resolution um that was passed um opposing the water first north florida project um and so the the planning council joined the river task force commission and several other counties including my own swanee county and my own town of branford um as entities that have passed formal resolutions or calls for moratoriums against the water first north florida pipeline so in addition to the um above two actions i urge you to please adopt a similar resolution and please call for a moratorium against the water first north florida pipeline thank you and take care thank you ms hall thanks for being here today and for your work with our sister counties next speaker welcome hello i'm a university of florida student and today i want to address um how i've seen in like local elementary schools in gainesville how um there's like a lack of resources these students how we can probably improve on that um to use in preface i've been a tutor with refugee and immigrant communities for the past two years and i've worked directly with families and students outside the classroom a lot of times it takes a lot of work um to plan out with these families on how to best improve their students because there's a culture and also language barriers with these students um and i understand a lot of how much work it takes outside the classroom to really see these kids improve in the in the classrooms however um with volunteering in gainesville especially going with these easel students i've seen also there's a big gap in our elementary schools to give a little story real quick last semester i went to alaska elementary school and i was volunteering with this one student and i was very concerned when i first started volunteering with him because i could tell there's a lot of language barriers in the school system a really terrifying thing i saw was they were doing an english lesson with vocab and the student um had no idea was happening and um unfortunately uh had to just copy what was on the board without even understanding what the letters he was putting in the sentence were so these are basic definitions and he would just copy the letters from the board when i asked the student what the the words meant or the definitions he had no idea um and that was just a very concerning thing because the teacher had no idea that the student was struggling so much as well uh there's a lot of um um gaps in knowledge i was trying to ask the student basic things with time seasons um basic things that these this kid was in fourth grade he should know these things and there was no knowledge there so i do a lot of tutoring in spanish with the kid just to get him caught up to where he should have been and that that took away time for him to actually engage in the classrooms activities and stuff like that um and that's just one experience one kid i've worked with and i'm sure there's a lot of other kids that fall through the gaps within our own system and today i just really want to address this issue because i don't know how obviously i know resources are limited but when i when i my first time volunteering with gainesville with the county with these easel students i have to see the students struggle so much it really makes me think how many other kids are falling through the system and how can we as a community ensure that these students that are in our elementary schools are also falling within the system because i'm sure he's not the only one that has fallen through the system and it really infuriates me when the teachers care so much the faculty care so much it's not their issue it's our issue that we are not supplying the proper resources for these kids and the proper tutors and other um allocations of funds as well so really if you could look into that would be awesome could you introduce yourself to us uh no but is it okay i don't have to introduce myself just maybe your first name carlo carlo thank you yeah thanks for volunteering well done next speaker please hello my name is abigail fletcher and i'm here um i'm a local community member and a parent and a midwife and i'm here to urge y'all well to thank you first for all the things you've done to be brave to keep our community safer and to keep ice as much out of our community as possible and i urge you to continue to be brave and i urge you to pass this resolution how important it is for our entire community for our entire community's mental health for our entire community's safety to keep ice out of our community as much as we are able i know in the future we will look back to this time and regret if we didn't take every opportunity we possibly could to stop ice from traumatizing our community and so i thank you for all you have done so far and i urge you to pass this resolution thank you thanks abigail thank you for speaking okay next speaker please welcome good afternoon uh commissioners and thank you for the opportunity to speak my name is travis harvey i'm a u.s military combat wounded veteran and local uh business person i have a fireworks business that i have maintained for the last 10 years in alachua county and in my discussion yesterday i informed commissioner alford of many of the details of my actions within the community since moving here in 2014. a lot of those voluntary uh as executive director for two different um veteran programs i consider alachua county my home and where i'm from although i was raised in southwest new york 2026 is the 250th anniversary of the united states the semi-quincentennial this will be one of the most significant independence day celebrations in our nation's history our local municipalities should be doing everything possible to maximize local participation community pride and economic benefit during this milestone instead florida's outdated statewide municipality permit cap a law frozen since 2007 combined with the county's recent rule that permits cannot be purchased until within six months of the event date that was not enforced and allowed one single out-of-area competitors to sweep up available permits the moment the window opened this has shut out every long-standing local operator including my veteran-owned business in my experience counties like tallahassee and ocala do not strictly adhere to this limiting law yet it has been richly applied here florida's population is growing rapidly yet this old law locks in scarcity it secures more profit for the few established players instead of giving current and new entrepreneurs a fair opportunity to participate i do not believe this is what our founding fathers wanted to artificially decrease opportunity rather than allow it to grow naturally with our state and nation's growth this outcome creates real harm at home right now it sends local sales tax revenue out and profits out of the county instead of keeping them here it eliminates seasonal jobs that local workers and families depend on me for for extra income in these difficult economic times it cuts off my annual donations of free fireworks to veteran organization like amvets american legions and the gamesville shrine club who i also rent from which they use to fundraise for veteran scholarships emergency aid memorials children's programs and local community initiatives especially important to this year's anniversary it also causes a significant personal loss of revenue for my family business that has faithfully operated here for a decade i have proven 10-year safety record with full compliance all state fire codes and insurance requirements my business has generated consistent local economic activity and strengthened the community's patriotism for a decade if the county is not going to direct the fire chief to properly enforce their own new policy i was informed of verbally last year of within six months so that the application window is truly fair and open to all at the same time rather than letting one outsider monopolize everything that i respectfully ask the board to grant a special dispensation for one temporary fireworks retail permit for the fourth of july for 2026 i have just two more uh yeah if you just wrap up the expectation would restore fairness protect local jobs and veterans support recover lost county revenue and allow our community to fully participate in a once a lifetime historic celebration after this season we can address the laws with our state officials and look for an immediate change to policy that would allow to have an opportunity to grow and support our community and their personal endeavors to own and run their own businesses not just my own i commit to every required inspection secure storage and additional conditions you set and i'm willing to uh hang on to answer any questions afterwards that you may have i'll be sitting over here thank you harvey thank you for your comments all right anyone else from the chambers yep come forward good you introduce yourself hello my name is madeline moyer i'm a gainesville resident i didn't come prepared to say anything don't have anything um written down but just wanted to voice my support um for this resolution prepared by um the gainesville immigrant inclusion uh initiative i think they said that jenny yeah jenny yep um i some of the things that were were said by other people um especially what sergio said related to mental health and abigail spoke a little bit about um trauma and impacts on our our health really resonate for me um as a massage therapist who works with people's bodies all the time um i see the way that stress impacts health not just on the musculoskeletal level but um stress impacts like all these aspects of our lives and there's this large part of our uh community that is um that is important that plays an important role our immigrant neighbors right and who are living in fear and stress and um yeah the the impact that that will have going forward is is really clear i think we can imagine what that will look like um and so yeah i just want to voice my support for this initiative and um really ask you all to continue supporting um diversity and inclusion um here in gainesville and alachua county thank you thank you miss moyer thank you for speaking all right let's go ahead and move to the phones oh mark okay give us one second you'll be our last speaker let's do the phones and then you'll finish us up how about that you're very patient thank you um so mr chair i want to remind callers if they want to speak to hit star nine on their phone uh our first caller their number ends in two seven seven four if you will hit star six to unmute your phone state your name you have three minutes hello good afternoon my name is keith nichols i am a certified professional dog trainer through the certification council for professional dog trainers uh which is the largest independent organization certifying dog trainers who practice ethical and science-based training practices i work under julie hughes who is a very well-known name within the um animal community here in gainesville julie hughes is the only certified dog behavior consultant within 100 miles of gainesville she has extensive experience um practicing behavior management in a shelter setting um i was previously a kennel tech at electro county animal resources um for a period of 12 months and um i have been following what's been going on with um some of the allegations coming out and i'm very concerned about the allegations and about the direction that our county is heading um i've seen the reports about uh records being fudged to uh perhaps increase the live release rate uh numbers um and i do want to say that since the previous um outreach department um resigned which was a an event that happened all at once multiple people resigned due to um the management issues that are occurring there um since that has happened there is either no no person in the um behavior management position at the shelter or there is somebody taking over that role who is not experienced or qualified to um perform those decisions in terms of which dogs are safe and which dogs are unsafe to be placed back out into the community um and myself and julie hughes have not re received any communication from anyone from alacho county animal resources um to provide our services uh evaluating some of these dogs including dogs that sometimes come from dog fighting cases or things like that um that's a service that we provided free of charge um julie and i have volunteered um countless hours of our expertise and our experience assessing dogs to see which dogs are are dangerous and and which dogs do have problems that may warrant humane euthanasia um versus which which dogs have nothing wrong with them they may just have been overlooked for various reasons such as they're shy or something like that so i'm concerned that there's not a streamlined uh policy or process being followed in terms of the euthanasia decisions and the decisions that are happening are not reflective of what our community as a whole believes in um so i'm i'm urging the um whoever's uh conducting the independent investigation to uh please pay attention to what's going on um i've i've read the new whistleblower email um it's all very concerning and i'm very concerned that our county is backsliding uh to look like some other uneducated underfunded county animal shelter and that is not reflective of who we are at alachua county i mean we have the university of florida shelter veterinary medicine program at our fingertips we have all of the money and the staff and the caring members in our community um to to be conducting our operations to the highest standard thank you so much for your comments thank you next speaker please okay speaker whose phone number ends in eight four five one if you'll hit star six state your name you have three minutes hi there um katherine mcguire um calling in just kind of reiterating some of what's been spoken today um i and i'm not going to take up all your time i feel like at some point we can only say things so many times um the new email that came through last night is obviously very very very stressful very disheartening especially in the um week of us you know not knowing you know that we we want to know where our dogs have gone and that's not something i mean we've we've talked about it a million times um and so seeing things like what came through in that email last night is just full crushing um and i just kind of want to say i mean i i think the community needs to make it known that we want answers but i do want to reiterate um what was said by some staff today that it is not ever appropriate to um target staff members for this um they're there doing this job daily um and and i want to reiterate that that's not our goal our goal is in no way to um hinder you know the day-to-day shelter operations and the people who are there doing the right thing um but at the same time having staff members show up um in in in their you know county government uniforms today um to speak on um things going on at the shelter and basically to just kind of get up and and and dismiss um kind of some of what's being said is it's frustrating um it's frustrating to see and to hear um because at the end of the day we all want answers um and and i don't think that necessarily was a great representation of things but um you know that's not something that's my fault but um i just want to reiterate know the community should not in any way be be targeting shelter staff members that's not what this is about we're here for the animals um and we do need change things are not okay there regardless of what's being said but um it needs to be handled appropriately um and so i just kind of want to you know put it out there that you know we appreciate the staff that is there and is doing the right thing um the staff that are there the volunteers that are there to help the animals because that is our goal um but it can't take away from the fact that we we do need answers um because the stuff that keeps coming out is just being exhausted is not the right word i think i think everybody can attest to that and understand that um exhausted is just not a good enough term at this point um but thank you all for your time um i appreciate it thank you ms mcguire thank you next speaker okay the next speaker phone number ends in two three seven one if you'll hit star six state your name you have three minutes hi my name is uh teresa i reside in the city of alachua and i have a non uh agenda issue that i wanted to discuss today um i think that we are um seeing a lot of conversations and a lot of um concern about the ai data data centers that are popping up um recently we had um there is a talk of a high megawatt data center being up for um they're trying to sell it and they are um offering it at the ai data center off of uh 441 and um this is going to be popping up everywhere this is going to be an issue that we are going to see for a long time coming and i want to reiterate the concerns from the people in the royal area um a few are the energy demands the projected electricity and the megawatts that are going to be used um also the water consumption how many millions of uh gallons will the facility use daily will it rely on local aquifers or reclaimed water i think we can all attest to right now that our water consumption you know we're asking um people to conserve water um at the same time we are in the worst drought of um you know in florida's history and we are you know about to open the doors to you know ai data centers and i want to know you know i want these questions uh to be asked where this water is coming from where's the reclaimed water from uh the electricity rate height um are these people in this area going to be affected by that i know there's a lot of conversation about job creation um but how many permanent local jobs will be guaranteed um the um how is this going to affect our taxes the environmental aspect noise pollution backup power light pollution all of these things are a huge um concern for us and i do believe that the royal community surrounding us are carrying a lot of this burden because we carry a lot of the farmland out here and we have a lot of land available that's getting sold off and so i'm asking you to listen to your constituents about creating transparency for these concerns especially with the water issues that the our state is enduring right now um and i'm going to continue to fight for the the people in my community to make sure that we are protected against these companies that want to come in and buy cheap land and uh utilize that for profit for them and i want you know i want transparency on that and i just wanted to bring up that issue i knew that was something that came up recently i appreciate your time for letting me speak and i hope that other people continue to bring up this issue and that we can continue to fight for transparency on this okay thank you so much for that comment all right mark you want to come up and mark are we done with the phone yes we are mark you'll come up and you can wrap up public comment we'll call it uh a day for that and then we're going to hear from the chief on the fireworks and then we'll do commission um commission responses on the uh jenny initiative as well as the school board request mark go ahead thank you very much hi um i'm here to talk about pollinators but um it is interesting to know that the first uh concentration camps that were built were built for the uh the what were they again the guys that lived in the woods i forget their names they had little carts gypsies the first concentration camps were built for the gypsies because they were kind of like the homeless of the day and you know you could all point a finger at somebody looks different it doesn't live in a house it works it works everywhere if i was uh you know in a room and i started throwing rocks at you one of three other monkeys start throwing rocks at you as well divide and conquer it's a tactic it's worked throughout the ages man it's it's fascinating how it how it's re-implemented um thinking of of uh like scale this is about something about scale so when the last pyramids were built about 2000 bc there was about 50 million people on the planet today there's 168 times more of us and we're little by little we're scraping the surface of the planet and changing it it has numerous effects including things like this you see how it becomes wobbly normally the top of the atmosphere is nice as you know centrally located now it's becoming wobbly because the center is falling apart so it's becoming wobbly and so for example a couple weeks ago we had like you know it was 104 somewhere in arizona and it was like a foot of snow in pennsylvania that's the wobble and about eight years from now the ice is going to be gone and it's going to disappear basically the thing that functions our northern hemisphere just for graphical purposes these are the three different cones normally it's one nice little center and from that moment on our whole ecosystem is going to change literally everything that you know around you is going to start dying and the only thing that we have or that exists that naturally comes and brings the dna from one plant to another are these tiny little guys that fly and we're doing everything we can including you guys to pay people the moment the grass starts growing in spring is to cut everything down and keep it as short as possible whereas normally their habitat includes these wildflowers that they depend on and that's a habit that not only you do but also hawthorne does and the hoas do and the churches do and the people at home do and you have a very limited window of time to change the direction of the herd and make it normal including here up front we need to start wilding like now you can triple the amount of pollinators before the end of this decade if you just start and make it a thing okay thank you mark and thanks for uh coming out to hawthorne yeah that was interesting yeah we'll see you at the next i'll give you this okay i gave them the stuff but they you know i don't just share with you or not all right thank you so much okay um we're going to close public comment i want to thank everyone and especially those that have already left thank you for coming uh fire chief you want to give us your thoughts on mr harvey's request on the fireworks i'm not exactly sure i understand the issue but you can certainly fill me in yes sir mr chair uh alachua county the unincorporated alachua county what we are responsible for has under the state statute the ability to issue two permits uh per year for fireworks for the sale of fireworks okay with july 4th coming up uh we've had requests from uh entities that businesses that sell fireworks and mr harvey applied after another individual had applied and was granted those two permits the county does not have let me back up state statute governs the amount of permits that we can issue as a county now municipalities can enter can can have more permits i think the city of gainesville has 10 12 11 permits that they can issue i think but lots of county can only issue two and it was based upon a 2007 state statute that is in place uh we have the the fire marshals association john adler our fire marshal is a part of that has attempted to change this legislation it is not good state legislation it's difficult for us to work with under and it doesn't allow for any growth of the community at all to add more firework companies to sell fireworks there is the the applicant then has to apply for a temporary use permit which then gets forwarded to us as a special use permit to um to evaluate the fireworks displays that are there to make sure that it is safe uh for the public and so that is fire rescues involvement in it it goes through public i'm sorry through growth management for that temporary use permit to my knowledge there is no six month mark case demarcation of that a applicant has to apply within or by uh there are some deadlines that you can't apply so many more days out of an event but there is no lead time on the front end and so the individual that was awarded the um the permits applied january 1 2026 i think and was awarded those permits yeah go ahead please is how does one individual apply for two permits it seems like it would be two permits two business entities would get one permit and another permit so it's confusing to me how one entity got both but that's one question i have yep mr chair uh the there there is no provision that says that one entity can cannot apply for multiple permits they can um i believe the permits really are locations and uh in fact uh the applicant that just came to you has had both permits for a number of years this is the first year that he hasn't had it uh the other applicant threatened legal action against us last year uh for that very reason yeah okay um and then my other question is actually something that's not related specifically to this but it's also um since we are in a state of emergency and in a drought um and it's not showing any times of lightning anytime soon what are the current rules and regulations and policies for our residents with regards to fireworks and also what are the county and the cities doing about their fireworks shows assuming that we're still in a drought and a state of emergency could very well be a moot point that we do not have fireworks on july 4th if we're in a burn ban we will not have fireworks for july 4th uh the state statute does not allow for any projectile firework uh they sell it under the um and purchase it and use it under the agricultural exemption rule about um the launching of fireworks for agricultural use and that's sort of a a caveat a way around that so if today was july 4th there would be no fireworks that's correct the existing state of emergency in bourbon that is correct okay thank you thank you thank you all right let's go did you need to tell us anything else no sure all right thank you i have some questions oh go ahead i'm sorry i had my light on but i don't think the lights are working no they are i thought it was before him sorry okay um so i understand that some other counties have a different system where they have a lottery type system so people apply for permits and then we would like by lottery uh draw them is that something that we could consider here in future years i know we can't do it now yeah mr chair i'm not familiar with it we'd be more than happy to look into it we'd be more than happy to look into other ways to divide the permits so that not one entity gets both permits but we this is a situation that we were just confronted with where i just learned about over the last couple of weeks okay and and so um as i understood it um our it was communicated that that there was this sort of six month window is so we don't have that written down so even though that was communicated we are not gonna i i do you know anything about um our fire chief and that uh not fire chief sorry our our adler's uh comment that there was a six month window do you know anything about that i i mean i feel like we kind of screwed up somewhere and i just want to admit that and apologize if that's true yeah mr chair i know that the city of gainesville i believe city of gainesville has a six month timeline on theirs okay um i know that our fire marshal has had discussions with growth management about having a six month timeline um i don't know if our fire marshal communicated that with mr harvey or not i'm unsure of that well i just want to publicly apologize if that was the case for the for messing that up for you know a business owner that's done business in the community for a long time okay thank you all right thank you i appreciate it all right commissioner prisia and then back to commissioner alford okay um okay uh first before i get into the more meaty subjects this was quite the public comment period i have to tell you not so joyful but definitely important issues um first though for dr roberts um 83rd street is on our list for this 10-year period of paving um and i believe it's on 2028 so this cycle is the engineering and design and all that i believe and then um and then i believe the paving will happen in 2028 is my understanding from previous emails we got from ramon is that correct and i believe ramon's bringing back to us an update on that in june yes mr chair he is and um it may actually be in 2027 that's one of the roads we're looking at potentially moving for you to consider when you see the whole list fantastic so there you go good news for one issue uh we may be able to move that road up a bit may i add to your to that um we also did you get a request i got a request for a crosswalk across that same from the village over to santa fe there is no place to cross so you know when we're talking about that keep that in mind too because something to look at it's yes uh evidently they're having a hard time getting across that that way too so all right okay all right all right um i think so my my uh what i wanted to say i guess one i i know mary's got more to say on this issue but i do support the work of the homeless continuum of care and family promise to look for solutions to family homelessness and to continue thinking about the ways in which local government can support identifying underutilized spaces for that purpose so look forward to chatting more about that um and then now i just want to dive into jenny and first and foremost i want to say thank you to veronica to ethan to robin and to anna and to all the people who are on the front line supporting our immigrants every day this is such a scary time and our county does really care about our immigrants we care very deeply about our immigrants and since i've been on the dais we've worked really hard to push language access better communications better support systems opportunities to make sure that our immigrants feel welcome in our community and feel safe in our community and so it's really heartbreaking and heart-wrenching every day to sit up here and have to face the decisions that our federal government is making to undermine all of the hard work that we've done to show our immigrants how much they mean to us and you know really we're all immigrants unless you're a native person we're all immigrants here we're all families of immigrants and we all came here um and we took land in order to be here and so um the fact that we're now in the state of like deciding who gets to be legal and that humanity and personhood should be legal or illegal is just beyond devastating to me um so i do want to reiterate that i that i do support our immigrants and i support the protecting of all rights for immigrants and all residents and upholding those rights and due process for everybody that is in a situation where they're facing law enforcement and potential detention i do want to be able to inform our residents and our immigrants on their rights and the processes and the resources that exist i know that we are doing some of that already in some of our resource centers and places but we definitely if there are ideas on that i'd love to hear more about how we could better do that work um and i would like to make a motion that we refer the um language that's being requested in this petition to our staff um attorneys for developing a resolution to bring back to us at our next regular meeting and to include all points one through five that are included on the petition from the gainesville immigrant neighbor inclusion initiative okay got a motion in a second to uh refer to staff one through five of the petition um i read through it completely wholeheartedly agree with uh commissioner prisia's points i was here in 2020 and 2021 and 2023 and um immigrants contribute an enormous amount to our local economy um and i know that uh our sheriff also agrees with that and so when this comes back to us i will look forward to understanding specifically item three and what um what has been done and what can be done uh to support our immigrant community so those are my comments any further comments on the motion okay any public comments on the motion that we haven't already heard back to the board all those in favor say aye aye any opposed that motion is unanimous okay thank you commissioner all right commissioner alfred and then we'll get to commissioner i want to thank commissioner prisia for um uh bringing that that motion forward that um leaves me to the other big item today which is uh addressing the uh homeless continuum of care and uh the work that we need to do in this community to house families that are currently experiencing homelessness so um in response to the community request i would like to um request a chair letter to the alachua county school board asking for first a convening of the school district alachua county and the continuum of care leadership to actively address child and family homelessness um a secondly the convening should also consist of a collaborative review of underlying school board facilities as well as alachua county facilities to explore opportunities to better serve families and students that lack stable housing consistent with the mckinney-vento act and thirdly uh to identify uh coordinated strategies to improve access to service and stability and educational continuity for impacted students okay we have a second got a motion and a second all right any discussion all right um i see the manager manager yes could you add the city of gainesville to that motion oh yeah absolutely happy to add the city of gainesville to that motion okay add the city of gainesville and i will tell you that um i don't want to speak for the board of ctac but this issue has been discussed by dr hart for two years absolutely and um uh the children's trust board is very interested in working with the county and the city and primarily the school board on this issue and so i think to have four boards at a meeting is too much but i think we will invite them certainly if we can get a meeting scheduled and they will be at all those meetings we could we could also uh have representation from yes we want to add children's trust as well city of gainesville thank you for that so we got a motion is that okay with you for the seconder yep all right any further discussion any public discussion that we haven't already heard on this motion can i just say i do want to say i want to give some kudos to the city of gainesville i think the you know we had the um the sheriff's office and the continue of care and others came together to create the the summit we had on family homelessness and i think it was really great conversations i do think that some of us that our policy makers kind of left there frustrated because we felt like it was it was meant to be sort of a convening of of of people together to come up with solutions and ideas for how we could move the needle on this and um and so i'm excited that at least now we're in that phase of like starting to push that and i would i would i do think that the more policy makers and the more staff that we have in the room the better solutions we're going to find so if we can think of a structure for that meeting whether it's a workshop or something that allows for dialogue for conversation for brainstorming and for safe spaces for staff and policy makers to have dialogue i think it'll be really important to us getting to yes and getting to good solutions and i just want to thank the mayor um of the city of gainesville for coming up with a proactive solution right out of the gate um at that meeting thinking about how we might utilize some under underutilized government spaces to create sheltering so um i just want to put that out there yeah 100 the mayor has been uh at the front edge of that sword and um mr turner thank you for kind of leading our public comment off with with that recommendation i think it's a great one all right uh any further discussion okay all those in favor say aye aye that motion is unanimous and mr chair i have a second motion i'd like to make it up okay go ahead uh i'd like to uh move that we ask our um our fire rescue folks and our county staff to look at a more equitable way to um approve uh and uh uh permits for fireworks uh in future years rather than the one that we have now which is predicated on first come first serve so just refer to staff yep yeah okay got a second got a motion and a second on that any further discussion all right uh any public discussion see none back to the board all those in favor say aye aye aye aye any opposed all right and that motion passes 5-0 okay three uh action items thank you to the community you move the needle you continue to move the needle we're going to go back to chair oh i'm sorry commissioner wheeler sorry guys um i've been sorry quiet down here because this is really my jam every one of these issues here are issues that i've dealt with in the past and i'm i'm looking at people now robin veronica i don't know if she's still there you are we've been working on this a long time immigration reform started back in 2011 2013. i was the district director for cir now even i'm glad to see your face-to-face thank you we'll get together okay cir now comprehensive comprehensive immigration reform now that we started back in 2011 and we worked with the mockley workers we worked with farm workers i taught esau carlo i taught esau at westwood middle school and it's one of the reasons that i got involved with all of this because the kids that i had coming into my classroom were children of farmers immigrant workers that were here where they felt pressured to have babies at 15 and drop out of school so that they could stay in the country um we worked real hard with the daca kids in the community back in those days we worked with ted yoho and put together put together a resolution a bill the daca kids all of us got together down the university at the old la casita the little one the old one and put together a bill that that representative yoho could take to washington this was back in 2011 and he was there for the photo ops and we did all of that but nothing ever got done and so i ran against him in 2012 because of that 11 counties i was still teaching middle school at that time but we were we had a coalition of people throughout the state who were working on this ocala we worked in ocala very very intensely because of the horse industry down there i have a stack this thick of people who work together to make this work that was 13 years ago and look where we are so i'm really very emotional about this and if you guys want to call i'm coming off this board in november which means that i'm a free spirit again and you guys you know you find me please uh because we used to work with iaij um over at the mennonite house the meeting house there i don't know where people are meeting now people may not be so excited about meeting out in public or telling anybody where they are but um just find me because this is this is really important to me to okay in terms of housing for children for eight years i've been talking with folks trying to access some of that housing at takachali there is housing there we just need access to the state government to make sure that we keep it in our hands hud has already told us mr chair that they will get in there and they will repurpose those buildings we just need a commitment from i work with partnership i i'm i'm telling you we've been flood you know beating the bushes trying to find ways to get into the legislature to act so we have access to something that's already here in terms of schools remember i went to the school board and asked for terwilliger let us buy that from you we will use it for housing and they tore it down without any further discussion guys it's not because we haven't been trying somehow the coordination has not been good enough that we've been able to make the impacts that we're trying to but it bothers me and i've worked in residential care in eastern kentucky in the mountains i work with doj juvenile justice girls in residential care i believe in campus kinds of communities that's why i believe in takachali and i believe that it's a large enough facility that we could service a wide range of special needs populations on our campus in our community affording jobs to our people in terms of animal services you guys it bothers me a lot that we have these these epistles that come into us from anonymous folks you know i i don't understand why if there's this much stuff going on in our community at this one shelter why we are not knowing who these individuals are while they're at work there because i'd like to know who it is that they're expecting retribution from who who would they be getting retribution from i i don't understand who they're afraid of you know in terms of if they're going to quit anyway you know then let's let's talk about what's going on because when you've got anonymous letters coming in and they're this long and they're each line i've read them i read them all i read them every painful word of it you know is it the same person that's writing is it are they different people that are writing it's really hard for us to know who's who is doing this now in terms of responding to um mr nichols who called in about certification for behavior kyle certification he is certified he's certified from animal training and behavior training and it's public record they can find his credentials online these two that he pointed out these are names i don't know but there are other people in the community who also have this kind of these credentials that i've contacted we're trying to expand the network for other people in the area who have these resources as well so um i think i think that's what all i wanted to say but i'm telling you this is my jam and these three these three issues that have come up today um make it really hard for me to sit quietly okay i'm done all right thank you and we're going to be talking about them it sounds like in hopefully some joint meetings coming up so thank you all uh for your comments um do you have anything check you're good all right we are at 2 15 and ready to start our agenda okay um you guys need a quick break are we good and keep going all right let's keep moving all right okay madam clerk public comment is done next item just to bring us to presentations alaska county living spaces and thriving places okay and so awesome are you doing this one uh mr chair ralston rio dica community support services um i'm actually here to introduce our presenter today okay sb friedman who is on zoom all right so the uh living spaces and thriving places update the recommended action is just to hear the presentation yes mr chair um discussion elena if you guys are controlling the presentation you'll need to share your screen so that we can see it absolutely can you all see the presentation yes we can see it elena yeah we're ready um whenever you're ready to start do you need me to advance you have control right elena should we go to the next item and come back to elena or do we know if it's a is it a communication problem or you all cannot see the screen oh hi elena no hi there there you are we can hear you now though but you cannot see the screen oh there it looks like there it is okay yep we got that uh elena sorry guys it keeps switching between our computer down here and our one up there so it keeps logging us off up there every time we try hang with us elena we'll be right there give me one okay just let me know when you're ready okay i i didn't know if you were here so it sounds like you're here i'm waiting thanks for your patience i know you're first on our agenda and we yeah it's maybe it's central time i'll just say it's central yeah if we would like to get started with their presentation it'll show up on that screen for just a minute while i get us set back up here okay and then it'll show up on the main screen all right so elena you are recognized you may be great thank you thank you for the time chair and to the board of county commissioners we're here today to just provide an update on this work we've been doing to support the county um related to the ist funding so just a quick background i'm elena elena caminer i'm a senior project manager at sb friedman we are out of chicago but we do a wide range of work and economic development advisory space we work on a variety of housing issues all the way from early vision and market analysis through the deal and implementation side unfortunately caitlin johnson the senior vice president had to drop off for for another call but she's been leading our efforts as well and has a lot of experience in florida um working on on this sort of work so just to briefly i you all should have received these slides so i'm going to try to go through them pretty quickly have to take questions at the end but we've been working on a few different avenues as it relates to the ist funding policy guidelines gap financing for multi-family rental housing the land acquisition side so thinking about the home ownership perspective as well as generally getting into the innovation of what else can can be funded through this program so that's kind of our scope of work but this next slide shows what we've done to date so we've done many different kind of check marks as you can see on the slide started drafting program guidelines establishing systems and processes for program implementation still more to do on the guideline side of things that we'll be working with county staff and stakeholders to make sure that we have a great framework in place to get this funding out the door and these projects underway and get affordable units to the county um in terms of the gap financing for multi-family rental housing i'll go into more detail there but we've revised the assistance application and we'll be sharing a live version um with the county staff very shortly um so that that can go live and be used for developers to submit their applications in an easier more consistent manner we've met already with the two developers who you all have approved those projects for um with banyan and oakview and have two set meetings set up for the next week or two to continue those conversations and start negotiations as it relates to their loan terms again to get that money out the door and to see those units start to get constructed in terms of that green bucket and the land acquisition model to support home ownership we've researched and provided guidance already on a shared equity home ownership model and will continue to structure that model and the resale formula with the staff and hopefully provide an update in the coming weeks and months and then lastly as i mentioned innovation to housing there's more that can be done perhaps with this ist funding and so we'll be looking into that as we get through all of these different avenues of work so wanted before we get too far just to remind folks about just the typical development timeline for an affordable housing project to be built really from applying for public assistance at the very beginning through project completion and stabilization meaning getting those units with people in them it really can range the fastest we really see it happen is at least two years um it really takes months and months and months um to get these projects done and even before they submit applications developers have been working on those projects um to understand how to structure them especially in affordable housing projects really complex um capital stacks and having to get the timing to allow this again provides more detail on this slide um but the next slide we also wanted to show an example of pinellas county which is where we've done a fair bit of work to date and here are just two different projects that have been completed more recently seminal square and largo as well as skyway lofts um the second uh development of that in st pete st petersburg and so again just have both of these projects took more than two years from and that was even the conditional approval not even from when they first submitted their application so we just want to recognize the time that it takes from conditional approval to actually entering into those agreements which is really the stage we're at now with the two projects that you all have approved um and so again you'll see that that took 10 to 11 months in the case of seminal square and skyway lofts and then from there you provide the funding the construction begins and that construction timeline can vary but again typically one to two years to complete the project construction um and then again a little bit of time to get those units leased up and fully stabilized so just some lessons learned from our time there again just the time that it takes to to assist these projects it can vary but it takes a fair bit of time and also want to recognize the work that you all have done to already pretty quickly get the sales tax in place and start to get projects approved so that was pretty quick but we know it takes time for them for the projects to continue to advance but the track record in pinellas county shows that it really is working there's nearly 3600 units that have been approved across more than 40 projects 24 projects have already been completed and these projects vary in scale some of them are small single family developments just a few units to some of those larger projects that i showed on those earlier slides but really the benefit of course is that it's providing affordable units to the county which can be really meaningful and i think kind of piggybacks off of some of the issues that were discussed in your public comment today so again i'm i know i'm trying to rush through this quickly but we can answer questions at the back end just wanted to talk briefly about the policy guidelines so we're our work is really just to make sure there's consistency across all the deals and to make sure there's a good process in place um and that's some of the work that we've been doing so far but we're focused really on the rental side of things since those are the two projects that you have already approved and so we've already worked to modify the existing application we've made it now in an excel format it's much easier we think for a developer to be able to use it'll it really complements some of the other applications that they likely are already filling out and it really the other thing is able to make sure that now the scoring tool that the staff will be using can align with the application and so we're making sure we're asking all of the the developers the questions that we need within the scoring tool and that scoring tool is actually generated from the questions that are asked in the application we're working also as well to develop that standard term sheet for deal structuring um and that is really the work we're doing as we we work towards these negotiations so this is just a quick screenshot of what the application is starting to look like we're making sure that we will align all of the um kind of logos and temp and color schemes with the county's um guidelines but again it's really meant to be easier for the developer to fill out very clear of the yellow cell you know what cells they need to form out fill out versus some being self-populated based off the answers they provide we're making sure again that we're asking for all the information we think we'll need throughout the evaluation process and then again the scorecard is directly related and linked to um the application again just for consistency across scoring so again everything is actually just linked to other parts of the application so there's no bias here i'm really meant to be um very much kind of uh connected to the application the other thing we're really focused on now is the financial framework and the underwriting to for each of these deals so we've worked to kind of clarify the application cycle and the application but now it's figuring out what are the loan terms to in order to to provide this funding um to these projects we recognize that the county wants to um get that funding back basically a revolving loan fund that it's not just giving away the funds and never seeing them again but be able to support projects support those units and receive that funding back so you can go and support other projects in the future and so one of those key considerations is the interest rates so thinking about how much the cost of borrowing is and there are a few different ways to think about it um we've been working with staff and understand that again we really want to make sure the fund is whole over the decades so that you can continue to use this funding um in in the future that it doesn't just go to three projects and you never see it again but you support those three projects they pay you back and then you're able to support more projects for example and so there are different ways we can think through the interest rate as well as the amortization or the term and the length of the agreement so you know we recognize again you want to make sure you receive that capital recycling pretty fast um a 15-year term would be able to make sure you get that money back repaid at a quicker pace but we recognize it may be harder for those projects who have very thin margins um in terms of of what they're able to support in debt um and then you know a 30-year term while you were paid slower it supports those deeper affordability projects who have again thin margins for um and this aligns also with typically the the funding um and other loans that they're using for long for affordability projects so one of the things that we'll want to ask and really kind of hear some of your feedback later today are the different scenarios for loan structures so we've come up with three different kind of key options but we want to know that all projects are gonna at the end of the day it will be project specific based on what the project is able to support from a debt coverage ratio perspective but a few different ways to think about the loan structure for projects option one would be that the county recovers their full loan amount over 30 years in a more traditional loan structure so where it would be principal plus interest being repaid over 30 years if they're able to do it in 15 years obviously um we would we would recommend that it just depends on what the project is able to support option two in the middle is where the county would receive interest only payments until a full principal repayment at year 15 so you would have a higher interest rate over those you know first 15 years but recognizing the project may not be able to support um repaying the principal um during those 15 years it would just be a balloon payment um at a later date at like year 15 for example and then option three it's kind of a combo or a blend of both where perhaps a project pays interest only payments for a few years that's they stabilize up and then their their noi their net operating income is able to support a higher level of debt so then they start paying principal and interest again these are all different scenarios and they would be project specific but one of the things we would be looking um for a little direction from you all is just whether or not these are all on the table as um possibilities that you would be willing to to move forward with um the two approved projects and move forward in the future and again as i mentioned at the end of the day each will be a project by project approach really based on their cash flow so based on their net operating income their rents minus their expenses are they able to cover what amount of debt and of course with the goal that we're making the county whole as quickly as possible um but recognizing that these projects have very thin margins um and that this is kind of some of the this the support is some of the last dollars in this just with some other loan term considerations like i was just saying the position of the loan being some of those last dollars in and therefore this debt being subordinate to some of their other um you know debt traditional debt that they may have taken on um and again just some other loans for example um debt coverage ratio wanting to to stay within a 1.15 to a 1.4 debt coverage ratio meaning we think you know the the developer would be able to pay back um the loan but but you know that they're we're getting as much you know as um financially feasible in the near term but again we recognize that the final loan structure and terms will remain at the discretion of the board and will be on a project by project basis moving switching gears just a little bit here is the ground lease payment considerations and this is very relevant as one of the projects that you all approved is asking um for the county to purchase that land um on their behalf and so one of the things to think about then is the ground lease um that that the developer would be paying to the county um to to have that land and so there are a few different options here as well but again overarching idea is that the county is being repaid as much as possible for their land cost option one here where it's just a gram nominal ground lease meaning a dollar a year or a dollar a month and this is really then that the land acts as a permanent subsidy so the county wouldn't really be recovering its costs option two is when the county is able to start recovering its ground rent and this is where we would look to see some sort of fixed burden on the cash flow so a fixed rent maybe it escalates maybe it doesn't um but ultimately with the idea that you're able to to recover the capital to recover the assistance that you provided the last option is really um more again about project feasibility and making sure that the the project remains feasible um and so it's some sort of share of noi and again these are different options if there are any that feel like they're totally off the table let us know but again we would expect this to be a very project by project um analysis just here's a quick snapshot of just the project level implementation support that we've already started to provide so already looking at the two projects you all approved the royal park seniors by banyan and oakview apartments um thinking about what is their assistance levels what is their project um currently able to to take on and so as i mentioned we've already met with them we've received updated performance um we're reviewing those performance already um pretty far along in our our feasibility analysis um and starting to think through the recommendation for structuring and negotiating the terms so just some near term next steps on the screen again policy guidelines thinking about continuing to draft those those program guidelines and work with staff to make sure we're able to implement so making sure we have all the materials we need to implement the deals ultimately the county will be responsible for drafting those agreements but we'll be looking into the terms that are necessary this middle bucket in purple is really where i've spent a lot of the presentation today talking about that excel application and scorecard that we expect to go live here in the really near term we've conducted most of our due diligence on those two projects but we'll be meeting with each of the developers to make sure we make sure we have the best understanding of those projects and start to get into the structuring um for this loan and then ultimately we'll be thinking through that that structure for the rental land acquisition program again because oakview requested that land and then lastly the shared equity homeownership model we're working to structure and understand the resale formula to make that program a reality so i know i went through this very quickly um thank you commissioners for your time and happy to answer questions okay excellent uh it is really exciting to see that we are um where we are so thank you for the presentation all right commissioners commissioner alfred and then commissioner prisio yeah i'm i looking at all the different financing options you know it's really um enticing to me to try to get the money back as quickly as possible and to be able to reinvest i feel like we also need to incentivize good management of the projects if we make it too too easy or too lenient i feel like it would it's not incentivize the best management practices on the other hand you know we have this whole idea of risk and that shared risk with changing economy with changing um political environments and not understanding what the future holds so it's it's kind of hard i'd like the the idea of the balloon payment and as you know an individual i have purchased property myself with a balloon payment and then had my financial situation change and had to go back and then get a second balloon payment so that's always an option i feel like if we write it in that way that if we um you know look to recover our investment within that shorter time period yet you know be open to um having a second application made should should there be different different changes is that a kind of a structure that other places have utilized i'll have to look into that i don't think um super traditionally we've seen that but we'll double check i think you know one of the hardest thing is just the compliance then and making sure um that that you all are repaid in in the right manner but i think it's definitely doable and as you mentioned something that happens with traditional debt yeah i mean the sooner that balloon payment happens the sooner we can reinvest that money it really forces the project to go start looking for refinancing as soon as they kind of get it right as soon as they get their feet under them you know there needs to be good management on their end and i i don't want to make it too easy for them to keep our money if that makes sense or not our money our community's money yeah you go ahead speak to that i guess what i want to say to that in particular and then i'll turn the mic back to you if you're okay with me responding it's just that like i think we have to remember that we're trying to push a market that like doesn't exist we're not we're not like out there like handing out money to a bunch of developers who are like clamoring for our money and who are like sitting around just like waiting you know in the wings with projects and they just need this last 10 on the capital side like we're trying to entice developers to come and play in this sandbox and so while i get the idea that we want to like recover that money as soon as possible i also think we need to be willing to be flexible so that we can negotiate the best deal possible for the highest number of units and the best quality housing that we can get out of these project deals and i feel like the more flexibility we give our consultants and our staff to negotiate those terms like having the option of all three of these loan structures depending on the project right if they've got really deep affordability their comp their capital stack is going to be so complicated you know and and we're going to be a small piece of that and we're hopefully going to be subordinate to a lot of other debt but we're going to be that really cheap money that probably makes the project finally possible and allows them that deep affordability and so i guess i just don't want to jeopardize that with like then they see the terms of 15 year balloon payment and all their other terms are 30 year terms and they're like oh that's going to mess up all of our financing structures and all of the way that we've amortized our debt and i and we like lose the project opportunity so i i guess i'm just asking that we think about flexibility absolutely no i totally agree i just wanted that to be an additional option right yeah yeah that if you you know if we have something with a 15 year balloon or even a shorter balloon that we have the option for refinancing i feel like we need to as as was said multiple times in the presentation tailor each of these deals to what is being offered if we have a a housing opportunity that is deeply affordable then we are going to be completely different in how we approach that financing to someone that is providing housing at you know 80 to 90 percent ami right so i think that those are you know those are completely different circumstances but i just want to i just wanted to make it so that we don't make it too easy on the folks that that you know are set up in a situation to make money but on the other hand that we have the flexibility to allow um folks that are on the other end of the spectrum you know an opportunity to get to maybe have a development that has maybe five or six different kinds of housing and you know we can work within the constraints of like uh uh serious financial changes in our economy for instance so do you conclude mary i conclude oh yeah commissioner prissy and then commissioner chessa okay um i guess uh i guess initially you know i i i want to say first i really like generally the scorecard i i like the idea of calculating sort of the our money versus the total cost looking at that and also looking at the affordability and kind of creating that ratio that gives the opportunity for them to play around with some of those numbers to make it um to stretch um and to get those deeper affordability units at less than 60 percent ami was just what we're really trying to target i did i'm sure this is probably also in the application but just wasn't in the presentation but i'm wondering um what in the scorecard addresses sort of the viability of the project um like short-term viability i mean i'm not talking that it's shovel ready necessarily but that like one of the deals that we've already approved they're now going for lightech money which could take them five years or you know because oftentimes that's a lottery process and it takes continued submissions before you like land land your money and so you know um do we have anything in the criteria that looks at sort of how much of their financing they already have how close to sort of ready to go is the project and and anything on the qualifications of the developer and the past experience of the developer in developing the kind of housing that they're proposing can i go ahead and answer that yeah please um i will say a few things yes i think in our application and in the scorecard we do have the percent of funding as a share of total funding um and thinking about kind of what funding is already committed we at sb friedman also as part of our work is doing some of that due diligence and thinking about we've set up a real estate readiness kind of framework evaluation that thinks about precisely those questions commissioner i'm thinking about kind of is this project going to get off the ground in the next six nine twelve months um what what does it take are there any kind of barriers and we would suggest that that would be an attachment to the staff recommendation that you already got um so that in the future this would come um before any projects are even approved so that you all can see kind of the challenges or potential barriers that sb friedman identifies before projects are approved recognizing that there can be um some of these hurdles again not that they can't overcome those hurdles but just so you all are aware before you approve any projects and that's part of that due diligence that we would recommend um in future rounds happens prior to any project approvals great um okay and then on the thank you for that um and then on the the gap financing for multi-family one of the things that we discussed kind of early on um commissioner cornell actually reminded me um was uh rather than us directly financing like leveraging this money as the sort of loan loss reserve money that would back private sector financing and would allow them to negotiate better terms with their private lenders that they're already working with in which case you know they sort of have those relationships they might be able to build a better better overall capital stack um is that something that's been considered i'll have to get back to you on that i don't we have not specifically um thought about that but i think as part of the negotiations which we are anticipating starting now in the next week or two and going back to the developers um we can talk to county staff and and make sure that that's um a part of the conversation well yeah i mean my my feeling is the more flexibility i think having all three scenarios on the table makes sense and potentially the fourth scenario um of them them securing all the financing and us just backing that financing should something go awry um and then my my guess my only feedback for the gap financing i didn't know if you were asking for sort of our our response to these loan term considerations but i think that they they look good i do think that us being subordinate to other debt is a good thing because i think it it gets the the other debt is like gonna want to see that in order to be willing to come to the table on a lot of these projects um and the rest of this these terms look like they make a lot of sense um in terms of the guidance i my only other question is with regards to the ground lease payments and that is i guess for me you know that is a way in which we're kind of trying to move the needle on the deep affordability even more so because a lot of times i think that that's the kind of deal where we're going to have to buy the land um and you know make to make the project sort of viable if you will you know um we've had these ongoing conversations about are we able to improve that land like can't if we own the land can we put in the utilities like are we talking about using our funding to do the horizontal infrastructure or simply to buy ground and then they would finance the entire project and i i'm still not clear on where we landed with that question with regards to what land means is that improved land or is that raw land um and i think that matters in terms of what we're talking about with a ground lease right because if it's just raw land then the dollar makes a lot of sense because they're gonna have to finance that entire project um if we're talking about improved land then to me it makes a little bit more sense for us to come up with some kind of a structure um where we do share in the noi or that we have some kind of reasonable rent that covers um the cost of the infrastructure that we put into the project at least somewhat over time and in the maintenance of that uh infrastructure as well sorry to jump in that's okay anyone know if we've come to conclusion on rather or not it's improved land or and if we can use infrastructure tax dollars to make those horizontal improvements uh mr chair um madam attorney did provide a memo um about a year ago and so this is one of the things that we're discussing um with the county attorney's office on the specific uses um horizontal and vertical but right now um for affordable housing um acquisition right land acquisition is an eligible use based on the state statute to get eligible so mr chair we talked about whether we were pulling the money from the economic development side of it or we were pulling it from the piece where it says affordable housing and my understanding was under the under the economic development we have much broader potential uses so it almost doesn't matter if there's anything on it if we start talking about um or if we did horizontal infrastructure so long as we make those findings um when we start to talk about in the in the world of people who cannot work who are there then we have to interpret the statute and based on whatever land means and it isn't particularly clear in the statute what that means but i thought we weren't necessarily going there i thought we had been talking basically about workforce housing so we didn't need to make that decision well i think that's true but i guess affordable housing and workforce housing are like i feel like there's a lot of semantics i mean there is affordable housing that is not workforce housing because there are people who are disabled and can't work or there are people who are senior citizens that no longer work because they've retired or they're on some kind of disability or pension but by and large the majority the vast majority of our affordable housing is also workforce housing so if we used our affordable housing money to purchase the land and then we used our workforce housing money to do the horizontal infrastructure you're saying that would be appropriate quite possibly um that there's i mean it's all the same money but well right it's all from the same pot so the question is whether you can say that certain money is used for workforce and if you say it can it's used for workforce then you go into that economic development definition which is basically whatever this board can make a finding about if it goes under the um just the affordable housing piece because you have people who can't work for whatever reason then you have to figure out if that means land and then you're restricted by the requirements that you just do long-term leases as well so there are a number of different restrictions under that but we what we've talked about with staff based on that memo is this is your general guidelines bring us projects show us projects and we'll try to figure out how the money can make those projects work and what we can use the money for based on instead of trying to do it in the abstract okay well i guess my sort of feedback on that these options i guess is just that i think that i think that it's sort of like value in value out like to me it's sort of like if we're just giving them raw land i would hope that we would work hard to try to come up with some nominal associated fee for that land right it's raw land they're gonna have to do everything to make that project happen um and at the end of the day we still own the land underneath it right and that that helps but it's you know in terms of like tax burden it doesn't help a lot in terms of still having the ongoing cost of a potential lease so i think making it is possible by by making it inexpensive and then if we start to get into improved land where we're adding utilities and we're we're investing in the long term of that that project that there's some there's some negotiated rent that makes sense it doesn't overburden the project and make it infeasible but also allows us like you said to recoup enough of that money to be able to invest in other projects and or to do the maintenance on the on the facilities that we own i think that's all of my comments um just other than to say thank you i mean we're you know we're we're well into we're well more than two years into this project um experiment um and so i'm i'm excited for us to start getting this moving and i have been starting to talk to more and more developers about it and i think there's more and more conversations being had by people like miss dr hart and um our real estate association and others about the importance and the need for affordable housing and so i think the interest is growing um in what we have to offer and i think the quicker we can get this all structured and be able to get a package together that we can go and present to those groups the better so thank you very much okay commissioner chestnut and then commissioner wheeler uh thank you mr chair uh thank you for your presentation uh i like the three options but i'm i'm more of a conservative type guy so um i would want a more quicker return on my money than then in the long range because i would like to do more projects and and that's the point starting out i would want to be conservative and then as things get better then we can offer those three options to make sure that we do have the money in the future to continue to do projects so so that's where i'm at so but i i like the three uh options i i think they're great but i i just want to be more on the conservative side since this is our first time going at this i want to be conservative to make sure that we have future projects in the years to come because if we do like two all 30 years then that's 30 years of funding tied up if we do options one of these options we have a better chance like the 15 with the balloon that's a better option of getting our money back quicker to do another project but i wouldn't want to do two 30 year types of stuff i want to have that diversity there so that we continue to to build more housing and and more affordable housing for folks than to say oh we got 30 years twice and we got no money coming in to start another project i mean that's not right and i just don't think it's fair uh to gamble like that so i want to be more on the conservative side starting out and then with those other options be more creative to help other folks uh of developers to get started so i mean i see it but i think initially i would want to be more conservative to make sure we have fundings to do more projects that's all okay thank you commissioner okay commissioner no no okay back to commissioner prison and then i'll give my comments i guess i just i'm interested to understand because i think i think that one of those i hear both of you and mary on the conservative side but i guess what my concern is is that so i'm interested to know from the consultant if they think that we have enough potential projects in the wings or um potential interest in to be able to actually attract people at that rate because i think it's sort of reverse of what you're saying i feel like having maximum flexibility early on in the program to try to attract people to the program and then as we begin to understand the kinds of projects that are coming we can sort of refine and get more conservative about our expectations on them but we're we're kind of in a place where we're trying to sort of like dance with someone you know so you're kind of like well what kind of music do you like and what do you you know what like you know you're kind of it's like a date you know and it's like a first date so you're trying to figure it out and then as we figure out the kinds of projects we're getting and the sort of financing that works in these arenas we can like start to narrow so i sort of see the funnel getting narrower as it gets older rather than the what you're talking about sort of having a narrow funnel and then getting broader only because we haven't had a whole lot of luck in attracting a lot of this affordable housing recently but i'm interested if the staff or consultants the consultant has any ideas about sort of where other communities are landing with this kind of financing model and if it's working i don't know can i can i add one real quick thing to that i feel like it's a cost benefit analysis because if if somebody's coming to us with like a really great project that's going to help the people that need the help the most then i'm more willing to to put more out there than if somebody's coming you know looking at 80 90 to 100 percent ami you know i mean that's where i'm at i feel like we we have to have the flexibility to be able to to to to be more conservative when it makes sense and to to be more generous for lack of a better term when when somebody is being serving our community more deeply so you guys want to respond to that elena and then i'll roll something elena i i'm happy to jump in real quick which is yeah which is to say that the the first two projects that were submitted based on their current performance i think will struggle to do the traditional principle and interest um kind of 30 year or even wanting to shorten it to a 15 year and so i think some of the other options like an interest only plus balloon or even um kind of a interest for the first few years and then p and i are likely to be more feasible at this time based on our current analysis but again we want to get the most updated information and so we appreciate the conversation here about the flexibility and recognizing the deeper affordability projects perhaps are going to need a little bit more flexibility um and you know projects that perhaps are having more market rate or closer to market rate um runs will may not need as much support and so we hear that from you and i think the their nois will also show that awesome yeah mr chair so uh from the beginning we've had flexibility in mind right with um getting the money out to developers and so uh more recently we've aligned the program to what florida housing has so to your point commissioner priscilla about um having permit ready developments and scoring those higher that's the direction that we're going but also with pinellas kind of emphasizing mixed income developments right so workforce housing so not solely dependent on um you know developers getting tax credit financing right um or bond financing so not limiting ourselves really is what i'm trying to say so yeah i love that and that's why i think that loan loss reserve could be a fourth option because they may have private equity that they're ready to tap into and being able to have that loan loss reserve would give them better terms and would allow them to kind of dive into some of that deeper affordability that they wouldn't normally do at least that was feedback i got from developers early on before we even started down this infrastructure sort of tax path when i was just talking about the idea of having funding for affordable housing so you conclude chuck yeah i'm done okay so um you conclude in yeah so my comments i guess are probably similar to anna's and actually all three of chuck and and mary's first of all i it looks like we're looking at 6.6 to 7.6 per project which is you know 15 million essentially over two which is like three years of funding it's about five million a year it's 50 million so and i am similar to chuck really interested in funding as many projects as possible i really like the idea of guaranteed loan loss it's like an sba model right the the bank has a guarantee from the federal government so they can go ahead and maybe do a loan that they maybe wouldn't have done um or change the interest rate because they now have a guarantee by us and it gives us the ability to actually get projects on without spending any cash um to commissioner alford's point if we can structure something with a a 10-year balloon that's better than a 15 because it it puts that money right back in um i am a little nervous about doing multiple 30-year projects because those are projects that that money's pretty much gone and i i i can't think 30 years as far as what our government funding is going to look like so i think the more projects we can do with a sooner balloon i would be in favor of um i do recognize that when you're trying to do ami at 30 to 50 percent that's a different financing deal than 80 to 120 and so like my colleagues i'd be more flexible at the lower the ami but i i really am hoping that we can leverage these dollars like 6.6 million is leveraging 43 million you know 7.6 million even with the acquisition of land is leveraging 39.9 million that's that's the idea behind the project to build units and recognizing that these projects take as you said from you know two to four years but um i i like us as instead of being the primary part of the capital sack we're that last piece that makes the project happen um and we do as many projects as possible by getting that money paid back as quickly as possible so those are my comments really appreciate having the options would love a fourth option if you can come up with a loan guarantee option um i agree with commissioner presia we got to get some of these built before we can you know be too restrictive and so i appreciate these two folks that are working with us i know they've been working with us for some time and hopefully we'll get some more folks working with this so those are my comments uh yep we'll do commissioner presia yeah i guess what my last comment is a comment to our housing staff and our growth management staff and that is that i think we we do have an opportunity here um if we do do the loan loss reserve and we have some of these more creative capital stacks and that is that our for-profit developers that are building right now that are putting in first you know first step applications and having those conversations they're deciding what their what their space is going to look like based on those conversations a lot of them especially when they're coming in on a pd or they're coming in on a tnd tod you know they're they're one they're going to have to meet affordability requirements that we're already putting in place right if they're asking for rezoning they're definitely going to have to do that and so they may want to maximize density that they weren't going to maximize before if they find out that there's funding available for them to do that so i hope that we are making sure that the materials for this ist end up in the growth management office and that every opportunity we have we're having conversations with developers that are that are planning new developments to say we have funding available if you want to add affordable housing to your community um and that we kind of start to kind of you know have that conversation not just in housing with affordable housing developers and the people we've already been working with but also with the developers who are knocking on our door ready to develop tomorrow yeah it's a good point it's a good point that's got to be on that make the ask and then see what comes from it okay uh any other comments from this commission elena ralston did you get enough feedback to continue forward yep uh mandrew okay all right let's see if there's anyone from the public that wishes to speak to all that we just spoke about okay i don't see any we're back to the board uh anything else before we move on to the next item okay thank you so much ralston all right madam clerk are we ready for do-si-do next item facilities management master space i love it you will all right so we've got commissioner wheeler do-si-do facilities you will miss me when i'm gone master space plan i don't see do-si-do on the agenda but i'll we'll talk to the manager about that because i know you termed that one travis it was great to see you out at those two former hotels last week and saw you on the video in the announcements and the longest announcements in the history of the county commission thank you what do you got for us um good afternoon mr chair travis parker facility director commissioners i am going to present what was formerly the master space plan or do-si-do plan that has now turned into that plus all the other projects that we've got going on um to give you an update we'll start with the courthouse um you've seen this before and each time i present the line keeps moving to the right so this is the construction timeline for the site work we're well into it now and i'll touch on each kind of project as i get into it but you can kind of see the line moving we're going to start the parking garage very soon we've completed a lot of the the underground storm water a lot of the chill water piping the things that we need infrastructure wise i'm sort of making good ground there for the courthouse itself we received the guaranteed maximum price proposal from ajax last week tommy and i reviewing that this morning so we're still working through that we plan to bring that back to you guys for review and approval if in agreement hopefully next month ajax is looking to mobilize if if if we're able to get there july 14th and their substantial completion target is april 3rd 2028 the energy plant i was very happy to see the the actual plant skid the mechanical skid leave our warehouse yesterday on a crane so it was delivered on site to where it's going to be housed forever we hope to have it set by april 30th which then we can install the roof to the to the energy energy plant building if you haven't been over there i'm going to show you some some photographs they were taken last week but a lot has happened since then so they're a little behind we hope to set the mechanical ice tanks by the 27th of may have the exterior finishes of that building done middle of june and set the chillers june 17th and they hope to have that project wrapped up june 22nd and some progress photos this is actually the building where the plant is going to be housed and you can see it's had a lot of activities since these photos you can kind of see the perimeter wall so inside those walls you're going to have your actual chillers themselves and then all of the ice tanks that are supporting the mechanical skid that's inside the building parking garage update we are currently working on the underground storage tank we're storing a lot of storm water under there we hope to have that completed towards the end of may as you know construction you run into some things we're you're almost ready to get it in there and you know there's a lot of layers of material that have to go in one of them's cut too short so you know some of that stuff you know happens but we hope to have that building pad ready by may 21st and they can start erecting precast by august 17th and just some of the other minor details is you know storefront installation elevator you know when we're pavement marking is is important because it tells you we're getting close to the ends i'm looking for final inspections november 24th and they hope to have a ceo by november 24th so the those projects are moving quick um once we get the infrastructure in um finfrock who's doing the parking garage they can go vertical pretty quick will the parking garage be accessible during the still working on that um whether we got to get a temp ceo because there's other parts of that site plan pedestrian path that we can't do because we still have crane work working on the courthouse so i don't know what we'll be allowed to to open up until we get there some photos you can kind of see this this is going to be where the building pad is rock base splash pads for the storm trap you can kind of see some of the layers we're talking about so this is a layer that'll go and then the storm trap will go in and then we can start building our building pad all right so jumping completely over to fire rescue headquarters and eoc so we've got the building envelope complete interior painting they are behind schedule um we're working the same uh contractor that we worked with on the scottish end so we're working through some challenges as far as just you know meeting some of the mechanical um electrical plumbing um we're we're working really really hard um i'll tell you that we hope to have a ribbon cutting on june 1st which is the first day of hurricane season um we are we had our two large video walls arrived june 10th so that will be after that but we can have everything in you know aside from that and that's that's our target date um we've done exterior painting um you can kind of see some of these photos um some of the rooms are getting ready you know painting all that stuff is done but you know still some work to be done last time i'm going to bring these to you guys east tumbling creek and forest edge i'm going to close these out as you know we attended the ribbon cutting on april 21st and we're still working on collecting you know warranties as well drawings all those things to close the projects out um and turn it over to housing authority to start managing those um we obviously will still work with them anything that comes up that kind of thing when are we looking at occupancy there you're when yeah yeah i've had some people ask me yeah i i don't know i can't really tell you that i think that um i heard that i got an email this morning from amanda from the housing authority said they're looking to start moving folks in next week okay that's what i kind of thought but i wasn't sure okay number four photos um of both of them and then some of the afters the other project that's at forest edge is tiny home project um blackwater is on site they've got construction fence up um as you know that scope includes the infrastructure needed for the 29 the tiny home units so 150 day working um working days to reach completion on that one um what you're going to see next on that is we're going to develop the scope that we have all talked about previously on what the homes you know what you all want to see in those we have a a set of drawings from the um the unit that we the single unit that we we had done so we're going to use that as the basis make those adjustments and then get those out to bed and it's just the site location you kind of see it across from where um we just did the ribbon cutting sunrise residence in um we are hoping to have the exterior painted by the end of may i saw that they got a notice to proceed today for that paint job so we're doing that something that we're doing internally the project itself releases april 22nd released to april 22nd proposal to do may 27th so we hope to award that july start in august or september how many units eight units at a time so four units on the bottom four units on top we did go in there previously um before we put the bid out and we exposed all the walls ceiling floor joists everything that we can kind of see to avoid some of the you know unforeseen stuff um actually was better than we anticipated you know some of the the the wood was rotten around where the shower is um bathroom but other than that it was actually in a lot better shape than we thought um and how many total units are in that 30 36 it could be 36 i might be confusing that with um the other two but it's close it's it's mid 30s okay i can tell you right now i have it right here um 36 plus a boiler and a laundry all right tech city fire station 25 we were approved from the pnz board april 21st we are finalizing the option contract for the property donation um that will likely be on the next agenda we hope so if approved we'll look to close that within 30 days we expect to have 90 construction documents june 17th and um it shouldn't take very long um after we get the gear after we get that to get the the gmp from scorpio we've already looked at that we've already done two stations so i'm hoping that process speeds up so we hope to begin in the fall sometime i don't necessarily have a date yet but start construction in the fall bringing this one back up fire training facility we um i've been working with fire chief we've got eda back involved previously we had discussed you know conceptual site plan that was when we were working with and around the farmers market um making sure that everybody kind of had a cohesive unit there on the site now um we're looking at what what do we do with those structures how to you know can fire rescue utilize them what are we going to do with the existing csw warehouse so we've engaged eda again to start working on some site civil work that actually will take it from conceptual to an actual plan so you guys will see that as it as it goes through the process we did um we did go tour i went with the fire chief and some of his staff and we went to north port and we saw their fire training tower and what that facility might look like to kind of get an idea is that something that you know would work here um and and and kind of identify how they did it and i just attached a few photos i took while i was there and those are container units land conservation complex that project will release on open gov may 6 and proposal will be due june 10th so once they come in we hope to award that in august and start sometime october november so all goes well rural collection center in newberry we got a conceptual design back from eda we also engaged in architect let's talk about what do the structures on that site look like i'm looking at right now some prefab units a for longevity some of those things instead of site built so we're just awaiting an updated site design based on some feedback that we got back from gus and his team so as soon as we get those we'll start moving through the the process with the city of newberry um so we're also working with tetra tech and life souls text the engineer life souls is the um which will be our neighbor um they're going through the process right now of designing the entrance road that we'll both be sharing so we're currently working with them as well to to they need to get in there before we do so they're going to do the stuff up front pharmacy renovation um the pain group mobilized march 4th just some key dates that you'll see here hoping to get a temp co in june completely punch list in june premise will mobilize after them and they are the specialty group that works with walgreens and they're going to be the ones that kind of finalize it and they hope to have a go live date of september 1st these are just some of our capital preservation projects um previously when i was here i had 60 on there and it only went down to 58 but as we keep closing some you know new problems arise um you know new chill you know chillers need to be rehabbed um all that type of good stuff um i will speak to a couple things uh jail um we're replacing a lot of uh doors at the jail that that is in open gov um it's actually out for solicitation now um some of the other things at the jail you know we have the jail study feasibility study that's also out in open gov now um a lot of things in open gov so we're we're working diligently on this list um and hope to have it down to zero by the end of the fiscal year and that concludes my presentation okay questions commissioner alford i just want to say you're doing a fabulous job amen to that okay good comment thank you okay and she concludes anyone else i just had i had a question about the pharmacy project i i'm missing that somehow that's for the clinic clinic right right right outside the clinic the clinic which is off of the third employee clinic health insurance clinic oh okay i don't know about it i don't know about yeah across the hall where across the hall from the clinic on uh on the millennial bit employees okay okay now where i know where it is okay got it thank you thank you um probably more for the manager but we had talked about um the idea of exploring the units that sent to the vacant units as they got renovated sunshine and being held for re-entry partnership so that we would have guaranteed housing for rancher do you know if that conversation is ongoing with our community support services staff and um our re-entry partner or like how that how what what are the kind of next steps on that concept i don't know if they have had a discussion i will ask them okay if they've worked um if they've reached out to have that discussion with them i do know we have we have obviously we have a handful what is it 10 we have a handful that's that are remaining open upstairs and downstairs for renovations so we can shuffle people around i just would love for us to have the plan in place by the time they're renovated so yeah the one thing i don't know is whether there are because the vouchers are attached to the units not like people and then how that process works to make sure how that process works to utilize the hud vouchers yeah so that's that's the the other questions we have to ask yeah we meet bi-weekly so we'll i'll bring it up okay thank you okay travis great work thank you thank you yeah really really great work all right your whole team thank you there is yep okay i don't see any public that wishes to speak to this item am i missing anybody all right we'll go ahead and move on to next time so commissioners we're going to reconvene at five do you guys object to us doing manager comment commission comment and attorney comment now before we instead of tonight no no we're glad to do it all right so um we'll go ahead and on the agenda madam clerk we'll move that up to county attorney comment here i do not have any comments thank you uh michelle county manager comment yes i do have um one quick thing so the board previously had requested um the policy discussion of the ag lands conservation terms um we said we would do it may 12th um because five five was a pretty busy date but the families have contacted me and the state deadline is five eight to notify the state whether or not you have a partnership to be eligible on that five five yeah so i would like to move that to five five we could do it we would put it at 130 i don't think it's going to be an overly lengthy conversation because we do have the ear in the afternoon but there's more time available in the afternoon so if we could just do that first at 1 30 and then get to the ear sounds good make it so okay yep that was all i had five five all right commission comments commissioner wheeler you got anything just the jonesville park uh people are complaining about the issues of the condition of it i've gotten two complaints about the big what is it where they play soccer or where i've not been there so i don't know is that you all haven't can we have our parks group look at that i did forward it to them and they said they had received the email yeah i haven't haven't seen a response yet though uh jason had responded in fact i was just reading it did he not copy you all no he did he responded at 10 59. okay okay i haven't seen that yeah i was gonna go back and check and see if uh if he copied you but um and and by the way claudia did say they have um they have had a brief discussion about it um but um we can provide you any update but um again we were waiting for the renovation and then we have to look at the hud voucher process i mean i guess i would just ask that like we ideally have some kind of a like are we doing that and if so it was a recommendation from a hack that we look at those units for for this purpose i think we brought it to this board everyone was in favor of us exploring that i just would like for us to explore it while we're doing the renovations and have some kind of like how would we do that what would that look like brought back to us before the renovation is done so we're not sitting on renovated units waiting to figure out if it works or not or or loading them up with people and then being like now we don't have any right understood i just wanted to let you all know that they had started that conversation and just very quickly too and i don't know any do you all know anything about an ai project um that they were discussing for 441 and that's on that was online okay that's not okay okay fine and then the other question um school board meeting tomorrow at 10 o'clock i'm not really sure what's going on but i was up at mbain this morning and they were talking about a 10 o'clock meeting in the morning hoping that they could get um irby elementary uh designed for k through four and then put fifth grade up at mbain because they're really concerned about how they're going to be able to afford to build a whole new elementary school or up there anyway it's a 10 o'clock meeting and i didn't know if there any of you all were at the school board meeting that we were at when they were discussing this but i had thought that we had i i had thought that chair had um asked for a meeting before may but he doesn't remember that so i must have made it up but i'm not sure you they were there i don't know that we i think uh what i remember from our joint meeting with the city when was that that we asked them to pause and to do an analysis with growth management to look at their redistricting before they did it so that we could understand the impacts they i guess they chose to ignore that and to move forward with the work that they're doing i was unfortunately not at the meeting that you all attended but i have been looking at our agenda about like when our joint meeting with the school board is and i think maybe that might have been something that latoya was working on for us um and so it may still be in limbo yeah so uh after the public comment today we just approved the chair letter requesting a meeting on right on those facilities and so i think we are we'll see if they that's that's fine a meeting and we can yeah that that's fine and and and i'll check with i'll check with some of them and see what i can find out too what they're actually going to be trying to do tomorrow but the and then this north florida water project you know if we can somehow weigh in on that because i know columbia county has already done it um well i i believe that uh scott coons distributed to the all the chairs a copy of the resolution that that we did at the regional planning council so um maybe we could use that as a model for uh the idea was is that uh counties and cities would use it as a model to have their own resolution um in opposition i think columbia county's already done it and that's kind of a just well yeah that well we did that we did it at the regional planning council last month and i believe columbia county jumped right on that yeah they did right on that yeah so that's impressive yeah okay thank you yes so before we do that um i would like to refer that to epd um and make sure we uh review all the information and come back with you know um yes stacy what our resolution would look like yes we were to do that a good job of sharing um information with all of us about the project i would like to know if epd has any particular concerns about that i'm happy to make a motion to refer that to staff to um take a look at the resolution provided by um for the regional planning council and uh uh look at at what that says and if there's anything we would want to make particular to alatra county before we uh consider it as a board right second and the walls group too has also reached out so they're going to be working that's across georgia line so we got motion and then a second from mr wheeler uh any discussion any public discussion i'd like to the board all in favor say aye aye aye any opposed thank you i conclude thank you okay you got anything you conclude you got anything um so quickly on the data center front there is a um a currently a commercial realtor that is advertising a site for a high megawatt data center in at 104 acres in alachua i did bring up data centers when we were doing our ear process and i think staff are preparing some potential language with regards to that so i'll be looking forward to seeing what they bring back i mean i do think we need to be really really careful about restricting the potential for data centers in our rural areas we just don't have the water resources to be wasting on those sorts of things so i'm hopeful that we'll have some good quality language for our comprehensive plan i know that um this site in particular i believe is within the alachua city limits so um you know they would be the ones that would be making the call um but i do know that they're some of their commissioners are also concerned about this issue and um plan to explore it and bring it up and i think again it just behooves continuing that conversation about even if we don't have joint planning agreements having those conversations early and often about the way in which economic development and community planning are tied together and and the importance of making sure that we're protecting not just our natural resources but honestly most of these places also don't bring very many quality jobs with them either so it's large land use with very little economic impact to the local community right excuse me mr chair so we are bringing data centers back with the code updates um because there is a new statute that was um signed into law regarding data centers at the state level so we will be bringing something back to you on that so go ahead i just wanted to ask how how you heard about it how did because this is the first i've heard at all about it oh oh yeah i can send it to the manager it's a it's a commercial listing on the web on the web saying come megawatt data wow got it okay all right thank you so commissioner on on that point um the joint planning agreements that we gave direction to have with all of the cities i talked to the manager we're not going to do that because it's just not happenable but when we when i meet with the city of alachua would should i put data centers on that agenda yes yeah so i think if we i think with the joint planning agreements and i don't think missy's still sitting over here um and speaking with her really the only municipalities that we've heavily talked about that with would be like newberry and alachua i think so that might be a more important conversation with them yeah all right so i'll when i when i meet with the mayor um i'll bring that up and if we want to talk about but we could have it in a more pointed if we do that we could have it in a more pointed way i think about about impact fees for roads and yeah these kinds of economic development okay um second thing is i'm going to bring it up at mpo but i wanted to bring it up here too um i've had numerous conversations sorry the mpo the tpo the transportation planning body that is um yes um and that is um i've had a number of residents um approach me about the safety and um congestion on the newberry corridor and it's something that our um transportation and planning team has also brought up to me um that we're kind of long overdue for a corridor study in that area so looking at um that's why i'm going to bring it up at tpo because it would make sense i think for the tpo to pass the funding for doing the corridor study in that area but i just wanted to bring it to you all first so you weren't like what is she talking about yeah okay um and the last but not least i just wanted to say thank you to the sheriff i wanted to say this earlier but you know they did an amazing resource fair today um their staff put together a resource fair for inmates that is that are you know that are on their way out or getting ready to be released and it had um everything from re-entry to our our mobile integrated health team in the gainesville paramedicine to banking to jobs and career source um so i just thought they did a really good job um and i just wanted to say thank you to them for continuing to take um the idea of re-entry seriously okay thank you commissioner mary you have anything a couple things um on the same subject of the jail we got an invitation for a lunch recognizing detention officers on may 5th and 6th so there's four different opportunities to interface with different shifts i thought it'd be cool if one of us managed to be at each of those shifts and i i i'm i'm happy to go to one or two um may 5th and 6th so maybe we could coordinate with staff to make sure that we've got them all covered because i i felt like it'd be really great if one of us was at each of those shifts given all of the direction we've given to um our our staff over there i thought it would be great for us to be there to recognize them and also to you know hear anything they have to say to us that was first thing um hopefully shannon in the back and becky and shannon well hopefully they've heard that but i'll reiterate it with them um then uh um i wanted to thank the animal resources staff for taking time out personal time to come speak with us today i know that that was controversial with some folks that were here but i thought it was great that they did that great group of people yeah and yeah no they're they're a great group of people and i don't believe that they were coerced or anything in um in giving that um feedback because i know several of them and i appreciate that and speaking on the um transportation study for newberry road i actually shared um the the report we got from jeff on on social media and got a lot of feedback from folks they really appreciated that information being out there so um i i think that you're right there's a lot of interest in that right now so i'm fully supported doing something like that that's all i've got okay excellent thank you mary and the only thing i have mr chair they they did hear and they're already working on it for you they were listening okay great um the only thing i have commissioners is after the last meeting i reached back out to the school board and the superintendent they had a meeting last week and they have agreed to move their first public hearing in september to accommodate and get us back on schedule of what we've been doing for the last couple of decades so i want to thank the school board and totality and the superintendent individually for moving that date and i know that um they're coordinating with the manager and mark and so i want to let them know that and and with that we will reconvene at 501. and a reminder jean's day tomorrow jean's day is tomorrow dinner day is tomorrow for all county employees and all employees around the county right okay very good we'll reconvene at 501.