Regular Meeting @ 11:30 a.m. - Aug 12, 2025

okay good morning everybody i'd like to go ahead and call the port of county commissioners august 12th meeting to order i know mary's going to be joining us in a moment and our chair commissioner chestnut is out and so they've asked the vice chair which happens to be my title right now to the meeting so you guys are stuck with me before we get started uh we will go ahead and ask the reverend bj osaba see here to give the invocation the reverend's not here and so um madam clerk no okay would anyone else like to give that come on yeah come no come forward we got five yes yes all right could we could we all stand and uh recognize the fire department thank you let's pray heavenly father we thank you for the opportunity to gather here this morning we thank you for all that you've done for us friends you'll be watch over these proceedings this morning lord and then we'll go about your business we pray all these things in jesus name amen amen thank you if you'll join me for the pledge okay thank you all thank you for filling in appreciate that all right so the next thing on the agenda is the approval of the regular and consent agenda madam manager are there any changes yes mr chair i've had a request to pull item 4b approval to retain special counsel for insulin litigation from the consent agenda to the regular agenda which would be under what's the item for m okay items pulled from consent i move approval of the agenda with the uh move the one suggestion of moving item 4 to items removed from consent 4b okay i got a motion and a second any other changes all right see now let's go ahead and uh any discussion to the motion all right let's open it up to the public now is the time if anyone would like to speak to the motion about the agenda adoption of the agenda now would be a time come forward and that includes the consent agenda which includes the consent agenda anything on the consent agenda hi welcome if you'll just introduce yourself yes my name is debbie siegel and i'm president of the alachua audubon society we're a thousand member bird conservation organization with 15 all volunteer board members and i'm here to speak on behalf of the bob simon's memorial trail um for over 60 years is that on the agenda yes it's item 5 se on the consent on the consent okay please go ahead i'm sorry yes for over 60 years bob simons was a leading advocate for conservation lands and sound environmental practices in and around alachua county he served on the board of the alachua audubon society for over six decades as well as on the alachua county conservation board and the gainesville tree advisory board for many years bob passed away last year but his legacy remains in alachua county perhaps bob's biggest legacy was his two-year effort to purchase and preserve san falasco hammock state park but that was just one of his many selfless accomplishments as a professional forester bob mentored and oversight many of your county staff as they learn new and effective management of public lands and he provided this expertise in the most generous and respectful manner when dep proposed to allow grazing timbering and hunting on state parks bob led the protect payne's prairie coalition on behalf of alachua audubon to protect the prairie sensitive resources stepping back a few years bob provided much of the ecological information that helped convince u.s senators to oppose the cross florida barge canal and to deauthorize more dredging bob was a key player in the state acquisition of the silver springs preserve state park as well as the river rise portion of oleno state park he was also instrumental in getting the santa fe river designated as an outstanding florida water he also through his land management activities he helped to increase the population of the of endangered species such as florida scrub jay red cockaded woodpeckers and the american kestrel bob was not only generous in sharing his time and expertise with others he was genuinely kind friendly and respectful bob was an outstanding mentor to your environmental staff as well as many many other people he was well known well liked and well respected and it is fitting that the county recognizes bob simons as the local environmental hero he was by renaming the hammock loop trail at turkey creek preserve in his honor thank you miss siegel and with the approval of this agenda uh on consent it will it will be so okay next speaker anyone else wish to speak to anything on the consent agenda now's your time come forward jancy to the county commission's the device chair i'm not sure it's appropriate time now but i was going to talk about the um confirmation is it time for that this is the time oh okay all right great thank you i'm here this morning to ask the board to reject the confirmation of the i.t director because i believe the integrity of the hiring process has been compromised the concern is that the inconsensus of the process and what i'm talking about is that um and in particular the name val valerie kendricks she applied for this position um she is now i believe the interim i.t director also she has served eight years prior as a i.t director in marion county um 10 years here as assistant i.t director and um she's um she applied for the position like all the other candidates she came my understanding she came twice out of the um as recommended for one of the candidates to be hired however once um that happened a national search was done um the national search was done and then after the national search was done it's my understanding that um the um kind of the staff in which she um served and her um was all interviewed about her that concerns me you know when a person with that qualification and qualified for position and you go um and talk to a staff about her see you got evaluations her director i.t director before he um retired did evaluations on her and if anything you should look at the evaluations um when you go to staff you solicit information it calls in my opinion a hostile environment meaning that people are talking gossiping about something maybe never even should have happened and you don't give a person the right for due process even to verbatil or respond to any allegations to make sure that they are true um she was um my understanding told that she was rejected based on cultural and staff um feedback that's not fair you know um i went to hr and i just want to make sure that everything's still in line on third floor on your board you said you have equal opportunity is the law you know the other candidates did you go and interview their staff for feedback and see what type of a leader were they was that done no it was not it was only done for her that's disparity treatment on a person the hiring process on the law should be fair equitable to all and not to or against one and that's why i'm complaining about the inconsistency of how you're doing your hiring practices prior to that um um there was a risk management i t i mean a rich management management director position um that was filled it went through the process i'm sorry that's okay all that wrap up okay all i ask is to not confirm it look into it we got to be fair uh we can't be wasting taxpayer money looking for national searches when you've got somebody internal don't work very hard and lawyer to this county but for some reason if you don't want that person you shouldn't um go behind her back and talk to stale thank you and not to the others and thank you thank you anyone else good morning is it still morning it's still morning i'm jack carter i also speak uh against the process uh i above the candidate miss valerie uh for the mayor fact that she has been a dedicated person she has experience i think she is uh acting the position in that particular position that she's applying for if you're going to be fair you have to say to yourself first of all does this candidate if you're into uh dei yes she reached that one if you want to do no dei she reached that one she's been lawyer to this community she has experience and if anyone deserves this position it should be her i do not think you should be going outside and spending all this extra money doing national search if you got a qualified candidate that can do this particular job that's in in-house who is acting in this position why not give the person the job she passed the test she has the education she passed the test she's been lawyer she passed the test she has the experience so why not just say hey let's give it to valerie not wasting all the time don't go get no other candidate let's look into the process like ms chancy said let's look and see why you do one thing for one candidate that you don't do for other candidates thank you very much thank you jack next speaker please morning ms fox say acting chair and commissioner thanks for allowing me this opportunity i'm speaking on the topic that jancy and mr carlos spoke on i understand that the last three persons that were hired in leadership position they were hired internally yet we have miss kendrick who's been with us for a long time and i'm upset uh concerned that we are using our taxpayer dollars to do a national search when we have people in-house that can do it we just want consistency on the way things are done i spoke with the manager yesterday um at length about our concerns so we feel that mrs of high evaluation has been good she worked with the retired uh manager that was in the it director she found no problems she had excellent evaluations so i don't know if it's something personal of what and i explained that to this manager but everyone deserves a fair treatment regardless to if you're we're not talking about color that's not even important important we are talking about the process but she used another process the job for the other three positions was never even advertised she hand picked those people and put it in that position the assistant to the county manager and two others it was never even advertised so all that we are asking is fairness to everyone and we appreciate if a person is qualified to do the in in-house hire that that seems fair than anything else so would you please not um go along with mr chow from miami and we did a little research on him and he was um we couldn't find everything we wanted but the article did say that he was out so we couldn't find out the other stuff on the short notice that we had so please consider our in-house candidate who has all the qualifications who all of you knew that would do an excellent job for us and don't spend excess tax dollars for these consultants to go out and do a national search and i thank you so much for you thank you miss fox thank you for identifying this was about process and not about race and next speaker please good morning my name is pamela marshall coons thank you for the opportunity to speak over the weekend i had an opportunity to go see the atlanta braves play and they won there are rules that must be followed in everything there was a foul ball it was counted as a strike they did another foul ball it was a strike but you can't but if you but then that foul ball puts you out what we're experiencing here is there have been several foul balls that have been played and they've been cited putting people in positions when you don't have a national search then as an employer myself i know that the rules are if somebody calls and asks if somebody was employed you're only required to say they were employed and their date of employment to go to fellow employees and create an environment where people are expressing opinions is legally wrong that's a but and that is out that is completely out we cannot set that kind of precedent otherwise we're setting the county up for being liable and for lawsuits i ask that you all govern in a way that everybody will understand that you have rules and regulations you have a playbook please adhere to your playbook thank you very much thank you miss marshall coos anyone else speaking to the motion on the floor larry come on up good morning i'm larry me but not policy because y'all are policy makers policy decision deciding folks and there is no way that we can continue to go along the same way to go along the same way we have been going uh to have a process in which one minute you're doing one thing another minute you're doing something else and a third minute you're enter interjecting something that has not been in the playbook uh it's not consistent uh and in this particular case we don't want to go back to where we were 12 years ago when we had a manager reprimand it for not following the rules not following the guidance that was given by the board not following the guidance that's listed for hiring of folks uh there has been tragedy in our hiring over the past few years we have one department where we've had at least seven or eight directors and interim directors and we spent thousands and thousands of dollars in searches we've also spent thousands and thousands of dollars in bringing in folks who are supposed to be uh experts in the field when we should be hiring experts in the field but we didn't do a creditable job in doing that ahead of time so we don't want to be in those similar positions it makes no sense if you've got people in a process and they've been on a panel and they've been rejected to go to the next element and then you go back and you include them in that process that just makes no sense you can't ask for anything that's going to be good or fair so consequently my suggestion to you is that you relook this process you figure out where the gaps are you figure out why in the last few years you've had such a high turnover in at least one of the departments that i'm aware of because that's where i worked for 30 years and it just makes no sense for us to continue to go down the same road in the hiring process uh was the internal candidate given an opportunity if i was going to say that you you have a morale issue well that morale issue didn't start with you that morale issue probably started with the person who was there before you and like they said before if i can't go back and look in those other candidates backgrounds and see that type of stuff i shouldn't be searching in that person background or i shouldn't be taking those words i suggest again that you review the process you figure out why we've been making these errors over the past few years and figure out what we can do to save citizens money because that's what it's all about and to bring the best creditable person aboard this is not about a person for me it's about a process thank you sir thank you mr mcdaniels anyone else to the agenda i promise we will get to the agenda folks miss akpan welcome thank you heather akpan assistant county manager interim hr director i want to clarify some of the comments that are made we have a process by which we can waive recruitment that is one of our procedures that is not an exception to a procedure you can waive recruitment so it is true that in some cases we have done that we also have a procedure where we do a competitive search we have used search firms before so that is not outside of the process i was hired through a search firm eight years ago um in in terms of the question of whether we can speak to employees anyone here who's an internal candidate we allow the hiring manager to review their entire file they can pull i mean they're public records anyway but they can review their file they can speak to anyone they want to we have never prevented them from doing that so that it's not true that's that's an aberration maybe it hasn't happened all the time but certainly it can happen so it's not a violation of any policy or process that we have to speak to employees so i want to clarify that if this is about the process then from my perspective there has not been a violation of any process or any procedure that we have at this time thank you ms aqua anyone else okay back to the board um board any comments from the board or the manager well mr chair i would just say that i have heard uh concerns from the public regarding the process um that uh that seemed inconsistent my understanding of the manager's position in our board is that uh she is free to hire the people that she's supervising um as as manager of this of this county and i don't think that there have been that many times that we have questioned her ability i do know of one specific time that i was concerned about um a process being questioned um and it was very uncomfortable and i uh i i understand the discomfort coming from the community um i've spoken to several of those folks and i think i just can't think that there's anybody on this board that feels like that we would try to undermine anybody's um ambition to work as in a higher capacity with this county and but at the same time i have been separate i think all of us as a board have been separate from the hiring processes of this and haven't had to deal with it except on maybe one other occasion since i've been on this board so you know i i've had no reason to to question our manager in terms of hiring people that she wants to supervise and be um and working with i felt like you know that's something that we needed to have the public come forward and talk to us about i think it's something that i'm thinking all of you all have probably been contacted as well right so i i don't think it's something that we can just very quietly let go without uh without giving it a hearing here and hearing from miss akpan i trust her judgment and her her fairness sense of fairness in the hiring and so that's you know i i would rather than go with what so much our manager is doing or saying in the process and and i understand about inconsistency in process i've been uh guilty of it myself from time to time and but when it comes to our hr staff and the um implementation of their job you know i just have to take this as a lesson learned that we have to be more careful in our process and that we um trust the judgment of the people that we have hired to do this do this work uh so miss akpan i thank you for for your comments i'm hoping that people feel better having heard what you have to say and i'm hoping that people will feel better having their time here to talk about the process and how inconsistent and unfair it makes it seem and i i accept that from the community and i'm hoping that we can be more diligent in making sure that not only myself but all of us as a board and as a community are following process so that it is fair okay thank you commissioner commissioner and then the manager yeah i i guess what i wanted to say is you know i heard loud and clear this is about process and processes can always be improved we've reviewed our processes on several occasions when it's been brought to our attention that something seems like there's inconsistencies i think this is an area where we could review our processes and if we're going to have a process for staff to weigh in on a director position or something like that perhaps we need to have a process for that you know there's a presentation to staff in a form they fill out or there's an inner set of interview questions that are asked so that everyone's asked the same questions about every candidate and we're sure that that's been done i think there's ways to ensure that this process is done fairly and i hope i would like to refer to our staff to develop that process so that we have a clear set of steps to follow for the future we'll add that as a commission comment item since we're in the middle of discussing a motion without a manager i would just say to the board um and to the community that my recommendation to you is for what i believe is the best qualified candidate for this position based on the totality of the process and not any one specific piece of the process it is not a process that we have not used in the past is a process that was used when we selected mr smart as the deputy county manager um as an internal candidate it is a process that is being used um currently um that we've used uh in miss akpan looking for hr director this is not um an unusual or an improper process uh it is a critical position and i believe that my recommendation to you is um for the best candidate for this position given all of that the factors uh that i looked at thank you all all right any further discussion okay all those in favor of the agenda and the consent agenda say aye aye any opposed uh that motion passes unanimously chairs a nay on 8a so that's 3-1 with chair in dissent okay we finally have an agenda and mark before i bring you up for announcements it is 12 o'clock and so this is um a time when we give the public an opportunity to address anything that is not on the agenda and so we'll go ahead and open up the general public comment mr chair jim conch i'd like to have the overhead in addition to mr mcdaniel's 30 year of service he did five tours in iraq be off before all that he was a successful stockbroker instead of feathering his nest he worked in the community and he needs to be recognized for that this month 2500 meters disconnected because people cannot pay the bills 10.2 million year to date referred to collections a lot of that money will never be seen to cut through the smoke and mirrors i've set up a website and i'd like to specifically talk about the county because you're under audicer and these are real auditors and they're not partisan which is really bad for you on my own initiative in 2019 i determined that you were paying gru 4.5 million on 223 accounts mr mclendon was in charge of this and after bringing forth a proposal to show you how you were being systematically overcharged like everyone else by gru you instead hired a consultant to improve your behavior and paid him a million dollars during the pandemic and blew off clear proof of billionaires now i'd like to give you an example of a billionaire when i was working with keith perry i came to understand where he worshipped at that time so naturally i looked at the church's bills because i have all the bills my officer my passion is reviewing gru bills i need to send you mine yeah so keith perry's church was built for your pyramided county utility tax and sales tax although exempt a phone call was made 11 000 came back that you never should have hammered them for in the first place double d envelope while they were talking about leaving because the of the onerous rates received a hundred and six thousand dollar sales tax refunds because the poor people at gru dealing with 650 billing codes and this layer breadth of taxes and surcharges simply can't get it right because nobody's paying them to deal with it you're freeloading on the collection and administering administration of your pyramid tax now i had the privilege of looking at a bill from a church right here is a church two and a half thousand wrap up jim the bill can be lowered by 23 percent by filling out an esoteric time of demand contract thank you the same with the county thank you mr i know you want to hear more but i'll make put all this on my website this afternoon and i hope doge will take a close look at how you um advance the false narrative there's not really a problem with gru bills this is a problem with our behavior and abilities thank you be here tomorrow so thank you all right next speaker please anyone else wishes to address this board on anything not on the agenda come on up mark that's okay mark fences bergen hi it's an illustration and um um just to um get you an idea of what how things work if you will so um do you know what this is i imagine right this is the average thickness of the polar ice cap when i went to buchols high school it's 10 feet so imagine driving this in the 80s by the way you know um so imagine driving from miami to like seattle on 10 foot of ice or uh you know from san diego to like boston on 10 foot of ice and the size of the polar ice cap was 7.3 million square kilometers at the time which is roughly the size of the continental united states so so we don't allow props and we don't allow signs but that's pretty creative use of one say it again no go ahead continue we don't typically allow props or signs but a tape oh i don't think it's ever been okay well um it's a tool it's not a prop okay so um do you know what this is two feet it's uh the average thickness of the polar ice cap today and the circumference is about 4.8 million square kilometers so you can drive from miami to about you know boulder in about two feet of ice or from el paso to like new hampshire on two feet of ice so in the 80s the average thickness of the polar ice cap was 10 feet in the 90s the average thickness of the polar ice cap was eight feet in the 2000s the average thickness of the polar ice cap was six feet in the 2010s the average thickness of the polar ice cap was four feet in the 2020s the average thickness of the polar ice cap is two feet in the 2030s the average thickness of the polar ice cap is when that happens this is called january of 34 when that happens the entire circulatory system of the northern hemisphere It's going to go, and the phenology, the timing of the plants is not going to match up with what's stored in our DNA database. And suddenly things are going to die in a big and fast way. You'll see it. The kids will experience it. It'll be incredibly dramatic. It'll change the way we perceive ourselves on planet Earth. The bottom line is two things. One, screw algebra, teach your kids how to grow food. And number two, solar panels like this, pollinators like this. Thank you, Mark. I didn't think I could feel worse, but you successfully made me feel worse. Thank you for that. Sorry, come on up. Wow. That's intense. Hello, Sori Lindbergh. I don't have a science lesson. I don't know much about ice cups, but now I have to look into it. I just want to say real quick thank you to the staff at Public Works, Procurement, and Legal. The Santa Fe Hills Water System documents are out in the world. Procurement is out. The interlocal agreement went to the city about three weeks ago now, three weeks today. So it's all in their hands. So we'll see how that goes. And I also want to do a special thanks to Milica and Lilit, if I'm pronouncing their names right. They got on the phone with me. They talked things through with me, whether it was a plan or how to make a public records request. So I really appreciate their patience, because I always would say, like, one more question. Hey, about this. So just thanks a lot to them for helping just a regular person out in the corner that wants clean water for themselves and 86 of their neighbors. So we'll see what happens in the future with now it's in the city's hands. So thank you. Thank you, Sori. Next speaker. Anyone else? Welcome back, Jack. Thank you, sir. Well, I would like to see this group and the city group as we transition to these electric vehicles. The problems that I see with them is that as a person who probably would be driving a gas vehicle for years and years and years, paying these outrageous gas taxes. I would like for this group and the city group to ask the legislative delegation to tax those particular people who drive these electric cars. Their cars are twice as heavy as our gas cars. They tear up the roads. Y'all have to pay the money. We have to pay the money to have the roads fixed. So if you can do a referendum or whatever y'all need to do to request that the legislative delegation tax those electric cars so it can be least fair. Thank you. Thank you, Jack. There is some movement at the state legislature with regards to figuring out how to have them pay their fair share. And it's also on the FAC. And it's on the FAC. Yeah, it's on the FAC. Legislative delegation. Yeah. Anyone else? Either. Yep. Welcome. Is there any other one in the chambers that wants to speak? All right. And then we'll go to the phones after this. Go ahead. Thank you. My name is Isabel Darwin Thomas. I go by Darwin. I am a lifelong Gainesville resident, and I just graduated from the University of Florida with a master's in integrated sustainable development after getting my undergraduate degree in sustainability and the built environment. And I say that because I want to talk about the Payne's Prairie or adjacent to Payne's Prairie rezoning recommendation that's been put on the board. Because after five years of studying about how to handle planning to make it better for the environment and for people, rezoning natural spaces next to a state park to be for single-family housing is probably the one example of what not to do that we got the most. Single-family housing is one of the most dangerous types of zoning for the environment. It is going to cause a lot of new impervious foundation, so water won't be able to drain and run off properly, which is especially important next to the prairie. It will increase pollution, both light pollution and gas pollution. Single-family zoning has a lot higher use of cars than other types of zoning as well, so you are going to be seeing a lot more of those carbon emissions right next to the prairie in that case. And I just, I've also seen issues about this perhaps blocking off a wildlife corridor that allows wildlife to safely move from one side of the prairie to the other, which would cause a lot more deaths in that case. And I just wanted to ask the commission to consider and deny the rezoning request. Thank you. Thank you, Darwin. All right, let's go ahead and move to the phones. We've got someone on the phones, Mark. Yes, Mr. Chair, we have one caller at the moment. Caller whose number ends in 9267. If you would hit star 6 to speak, and you have three minutes. Hello, Chair, fellow commissioners and staff. My name is Kathleen Rupert, and I'm calling regarding advisory committees and, in particular, the Animal Welfare Advisory Committee. As your agenda indicates, you will be hearing from the chair of that committee today. First, as I understand it, you are working on a handbook of operating procedures for all advisory committees. If this is true, when and where am I to obtain a draft of the document, or if completed the document in its entirety. As I've mentioned before, the Animal Welfare Advisory Committee does not allow for any citizen input, except for three minutes, wherein the committee decides whether or not to address the citizen's concerns. The public is not allowed to comment on individual agenda items, nor are they allowed to engage in a conversation with anyone on the committee. You can understand why I'm confused by the annual work plan for the Animal Welfare Advisory Committee, including the statement, quote, assist with community feedback for the new shelter, unquote, especially when the committee agreed not to even comment or provide suggestions for the location of the new shelter. I guess it is really telling when, under their list of prior year accomplishments. The very first item is, quote, guidelines for public comment were established, including allowing citizens three minutes to make their comments and creating a designated agenda item to respond to the comments at the discretion of the committee members. Really? This is how advisory committees work in Alachua County. Even more telling is that the agenda for tomorrow's meeting of the committee does not include the Zoom link or instructions for calling in. In addition, there is nothing on tomorrow's agenda regarding the sheriff's office taking responsibility for the investigative portion of animal resources. Is this really what you intended when you initiated this committee a few years ago? I look forward to your response. Thank you. Thank you so much. Anyone else, Mark? No, Mr. Chair, that was the last caller. Okay, let's bring it back to the board. Any commission comments? Commissioner Frizio. Yes. To the individual who was speaking on the Prainsbury rezoning, I just wanted to let them know, number one, we haven't received any recommendations. It's simply an application, and it's a quasi-judicial hearing, so we have to make our decision based on the evidence that's presented during the hearing. So if you're interested in, I mean, or that's sent to us, so this will be public record, this will be entered into the record, your comment here, anything you email will be entered in the comments. But if you believe that you're a party to that, if you live close to the property or you are more unduly affected than the average citizen, and you feel like you should be a party, you can apply for party status so you can present evidence at the hearing, which will probably be sometime in September. So I just wanted to give you that information. And then on the comment that was just made, I guess I just, well, I'll leave that for commission comment. Never mind. Okay. Thank you. Commissioner. Commissioner Alford? Yeah, I just wanted to ask, do we have a date on when we're going to get that handbook for the advisory boards? Amanda? It's fairly soon, I think, right? Mr. Chair, we're in the process of working on it, and the caller is free to make a public records request and drafts of public records just as final documents are, but it is still a work in progress with the information that's in there. Because I've heard concerns on other boards as well, so it's definitely something that I think a lot of people are looking forward to. So thank you. Yes, we can certainly send it to you all when we complete that. There's just, you know, I'm looking it over as well and just making sure the information, we're making sure it's accurate. Okay. Thank you. All right. So that moves us now to announcements. This is the latest we've ever had them. Chief, you're next, I promise you. Good afternoon, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I noticed Julie Johnson is in the audience today, and I just wanted to take a moment to congratulate her and her staff for the incredible summer adoption event. The goal was to adopt 100 animals, and they adopted 116. That's 116 lives saved, so I just thought we should all give her a big round of applause. Also, Mr. Chair. Hold on. Before you get there, Julie, I know my wife brought you a cat. What was the name of that cat, and was he the adopted? Okay. Bippity. Bippity. All right. Thank you. Go ahead, Mark. Sorry. Yes. And just for everyone in the room who would like to run over to Animal Services right after this meeting, we're waiving all the adoption fees for the remainder of the month of August. That's good news. Also, I know many of you were at the ribbon cutting yesterday, but we just wanted to take a moment and acknowledge what a special event that was. My staff is working on a video production that we will share with you soon, but we celebrated the diesel mechanic program that is a partnership between Alachua County, Santa Fe College, Career Source, and the United States Army Base that's being built on 39th Avenue. It was a wonderful event. And then finally, Alan, if I could have the projector screen on to show the computer. We have put out information recently about the public being invited to learn about flood map changes in Alachua County. It's very complicated stuff, and Alachua County residents are invited to attend the upcoming public meetings about proposed updates to the Federal Emergency Management System's flood insurance rate maps for firms for the Waukasasa Basin and surrounding area. This press release is on our website. We encourage you to go to it. It talks about the public meetings that are coming up on August 18th, the 25th, and the 1st. And it also has a link to this map. And basically, if you are within the red boundary here, and just to give you some reference points, the city of Newberry is up here. So it's a good deal of Alachua County's western portion is affected by this. These changes could affect whether or not you need flood insurance on your home. And, you know, we encourage people to digest this press release, to use all the links that are in it to try to understand this. But most importantly, you have an opportunity to comment on these maps, and those are detailed within the press release. So we encourage people to do that. And certainly, if, you know, as a layman myself, in digging through all this material, it's complicated stuff. So another suggestion we had is if you talk to whoever is your insurance broker for your homeowner's insurance, they can also give you good information on this. And we wanted to make the public aware that this process was happening. And, Mr. Chair, those are the announcements. I just want to note that all of those meetings are happening during the day, and this is actually a really important topic. So if, you know, folks have questions, is there a place that they can call since they might not be able to attend these information meetings that are happening during the day? Well, Mr. Chair, Suwannee River Water Management District, there are links here in the press release to their site. And certainly, they are the ones leading this effort, so we would suggest you get directly in touch with them. Okay. I didn't know if there was, so... There is a link right here. Okay. All right. I see it now. Okay. And there are links to where you submit comments if you are at that point in the process. We are kind of, as a service, trying to help them. I understand that, but it's, you know, I just want to make sure that we're trying to address the needs of all the residents and making it real easy for them to find out all the information that they can, and I might contact Water Management Agency and ask for an evening meeting. Absolutely. And as I said, you can find all of their contact information within these links. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Okay. All right. So, Chuck, where we are is, yeah, approval of recognition. Okay. Alachua County Fire Rescue Type 1 Technical Rescue Team. Can we get approval, I guess? Can I get someone to approve the recognitions? Yes, sir. I have a motion. I have a motion. I have a motion. Second. I have a motion and a second. Those in favor of the motion, vote by the sign of aye. Aye. Those opposed, same time, motion carries. Hi. Good morning, Mr. Chair and Commission. We want to thank you so much and really wanted to take this opportunity to share with you the work that has taken place really over the last four or five years. We began this process in FY21 with the purchase of the heavy rescue vehicle, which went into service in August of 2022. And since that point, we have been working year over year trying to build our technical rescue team back to where it was in 2008. And after 2008, there were significant budget cuts, and the technical rescue team for Alachua County was one of those items that was proposed and cut in the budget. You, as Commission, have approved the funding for about $175,000 over five years of training 52 individuals in multiple disciplines when it comes to tech rescue technician services. Whether it's collapse, whether it's sinkholes, there is a wide breadth of information and training that these individuals in our department have received. And so I want to take this moment to recognize them and all of their hard work. Our team is headed up by three of our battalion chiefs who are here today, Justin Patterson, Jamie Clifford, and Chad Winningham. And I want to recognize them and all of the individuals behind me in their fine work that they've done. We've also just last year, went into service June of this year, we placed a technical truck and trailer for collapse, trench rescue, that's now in service. And so we were recognized on June 3rd as a statewide asset. We are one of 42 technical rescue teams in the state of Florida and one of 15 type 1 teams in the state of Florida. So I want to take this opportunity to recognize them and their fine work. And if I could, chair or vice chair or all the board, if you could come down for a picture with our crew, we'd love to take it. We have this plaque to recognize them and their efforts. I also, while you're doing that, would like to pass it on to our local 3852 president, Ryan Lowry, want to say a few words. Ryan Lowry, president, fire rescue professionals at Alachua County, local 3852. Mr. Chair and commissioners, on behalf of local 3852, I want to express our sincere appreciation and pride in seeing the specialty team return to Alachua County fire rescue. This achievement would not have been possible without the leadership of a commission that truly values, prioritizes public safety. Prior to the 2008 recession, this team was a vital part of ACFR's capabilities. And as many of you know, that once resources like that are cut, it's very incredibly rare that we see them reinstated, especially within the span of a single career. The fact that this team is back speaks volumes about this commission's commitment to strengthening emergency response in our community. This team is more than a local asset. It's a resource for the entire state of Florida. And as a deployable asset for statewide emergencies, it enhances our region's readiness and reaffirms Alachua County status as a leader in the fire rescue field. Beyond its operational value, this team also plays a crucial role in recruitment. Today's applicants are looking for departments that offer specialized opportunities like this one. Having this team in place makes ACFR more competitive and more attractive to top-tier candidates. In closing, I want to sincerely thank the commission, the county manager, and our fire chief for their continued investment in fire rescue. Your leadership and support have made this achievement possible, and we are proud to stand alongside you in building a stronger and safer Alachua County. Thank you. Do you have a question? Oh, yeah. I guess I just wanted to say it's exciting to have a team like this in our own county. You know, so many counties have to reach out for special assistance, have to go, you know, across even state borders sometimes to get the technical assistance they need. So it's exciting that we can be that place for others as well as for our own community. I just really appreciate the investment that you all have made in time and energy to learn these skills, and exciting for us to have been able to make those kinds of investments. And, you know, as budgets get tighter these days, it's nice to know we have this and that we've put it in place so that we have something special and supportive for our whole community. Thank you. One of the things that a lot of people don't know about me is that I worked in the power industry for many years and was the operations manager at a power plant. And in power plants and in other industrial spaces, there are all these areas where people do work, and they're called confined spaces, and they're called trenches, and they're called all of these other technical places that work has to take place. And, yeah, people get special training before they go into those, but also bad things happen when people are in those places, and that's what this team does. They can go in and help rescue folks that are in really bad situations. And so I am so proud and happy that this is happening here in Alachua County and that we are here to support people all around our region as they, you know, do the work that help keep our lights on and keep our county working in a great way. So, thank you, guys. This is really cool. You want me to do it? Okay, Chair, next, that'll bring us to board and committee items. Appointment for Bicycle Pedestrian Advisory Board to MTPO. Are there any applicants here to like to make some comments? Okay, back to the board. Did you want to nominate someone? You want me to just call off? Nominate Anya Archer for the position of county or just the, it's just a citizen at large. I would like to ask for a vote. Please. Okay, that's fine. Okay, Commissioner Alford, if I can start off with you for your vote. Dianne Shaw. Commissioner Wheeler. Archer. Commissioner Prezio. Archer. Commissioner Cornell. Archer. Give you a break, Chester. And Chair Chester. Archer. Okay, there's a motion and a second. Are there any further comments to the motion that's on the floor? Those in favor of the motion, vote by the sign of aye. Aye. Those opposed, same side. Motion carries. That'll bring us to the local planning agency and planning commission appointments. Okay. Appoint two citizens at large, members to the local planning agency and planning commission with terms ending on July 31st, 2029. I have a question. Sure. I call here a question. There was a Melissa Norman who was on one list, but not on this one. Yeah. Mr. Chair, Chris Dawson, Principal Planner Development Services. Yesterday, Ms. Norman emailed us and removed her name from consideration. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Are there any applicants here that would like to make some comments? I see two of them. Okay. I hope they both comment because they're both good guys. Okay. Good afternoon, Chair and Commissioners. I'm Adrian Hayes-Santos and applying for the planning commission seat. I grew up in Gainesville, grew up in Alachua County, and I love our community. I'm also a American Institute of Certified Planners, a professional urban planner as well. And I've served our community in a variety of different ways. I've served as the Gainesville City Commissioner. We are advocated and pushed for housing options, transportation, and ensuring that we're protecting our environment as well. I believe the decisions we make today will affect our community for decades, specifically though on the planning commission. And with my professional planning expertise, public service experience, and deep knowledge of local policy, I will advocate for smart growth that not only protects our environment, but also helps us prepare and protects our rural lands as well, while ensuring that we have enough housing, that we have strong infrastructure, and that we have environment-connected neighborhoods. On the plan board, I will always strive for a balance of progress with preservation. So Alachua County remains a place that we all love, but also that we have homes, we have infrastructure we need, and places for everyone to, no matter what their background is, to live, to play, and to thrive in our community. Thank you for your time, and I appreciate it. Chair and Commissioners, my name is Brent Riley. I don't have the pedigree of some of the people that are in here applying for the position, but I've been a resident of Alachua County since 1971, been a real estate broker for 35 years, and so I'd like to be part of the process of the planning in the future and see basically Alachua County, you know, prosper and move forward with the balance of what we have in Alachua County also. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. I'll call on each commissioner for your two nominations. Can I start with Commissioner Wheeler? Yes. Adrian Hayes Santos and Brent Riley. Can I have Commissioner Alford? Santos and Riley. Commissioner Cornell. Santos and Riley. Thank you guys both for applying. Commissioner Aprazio. Sure. I'll make it unanimous. Santos and Riley. And Chair Chestnut. Santos and Riley. Chair, I would move Adrian Hayes Santos and Brent Riley to serve as the two citizens at large members to the local planning agencies for the planning commission to terms ending July 31st. That's a long time. It is. I will tell you that, well, from my perspective, these are two really great folks. I don't agree with everything from each of them, but I know they are both fair, they're dedicated to Alachua County and will serve great on the planning commission. Thank you for the discussion. Okay, those in favor of the motion will by Senate aye. Aye. And those opposed, same sound. Motion carries. Thank you. You're elected until 2029. Probably longer than all of us. Thank you, vitamins. Enjoy the EAR process. I was trying to figure out how old I'd be in that day, 29. Chair, this will bring us to the Animal Welfare Advisory Committee Annual Work Plan and Accomplishments Report. Good afternoon. My name is Perry Kuhn, and I am here today as the current chair of the Animal Welfare Advisory Committee. It's a committee, you know, it's filled with volunteers. You know, they're not paid to do the job. They're here to volunteer their time, and they are as passionate about the animals and the welfare of the animals here in Alachua County as I believe this commission would be, and certainly Alachua County Animal Resources and the entire staff. So, with those in mind, we basically have two responsibilities that it boils down to, and that is to support Alachua County Animal Resources and their mission to serve the animals and the citizens here in Alachua County, and to serve as a community engagement board. One of the biggest things that we accomplished when this year was we had a quorum issue. We had a quorum issue, so it was difficult to conduct business beyond being a workshop. So, we hit that issue head-on, adjust our quorum issues so that now the committee is able to function the way it should function. In doing so, we were able to establish guidelines to help engage with the public with our public comments section, as well as a designated agenda item to where those comments that we could respond to, we were able to respond to. We've been able to add members as we go, and in the future, you know, our goal, our upcoming goals is to continue to add and fill those vacancies, continue to assist with community feedback for the new shelter plans, and continue to work with Alachua County Animal Resources to make sure that they have the things that they need, and that we can advocate for them for things that they desire. We have. Thank you. Oh, no, that's an old line. Oh, that's an old line? Okay. But I will say thank you for the work that you're doing there, and I do, I know we've had a lot of concerns from the public about, some public about, you know, being able to address individual items on the agendas and things like that, but you're the chair, it's your purview right now for how you want to run that until we have more guidelines out there. But thank you for the work that you do. I've chaired an advisory board before. It's sometimes a thankless job, but satisfying, so I thank you for doing it. Again, everybody, there's a volunteer. Yep, I've been there. Thank you. I think that was a question. You're meeting tomorrow? Yes, ma'am. Is that true? Yes, ma'am. What time are you all meeting tomorrow? 11.30? 1 o'clock? Is it 1 out at the health department? Is that where the community services support? Okay. Well, thank you, and thank you for your service on that board. I know it's tricky business. You know, we have a lot of very passionate folks in the community who are concerned about it. We want the same things that they want. It's, you know, it's just we've got to find the right way to navigate to it. Well said. Well said. And I will say, too, Julie, I was out there, Mr. Chair, Saturday for the event. I got there before 10 when it opened, and when I got there, there were cars lined up and all down the street, 53rd. I think I counted 30 cars just on the road. That's not even inside, and all the volunteers that were there, and they hadn't even opened yet. That was 10 o'clock is when you opened, right? So it was quite an event, and I'm so excited to know that people are still going to be able to get those animals then going forward, too. So thank you, and thank you very much for serving on that. Thank you for your service. Thank you for your service. I know you all are going to have your work cut out for you this year with all the work we're going to be doing, hopefully, with moving forward on the new animal resources facility. And so my only comment is that we have gotten some feedback that your committee doesn't have a lot of opportunities for public comment. And I think it's something that I know we're working on with the manual so that it's consistent across all of our boards because it's hard as a chair to know when do you take it, when do you not. But I just want to give that to you because we've gotten it quite a bit and just ask if you all think about, like, if you have a motion on the floor to take comment on it or give folks another opportunity at the end of a meeting to comment on the, you know, or the beginning of the meeting to comment on things that are coming up so that they feel like they're heard ahead of your agenda items. That would be really appreciated, I think, by the public. And I know you could, you know, if it's too many people and time is short, maybe limit the time frame or something. But I just offer that to you and I guess we'll have the manual soon so you'll have a more consistent way of doing it. But we really appreciate the service and hope that hopefully together we can have a better, kinder animal resources program. Thank you. Commissioner Cornell and then Commissioner Wheeler. They said it. Thanks for serving. I know you do a great job as a chair, so I appreciate it. Commissioner Wheeler. I just go back to the comment made earlier by Ms. Rupert about concerns about not having enough information about merging with the Sheriff's Department. And so we're still working on that, right? There's, it's not set in stone. Nothing has been set. So for the public to understand and for, for me to understand, because I was one of the ones who, I think we had most questions about that. I think I, we'll all be looking forward to understanding how that's going to work. Right. And you're our head guy. Well, and that's, you know, and, and, you know, I don't know that that necessarily falls in, you know, whatever this merger or whatever happens takes place is, is really not part of this committee's, you know, mission. And, but, you know, we, we've, the whole, just to address the, the public comment side of things. And that was something that was, obviously we meet quarterly and we don't discuss business outside of that. So that's something that was actually just brought to my attention this week. Gotcha. And it's new. Yep. And it's, and it's something that I hope that we address in future meetings, perhaps tomorrow, you know, and, and we can make adjustments to our guidelines and, you know, to better serve and to better be a, you know, community engagement body. You know, so. I think it's just that we haven't really said it yet. So we, it is new and that's, it's new for all of us and so that's why we don't have a whole lot of information out there. Gotcha. Thank you. Okay. Thank you for your presentation. Thank you. Madam Clerk. This will bring us to action. Items, 24-hour child care, survey results, and proposed legislative requests. Good afternoon, Madam, Mr. Chair. I'm Jessica Hirov, your tourism and economic development director. Um, so Sean McClendon and I are here today to bring some updates about some work we've been doing on a potential 24-hour child care, um, program and legislative requests. Um, so a very brief program overview, um, this is looking at a 24-hour child care facility and workforce development program serving local government employees and advancing early childhood educational pathways. Um, some of the background on this revolves around what you just saw with Chief, also our sheriff's office, um, shift working public employees, including first responders and essential personnel, face a lack of access to high quality, affordable child care, especially during non-traditional work hours. Um, this unmet need has ramifications that extend into the ability of people to enter the workforce into some of these career paths, as well as supporting the workers who are currently in them as our county employees and employees of our constitutionals. Um, so to address this gap, um, so to address this gap, we're really looking at, um, your feedback on potential legislative support to establish a child care facility that operates 24 hours as a pilot program serving public employees, particularly these potential, um, essential personnel, um, and all personnel during times of declared emergencies. So, um, so as Sean and I have been taking a look at this, we've really determined that, um, there are three program pillars associated with this concept. Um, number one revolves around the workforce recruitment retention, um, how this kind of child care can support, um, current employees and also obtaining that recruitment. Um, the second pillar is the career pathways, particularly with, um, Santa Fe College and some of their early childhood education curriculum. Um, and as we explored this, we've really learned, um, a great deal from the Children's Trust and from the Early Learning Coalition and others from the Anita Zucker Center about the critical importance of high quality child care services in support of best outcomes related to that zero to five window where a great deal of outcome, lifelong outcomes can be determined by access to gold star enriching child care programs. Um, so in conjunction with that, um, what we're looking at is potentially utilizing an underutilized, currently underutilized public facility, um, that would maximize existing infrastructure, potentially reducing capital costs. Um, and so I'm going to just go into each of the pillars and then we'll get into, um, some of the survey results because we did a survey. Um, almost 900 people have replied to that survey so far. So when we look at the challenge and recruitment, I know that you've all heard a lot from chief and from the sheriff's office, um, over the years about all of the issues and, um, the growing population within the state of Florida. We are one of, if not the fastest growing state in the country and with that comes an increased demand for, um, our public service and first responders. And how does this potential program support recruitment retention? It removes an employment barrier. If we don't have reliable childcare as workers or as potential workers, um, it is difficult to understand how to enter the workforce. We heard from the early learning coalition that childcare is the number one reason that people leave the workforce. If they can't have someone to take care of their children, they need to stay home and be able to do it. Um, childcare reduces absenteeism, turnover. Um, if an employee working an overnight shift or one of the transitional shifts knows that their child is safe and sound in an enriching environment, um, it will improve job satisfaction and morale, increase the ability for us to have, um, a very robust talent pool, and it supports long-term career progression. So, um, once they are working within us, if we have that, they do not have those kinds of reasons to exit the workforce, um, because they have to make sure that their child can be cared for, especially during the non-traditional hours. The second pillar, um, is with Santa Fe College. So, Santa Fe College already currently offers comprehensive, comprehensive programs in early childhood education. Um, they have bachelor's and associate's degrees. They have credentialing programs. We've been in discussions with Santa Fe, and just like yesterday, we celebrated a ribbon cutting with them, um, around the heavy diesel mechanic training program. This would be something that Santa Fe has expressed interest in partnering with the county around, um, having a conduit between their students and this potential program. Um, so I just wanted to take a moment while we're discussing this to really talk about, um, the early childhood window for, um, brain development. This, the Anita Zucker Center at UF demonstrates extensive research confirming that high-quality care, we're talking the gold star care, um, can have lifelong implications for that childhood's school readiness, cognitive ability, health, social-economic development, and future economic and educational successes. Um, so we almost are thinking of this as foundational to all economic development efforts. If we are starting off our youngest population with the best foot forward for their ability to attain the highest level of educational success and the county can support it, it would be, you know, really the building blocks of future generations within our county. So, we did a survey, um, over the course of the spring. We are unfortunately just shy of having 900 employees having completed the survey. Um, so we had about 40% of all 2,240 employees, both from the county and from our constitutionals, um, providing their valuable insights into these childcare needs across the public workforce. Um, and at this time, I did want to thank all of the employees of the county who took the time to take the survey, and also for our constitutionals. Um, the constitutionals distributed it to their workforce. And I'm happy to report for the sheriff's office, we had 314, um, respondents. That's about 36% of sheriff's office employees. For our own fire rescue, we had, um, about 35% of fire rescue reply to the survey. So, we felt that we have a pretty robust sample size by which to bring you some findings from that. So, just some high level, we will get into a few of the details from the survey. Um, major takeaways highlight a demand for this kind of flexible or, and or emergency childcare services. Um, particularly for employees with non-traditional work schedules. We have seen interest in the 24-hour center. Um, when we go into a declared state of emergency and, um, people are not only deployed to the EOC, but some of our first responders are also working extended around the clock schedules. Um, that's been a need, which we'll talk about in the future. Um, we asked them what kind of features would be important or valuable to you. Um, within a center, number one by and far is safety, the security of the facility, the ability to have cameras and all of those access points. And second to that was the experienced or certified caregivers. Um, and obviously pricing is always a factor when it comes to childcare. Um, and then we explored some questions around workforce and affordability. How can all of this be paid for? Um, so we'll bring to you information about that. So, to start off, we needed to just have a few screening questions. Um, we asked people about their work schedules. Just over half of our respondents from the survey work those traditional weekday daytime hours, what you would think of as normal administrative office hours. Um, and another half reported working evening, overnight, 24 hour and weekend shifts, including Saturdays and Sundays, when a lot of childcare facilities are currently closed. Um, so at that point, we split this survey into two constituencies. We asked people, do you currently have children requiring childcare? Um, or do you anticipate having children who may be in need of childcare? Or do you not have that and do not anticipate that need? So, the population of the survey was pretty much split about 50-50 between those who have or anticipate having versus those who do not. So, of the people, um, who currently have or anticipate having, um, a need to secure childcare arrangements for dependent children, we had a whole series of multiple follow-up questions to kind of drill down a little deeper into what are they currently doing for childcare? And how could they see, um, a potential project supporting them as an employee? So, this section of the survey responses are specifically answered by the people who have or anticipate having the need for childcare. As you can see, they reported a variety of, um, current childcare arrangements within their family. Um, we queried them on the interest in a childcare program of this nature. Seventy-one percent expressed interest in it. Um, and about twenty-nine percent said they were maybe or not interested. Um, the majority, vast majority, eighty-seven percent of respondents, prefer a traditional childcare setting as in a facility rather than a licensed in-home setting. Um, as I've mentioned before, safety and security is by far the most important feature. We asked them about some other features of childcare centers that were important to them. Um, second most common response was the experience and certification of the caregivers, affordable pricing, flexible scheduling came up, and so on. So, um, respondents identified a range of valuable childcare services, with the most commonly selected being traditional weekday care. Um, however, when we start to look into that non-traditional care, or how am I filling the gaps with what my current childcare provider can offer? Um, there is a large need for weekend care, evening, overnights, before school. Um, you can see the full array here. Even in an emergency backup care where my current provider has somehow fallen through, and I still need to be able to go to work and do my shift. Is there some form where I can access this, um, drop-in service? So, um, getting into the overnight care. This would be the, um, child staying overnight. Um, fifty percent of respondents indicated they would use it occasionally in emergencies, or if their regular care came through, fell through. Um, twenty-eight percent said they were not interested in using that, and twenty-two percent said they would use it regularly, including every night, which was fifty-nine people on the survey said every night, and thirty-five people who responded said they would use it a few nights per week. So, um, that was just a baseline that when Sean talks about some of our modeling, we pulled those numbers into just very preliminary modeling around the center. Um, as I said before, we've asked them about declared emergencies. Um, how are they handling childcare during declared emergencies? Um, fifty-one percent of the respondents that we asked reported difficulty securing childcare during a declared emergency. As you know, staff who may be administrative office staff, um, for the bulk of their job can be deployed out for declared emergencies, either for shelter duty or for duty at the EOC. In those circumstances, they may be faced with trying to secure childcare. That is outside the norm of their, um, regular schedule. And a strong majority, eighty-one percent of respondents, indicated that they would use this kind of childcare service in a shelter-rated building, um, that would remain open during emergencies to support first responders and essential personnel. So, we asked them, what kind of challenges have you faced during declared emergencies in the past? Um, people are expressing a lack of backup. Um, increased work hours make it harder to obtain childcare. Um, forty percent reported that their current childcare provider closes during emergencies, leaving them no other choice than to hustle and try to find something else that would fill in. Um, we did ask this about declared emergencies, although I think a lot of these, um, would apply to any kind of childcare setting. Um, but especially during this, they were expressing interest in guaranteed availability for first responders, extended hours, the ability for the center to provide meals. Um, people are interested in having a monitoring capability. Um, and, and I love this one, just parental visits, that if you're working a 12 or a 24-hour shift, and you may have a break, that you can come by and, um, take a quick visit with your child before heading back out into the field. Um, we did query them on fee structure and payment, and we worded the question about what percentage of your current household income or family income is spent on childcare. Um, and I believe about twenty percent of families report twenty percent or more of their household income is spent on childcare. Um, so that's something to consider as we were starting to look at some of the pricing models and sliding scales for this, which we did ask them. So, one of the, um, questions was about a sliding scale tuition model based on the ability to ensure affordability. Um, and a strong majority of respondents expressed potential interest in some county program offered as a part of a future benefits package. Uh, and so with that, the final two questions on our survey revolved around the workforce development piece of it, which is more of the pathways to professionalized early childhood educators, um, working within not only our community, but this facility in general. Um, respondents showed a strong interest in paid apprenticeship programs. Fifty-eight percent in early childhood education, teaching, family community services. Um, and then when we asked them what would be the most valuable services that could support these career pathways in early childhood education. Seventy-four percent said it tuition assistance for certification programs. Paid on the job training. Scholarships, mentorships, and career placement. All of which are very reasonable, um, requests around getting them into our workforce pipeline. So with that, um, Sean and I have spent some time just doing some preliminary modeling around the program, um, knowing that we would need three shifts a day. So we would have a daytime shift, what we're calling a transition shift, which would be to 3 to 11, and then an overnight shift. Um, we used the DCF guidelines for, um, caregiver to child ratios for each of the different age groups starting in infancy up to pre-K five years old. Um, so for this initial modeling, and this is very, you know, if it could be a huge draft over this, this is very preliminary. But we needed to try to just have a starting point to wrap our mind around some of the discussions. What would the scope and capacity of this be? Um, we based it on 120 children for the prime daytime portion of the childcare center. Um, and did 20 children per age group. That would require about 15 full-time caregivers. And then when it comes to our transition and overnight care, um, we had from the survey, I think about 60 families maybe just under saying that was something that they were strongly interested in. So we modeled, um, the transition time and then the overnight care to a 50% capacity of what the daytime care would be. So that then got modeled into what would the FTEs look like around the center, um, and then incorporating a portion for the apprentices slash trainees that hopefully would be coming through either UF or Santa Fe College to support the program. And we worked up, Sean can share a little of this. But this is very preliminary just to try to get a sense of what are some of the key, um, requirements around a facility and start to assign even preliminary budget numbers for those. So again, uh, all models are meant to give you a concept of what the shape of the world is. This is not an actual business plan, but it does give us a sense of scope and scale to a facility so that we can begin to ask better questions about what kind of policy adjustments do we made, what are our priorities, who are going to be our best partners in achieving some of these things. Whether it's the number of personnel, how we manage the apprenticeship program with our partnerships, whether it be a career source or Santa Fe College or University of Florida. Uh, what do we do about meeting the amenities that are needed and begin to budget for them. If, you know, having food, safety and security was a high priority. The technology to be able to just take care of the employees while they're there. The licensing and the insurance and making sure those values are correct. This is all a very new, uh, occupation enterprise for the county. So, um, you know, Jessica has done amazing work with pulling together a lot of these, uh, facts and figures for us, but we have more questions, um, and we need more direction from you to better figure out how we can understand the how of the facility. I think we have a very, uh, very refined understanding of the whys and even of the, of the who's who will work with us. Um, again, capital budget, we need to start somewhere with thinking about what would it take to, uh, hopefully have a facility that is donated to the county that will have value in any grants we want to apply for. But inevitably, if it's a facility that we're inheriting or having donated to us, it will require some form of assessment and then, uh, refurbishment and build out as well as the FF&E requirements for making sure that it can meet the needs of a, uh, childcare facility. These are just estimates. These are just conceptual estimates. These are not final numbers and not a business plan. And finally, based upon sliding scale, uh, thoughts, uh, being able to make this an amenity for, uh, the employees of constitutional officers, uh, and, uh, for county commissions, we begin to think about, uh, revenues that could be generated, uh, based upon that. Uh, again, there could be opportunities for other funding, uh, sources. Uh, we've preliminarily looked at opportunities. There's a mix of opportunities out there. Uh, it would be a mixed bag of opportunities depending upon the capital needs, uh, operational needs, as well as who would be the primary applicant for those grants. There might be some grant applications that the county would not be the best lead agency for. We might, uh, go to, uh, the sheriff's office to act as the lead agency for those items. There's also, uh, legislation probably to watch as we go through the, the remainder of the 2025 legislative season up in, uh, uh, Washington, D.C. That might lend themselves to future grant opportunities as well. Again, this is all very early steps in thinking about how does the capital staff work for, uh, building out a facility as well as overall operation. And finally, that takes us to a summary and next steps. Um, the 24-hour child care and workforce development pilot program has many key benefits. Number one, supporting our first responders recruitment and retention. Strengthening early childhood outcomes. Expanding the early childhood workforce pipeline. Preparing underutilized existing public infrastructure. And demonstrating a scalable cross-sector solution for working families. Um, so through this time, um, it's been a great, people have been incredibly generous with their expertise and their knowledge. Whether it's the Alachua County School Board. The Children's Trust. Career Source. Santa Fe College. Early Learning Coalition. Um, potentially UF. The Swag Child Care Center. Um, we've kind of immersed ourselves in a lot of the, the amazing work that's already being done in the community. So at this time, um, we wanted to bring this to you so you see all of, everyone, what we've been working on and get direction from you for staff to continue to work with the potential partners. Solidify the local pledges, continue to work internally with our own staff on the modeling of the budgets and, um, program in support of a legislative request for this. And also to be, Sean has them on the overhead, I think, but to be able to look at some of the, either foundation grants, um, and other federal grants that we may be eligible for, um, to go after and pursue. And pursue in support of this concept. So thank you. Okay. We have some comments to make, uh, Commissioner Alfred, Commissioner Cornell, and Commissioner William. And Prizia. Um, I wanted to, this was the, something that I brought forward. And I wanted to talk a little bit about what the larger vision for this is. I had a sunshine meeting with Ken and as his, uh, in his capacity at the Children's Trust. So he's heard some of this, but I'm not sure the rest of you have heard how all this fits together. And it's hard to tell that story from staff perspective right now, because the, the, the big picture involves partnerships and partnerships with, with the Children's Trust, partnerships with Santa Fe, partnerships with the school board and, um, potentially other folks. And those partnerships are the key to bringing those numbers down, those costs down and making this all work together. But in an ideal world, um, you know, this, this partnership would, would work so that, um, uh, we, we have, we have folks that need childcare desperately. And they, we have folks that, that can't afford childcare that aren't working. We have employees that we've invested huge amounts of money in, and we are learning that as many as 30% of folks that leave the workforce are leaving because they can't get childcare. And that's, that's, that's a statistic nationwide that is not unique to Alachua County. I sit on a group with NACO called, um, it's, uh, uh, dealing with, um, preschool age kids. And this is a problem and these are solutions that are being pursued by counties across the country. This is not something that I invented or whatever, but this is, you know, this is sort of a, an amalgam of the special, you know, opportunities that we have in Alachua County and putting those things together to make a workable solution. So, um, given all of that, if we can create this training program and in, in my mind and in the discussions with Santa Fe, this is a training program that would last a year. Um, this would be in addition to the six weeks that, um, all childcare workers are required to have a six week training program to give them the very, very basic part of taking care of kids. That does not address, um, things like school readiness. It doesn't address things like, you know, what early childhood education should have in it. But if we had a, a year long training program with a combination of classroom activities and on the ground training, then we can utilize those, those folks going through that training process in the classroom. One of the biggest problems with providing flexible 24 hour childcare is, is, is that, that whole modeling process process that, that, that Jessica did a great job of presenting, which is, um, you, you know, it costs a lot to provide, uh, those, those, uh, childcare ratios. So if you have students in the classroom, then we can have those teacher, the required teacher student ratios without spending that extra money because we have those interns in there. Right. And so that's our way of, of meeting the, the, that flexibility at a lower cost, if that makes sense. And in my ideal world and in something that other folks are doing across the county is, uh, children's trust. Um, you know, we're not the only community that has an organization like that. And one of the things that, uh, other communities are doing or finding ways to supplement the, the, uh, wages of childcare workers, because they are some of the lowest paid workers in our community, our childcare workers. And, um, um, that is showing up and in, uh, when kids are entering kindergarten, because we know that here in Alachua County, over 40% of the kids entering kindergarten are not prepared to be entering kindergarten. They don't have, uh, they haven't, you know, had the experiences and the exposure, uh, to reading and to math that they need to have in order to be prepared to start learning on par with the other kids in their classroom. So if we can provide this training to all the childcare workers in Alachua County and supplement their pay through, uh, uh, grant from the children's trust, like is happening in other places. If they go through this extra training, then we can lift up all the kids in Alachua County, bring all the kids up to a higher level of literacy and a higher level of, uh, school preparation. And I think that partnership with the children's trust is key to making this work. And quite frankly, that could go forward, whether we, you know, engage in a childcare facility at the county level or not. That's something that could be completely separate, but I think is an opportunity for the county to solve this other problem. If we can work together to, to provide that, um, let's see. Let's see. I took a bunch of them. Um, I think that, uh, another big partner of course is the school board. Um, when Ken and I had our, um, our meeting with, uh, to talk about children's trust, we had six school board members show up. That's how interested they are in this. They're not just interested in the fact that we would love for them to, you know, donate space in one of their, uh, underutilized buildings or unused buildings. But, um, they're interested in that school readiness portion of this. They're interested, they're interested in their success as, as a school board. So I think they're going to become, uh, they would be very willing partners in doing all of this. Um, the sheriff was brought up in this. They are also a very key, uh, partner in doing this. They are, they were calling me up. Their deadline for their legislative request was yesterday. And so, um, they can still do something, but they were, they had hoped that this would be moving along a little bit faster because they would like to see this happen. Um, with respect to legislative request, it's, this is a tough year because it's an early year to make this happen. But I also believe that this is going to be a, um, and I'm not holding my breath and I don't think this whole program should be predicated on a, on a legislative request. But I do think that we need to start having the conversation sooner rather than later. I'm not holding my breath on getting anything funded this year. I don't think we should, but I do think we need to start that conversation. I think we need to have that, that ask out there and, and let them know that, you know, this is a goal that we're working for. And I think we're in a unique situation by supporting our first responders and our sheriffs by, by making that a big part of our ask. Because, um, quite frankly, the legislature is doing a good job of supporting law enforcement right now. And we could, you know, ride that wave just a little bit. Um, let's see. And it's another point I wanted to make. It's not like we are going to be costing the childcare providers in our community, um, money. We're not going to be taking business away from them. There is a real shortage of childcare in the community. And I think that that's something that, um, you know, we, we can be part of. One of the phone calls that I've gotten, um, as I've started this journey is from the University of Florida. I think that it's real important to say, to note that we don't need to start with 120 kids like we have on the board. We could start this much smaller in a pilot project. Um, the SWAG folks, um, have capacity. And they said, you know, we could maybe help you with a pilot and open up a, um, overnight, uh, facility and help you do a proof of concept and, and see if this is all working. And I thought that was a really excellent possibility to discuss. And then the second call I got was from the University of Florida and they're like, hey, how quick are you going to do this? We would love to be partners. So, you know, I don't think that needs to be part of our first step, but I think that there are, um, you know, there are other folks like UF Health where recruitment and retention of employees is becoming, um, a problem because of the lack of 24 hour childcare. So, you know, this is a program that could start very small and could grow very big. Um, I'm ready to go to make a motion, but I'd really like to hear y'all's comments before I do that, if that's okay. Commissioner Cornell. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Um, Mary, first of all, thank you for your leadership, uh, on this, the, the sunshine meeting that we had really opened up my eyes. Jessica and Sean, um, the amount of work that you all have done to get us to where we are today. Sean's pointing to Jessica is exactly what was needed to kind of prove out what is the need. Um, I'm going to share with my commissioners a number that as the chair of the Children's Trust, I have been talking to our community about at every opportunity. And that number is 1,825, 1,825. That's how many days exist in the first five years of a child's life. And when you think about 1,825 and you think about what is six months, that's nine, that's 10%. So if 90% of the brain is done in the first five years and in six months, 10%, that's 9% of a child's brain. This is the most important point that we as Children's Trust members and as county commissioners should be focused in on. And it shows how important the first five years are. This is a huge undertaking. Um, but it, but it doesn't have to be a huge undertaking. You know, from my perspective, I was really interested in what are our employees asking for. And, and what I got out of that survey was this is really a recruitment and retention tool for some of our most, um, uh, uh, for some of our employees that have such a difficult 24 hour shift. And, um, um, these are hard jobs to fill and to keep, and there's a huge cost to not retaining these personnel. Um, when I looked at the survey results, 50% of our employees have an interest, 71% of that 50%, and 87% look for a traditional safe, uh, setting with safety and security. So I think this is something we ought to pursue, uh, in a couple of different channels, certainly from a benefits perspective, from a legislative perspective, from a future partnership perspective. Um, I don't know of any other Florida counties that are really taking this on. And so once again, here's a place where lots of County is probably, um, leading, but it's a, it's something that I think we will get a lot of traction on in the next couple of years if we, if we work on that. Um, I think the right way to move forward is to grab those folks that have expressed interest. You have swag private providers and try to see if we can come up with some sort of a pilot whereby we offer that to our employees as an extra benefit. There's obviously a cost associated with that, but like I said, there's also a cost when people are lost and not retained. I don't know how to do that math, but I am very interested in pursuing this with our toe in the water, knowing that once we kind of figure it out with some of the best and the brightest around Alachua County, that it could be a big picture, a long-term thing. As Mary mentioned, um, when she asked for the sunshine meeting, I, I, you know, I reached out to, uh, the superintendent who is a board member for SeaTac and said to County commissioners, our meeting thought you should know. And I reached out to Marcia Kiner at SeaTac and it was a very brief call. I don't even think I spoke to him. I left them both 30 second message. We had our meeting. The entire leadership for SeaTac was there, like literally the entire leadership. The superintendent couldn't make it, but her entire leadership team was there. And so just when I showed up and I thought we were just going to like meet in grace and we got moved to the manager's room and then there's the whole community. I was like, this is important. Like, this is important. Jessica was there and I said, well, is it important? Jessica, give me the survey results. And then she told us about our employees. And I was like, this is important. Like, this is important for the community. Let's just forget about that for a minute. This is important for our employees. And I think this is important, most of all, for the 1,825 days of a kid's life for our employees. And so I don't know what your motion is going to be, but I will support it, probably. I will tell you, though, that, you know, the costs, those rough costs, you know, in my mind before I even met with Mary, I was like, okay, it's our child care center. It's three to five million. And it's three to five million. But if there's a public purpose and if we can get grants and if we can use our partners, we can lower that cost. I think it's also a real opportunity for us to say to the sheriff, the constitutional officers, our fire rescue personnel, and the other 50% of employees that responded, 71% said they have a need, that we are listening to you and we're going to start to figure this out. So I am in support of this. If we can get money from the state, great. I, like you, don't think that's a big shot. But if we got local support for a pilot program, you know, it may be a shot, you know, because public safety is one place that the legislature is not going to touch with regards to, I think, local control and pushing more resources into that. They're trying to push us to push more resources like I'm so excited that those are going to be here tomorrow and they can see that. And they can see that, yeah, we've been doing that, you know, we've been investing in public safety significantly over the last five years. Maybe they'll take that back and learn about that. So I like this initiative. I don't know how to do it yet. But I know we have a lot of really, really smart people that can help figure it out. I like Mary's timetable when I said, when do you want to do this? And she said, you know, fast, like now and over the next four years. So, you know, I think now is right. But I think big picture over the next four years makes a lot of sense. And ultimately, I think it's the right thing to do for not only job training for folks, but mostly to make sure that our kids have quality, safe, secure child care. I conclude, Mr. Chair. Okay. Thank you. Commissioner Wheeler. Thank you, Mr. Chair. This is an amazing report. Amazing that you all were able to put all this together the way you did. I've been poking at the school board for quite a while. Individual members about child care for teachers. This is not included. You all didn't include the teachers in this. I would like to have seen that. Because we have a lot of young men and women who are graduating from education programs ready to teach, also ready to get married and raise families. The thing is, by the time they're able to have their children, that means they can't get into the classroom. Because most of those, if they're in elementary ed, they start at 7 o'clock in the morning. That means they'd have to get their children somewhere by 6.30 in order to get their jobs. And that's not going to happen. There's not that many agencies that are open at 6.30 in the morning for them to take their children. Also, if a teacher is sick or if a kid is sick, you know, a teacher is going to have to take. So, we have a shortage of teachers in our public schools here. If we could figure out a way to have incentives, you know, add to it. Because teacher pay is probably the lowest in the state. One of the lowest in the state here in Alachua County. I would like to have seen a survey of, I don't know how you would have get them. Because a lot of those teachers are not teaching because they can't teach. So, you know, they can't get the child care they need in order to get to their jobs. So, they don't even apply. And so, we hire a lot of permanent subs to fill in those places where we really need those young educated teachers who've got the enthusiasm to get out there and do it. So, I'm just saying I have pushed at the school board to try to set up daycares on campuses in some of these schools so that the teachers could bring their children in early and then they would already be there on site. You know, so if there's some way that you all can include that in your discussion, I would appreciate it. Because it affected my daughter-in-law when we were trying to get her working and she couldn't afford the child care and couldn't get to classes, you know, get the kids. Well, she couldn't get the kid into daycare at an early enough hour. So, just, you know, keep that in mind as you all move forward with this because they're serving the public too. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Commissioner President. Thank you. Yeah, I mean, I too think this is a really good and interesting idea and I'm excited. Thank you so much for bringing it forward. I think, you know, I mean, this is why the Children's Trust exists, right? I mean, that's why it exists because we recognized that by investing in children, we're investing in the future of our county. By investing in children, we're investing in sort of the root causes, right, of many of the social issues that we have. And if we can do that right, then we sort of set ourselves on the right path because they have all the skills that they need to be successful. And then we hope the school board picks up where we left off and continues to build those skills and experiences for them to be successful adults along with their families and the supports that they need. And so, you know, to me, this is about investing, again, in those root cause issues. I think this is an important piece of that. You know, I think this is an extension of the literacy work that we've been talking about doing. It's about investing in the youngest residents and citizens of our community to make sure that they have their needs met. And so I really love that. I'm super excited to hear that the SWAG Center wants to step up because if there is a model in our community of what successful child care looks like, it is the Child Center. You know, they are partnering with the Anita Zucker Center to look at best practices. They are looking at the ways in which they have wraparound social services that support more than just the child but the whole family so that everyone can be successful. I do think that partnerships are key to this. And, you know, I'm a little concerned about being like jumping to legislative budget requests at this moment because we don't have those partnerships solidified and we don't have the costs solidified. And for me, you know, just being someone who spent a lot of time developing businesses and putting them together, I just get a little nervous about not having some of those pieces and being kind of ready to go and having those people saying, yes, this is on our legislative priority as well. You know, it's on the school board's legislative priority. It's on the children's trust legislative priority. It's on like having us all go together, I think, as a cohesive bunch would work better for the legislative piece. But I think continuing our staff moving in the direction of building this out, getting those partnership agreements signed, you know, trying a pilot, you know, and if asking for the legislative budget request gets it in front of people to start the conversation because they tend to take a few years, I'll support it. I just feel like we might be a little premature on that piece. But I did want to talk a little bit on, I think the CTAC is critical as a partner, both financially and I know that early childhood is a big, big chunk of your budget and they're already investing a lot in developing the skills and the capacity of our early childhood programming in our own like home-based childcares and other childcares around our community. So, you know, I think that's important. And how do we synergize with that, you know, and I'm sure that some of those conversations are already being had. But I think thinking about how do we ensure that this supports expansion of quality childcare into our community because ultimately, like, it's great for us to provide something as a benefit to our staff, right? And our staff make up a big portion of the population of our county, although many of them don't live here as well. So I think we have to think about how does this serve our broader community? How does this help the children who need it the most? And I think that being that training ground, you know, training quality professionals, but again... And subsidizing their income. Right, and subsidizing their income at the time when they're in our center. No, no, after they're done, once they get credentialed. That's the partnership with the Children's Trust. I don't think I was clear about that, but that's a big part of it. Gotcha. So, like, all... Yeah, exactly. So all those things, like, how do we make sure that this is benefiting the youth that need it the most? Not that our employees' children aren't as deserving as any child. I just am saying, like, we're investing in our people, but how do we invest... And then we're investing in the people's training, but how do we ensure they stay here and work in our community and continue to build up the quality of child care we have here? I do think, to your point, too, and to your point, you know, about the school district being a potential partner, not just in terms of space, but in terms of possible also, you know, other public institutions that have employees may also want to play ball. So beginning to expand the survey, and I think, you know, on the recruitment front, to your point and to your point, you know, I'm not sure we have that data, you know. And so I don't know if we need that data yet, but I do think it's something to think about. Like, we surveyed people who already work for us, not people who might work for us. And then my last, just my very last point is, I think that budget's way low. Child Center has double that. Well, they're at least double the staffing rates. They have two employees for every one that you had up there. Because even though 20 kids to one person, can you imagine 24-year-olds in a room with one adult? Like, it'd just be chaos, right? So I think they have two teachers to every, you know. We're going to have interns. Right. That's the thing. Those are the extra employees. Well, I'm not talking. I'm just saying I think our budgets are low for the operations side of things. I don't know about the facility side of things, but I think food, you know, they're offering breakfast and lunch and, you know, things like that. So I just think, you know, getting more solid on those numbers will be helpful for us to have an order of magnitude of what we're really talking about here. And recognizing that we're getting ready to move into a time in our county when everything is going to get harder. We have SNAPs getting cut. Medicare, Medicaid is getting cut. People are going to be in dire need. You know, this is a worthwhile investment regardless of that. I'm not saying, but I'm saying we will be having to make hard decisions about where we make investments. Children is the best investment we can ever make, hands down, any time. I just think we're going to have to think strategically about how investments like this make the biggest impact. Right. And I do think partnering with the Child Center is a great first step. So I'm really excited to hear that. And I certainly will support the motion. But just ask that we take it slow and we take the steps that we need to take to make sure that we don't get into something that's going to be bigger than, you know, we really can handle at the stage that we're at. You know, like taking on a school might be more than we can handle right now. I looked at, for example, some of those facilities when I was thinking about the possibility of certain community center ideas. And some of them are in difficult shape because they've been empty for long periods of time, you know, and a lot of deferred maintenance. So those maintenance budgets, the utilities budgets, you know, the maintenance, ongoing maintenance are all not factored in there as well. So just big picture, you know, let's do it. I'm 100% supportive. And I just, I really appreciate Mary, you being thoughtful and creative about how we move into this next phase. Thank you. Commissioner Cornell and then Commissioner Alfred. No, I'll wait for that. Okay. And I'll make some comments. Yeah, let's do that. Well, you might want to make comments about the motion, but my motion has six brief parts because there's, it's a complicated kind of a thing. But the first part is to create a team across all the needed county departments. And that would include, you know, everything from the facilities because we would need that facilities experts to, you know, legal, to help social services. All the different departments need to, you know, have voices in what this could be. And also to include in that team the outside partners and experts such as the Children's Trust School Board, Sheriff's Department, University of Florida, Lassinger Center, Santa Fe College, and others. That's part one. Part two, to consider a stepped process where we work with existing child care providers and create some sort of a pilot as, you know, as appropriate. Third, to formalize the relationships and the commitments with those partners so that when we go to the legislature, we have those commitments available and ready and in a memorandum of understanding or whatever the legal part would be to have those commitments formalized. Fourth, to begin conversations with our legislators and to make the legislative ask when appropriate. But I think that the conversation with our legislators should start this year, whether there's an ask or not. I think this is something that our legislative team can take and start feeling out today. So I think that should go forward. Number five, to continue to investigate other sources of funding, grants, partnerships, other funding options. And six, to create a business plan and firm up the financial numbers as best we can so that, you know, we can talk about these things with some accuracy. And I guess I should say business plan and model because we do have the model out there. And that's it. Can I just ask a second with a question? Okay. The step process of working with the existing child care providers, with that, I'm assuming this team that gets put together, this sort of cross-functional team, which I'd love to see for all of our efforts, including things that we're already doing. So, yes, I love that model and I hope we continue to use it. If they would be bringing back this step process, design idea, and budget to us before we approve. So we're not saying move forward with developing that. Not to move forward. No, I'm not suggesting we move forward immediately with that, but that that be. So we could just say bring that back to the board. Bring that back to the board. Absolutely. Absolutely. Because I think that it's important that we, you know, we don't want to jump into too big of a process too quickly. But I think that we need to recognize what the size of the facility might need to be. Right. I think those are two different things. So, yeah. So as long as each of these steps is sort of end, bring back to the board for consideration. Absolutely. So that we have the process, the pilot piece. Yeah. Sorry. I always forget to include that. Always. All parts of my motion are bring back to the board. Okay. All right. Before I recognize Commissioner Grinnell, I just want to make my couple of comments that I think it's a great program, but I guess it's all new to me. I've read the backup and stuff, but it's still kind of fresh in my mind. But what I'm mostly interested in, making sure that you have experienced and certified daycare workers there who can actually have some experience in early child development. So that makes that important because there's a statistics that really disturbs me, and they're saying if a kid is not on par in kindergarten, then by third grade, they can determine the number of prison beds that will have to be available in the future. So if it's going to help, I want to make sure that we stress that we have qualified people in those positions. And I guess the other part, I guess I'm trying to get a better understanding is with our partners, and I kind of agree with you. We got to know where they are with all of this. Yeah, right. Because I don't want to be committing more, and they're committing less, and I don't know how it's going to work. Is it going to be a sort of subsidized programs in terms of paying, help paying employees, child care? I just need to know more, I guess, about the more particulars of how this will work. But I support the concept because I think it's a great concept, but I'm just, you know, I want it to succeed and be successful. I don't want to jump into something and it fails because that doesn't look good. And especially with the current governorship that we have now makes things very, very difficult. You know, now they're doing this doge stuff. And so I just want to make sure we're doing the right things and that if we can get the legislatures to support this, then I think we have a better chance of getting grant funds from the state government. But I just want to know a little bit more how all of this will work because I want it to be successful, especially for our employees, and especially if we're going to subsidize some of the funding for it, so to give employees a break in terms of the cost of child care. And it's very expensive. It's been a long time since I had to worry about child care, but it was expensive then, and I think it's probably even more expensive now. You know, so one family member trying to take care of two or three kids, you know, a single mother trying to take care of two or three kids in daycare, that is very expensive. So those costs haven't changed. I think it's probably going up even more. But I'm just worried about the certification. I think that's the most important part. Can I answer your question? Sure, yeah. So one of the major components of this whole program is the training part of it. It's because we want to take child care workers in Alachua County, and right now they're only required to have six weeks of training, which doesn't address anything. So we would like them to have a minimum of a year of training, and part of that training to be in the classroom with qualified folks, right? And so once they go through that training and they get that certification, early childhood development, and in, you know, all these other things that you need to know if you're going to help a kid, you know, be ready for kindergarten, then work with the Children's Trust to give them a stipend on their pay so they make more money. That way they would be incentivized to go through this extra training. And we would benefit by that, from that, by utilizing those people going through that training process in our child care facilities to lower our costs. So we would lift up all the child care workers in Alachua County potentially if they go through this training process and increase their pay and utilize those folks going through that process in our own facility. So I think, you know, that's – I think the big part of this to me was raising up all of the child care workers, all of their credentials so that all of the kids have access to a better education. I think that – I still need to know a little bit more, though. Well, it's complicated. I still have to know a little bit more about how things are going to work. And will the partners, will they have their own program at their facilities, or how will that work? I mean, it's just – I just got questions, you know. So I just want to know how the partnership is going to work, and will they have their own facilities, like the school board have their own center or whatever, or Santa Fe have their own center, Alachua County has their own. So I just needed to know those kind of facts. So – but I do support it. I think it's a great idea. So don't get me wrong. Commissioner Cornell. And then Wheeler, and then Prisia. Thank you, Mr. Chair. A couple things I – a couple things I didn't mention. So at that meeting, we also had ELC, which speaks to the fact, really, to Anna's point, that serving the broader community and training child care workers across the board is a big mission of this direction. Also, after that meeting at the Children's Trust, I brought this back, and the Children's Trust has standing direction to work with our staff on this initiative. And so I just wanted you all to hear that because our CTAC board unanimously supported this idea. I think it's important that we take Commissioner Wheeler's point about the teachers because the school board obviously has that need, and, you know, they were there at the meeting. So I like – yeah, I like the motion from qualified, certified people, Chuck. You know, that's where Santa Fe really steps in with the chamber, creating jobs, creating resiliency and sustainability in our workforce. In speaking to some of the folks at the chamber, I heard support from their perspective. So – and I do agree with Anna that this kind of builds into the whole literacy movement that we are on, and the Children's Trust had a discussion about that yesterday. Anna was there at the meeting. Thank you for coming to that, Commissioner Prizia. And so that is a community-wide effort. I think in the team, creating the team, the cross-functional team, I do think that we should bring in the self-insurance committee or the benefits folks, Amy, because that's right in line with the survey results. And so, you know, if that's something that the Constitutionals and the County Commission Sheriff wants to participate in, it should be a discussion probably at that committee level. And I think seeking initially – you know, talking to Tom Griffin, our legislative team, about floating this idea with our local delegation. I think you've had a conversation with Senator Bradley already. Yeah. And did you – have you talked to Commissioner – I haven't talked to anybody, really. But having a – and she expressed at least – Her staff. Her staff. Okay. Yeah. So I think that's really good. So I'll support the motion. Okay. Commissioner Wheeler and then Commissioner Prizia. Guys, this is huge. And it almost needs its own department. I don't know who is going to be – who would be doing this? This is – I'm looking at these fake – Jess, no, because she's tourism and economic development. Oh, I know. I know. It just seems to me that it needs its own department separate and away from what – Eventually, but not now. – you guys are doing because, you know, what we're trying to do is grow the whole county. And that's in you all's hands right now. Just – this is huge. That's all I can say. And I've got to tell you all, liability is going to be a big issue for us in terms of taking on children and taking care of them, providing them with the best possible caregivers. Because even when I wanted to go to Cuscoilla to read to the kids at lunchtime, I had to pass a level two. Yep. Background check. Background check. Yep. I'm just saying, you know, there's so many parts of this that I don't know if we don't – I don't know if we can separate, you know, or build a different department to accommodate this, if this is really the direction we're going to go as a board. But it seems to me that this is a big enough program in itself that it would require its own team rather than put it in an apartment. I don't want to put it in one department. I want to make a cross-functional team to build the idea. And then once we have all of the bits and pieces and we know what we want, then we can decide how we want to go forward with it being a department or part of a department or anything. We all want that for our initiatives, though. I'm just going to say, Michelle, like I do want to say that. Like, you know, ultimately Michelle gets to make those calls. And all of us get our ideas that are big and grand, like stuffed into a department until they're not. So, like, I don't – I mean, I'm not saying – I want to see this not live there either because local food systems is there and economic development is there. And tourism is there. And tourism is there. And I'm with you. But I think that ultimately, like, I would love to hear Michelle's thoughts on that because I feel like we have a lot of really big things we're working on. And the whole East Side initiative, the Forward Focus, like we've got big things happening. This is another big one, but it's a big, important one. What if it's a big knot in my stomach just looking at it and trying to figure out, you know, who – Yeah, I'm with you. And why do we want to lose good people on our staff? Because we've worked up to death and they died at their death, you know. No, I'm – don't blow it off, y'all. I'm taking it up for you now, you know, just – because seriously, this is monumental. And it's – I'm not – I think it's a beautiful idea, Mary. I really – that the time and energy that you put into it and that these people have put in it to make it happen for you, you know, is incredible. Oh, it is. They've been amazing. It's incredible. But at some point it needs to be removed from them. Oh, I agree. And have wings of its own. And this may be the time. Okay. And this may be the time. I'm not – nowhere in my motion did I say this is Jessica's job. Well, that's what I'm saying. Okay, who do we hand it – okay, we've got this – all this data. We've got the interest from the board. We've got, you know, community resources we're trying to pull together. So whose baby is it? I think that's Michelle's job. Oh. So I think, Mr. Chair – Go ahead. We don't want that either, by the way, Commissioner Wheeler. We aim to keep employees healthy. And so, you know, I think that this is for Jessica and Sean. They've kind of led the effort. This is not – ultimately we're not even to the point yet of creating – of actually establishing anything. And I would not recommend that necessarily they be in charge of any operational piece. This is just the effort to take the concept and bring a group of entities, community leaders, government entities, nonprofit entities, you know, whatever needs to be together to create what this is going to look like. And they are helping to coordinate that effort to say this is – here's the partners that we can bring to the table for you. Our – as I've said, I know I've talked to each of you about this. There really are a couple pieces, right? You've brought in Commissioner Wheeler about the teachers. You have the component that – the economic development piece of training the future workforce for jobs, not just in early childhood education, but the ability to step off and expand into teaching, social work, public health, you know, law. So, any variety of matters can step off from the training that they would receive in this opportunity. So, you have that. And the child care that goes along with that is part of that training. That could be to employees. It could be to the community. It could be in a variety of ways. So, that's one component. You have the other component, which is county staff, both our staff and constitutional officer staff, have expressed a need and a desire for assistance in the child care area, which does hit on recruitment and retention efforts that we all have as government and struggle with. From the school board, the county, the sheriff's office, all of us struggle with recruitment and retention and how child care plays into that. So, you have that component. Right now, we've put those two together because it's the ability to provide, you know, to have the synergy between the two is there. And that's why we have started kind of working to see what that would look like. But it does take partners, and we don't have the expertise, the knowledge to operate a facility like this. So, it's starting there. We started with it there because it was really a job training focus with the opportunity to provide a benefit to government employees along the way is how we viewed that at the outset, not a employee benefit that had the side impact of maybe doing some training. So, that's why it started in that shop. But they are just kind of heralding the effort to bring people together. When we get to that point, then we can talk about who does want to be responsible for, you know, going the rest of the way with us. And, you know, Steph is... But we're asking more. We're saying we need more. So, I didn't know... We're asking them to convene meetings and to find out where those partnerships are and bring those partnerships to the board to move forward. Because, I mean, obviously, we have to be one of those partners. So, somebody has to kind of bring those people together. And that's what they're doing. Okay. Commissioner Prisca? I hear you, Mary Helen. I mean, I think that the reality is that hopefully in the very near term, they'll pull partners together and it'll become clear. You know, Santa Fe will maybe run some of the training programs and maybe in partnership with the Anita Zucker Center. And SeaTac will provide funding for subsidies and support the programming. And, you know, hopefully the Child Center will run this pilot. In my dream world, you know, they are a private sector. They know what they're doing. They've done it before. They've built this program, their program from scratch. And I think if you haven't been to visit it, I highly recommend you do. And I think they have that experience and expertise that you're talking about and they have the skills to do it. And, you know, because to Michelle's point, you know, do I think we should have a county-owned and run child care facility? Absolutely not. Do I think we should be potentially subsidizing child care as a benefit for our employees? Possibly. Do I think we should be providing workforce development in this area so we have quality child care across our county? Absolutely. And so, you know, I think it's, I'm with you. I think it's a big undertaking, but, and I think we ultimately need a team that's going to work on this, which is why I think the first point in your motion is important. But I think that's true of all of our programming. All of us just weren't astute enough to put it in our motions. Good job. But I do think that one point, to your point, you know, I hear you on the interns and the half-trained people in learning on the job. But I want to say two things. One, those people deserve to be paid, too. Oh, absolutely. And so, you know, it might save us some money because they're not fully certified, but I do think it's important. And second is that doesn't preclude the need for the certified people, to have the same amount of certified people we would have regardless, right? Oh, absolutely. So I'm not sure, you know, it might, I don't know where the savings comes in other than grants. It's because of the flexibility of scheduling. You know, you don't want to have that, to schedule the highest level of teacher-student ratios when you don't know how many kids are coming to stay on a night thing because our schedules are so wonky. Sometimes people get called in. You know, that's the real challenge. Yeah, but to Chuck's point, I think I'm just saying, you know, I agree with you 100%. Like, we need to make sure that we hold the standards as high as we want other people to hold them. And then the training piece is kind of an additional sort of buoying up of those staff, you know, like the aides in the classroom, et cetera, et cetera. But, you know, I also think this is a big part of, you know, what HR, to Ken's point, I think self-insurance and HR need to weigh in here pretty heavily in terms of the benefit side of things because how that would work, what it would cost, you know, and how we might offer that up. And what other employers in our community, like the school board or the city of Gainesville, I mean, any institutional public servant, you know, ultimately, maybe this is that opportunity. But I, again, just, I support it. But I think like Commissioner Chestnut, I just appreciate a methodical approach to it. So we have good information to make decisions on in a stepwise fashion. Okay. Commissioner Alford. I just wanted to say thank you to all of you guys. for, you know, your support and for your interest. And I really, really, really want to thank Sean and especially Jessica for their huge amount of work that's gone into this. For the level of ask, the effort has been huge. I don't know quite how to say that, but it was a lot. And especially right now to, you know, they have had to prepare for this meeting in the middle of preparing for Doge. And I'm pretty sure Jessica worked all weekend. So I just wanted to say thank you. Well, to your point, I mean, this is really, I mean, this is about that. It's the support of our first responders. It is. We need this more than anything. Yeah. And being able to support our police force, our sheriff's office, our fire rescue, to be able to do the job that they need to do to keep our community safe and know that their children are safe at the same time. Yep. Mary, are there any, I'm sorry, Mr. Chair. Go ahead. Are any of the research that you've done show already established child care facilities that could be paid to stay open 24 hours? I mean, that are already, you know, well-known, well-established, and have good reputations that we could, rather than have to set up. Well, there are, and there have been some of those discussions. The problem is there's not the capacity. And so there, you know, we might can create the capacity. So that's why I want to do this, like, pilot with the community if that is. That's what I mean as a pilot. Yeah. Because the swag center, yes, but there are other daycare centers. Yeah, there are. And I talked to the Early Learning Coalition about just that. She told me they had five facilities right now that do 24 hours, seven. They're all in people's homes. Oh, I see. And so people are not comfortable with it being in people's homes. Yeah. I see. Okay. Well, it seems to me that there ought to be someone out there that would be also willing to open for 24 hours. And now that we've opened this conversation. On call basis, you know, on call. And now that we've had this conversation in the, you know, in the public, they might come forward. Okay. You know, I don't think we're out, we're ruling anything out right now. That's, this is, you know, this is exploratory at this point. Okay, thank you. Commissioner Cornell. Just going to add to that point, you know, the stepped process and the fact that we're having this public discussion, you know, we have a lot of employees that have an immediate need. And so I think to Mary's point exactly, this is an opportunity for those that have capacity within our community that can offer 24 seven. We employ a lot of folks. And so let's see what kind of rises to the top. Yeah. And that's the other thing with childcare, it really is dependent on how close it is to your home, you know, especially or your job. Yeah, your job or your job. And so, you know, that's the real, that's what I see as the biggest challenge for creating a large facility centrally located is that it's just not only is it incredibly expensive, but I can see a training center. I can see using facilities that aren't being used that the school board is kind of helping us with. But the community, I think, understanding what we're trying to do may step up and provide us with some options. Okay. We have a motion and a second on the floor. Are there any further discussion? Are there any citizens' comments to the motion that's on the floor? Okay. Seeing none. Seeing none. Back to the board. Those in favor of the motion, vote by the sign of aye. Aye. Those opposed, same sign. Motion carries. Adam Clerk. Thank you all for that robust discussion. I have seven more people in justice. Thank you, Jessica. Thank you, Sean. This will bring us to authorization to settle civil case of Juliana Witt versus Alachua County. Good staff recommendation. Got a motion in a second. Mr. Chairman. Yes. I can barely hear myself here. This is the discussion regarding a case we've had two shade meetings on. Both will be transcribed and available for the public comment. We have had two mediations as well. And just for the sake of the public, any comment regarding what came up in mediation remains confidential after the board settles this. So there will be redactions in at least one of those transcripts regarding comments regarding what happened in mediation. This is a case that has been going on for a while. You will recall that in 2018, 2019, as part of the drainage mitigation, flood mitigation process, there was work done in Tomoka Hills Part 2 to clear out an easement. There was some disagreement between Public Works and the owner of the property over what could be done, and Public Works went ahead and began their process and removed trees, at which time we received a cease and desist order. We were unable to come into an agreement with them, and a lawsuit came about. Over the term of the lawsuit, we discovered that because of when the original dedication to the public was made and the original development was built, there may or may not have been certain regulations in place, and this slowed us down, finding out what was justified under the terms of the easement. We ultimately were able to get a commitment from the Water Management District that no additional permit was necessary, although that was subject to administrative appeal. And if an administrative appeal had gone through, we would have not been able to build anything on the existing footprint of the easement. So in the last mediation, we were able to come to a resolution of the case which will allow us to begin construction for the drainage area almost immediately, depending on how fast the equipment and funding can be marshaled. The terms are $300,000, which includes any damages to the trees that were done before. It includes payment for any issues regarding not having an appropriate permit, and the landowner will not challenge that. We can go ahead and use the easement as it was designed, and to the extent we can determine that it was in place, and we've had public works and independent engineers have gone out and done borings to see where the sediment had built up. As part of the settlement also, we are going to go and use their experts' replanting plan, which was very similar to our experts' replanting plan and the replanting plan developed by public works, and put that in place and maintain it just as we would for any other drainage area. We looked at several opportunities before arriving at that figure, including the possibility of using eminent domain, but again, because of the cost and time involved with that and the fact that we want to eliminate the possibility of an appeal on the permit issue, this ended up being about $100,000 cheaper in our rough estimate and lets us begin a lot sooner. Those are the four corners of the settlement agreement, and I have the county engineer up there, who was going to have some comments about the construction as he sees it. Okay, I have a commissioner. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Bob, nice job getting us to where we are today. I'm ready to move forward with SAS recommendation. I really just have one question for Ramon, which is, if we approve this, tell us what the next steps are, what you would require, how long would it take, and where would we be in 90 to 120 days from today? Good afternoon, Commissioner. Ramon Gavarrete, Public Works Director. You had a few questions there that you were saying, so next step is to pray for weather so that we can actually do construction if this is approved, because although construction could be anywhere between two to four months, it really is depending on weather. Every time you have to excavate, if it's wet, you really cannot do that, so that's my answer on the time frame, two to four months, depending on weather, and right now we cannot start because it's wet already. We actually went there, and it's already pretty wet in that area right now, so most likely it will have to be sometime probably around October, when, you know, when we have October is usually one of the driest months that we have to actually be able to begin construction. How much is it going to cost, including all the plantings that are being recommended right now by the plaintiff and also MV5, and establishing those, and this is not including the in-house labor and equipment, by the way, it will be approximately $230,000 to do so. That will be out of pocket for plants and rental equipment and then establishing the plants. So that's something that's also going to have to be considered probably at a later date on that issue. So that's as far as the Moca Hill Basin goes. The proposed design now, based on the geotechnical report that we got, it's actually a lesser impact to the footprint, but we are going deeper. I think the maximum that we're going is about 4.1 feet or something like that, but it is a lesser footprint, a smaller footprint, which is something that the plaintiff actually was also requesting. So we're doing that part in the Tomoka Hills Basin. And do you believe that once this work is done, the flooding that we experienced on 91st to the south will be significantly mitigated? My belief is that I'm not going to say that it's not going to help because it definitely will help, but if you want to significantly improve or significantly reduce the chances of flooding downstream, you also have to have the berm constructed that was recommended by staff back in 2019. And so is that part of the plan? That will be part of the plan, but there's an additional cost to that also because there's also a very elaborate concrete structure that has to be built. Plus also we're proposing to replenish trees that are going to have to be taken out. So that costs, not including the in-house labor and equipment is approximately 148,000. And so with those two things, the berm and the, and this, which is a sorry upstream, back to my original question, do you believe that the flooding, the historical flooding that this community, this area of the county has experienced over the last two decades would be mitigated? It will be extreme, very, very, very greatly reduced. I'm never going to say it's going to be, it's not going to happen anymore because you never know when you could have two or three wonder years don't back to back to back. But it will be extremely reduced once you do the Tomoka Hills Basin and the berm. What that area on the south side of 8th Avenue experiments is actually a flat flood. So therefore the berm actually would slow down that also. And do we have the funding in our existing budget to do both of those? No. Where is that going to come from? That's what I say. That's to be determined. With that? We will figure that out. Um, if the board makes clear because the board previously asked us to remove the berm. So I want that to be clear from the board that to construct the berm. Um, and, and we will make that happen. Um, as Mr. Graverette said, um, the, the system will function and provide some relief as it is without the berm, but the optimum relief and benefit that the system can provide, it requires the berm. Well, I, okay. So I'm ready to move staff. I'll move staff, um, staff's, um, staff's recommendation. So I'll move staff recommendation and then I'll make a comment. Got a motion and a second commission on the legal side. And, yeah, and then that's the only thing on the agenda, but my comment will be, there's no sense in settling this if we don't have a plan to fix the problem. And so, um, I, I don't know why they're not all kind of included together, but, um, that's, that's my comment. I think we have to do this as a first step. Thank you. Commissioner Prisian. Sorry. Second the motion. Um, but I, and I guess I would say I, I, I would love to add to the motion to, um, have staff move forward with the budgeting and planning of the berm. I think that the, and I will say this, we keep having the same issue, I think, with this thing. Like I wasn't a part of it early on, but then you all were, and then we were later on. And I think it's a, it's an upstream people versus downstream people, right? The upstream people like their trees and their landscaping and their, and the nature and the downstream people are getting flooded. And in order for the downstream people to have mitigation, we're going, we have to remove the vegetation upstream to build and engineer these structures. However, we do also plan to put them back. So I would just say when we, hopefully we will do the berm, I would be happy with adding that to the motion. I'll add that to the motion if that's helpful for staff. Yes. But I just want to be clear that staff do a good job of community engagement and having a plan for the revegetation plan with the berm and making that communication known so that hopefully it can mitigate at least a little bit of the upstream folks' consternation around the construction of the berm. Thank you. Your manager, your light was on. Oh, aye. Okay. Yep. Okay. All right. All right. We got a motion in a second. Is there any further discussion to that motion? Are there any public comments to that motion? Seeing none. Back to the board. Those in favor of the motion, vote by the sign of aye. Aye. Those opposed, same sign. Motion carries. Thank you, Mark. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Bob. Next, that'll bring us to, I'm sorry, presentations. Meridian Healthcare, Inc. annual report and funding requests. Mr. Chair, Commissioners, Claudia Tuck, Director of Community Support Services. Today, we have a presentation from Meridian Healthcare, providing their annual report as required by their contract. We request that you hear the presentation and approve the funding request, and I would like to introduce to you Lauren Cohn, who is the President and CEO of Meridian Healthcare, and she will give her first annual report to you. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Good afternoon, Commissioners. Thank you so much for the opportunity to speak with you today. It's a privilege to be up here to present Meridian's annual report. In my new capacity, since last time we saw each other, I was the Chief Operating Officer, but I'm now here as the CEO. You'll notice that this report looks a little bit different. I believe we announced last time we were here our rebrand to Meridian Healthcare with a little bit different look and feel, not just a refreshed look, but also a visual update and a representation of our continued commitment to serving our community with excellence. Meridian Healthcare, longstanding history since 1971, delivering behavioral health services across North Central Florida and in Alachua County. Our approach focuses on whole person care, emphasizing hope and empathy. It's our ambition to continue to transform our community together from the inside out. Our values that go along with our Meridian Healthcare brand, hope, empathy, accountability, resilience, and teamwork. You'll notice that those values together spell heart, so not only guiding our staff in organizational decisions, but ensuring we're always leading with that heart. Emphasizing integrity and collaboration. Our programs, as some of you know and have visited us many times, Meridian offers a comprehensive continuum of care designed to meet the needs of children, adults, and families. Our programs span integrated treatment, supportive services, and prevention efforts, reflecting a holistic approach to behavioral health. Our commitment to evolving services ensures that we remain responsive to the unique and ever-changing needs of the community we serve. Just to highlight some information regarding telehealth, telehealth has significantly expanded access to care in all of the communities we serve, especially here in Alachua County. With nearly 3,500 residents receiving over 21,000 telehealth sessions in this past fiscal year, which for us is July 1 through June 30th. This allows for faster, more convenient treatment from home and reduces barriers to care. This slide presents the demographic insights into the clients we serve, specifically in Alachua County, highlighting diversity in individuals that we've served. The age distribution highlights that a significant portion of the clients are young to middle age adults. Understanding these demographics is crucial for us as we tailor services to meet the specific cultural and age-related needs of those we serve. This slide, focusing on adults in Alachua County, breaks down the prevalence of the challenges we treat. Substance use and depression are the most common, followed by bipolar and schizophrenia and psychosis. This data underscores the importance of targeted interventions and resources to address those specific needs effectively. The next slide focuses on children. The challenges that we see, attention deficit and behavior problems, are the leading reasons for seeking help, accounting for over a third of the children we serve. Trauma and adjustment issues also represent significant concerns alongside anxiety and depression. These insights guide us in the development of specialized programs to support children's mental health and developmental needs. The next slide focuses on feedback we've received and national benchmarks to demonstrate Meridian's effectiveness in improving health outcomes. Recovery rates for serious mental illness, addictions, and chronic illnesses align with or exceed national averages. As you can see, we've got 75% of adults and 74% of children who report an improved functioning and reduction in overall symptoms. This, along with the satisfaction rates of the majority of clients reporting that they believe they're getting better and would recommend our services and re-engage if needed. That shows our highlight, the positive impact of our comprehensive care. Yes? Talk about, are those your numbers or are those national numbers? How do you compare to those? Yep, absolutely. So the national benchmarks are not our numbers. These are from our association who provides these numbers to us. The recovery rates for serious mental illness are approximately 33% for 12 months or longer. We don't have those for you. For us, the benchmark we're putting that up against is the clients who report improved functioning and reduction of overall symptoms. And that's in a 12-month period. That's 75% of the adults we've treated and 74% of children. So we're basing that on self-report numbers and our clinical assessment tools as well. I guess I don't, so you don't have specific numbers on recovery rates, actual recovery rates. You're just, it's self-reported, like I feel better. The self-report number. And then we do have clinical assessment tools that we utilize, but some of those are at different pivotal points, admission after six months and then discharge from levels of care. I can provide some additional numbers if that would be helpful. Always. Okay. I'll absolutely do that. Thank you. Sorry to interrupt. Yeah, no, no, not at all. This slide represents the details, the range and the volume of services provided specifically to Alachua County residents from July 1st, 2024 through June 2025, showing a substantial number across acute care, psychiatric care, outpatient treatment, residential programs, and medication-assisted treatment. This highlights our capacity and our commitment for addressing diverse health needs in the community. Here, we've highlighted our housing and support services, which we all know play a critical role in stabilizing individuals with mental health challenges. Transitional housing at the Lodge supports those in immediate need, while New Horizons Property offers more permanent housing options through our various facilities and apartments. Additionally, Meridian manages 67 HUD housing units, providing long-term safe housing, which is essential for recovering and community integration. And I'm sorry, I should have asked, do you have a copy of this? Okay. I just wanted to make sure. Okay. For this past fiscal year, 2025, I want to highlight some of the accomplishments. We've got the Court Diversion Grant, which began helping us divert individuals with substance use disorders from the criminal justice system to treatment. This allows us to serve 150 people concurrently across a multi-county region, including Alachua County. We also have the SAMHSA-supported program, Treatment of Individuals Experiencing Homelessness, which addresses homelessness and serious mental illness, partnering with local organizations to support 45 people concurrently. And last, we've got the Criminal Justice Mental Health Substance Use Reinvestment Grant, which funds efforts to reduce recidivism and promote independence for 75 people, reflecting a strong community collaboration with Alachua County in this particular partnership. I also want to speak briefly on the central receiving facility. We opened the doors January 2025, which allowed us to streamline access to behavioral health services for law enforcement and individuals in crisis. And we thank you immensely for your support with that project and your presence at our ribbon cutting and participation in the advisory council. This program offers 24-7 admissions, dedicated entrances, and person-centered assessments to connect clients to appropriate care quickly. Since opening, Central Receiving Facility has served over 750 Alachua County residents. Significantly reduced law enforcement drop-off times and enhanced efficiency and the client experience. The ongoing advisory council ensures continuous interagency collaboration and focuses on optimizing outcomes for those we serve and our critical partners. This slide highlights our payer mix, the landscape for funding. Most clients, the vast majority of clients served in Alachua County are at or below the federal poverty level, with indigent care funding primarily through Medicaid, state, DCF, and local funds. Nearly half of services in the fiscal year 2025 were supported by indigent care funding, while Medicaid covered 21%. While 29% of the clients we see have insurance, it only covers a small portion of needed services, highlighting the importance of our other funding streams to sustain access to care. So, as we've talked about before, Meridian must generate local matching funds to secure our state and federal funds. This year, we're requesting to maintain our contract with Alachua County at $895,556, consistent with the previous year, to support our local match efforts. As I conclude this report, I want to highlight one of our board members is here today, Stuart Wegner, who I know you're all very familiar with, so we want to thank him for being present today. I also want to emphasize the progress that we've made together, providing whole person care to Alachua County residents in need. I want to thank you for your continued support and partnership as we work to continue to provide these vital community services. Thank you. I think we have some questions for you, Commissioner Prizia and then Commissioner Alpert. Sorry. Okay, no, no. I'll go backwards, I guess. Sure. Commissioner Alpert, do you know how many diversions you had as a result of those 756 encounters? Like, how many people were ended up diverted from ending up in jail, were all of them resolved? I don't have that data with me, but we do have that data. Okay. So, I also take a note to send that in follow-up as well. That would be great. I know the advisory council, that's something that they've been looking at, so we've got that data. Okay, great. And then the coordination, I'm just wondering, I know that initially there was hesitance on the part of UF Health in partnering with the center receiving facility. Has there been any increase in their interest in collaboration with the CRF? Yeah, absolutely. They've been participating as a member on the advisory council, so that has been a partnership that's continuing to grow. Okay, great. Okay, the SAMHSA homelessness grant, you said there's 45 people currently, and that's to provide housing? It's to provide housing support and treatment, but that is one of the key components is connecting with housing resources and safe and affordable housing through that, but it's also primarily the treatment supports. And so, how does somebody access that support, those support services? Is it by being a patient at your facility, or are you coordinating with the COC on? Absolutely. We are, and we can take direct referrals, so through our access center, anyone can be referred for that. But we do have individuals also doing community outreach as a partnership with Grace, and they are out in the community looking for individuals, providing information, and doing that part, too. Well, I would love to get them connected, if they aren't already, with our released reentry folks, because I know that there's been a lot of, we've been having a lot of challenges with that intersection between homelessness, incarceration, reentry, mental health, and trying to sort of find avenues for our reentry folks for housing, so that they don't fall back into it. So, I don't know if this is an area where that could be coordinated, but just a thought on that front. So, Mr. Chair, Claudia Tuck, I did have a conversation with Emily Westerholm yesterday, in fact, and suggested to her that she connect with Lauren because of these services. Oh, my gosh. See? Great minds think alike. Perfect. So, that ball's already rolling. Yay! Good. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit how you do, like, I know that you all, you have our funding, but then you also have a lot of, like, grant funding, other funding. How do you coordinate your grant applications and things with other agencies and institutions in our region, or our county, specifically? Yes. Yeah. That's a layered question. But we have a grant writer on staff, and one of our senior vice presidents is Richard Anderson, if you have not met. He's a bit of a grant guru, and they partner in identifying available opportunities, and then what makes sense for those opportunities. What would be something, you know, we're not all things to all people, so who are the subject matter experts in the community, and how can we all come together to provide what we do best? And that's how that actually happened with the grant we were just speaking of to end homelessness, where we partner with the Gainesville Opportunity Center, BioRescue, and GRACE to do outreach and housing support. So, we're always looking for those opportunities. And I think collaborative grants are the way of the future, right, where it takes a group effort and a community effort to really be successful. So, we're always looking to do more of that. Great. And then my final question is, I know one of the things that we heard from our law enforcement is the difficulty in hiring mental health counselors for our co-responder teams and ensuring sort of the flow of funds for those things. How is, I know that you all have been kind of key in that, how is that going? It's an ongoing effort. I've just recently met with our law enforcement partners, and we have another meeting scheduled with the Gainesville Police Department and Alachua County Sheriff's Office to talk about additional collaborative strategies on getting the recruitment efforts out. We are pursuing additional avenues and working with the school, those interested in completing their criminal justice programs and counseling, how we can sort of capture, and also how we can grow our own, right? Like, how can we create paths for those care coordinators who are interested in doing counseling or evolving? We do tuition reimbursement. So, we're always looking at all of those sort of recruitment pathways. But it is still an ongoing effort that we are working on. Our co-responder clinicians that are in place are amazing, and we just need to figure out a way to get more of them. Yeah. Excellent. Okay. Thank you very much. Okay. I have a few more questions and additions that Anna asked. But first one is kind of for the community a little bit, because we, you know, have community members that watch these meetings occasionally. Can you talk a little bit more about what you offer through telehealth and how people can access telehealth services? Sure. Absolutely. We offer, our initial intake can be done via telehealth. So, by contacting our access center or by visiting our website, we can get that ball rolling. That means you don't have to come in to get treatment services started. If you're seeking traditional outpatient services or counseling or medication management, those can all be done via telehealth. And that was the next part of my question. Do you offer the psychiatric treatment as well and medication management by telehealth? And I had assured some folks that you did, but I just, I figured if that was a question one person had, that everybody probably. Absolutely. The only caveat to that is medication-assisted treatment does require a physical exam and an in-person meeting. So, that has to be done in person, but along with some of the dosing and nursing visits. Excellent. My next question is, how have the mental health profiles, I don't know quite how to say it, the statistics changed since COVID? Have they gone back to what you were seeing before COVID? Are you still seeing COVID-related changes in statistics of the kinds of things that you're treating, particularly with kids? That's a great question. I mean, I have to dig into that data a little more because I'd love to. It was your predecessor, I guess, that we were sort of following this with over time. I think, you know, as far as the kids, we've seen a pretty consistent breakdown of those over the last few years since COVID. But I'd love to even dig a little deeper because- Okay, if we find out, I'm curious about that to see how we're getting, you know, if those are like ongoing changes that we can expect to see for a while or if things are starting to kind of reflect the same statistics that we had before COVID. Yeah, I will take that as a to-do also. Then my last question were, you know, you gave us some central receiving facility numbers, and I know that they've been trending upwards. I was just curious what that trend is looking like. And you probably don't have that with you. I don't have that report with me, but it has. I mean, certainly since we opened in January and we're doing more outreach and education and partnerships by letting everyone know that we had opened and we were ready to begin, that's continued to increase. But I can definitely, what I'll do in follow-up is send all of the data we have that the Advisory Council looks at and that we're collecting on related to volume and sort of breakdown, diversions. I missed the last Siege of SAG meeting, so I didn't get that update, but I appreciate that. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Okay. Thank you so much. Oh, do you need a motion? Yeah, I guess we accept the funding. Yeah, I move we accept the presentation and the funding request. Second. Got a motion in a second. Any further discussion to the motion that's on the floor? Are there any citizen comments to the motion that's on the floor? Back to the board. Those in favor of the motion will vote by the sign of aye. Aye. Aye. As opposed, name sign, motion carries. Madam Clerk. Yes. This will bring us to Basin Management Action Plan, BMAP update. Madam Clerk, can you show me as an eye on that last foot? I'm sorry? Can you show me as an eye on that last foot? We'll get here in time. We took care of it. We tried to ask so many questions, you'd be back. I heard y'all. I'm just kidding. It was a joke. Hi, everyone. I'm Stacey Greco, Water Resources Program Manager with the Environmental Protection Department. And I am just here to give an update on the state's Basin Management Action Plans. All right. So what is a BMAP? All across the state, agencies like us are collecting water quality data. We all upload it into the state's database, and they look at that data, and they compare it to water quality standards. And unfortunately, oftentimes, we find our water bodies aren't meeting those water quality standards. So not meeting that TMDL, that total maximum daily load. When that happens, the state creates a Basin Management Action Plan, which I'll call BMAP. And that is a restoration plan, which is supposed to be a guide to get us to reducing pollution and meeting those water quality standards. So DEP, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, creates those BMAPs with stakeholders. And within that, it identifies responsible stakeholders and assigns pollutant loads, which are called allocations, which you will hear me say allocation many times today. So the update that I'm bringing with you today is the Clean Waters Way Act required DEP to update the nutrient BM, the BMAPs. So there were about 20 of them. They are a small group at DEP, so they were very busy. We've had lots of meetings with them, and they got adopted on June 27th. There is a 21-day challenge period with those BMAPs, and several springs groups have worked together, and they've asked for an extension from DEP. So some of our BMAPs, two of them that I'll go into in more detail, the Santa Fe and the Silver Springs, are actually, have not been adopted yet. They're in limbo because they are potentially being legally challenged. And I'll kind of address that throughout the presentation. So these new updates also have that responsible entities, like local governments, that have allocations, that we have to submit our plans for how are we going to meet these allocations. And we have to submit that by January 14th of 2026, which is very soon. It also has language that we must add the BMAP projects to the comp plan by April of 2026. So I'm working with growth management on that also. So these are our BMAPs. So the brown, that's the Santa Fe. So that's actually two springs BMAPs and a surface water BMAP. You will see that it also overlaps a little bit with the Orange Creek. That is surface water BMAPs. And then to make it really fun, Orange Creek really intersects with the Silver Springs BMAP. And that's that gray one. And that one is actually just a springs BMAP. So all of this adds a lot of nuance to what we've been, what Mary Zoka, our water resources engineer, and I have been working on all summer. This table, which I don't expect you to fully digest, this is just showing all of our allocations as Alachua County. So all of these numbers for Santa Fe and Silver are brand new. So we just got these in that summer update. We've never, we've known that we have to reduce nitrogen in those basins, but we haven't had a number. And you'll see for those springs, the deadline is 2038. We've actually hired a consultant to help us with this because it was a lot to review in a short amount of time. And especially that Santa Fe River, that 15,000 pounds of nitrogen that we're required to reduce each year. That's new methods that the state used. And we're still waiting for some of their backup data so that we fully understand that allocation. Okay. I'm sorry. On the Alachua Sink, is a lot of that due to the outfall from the Main Street Wastewater Treatment Plan and lack of denitrification? That is part of it. And you'll notice that asterisk. So Alachua Sink and Lake Waberg, those are actually shared allocations. So we share that allocation with GRU and with the city of Gainesville. That's a huge number. It is a huge number. And a lot of that, we actually think, is internal cycling from Noonan's Lake. Well, I was going to ask that question next because, okay, that helps. So that number might not include the wastewater plant because that allocation might go straight to GRU. I'd have to look, really dig into that because being a shared allocation, that's a really weird one. They don't do that anymore. The Orange Creek Basin was the original BMAP that they worked on in the state. So will our work on Noonan's Lake then hopefully help address some of this nitrogen load? We hope so. So, and also you'll notice in the Orange Lake, those numbers there, that's for nitrogen and phosphorus, where the Springs one is just nitrogen. And in the Orange Creek Basin, they're actually redoing the modeling. So these numbers could change. We don't know. They could increase. We don't know what's going to happen in that basin. So these are big numbers. What do they mean? It's hard to conceptualize it. So I'm going to show you an example using our most simple BMAP, and that is the Silver Spring. So that's just the Springshed, and that is like the southeastern part of the county. Our allocation is about 16,000 pounds of nitrogen per year. When meeting with DEP and when we ask local government, we have limited tools, what should we be doing? And they recommend upgrading septic systems and doing stormwater projects. So as an example, we know there's about 2,700 septic systems in that watershed. If we upgraded all of them to the nutrient-reducing septic systems, because there's no wastewater infrastructure there, we can't just connect them to a wastewater plant, we think we would get about 9,700 pounds of nitrogen and meet 61% of our allocation at just $27 million. So it really shows the magnitude of this challenge to meet these allocations. So a little bit of where does this data come from? This is straight from the BMAP, and we're just looking at the Hornsby Springs Springshed, and these two images are showing the same data, just in different ways. So this table, this is showing what are the sources. OSTDS is septic system, and they think that about 9% of the nitrogen comes from septic systems. UTF is urban turf fertilizer, and then the next four are agriculture, so you can see that's the largest part of the nitrogen in that springshed, and then biosolids, and then wastewater plants. So basically, they take all of the sources, and then they allocate portions of it to responsible entities. Being the local government in this area, we get some of the septic systems and the urban turf. If we had a wastewater plant in that watershed, we would get some of that allocation also. Like in this example, AD, FF, STF, and the CAFOs are all ag. I misspoke. AD is atmospheric deposition, and no one is held accountable for that. Okay. So the others are ag, and so those are considered a point source, or are they considered a not point source? I'm not sure that they really break it up into point source and non-point. Okay. Okay. And then the biosolids, like they're saying there's no biosolids being spread on property in the Santa Fe Basin? In, this is the Hornsby Springs Springshed, so it's a little bit narrower. I see. Yes, of an area. No, great question. Commissioner Alfred and Commissioner Cornell. Commissioner Parisea asked the question I was going to ask, which was about the agriculture part. Commissioner Cornell. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Stacey, how are the responsibilities, when you say of the county, how are those transferred to certain municipalities, for example, the cities out west and the city of Gainesville? So great question. This next slide shows, so then they take the pollutant sources, and they give the allocations to the various stakeholders. So we're still looking at Hornsby now, so we're looking at who are the other stakeholders that have allocations in that Hornsby Springshed area. In that second column, that's just the 30% goal. I don't know why they didn't have a table that had the 100% goal. So you can see there, looking at other local governments, so the city of Alachua has an allocation very similar to ours within Hornsby Springs, so it's got high springs. And if I showed you for the Santa Fe surface water, you would also see that Columbia County, Gilchrist County, those local governments also have large allocations. But I'm just giving you one example of one small springshed. Okay, and so I saw this chart. So does that mean that Alachua County has to reduce 1,337 pounds by 2028? Correct. And when it says agriculture, is that the state? Who gets that big number? That's a great question. So it is the producers. So the individual landowners, DAX, the Florida Department of Agricultural Consumer Services, works closely with them. So sometimes, you know, we talk about DAX having the allocation, but it really is the landowners. And you'll also see on this chart that agriculture appears to be doing very well in that they've met a lot of their reductions. And the way it works for agriculture, they enroll in BMPs, best management practices, and then they get that. $36,000? Say that. Does that credit? $36,000? Yes. So they have already earned, in this spring shed, almost 37,000 pounds compared to our 76 pounds that we have achieved. And it's just a very different process that agriculture has compared to what local governments has. So nicely put. So you can see here, there are a lot of zeros on this chart. So there's a lot of people are struggling, and these numbers just came out, even though, you know, we as Alachua County, we've gotten some credit already because we knew this was coming, and we've already been doing things to be proactive. We are meeting with the local governments within Alachua County to just make sure everyone's aware of this and make sure that they're also getting credit for some of our, the things that we're doing in the county. So, Ken, so, so knowing what the best management practices are for agriculture and knowing the credits that they are receiving, if we were to do similar best management practices on county-owned lands that are in conservation, would we receive the same credit? So, it's tricky. One thing that we are looking at to get credit on our conservation lands is if we change a behavior. So if we say, you know, we do a conservation easement, and now you're going to fertilize 10 acres instead of 100, then yes, I think we could get credit for that taking 90 acres out of fertilization. But, you know, there isn't really an analogous BMP program for local governments. If we acquire, if there's a farm, a large property, I'm thinking of the Lee property, that moves from certain operations into conservation operations, would we get credit for that? So, yes, and it depends on, it depends what someone was doing, what they're going to be doing, and where it is. There's attenuation factors. It's a little challenging. It's not a straight one-for-one, but those are the types of projects that we are looking for. Thank you. So, some of the challenges that local governments, not just Alachua County, are facing is that the BMPs don't specify specific sources in project locations because it's a big area. So, it's a broad model that's coming up with these numbers. So, we have spent significant time and money to evaluate the nutrient sources in our watersheds because projects are expensive. So, we want to do projects in the right area, and we want to make sure that we're getting the right credit for it. The allocations in the spring sheds were just assigned this summer, and the numbers kept changing. We've had a lot of back and forth. They might change again with this legal lawsuit. So, that's challenging, but we know we need to reduce nitrogen and then phosphorus also in the lake. So, we are, you know, moving forward trying to identify projects. A challenge that's been hard for me personally is our fertilizer ordinance is very protective, and it prohibits nitrogen July through February. We are working with the state to try to verify that that was accounted for in coming up with our allocation for urban turf to make sure that they were accounting for that. I think, if I may, yeah. I mean, I think, Kent, to your point, this is where we should be getting the BMP credits. Like, that is, I mean, all of our landscapes that we're, you know, permitting, we're creating, and then we're, you know, that are ultimately out there on top of what used to be farmland is now putting different types of fertilizer, but still on the same land. And, and us reducing that fertilizer load by having either policies or encouraging programs should be counted. Unfortunately, they allocate a very small percentage to sort of education or programs like this at this, right now, right? It's like 10 percent or 6 percent or something. Correct. So they max out, the way that they do credit is they give you a maximum of 6 percent of your urban turf fertilizer allocation. So, you know, we've maxed out at 300 pounds of nitrogen per year, and I don't remember what watershed this was. And we've argued with them, you know, because we had hired a consultant and evaluated just one year of our fertilizer campaign and showing that, you know, we think we kept 20,000 pounds of nitrogen countywide from making it to our water body, but we're limited at that, you know, basically at, you know, just a percentage of that at that 300 pounds. But I have been talking about this, so I'm blue in the face with the state, and I don't, they do not seem to be budging on the outreach credits and seem to maybe be moving the other way, that, you know, we might need to be even doing more to maintain the 6 percent credit, at least at the staff level that we've been working with. So I'm going to run through the different watersheds just to give an update of where we are. So the Orange Creek BMAP, this is our oldest BMAP, even though it did just get updated. We have nitrogen and phosphorus allocations here, and they are for the lakes. So in Noonan, so far, we're meeting 14 percent of our phosphorus, 7 percent of our nitrogen. We are at this point right now that we just got our springs allocation. So now we've got the big picture that for the county that we are responsible for, now we know what we have to do. So we're really in this deep dive of we're doing a lot of things that we're not getting credit for, so making sure we're going to get that credit and looking at future projects and potentially policies. So in Orange Lake, just to give an example, like I mentioned, we've had to spend a lot of time and money identifying where are the nutrients, where can we do projects. And I just went back 10 years, so we've been working on this longer. I've been here for 20. So we received money in 2016 from the legislature to evaluate Little Hatchet Creek. From that evaluation, we then did two bioreactive weirs on Little Hatchet Creek with additional money from the state. Those we're actually still not getting credit for. We're working on that evaluation plan to make sure that we do get credit for those. In 2020, we spent our own money and did a Noonan's Lake Treatment Wetland Feasibility Study. That study did find some challenges to doing a wetland, and then a legislative request was not awarded, and none of our regional partners picked that up as a potential project. We are excited right now. We did get $1.1 million from DEP, and we're in the process of designing a restoration project in the Hatchet Creek watershed. So this is pictured here. That's State Road 26 at the top there. This is Water Management District property, St. John's. So we're working really closely with them because we need to make sure that this is a project that they feel good about. It is their land. But we are hoping with some simple restoration and rehydration of wetlands, we can, you know, actually meet our phosphorus allocation, and I think about 50% of our nitrogen allocation. So a big project like this would really help us, you know, move the needle within that watershed. La Calusa is also in the Orange Creek Basin. We spent our own money, again, doing a watershed analysis to identify sources and projects. We identified two tributaries that have the highest concentration because if you're going to do a project, you need to find the high concentration so that you can remove the nutrients. We need to be finding these bigger projects. Initial estimates are that we would need a 30 to 60-acre wetland, and this would basically meet our phosphorus allocation and get us about 10% of our nitrogen. Unfortunately, our public land and the district's public land isn't on the high tributaries that we need to be working on, so we are in the process of, you know, seeing is there anything that we can do on public land, or is this something that we would have to potentially purchase land to do some type of treatment wetland? So can I just, again, I mean, this might be an opportunity. I know that's an area where there's a lot of potential, like, development demand, and there's also a lot of wetlands, and so perhaps there is opportunity with mitigation opportunities to collaborate on upland areas that have treatment potential. I'm thinking particularly of the 301 corridor stuff. So anyway, just a thought there. We'll take any idea. Okay, so now looking at the Santa Fe Basin, so this shows the two spring sheds are in the light blue, and the green is the surface water there. So this is just nitrogen in this area. You know, these allocations, so now this is not adopted yet because of the legal challenge. We don't know if these numbers will change, but especially that Santa Fe River allocation, you know, is a large allocation, and we are, you know, trying to get the backup data so that we can understand where that number came from, and we have a consultant that's helping with that. So what we've done in the Santa Fe, again, we used our money to do a watershed analysis. We identified important conservation land that actually since then has been purchased, so that's great. We don't get credit for that in this allocation, but it should reduce future allocations because now that land is in conservation. We're currently investigating stormwater projects in the Post Springs watershed, so trying to figure out are there any, you know, low-hanging fruit there. We've done some projects. We upgraded two septic systems at Post Springs. We did one at Lake Santa Fe in partnership with our parks department. We have a septic rebate program. Participation's been low to date, so only getting 15 pounds of nitrogen with that for now. We're really looking at conservation easements that lead to reduced nutrients. So have we gotten people to change behaviors, or can we get them, and then we calculate that. So that's something we're actively working on, and, of course, we're getting our public outreach credit. So you can see we still have a long way to go in this watershed. Silver Springs, again, this allocation, we just received it, and that is the southeastern part of the county, and it is just nitrogen. So Silver Springs, the crediting area overlaps with portions of the Orange Creek Basin, so it is an area that we're really targeting right now because we can get credit within both basins. Again, we've got the septic rebates. So one thing that's in the silver BMAP, which is a positive, in my opinion, is it will require that when anyone does a modification or changes to their septic systems, that regardless of lot size, they will have to do an enhanced nitrogen-removing system. So that should increase interest in our rebate program and should really help us meet that goal. Enforcement may be a challenge, especially with the transfer of the septic program to DEP. You know, there's been conversations that, you know, perhaps that's something that, you know, the county would want to look at doing a septic tank ordinance to help move that along, although I think there would be issues right now with preemptions from Senate Bill 180. Amy, you have a question for me. So, Stacey, any new septics in the BMAP will require the enhanced, because the health department permits that. The health department permits it. And so in the silver basin, so just in this light green area. Is what, Cross Creek, Orange Lake, Lake La Clusa? Mm-hmm. Those, even if you were doing a modification or repair, that would have to be an enhanced system. And I think... What about a new septic tank? And I think new septics in that watershed, regardless of size, would have to be enhanced. In the rest of our county, that did not make it into the BMAP, even though it was in our comments. And in your backup, you do have all of our comments that we've provided on these updates. And when does that new rule go into effect? It was supposed to go into effect on June 27th, but now that it's being challenged, we don't know. And I have not gotten an answer from DEP. They said, as of now, they are not requiring them. So we need to see what happens with the legal challenge to that BMAP. And that requirement would, again, come through the health department. Correct. Thank you. One other project that we're looking at is unique to that watershed is Cusco Willa. Nature is in that watershed. So we're working with parks, and we're right now getting quotes to upgrade the wastewater plant there to something that is treating nutrients better. So that is one project that I actually hope to apply for a grant that is due at the end of the month. So next steps, we've created a BMAP team. EPD has really been involved with the BMAP for all these years, but really it's Alachua County's allocation. So we've created a team with facilities, parks, public works, growth management, OMB, to help identify BMAP credits and projects. So that we know if there's anything that the county is doing that we can be chipping away at that, let's do it. I have been leading a statewide effort through FLARA, the Florida Local Environmental Resource Agencies, to kind of address some of these issues with the BMAPs. Because a lot of local governments are in the same place that we are, just looking at these big numbers and feeling like our hands are often tied. We'll be identifying new projects and continue with some existing projects. Like I mentioned, you know, we might want to consider a septic system ordinance, especially once we see what happens with these BMAPs, because things might get strengthened or weakened. One thought was, if we can't have new regulations with the preemption from Senate Bill 180, maybe it's just that we have some enforcement capability within that silver basin, that then we can be helping the health department there. We have a question, Commissioner Cornell. Could we add to that BMAP team, the health department, since they are responsible for septic? Yes. I mean, without them, yeah. Yeah, okay, I think that would, do you guys agree? If they still do it? I think all will. I mean, I think it's a pretty, you talked about the conservation easements and the fact that, like, if we get reductions in nitrogen on, unlike an Aggies meant that we're collaborating on their new program, we could get those reductions. What about if we are working with a private sector farm that hasn't adopted or does better than BMPs, like, can we get credit for supporting or subsidizing efforts around that? Like, if we partnered with IFAS to do work to help support farms that want to shift to BMPs but haven't gotten there yet or that are at BMPs but want to do more? Yeah, it's a great question. And, because it's, we're, we kind of need that. We need projects that might not be on our property. And we've gotten mixed answers from DEP, but it seems like if a farm is meeting their BMPs, then they will get the credit for that. And then if they do something that is above and beyond, and that could be some type of project that, yes, we even bring some money to the table or some expertise, that we should be able to get that credit there. So that is something, you know, we are having some conversations with. Okay. Well, I'm, you know, I think that's something worth brainstorming with Cindy and others at IFAS as well as some other of our community organizations that are thinking about sort of opportunities around ag because there may be some much less expensive ways to offer some financial incentives for farms to reduce nitrogen and phosphorus loading through fertilizer choices, et cetera, et cetera. And there is a new pot. So we did meet with FDACs recently to kind of start to brainstorm that. And there's a new pot of money that we should be seeing a notification about any moment now. And it has a research pot and a project. So we're very interested to see what comes from that. And there might be able to be some partnerships there. We will come back with a proposed project list in the fall. So with the challenge, we are moving forward just thinking that we're going to have to provide a projects list by January 2026. So we're moving forward with the work. We're not stalling and waiting. I mean, we won't be necessarily doing some of the projects, but doing the plan of how we're going to get there. Question, Commissioner Alfred. Yeah, I apologize if this came up while I stepped out. But so a lot of the issues with Noonan's Lake and that nitrogen phosphorus load is from a stormwater load from the city of Gainesville. Am I correct in remembering that from EPAC? The largest load in Noonan's Lake is internal cycling. Right. But that isn't some of that historic from like, I don't know. I didn't know if we were. Yeah, the airport ditches. Right. The airport ditches, there's definitely phosphorus loading from that. And we met with the airport district just two weeks ago because they are doing some, they're doing a stormwater master plan. So they brought their engineers to the meeting and we kind of went over some of those issues there because we need some of that, them to deal with some of those issues for some of our downstream projects to be successful. So I didn't know if any of those ditches had the capability of, well, I saw a project one time where they sort of put weirs in ditches and created some retention to allow for some nutrient cycling. Is that, have we done any, looked at anything like that? I mean, we did two weirs downstream of the airport. I knew we did some. I didn't know, but those were kind of small in comparison with what the capacity is available. Yeah. And I know the city of Gainesville also has a project that they want to do on those ditches there. I think it's at a 90 degree angle. They're trying to stabilize there. They did not get funding last cycle. And unfortunately, the pot of money that would really help the Orange Creek Basin, the water quality grants, did not get any funding this year. So I know Gainesville was really hoping. Yeah. Yeah. And we are meeting with. Yeah. Yeah. No. Yeah. All right. I was just curious if that. Great question. Is that something. Probably. You know, there has been. We're also meeting with DOT. So DOT, they have met their allocations also with their fertilizer cessation. So we actually are working with them to see are there anything. Is there anything we can do for them that then we get some credit for some of their stormwater basins? So we are talking with everyone trying to find. Oh, wait. DOT is getting credit for fertilizer, but we aren't. They are because fertilizer cessation. So they were fertilizing, then they stopped. Their argument is that so farmers applying the fertilizer, stop applying the fertilizer, get the credit. DOT, stop applying the fertilizer, get the credit. For us, it's homeowners applying the fertilizer. We get a little bit of credit for telling them they can only apply at certain times of year and they can only. But they consider that just education, even though we have the quantification of how much nitrogen it's reducing. And we did put in the. We took out all our irrigation in the county and no more fertilizer. There should be some little credit there. There is a cutoff line, too, with the date. We are looking at our fields, like our soccer fields and things like that. Can we reduce fertilizer there? There's been some discussions. Do some of them go to artificial turf? And then they're not being fertilized. So, yeah, we are researching lots of different options here. Thank you for your effort. Can you quickly talk about what happens if we don't meet our allocation by the deadlines? So when we've been in the meetings with DEP, you know, they have used the enforcement word. But then they also at the same time say, you know, if we see that local governments and entities are making progress and moving forward, that, you know, we understand that it's a big challenge. So that has been a hard question, especially for some of our neighboring counties that don't have an EPD. You know, so I don't know for places like Columbia, you know, Gilchrist, you know, how to meet that is a big challenge. So there is not been very clear. It's not outlined in the documents what that will be. But, I mean, I think it's very clear to DEP that we are – we care and that we are making progress and working on it. All right. Thank you. Okay. Commissioner Cornell? Yeah. Sorry for so many questions. Are we working with Marion County on the Silver Springs Basin? That is a great question. And we just made connection with some counterparts in Marion County. But we should definitely reach out to them more. So that's a great suggestion. Thank you. If you need help with those commissioners, let me know. Okay, great. Alford. That's all right. Red County. Thank you. Thank you. All right. All right. Thanks, Adam, Madam Clerk. Thanks, sis. Okay. This will bring us to public hearings, adoption hearing for – Chair? May I talk to you about this issue? I'm a landowner next to Post Springs. Okay. And I'd like to share, like, my 44-year experience with the river with you, if I may. Sure. I'm a lay person, but the Santa Fe River is going down. The flow of the springs is going down. You probably can't do anything about that. So that concentrates whatever pollution you get. There's less water. And it's just down, down, down. Next to Post Springs, I own 14 parcels of land. I have longleaf pine and wire grass. I do everything I can to load nothing whatsoever into the river. A gentleman bought a log cabin adjacent to some riverfront property, had a 200-amp undercrown service delivered to a building that had been abandoned for 50 years that's structurally unsound. And until I called Dan and his team, it was full steam ahead. Something like this needs to be condemned. Legally, you can do it, but you don't do it. There's another house here owned by Fielding. It is likewise getting ready to collapse into the river. However, his seawall was built in 1955. Somehow or another, he continues on. This lady right here, her predecessor was a retired nurse, and I supported her plan to tear her shanty down, get rid of her cesspool next to her well and her river, and build an new with the anaerobic septic tank right here adjacent to land I own right here. She sold her property for $359,000 to a lady who never had the anaerobic septic tank permitted or expected, and who proceeded to operate and continues to operate an Airbnb on an unpermitted, unexpected septic tank for at least six years adjacent to my property in the two-year flood plane. When the river floods, it goes straight into the spring. You got to lock the gates. I don't know what the solution to this is, but a Chinese man bought some land for me because you'll never buy anything from me for political reasons, and he's done himself a big hole, and he's calling it an agricultural pound. That's in the floodplain, and that's to accept the runoff from a 6,000-square-foot structure you permitted. Now, I've done my share, but I don't really feel you guys are doing your job out here. Now, I've talked extensively with Todd Harris, and I've talked to Stephen and his staff. I would seriously consider taking over septic tank permitting and enforcement because the state is not doing a good job at all. And also, this particular area with this 1946 plant that's chopped into dozens of lots that can be developed as a matter of right, Todd Harris believes that should be a special study area to really shut this approaching disaster down before it gets any worse than it is. That this is like a potential bomb of nutrients, and you need to get a handle on it. Thank you. I think Mr. Connish is correct in their loopholes with old properties. That's something that I was approached about all the time when I had my architecture engineering firm with people that would buy properties on the waterfront that were basically uninhabitable, but because it's redevelopment, remodel, or whatever, they keep some tiny little portion of that property, or that building, build a whole new thing, and it's on property that now we would never allow someone to build a new- Non-conforming. A new- Yeah, non-conforming. Non-conforming. Yeah, we would never allow them to build a new house in that place, but because it's rebuild, renovation, it's allowed. And I think, I don't know if we are preempted at the state level by how we define remodeling or whatever. I know one house I worked on here in town, which wasn't waterfront, they literally tore the whole house down except for one corner, which they built all around, built a whole new house, and all they kept was one tiny corner, and it still qualified as a remodel. So he makes a good point there. But the transient housing on an uninspected anaerobic septic tank, that would be something you want to look at, because that's like a motel. Well, and I agree, but those are septic tanks that would not be allowed to be installed today. And so when you go ahead and you- The one I refer to is anaerobic. Okay. But they didn't, the new owner never permitted, and Todd Harris knew about it. Yeah. He only acted because of Mark and Missy Daniels. He would have let him stay out there for eternity. I hear you. Yeah. I hear you. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Matt Flirt. Hi, yes. Okay. Public hearings. Adoption hearing for county-initiated amendments to the Unified Land Development Code, ULDC, for accessory structures, including carports. And as a UL Land Development Code. Move staff for conditions. We've got to reconvene. We've got to reconvene. Okay. Second. Second. We've got a motion and a second. Those in favor of the motion, vote by the sound of aye. Aye. Aye. Motion carries. I move we reconvene as the Board of County Commissioners and approve the ordinance and authorize the tariff signature on the ordinance. Second. Are you good with that? Got a motion? Oh, okay. Second. Those in favor of the motion, vote by the sound of aye. Aye. I talked about this enough, and I read all the backups. Thank you. Thank you. We didn't take public comment on that, though. We didn't take public comment on any of that. I sure didn't. Are there any public comments? We still can. I didn't see anybody. I didn't either, but I just wanted to follow the process. But I guess the process, yes. Legally. Okay. All right. Next, that'll bring us to quasi-judicial public hearings. Winsor Personal Wireless Services Facility PWSF Special Use Permit. Mr. Chair? Yes. This is a quasi-judicial item, which means that I have my little statement. Okay. So, Mr. Chair, anyone wishing to testify or present evidence during this hearing will be sworn in prior to speaking. Through the chair, all speakers may ask questions, seek clarification, and respond to comments or presentations. Anyone presenting written materials to the commissioners for consideration must ensure that a copy of such materials is presented to the clerk for inclusion in the board's official record of the proceedings. Florida law requires that county commission's decisions in quasi-judicial actions be supported by competent, substantial evidence presented during the hearing. Competent, substantial evidence means that the board's decision is based on enough credible evidence that a reasonable person could agree. Persons presenting opinion and factual testimony may rely on any factual information in the record to support their testimony. Opinion and testimony may be given by people qualified to give such an opinion. In a moment, the clerk will ask for persons other than staff and the applicant who wish to participate as parties to identify themselves and explain to the board why they believe that they are parties. Parties are people who would be more directly or more substantially impacted by the board's decision today than the public at large. If the board grants you party status, you will be permitted a reasonable opportunity to present testimony and evidence and to ask questions. Otherwise, you will be permitted to testify as a member of the public. Do we have any party requests? Mr. Chair, we have not received any party requests. Okay. Thank you. So, Mr. Chair, the party requests were supposed to come in a number of days ago, but people are allowed to show up and ask for party status at the hearing. They need to explain to you why they're more directly or substantially impacted than the public at large and why they missed their deadline. Unless you're the party. You'll be sworn in. You'll be sworn in in a few minutes, yes, sir. Okay. By our commissioners, if you have received any experts and any communications, and if so, please disclose them. I did speak with a resident of Rensler who wanted to talk to me about their poor cell phone coverage. Where? Rensler? Rensler? Yeah. I don't know if that counts or not, but I did get that. Yeah, that counts. I have not, but I also experienced poor cell cell service. I have not. At this time, anyone wishing to address these items, if you would please stand and raise your right hand to be sworn in. Do you swear or affirm that the testimony you're about to give is the truth, the whole truth, and not the mother? Yes. Thank you. Good afternoon. Good afternoon, commissioners. This is Mady Ben-Gutar from the Electro County Growth Management Department, and this is Z25-00011, Windsor PWSF, which is Personal Wireless Service Facility, and it is a Tier 3 request, which requires a special use permit. Location is 12102 Southeast 8th Avenue. As I mentioned, this is a request for Tier 3. The section in the Land Development Code has different tiers depending on a number of factors, and this meets the Tier 3 threshold. If approved, a monopole-designed tower up to 199 feet would be allowed within an 80 by 80 foot site. The site is in the Windsor Rural Cluster in the eastern part of the county. This, as I've mentioned, is a Tier 3 request, so we will discuss it before the county commission. As it is under 200 feet, it's not required to be lit, and the applicant has proposed a monopole design, and staff has proposed a condition for monopole design as part of the special use permit conditions. The PWSF code recognizes monopole design as having less of an adverse visual impact. And we have retained as part of the special use permit application an RF consultant to conduct independent review of the proposal and analyze the existing coverage gap. And he is here today to present his findings. This location map shows the site. It's to the east of Noonan's Lake in the Windsor Rural Cluster. This aerial image shows the approximate location on the parcel, and on the eastern edge, that's County Road 234. And southeast 8th Avenue comes up to the edge of this parcel. Future land use map shows that this has a Rural Cluster land use designation, and there is preservation land use to the south. Outside of the Rural Cluster is Rural Ag, future land use. The zoning map here shows a large percentage of Windsor with the R1C, single-family residential. Rural clusters have historically smaller lots than found elsewhere in the rural part of the county, so that R1C zoning corresponds with that Rural Cluster land use designation. This site, however, is outside that area, and it's got agricultural zoning. The site plan here shows the entry from southeast 8th Avenue along an easement, and then the lease area is within a landscape buffer, different tenants that will be there, and then the tower in the middle of the leased area. And this site plan is shown with the elevation, the tower, the compound that will be fenced on the ground, the different antennae that will be towards the top of the tower, and then the lightning rod that is at a maximum of 199 feet. This map shows nearest PWSF to the site, and that scion-colored circle is the two-mile radius from the site. So as you can see, there are no existing towers within the proposed site. Now I have our RF consultant can show a few slides about his findings on this application. Good afternoon. Hi, I'm an independent third-party consultant hired by Latjewa County, registered for professional engineering in the state of Florida. Been doing this type of work for probably 20 past 20 years. So the main thing the county hires me to do is to review the technical information that the applicant submits to verify that basically what they're presenting is true and factual, that we're not getting smoke and mirrors from the applicant saying they need a tower somewhere, they don't need a tower. We didn't necessarily analyze any lower heights this time because they kept the tower at a pretty low height for a rural area. But in the past, we have, you know, made sure that, you know, we don't need a 250-foot tower. You can just use a 200-foot tower or things like that. But that wasn't the case in this analysis. Like he showed earlier on the map, there are no tall structures out there. Definitely not within two miles. I think it was about two-and-a-half miles or three-and-a-half miles to the closest tower. T-Mobile is the proposed anchor tenant for this tower, the first person that will be going on the tower when and if it's built. And all of those towers around there, T-Mobile is currently on those towers, which you'll see here when we get to the next slide with the coverage maps. There's the same circle from my analysis. I search the FCC database, other tower databases, access to private and public databases where towers are. Google Earth is a really good tool. If you've looked long enough, you can see shadows and find towers that may not even be registered. Towers under 200 feet don't necessarily have to be registered with FCC. So there could be a 150-foot tower out there that's not registered. So sometimes those sneak under the radar, so to speak. So, again, we're mainly here to validate the coverage that the applicant submits, all the technical information. We go through that. We have our own coverage software to validate what they've presented. So what you're looking at is on the left is what my coverage modeling software says. On the right is what the applicant presented. They're not going to be exact. They're going to be close, should be close. Really, it's just for me to say, yeah, what they're presenting makes sense, that their engineers aren't doing anything nefarious. And they presented multiple maps. This is the worst-case scenario because they deploy in multiple bands. This is one specific frequency band of the proposed deployment. And, of course, this is without the proposed tower there. So, like you can see, all of those towers that are existing and are surrounding that area, they're currently in use. So then when they put the new tower there, this is the improved coverage in the area of need. So with that, based on what they presented and the coverage gap, I would recommend approval of their special use application and photo simulations. Thank you. So as part of a special use permit application for a PWSF, applicants are required to submit at least four photo simulations of locations for a visual impact analysis. So the applicant actually provided eight locations, and they are as follows, four that are along County Road 234, one from the north, one from the south, and one from the same parcel, within the parcel. So these are shown here in the next few slides, and this red circle indicates about a half mile, so most of these are within a half mile of the site. I can go through them all, but I think mainly the one that you'll see is from the actual site that you'll see a noticeable visual representation of what the tower looks like. So this is one of the locations from close to southwest, sorry, to County Road 234, and it is not very visible. You can see maybe if you make out through those trees, the top of the tower. This is also from County Road 234, about a little more than a quarter mile away. This is from where the Windsor Fire Station is, and you are not able to see it from the Windsor Fire Station. Similarly, from the south, and then this is from within the parcel, what it would look like on the edge of the subject parcel. So this slide shows our bases to approve the special use permit. Policy 521 is for locational criteria for institutional uses. Objective 5.5 of the future land use element on wireless service facilities and their design. Policy 581 of the future land use element. Also for PWSF that recognizes there's a need for balancing economic development, environmental protection, and minimizing adverse visual impacts. Policy 712 of the future land use element, which is for zoning criteria of approval. Policies 1.2.4 and 1.2.5 of the capital improvements element for adequate public facilities. Section 40454C, that's the PWSF code and the land development code, and specifically to minimize adverse visual impacts. And section 402.124 of the land development code, which has criteria to review special use permits. The proposed conditions are on this slide, if you have any questions about any of them in particular. Our recommendation is that County Commission approve Z25000-00011 with the conditions and bases of our staff report. The Planning Commission heard this in June, and they also approved the recommended approval of this application and made a further recommendation, which relates to removal of obsolete or abandoned towers. We do have in our code currently such a condition to remove them if they've been obsolete or abandoned for 18 months. However, what they recommended is that we look at our land development code and have a possible amendment for a structural removal of bond. Some other counties in Florida have a similar kind of bond that would require in the event that a tower is abandoned, that we have that figured out up front. And that's our staff presentation. I can take any questions. Commissioner Alfred and then Commissioner Cornell. I just was going to thank you for the presentation and move staff's recommendation. I was just going to second it. I think the recommendation when we do a ULD update makes a lot of sense. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Do we want to hear from the applicant? I think he stood up early. He wants to talk to some of it, yeah. Yeah. Appreciate the time, and no, I think your staff did an excellent job, as usual, so thank you. Okay. Are there any citizens' comments on the motion? Seeing none, back to the board. Those in favor of the motion, vote by the sign of aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed, same sign. Motion carries. Yeah, I think folks in Windsor are going to be very happy to have social insurance. Thank you all. Thanks for waiting on. We've got to ask you about pool line. Pool line, I guess not. Mr. Chair. Opioid money was pulled. Oh, it was? Okay. Mr. Chair, this will bring us to items pulled from consent. Okay, that's what I'm going to ask. Item 4B, approval to retain special counsel for insulin litigation. Commissioner Cornell. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So I had asked that this be pulled. In talking to the attorneys during my agenda review, I had asked, you know, how this had come up, and they had said that the counsel that's doing our opioid had recommended this, which I think is great. When we did do the opioid, we had, I had a number of folks, local firms, call me saying, we wish y'all would have called us. And so what I would like to do instead of approving the retaining of the special counsel is I'd like to move that we ask the attorney's office to put out an RFP for potential insulin litigation, return back to this board with the appropriate ranking of any interested firms, which obviously would include this one. I would leave it to the attorney's office to develop a ranking criteria, which would include but not be limited to the firm's expertise in this area, other counties and cities that they are represented, and anything else that would benefit a lot to a county. Did you make a commission of prison? That's a motion. I guess I have a question before I get, I guess it hasn't gotten seconded, but I guess my question is typically when we retain special counsel for something like this, we're part of sort of a joint of, what is the right word? I'll come up with it in a minute. But anyway, when many, many people are suing at the same time, right, class action, you know, so it's a litigation that's working with counsel that may be working on several cases at the same time. I don't, I'm just interested to understand what the impacts would be of like a local firm that is doing just for us versus working with special counsel, maybe working with several counties. So, Mr. Chair, this particular firm that we were recommending is currently representing 33 jurisdictions in seven states, six states, three cities in, well, three jurisdictions in Florida, and that is their model. Their model is to represent a lot of plaintiffs in multi-state litigation. They fund it. They fund the costs. They have in-house, not only in-house counsel who are licensed to practice in the jurisdictions they need to practice in, but they have in-house experts as well as contract experts. So it's sort of a, they do it with that many jurisdictions, and therefore it makes economic sense for the firm to do it. There's also power numbers. If we put out an RFP, those would probably be some of the factors that we'd be looking at. We'd be looking at, you know, how much influence could they possibly have in the jurisdiction. In these multi-district litigations, there are a number of firms that come at it from different angles, and a firm representing one entity is not going to have that much influence in the litigation settlement. But that would be part of what we'd consider, and if they, if you'd like us to go out, we have gone out in the past. We went out for the special counsel for the Charter Review Commission. We went out for the, your current magistrate, code magistrate. We have done that. Just to be clear, legal services are exempt under your, from competitive solicitation under your procurement code. Doesn't mean we can't do it. I don't, I'm not aware that we're under a big rush. Sometimes, um, I mean, the code recognizes that legal services are unique, and that you don't buy them necessarily based on the cheapest, um, and they're not fungible. That law firms are not fungible, and that sometimes we're in a rush. I'm not aware that we're in a rush at this time. If you want us to do this, we're happy to. Go to Cornell. Yeah, and the local firm that I talked to said that they would actually join with a national firm out of Atlanta who does a lot of this work, and so I just think it's good to see who wants to do it and who can do it the best. Maybe they'll win the RFP. Don't know. Second, I know they're paying out money. They did for the, um, the opioid that came to family members that I had. I wish I'd been a part of that. Like, I really had, wish I had been a part of that. So I know that it's money's coming. You just have to make sure that, you know, people know, the government knows where to send it to, or whoever it is that's actually going to be doing the payout. So, second, there's money out there. And why wouldn't we go with multiple that we already have identified as working with multiple? I mean, we might. It's just they may not be the best one for us. I don't know. We could say that with every single contract on our consent. I mean, we go, we do the, I mean, I don't, okay. I don't understand why. I'm not willing to do it. Who should they offer it? No, they're saying they already have somebody willing to do it. And he's saying get somebody different to do it. Do an RFP for it. I thought you were saying. I don't know. I just think it's going to slow down the process. But I thought you were doing something. What I had asked the attorney is, could we do an RFP? They said we could. Will it result in a different result? Don't know. Unless you put it out there, don't know. We still wouldn't know. We will never know what the result will be because it has to go to court under whoever we choose. And so we don't, we really can't look into the future to know how successful any particular effort would have been or would have differed under different, you know, under a different firm. I just, I don't know. I feel like we have a pretty busy legal department. And I kind of trust that, you know, they're going to take all these things into consideration when they choose a firm to begin with. I guess I kind of trust them for that. They didn't choose this firm. This firm came to them and asked if they could do it. And they just said, they just said, okay. And so what I'm saying is, is let's put it out there. Out there. You know. Okay. All right. I see your point. Yeah. They can hook. I mean. Yes, just be fair. And maybe they'll be the best firm. They're the best firm. Great. All right. I'm with, all right. I'll support it. Just wanted to make sure I understood that. Mary Helen seconded it. Mary Helen seconded it. I did. Okay. I'm sorry. I didn't hear. All right. Okay. All right. We've got a motion and a second. Are there any further discussion to the motion that's on the floor? Are there any citizen comments to the motion that's on the floor? Hearing none, seeing none, back to the board. Those in favor of the motion, vote by the sign of aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed, same sign. Motion carries. Okay. Do you all want to do commissioner, attorney, comments and manager comments now? Yeah. So at the end, we can depart. Manager, do you have any comments? I do have. Attorney, do you have any comments? I do not have any comments today. All right. Commissioner Wheeler, do you have any? Commissioner Prizia? Yes. Just one. We approved our farm, the farm grant, small farms grants on consent, which is very exciting. Another great group, I think, of applicants receiving resources to support expanding economic opportunity for our ag community. We had 64 applications, which is great. We were able to award, I think, 29 or something in that neighborhood. I don't have it right in front of me at the moment, but just exciting stuff. But when I originally spoke with the manager, we had thought that this had another, like, that we had continued the funding for this. But it turns out that it had not been included in the budget to continue the funding for this. But I would like to. I think the other thing that I wanted. So I wanted to ask if you guys are good with sort of giving them direction to continue the funding for this. And then also, but also to give staff the flexibility as they get the farmer's market surveys back and they get more information back from the community to maybe bring us back recommendations for adjustments to the program based on the experience of the past two years and data they get from the community. Great. I'd like to hear from them, too, if any of these farms could tell us what they're doing. I mean, you know, I'm seeing applications, but it would be really nice to have some feedback, you know, from these folks, too. I guess, Mr. Chair, if the board approves this, we'll just make sure that $100,000 is in the budget so you won't have to worry about it on Thursday. We'll just go ahead and include that because you're doing kind of the final things on Thursday this week. And so that'll be in there. And then staff will come back to you before it puts out. If anything else, staff has some really good thoughts on how to expand the opportunities with those funds. And so they're going to want to bring that back to you. But we'll make sure that that's in there if the board approves this motion. I have a video of some of those. So, yeah, so I guess we have a motion in a second. Thank you. Yeah, we've got a motion in a second. Are there any further discussion to the motion? Are there any citizen comments to the motion? Back to the board. Those in favor of the motion will by the sign of aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed, same sign. Motion carries. Commissioner Cornell. And we're going to bring up the process? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I just, I guess two, I have two other things. One is I just wanted to ask if we know or if we can refer to attorneys if we have any ability to regulate the, I guess, surveillance cameras use in our jurisdiction. So like flock cameras or other cameras that are being used for surveillance in, rather it's private sector or if it's public sector, there's more and more proliferation of these surveillance cameras and private companies and oftentimes the data is retained and then sold because unlike us being regulated on how long we have to hold data and how we have to delete data and how quickly we have to delete that data, that same, those same rules don't apply to these private companies. So, no, I'm talking about like Home Depot hangs up flock cameras for surveillance of their parking lots and then that data is surveilling everybody in that parking lot and then collecting that data and then selling that data. Ring cameras are also an issue because people have them aimed at people's bedroom windows and things like that. Yeah, just sort of, I mean, I'm just interested to understand what regulatory authority we have in that. Mr. Chair, we are, we are happy to look into that. I don't know what flock is. Lock is a company. It's an example. It's just one company. But any sort, it's sort of the online surveillance, online surveillance cameras. I mean, surveillance cameras that are hung up in parking lots, general things that are not used by government that are regulated by government entities on how long they have to keep the data and how they have to provide that data to the public and how it's deleted and how it's managed. That's my concern. Privacy issue. Privacy issue. Are these security cameras? Security cameras. In a public place? Yep. Okay. Thank you. And then, yeah, the last thing was we had talked about earlier today just the processes and I just wanted to refer to staff to look into, HR staff to look into the processes around involving employees in reviewing applicants for a specific job and creating, you know, sort of steps for that so that we can be clear about what that process is in the future. Specifically internal candidates. Internal candidates, yeah. Well, I think for all candidates, I mean, I think it has to be the same, right? So if they're going to review internal candidates, they're going to look at their applications and they give a presentation, they're going to give a review on them to do the same with the other candidates, yeah. Okay. Got a motion in a second. Any further discussion to the motion that's on the floor? Are there any citizen comments to the motion that's on the floor? Back to the board. Those in favor of the motion, vote by the sign of aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed, same sign. Motion carries. Okay. Do you want to do the data center or do you want me to do that? You can do it. Commissioner Winnell? Or the data center? We did that in, we did that in land use. We already referred that. We already did that motion. Well, it's not a motion and we gave it to them. They're looking at it. They're going to bring us back recommendations. Okay. That's one of mine. Is it my turn? Yeah, go ahead. Okay. So I just have two. There was an accident on Archer Road in front of Jordan Glare, in front of Jordan Glenn. And I know we contacted the D.O.T. Michelle, do we need a motion to refer that you contact D.O.T. about that intersection or what are we doing on that? Because it's a school information. I know some parents are planning on coming to the MTPO meeting. Which was my suggestion when they contacted me that that's really probably a good discussion at an MTPO meeting because they will have FDOT staff present in the room as well. And then if this board makes that a priority issue, that can be addressed through that process. I see Jeff coming in. Do you need any direction prior to that MTPO meeting? I will be at the MTPO meeting, but I'll be late. So if it doesn't come up, will you all just bring that up? Mr. Chair, yeah, I wasn't aware of it. But we'll have staff just look into it and be prepared. And, yes, that's a good suggestion because FDOT staff will be on it. I think we want to recommend a turn lane or some sort of safety. It shut down traffic out of Archer for half a day. Yeah. Okay. It was a bad accident. We have the same concerns of the school zone out there in Elachua, and also the Krishna School. Yeah. That's DOT Road, too. Okay, the other thing I had, guys, I don't know if you received an email that Missy sent late yesterday. It was regarding the temporary use permits for staff versus board authority, as well as potential events for recurring events for rural properties. Did you all see that? Yes. So, yeah, and so, you know, what I would like to do is refer this to staff that we schedule for a future meeting, this temporary use permits for what staff's authority is versus the board's authority. I think right now they just copied what fire rescue did, and that makes a lot of sense. But if we are having large events regularly, I think that should come before the board. But I want it to be a board discussion. And simultaneously, because of what's going on out in Melrose, I would like to refer that the staff look at consider initiating a special area plan for the Melrose Rural Cluster, which would also include, you know, the proposed Wildflower Music Park site that lies just outside the rural cluster. I brought this up in 2015 because there was a group of citizens that were interested in a special area plan out in Melrose. At that time, we had a discussion about the rural cluster, and so we never did a special area plan because we did this exercise with the rural cluster. But with what's happening out there now, I think it's actually the perfect time for us to refer to staff this idea about bringing back a recommendation to potentially do a special area plan out in Melrose. And so I would like to make that motion to refer that to staff. What that would look like? I guess the question I have, though, is on the special exception, like, we do have that requirement. If they're going to have, like, we have very specific things that they can do for a special use permit. If they are going to do things outside of that, they have to bring it before. They're going to have things on weekdays and after hours. And, like, we already have a process where it comes to us. Mr. Chair, yeah, and I think if you do find that email from this, it goes into some detail. But if there's overnight camping, overnight stay, if it's more than three days, then it does come to the board. Like, for instance, you saw the Hawk Town Medieval Fair when it was in the unincorporated area because it had overnight stay. Yeah, and so what I would like to do if this board's okay is refer to staff to bring back what would it look like to do a special area plan for the Melrose Rural Cluster Area, which would include the potential Wildflower Music Park. And then if we want to do that, then we would go ahead and move forward and direct that. And at that time, also discuss what Tier A events could look like under staff's approval versus the board's approval. Second. Got a motion. Second. Are there any further discussion to the motion that's on the floor? Are there any citizen comments to the motion that's on the floor? Those in favor of the motion, vote by the sign of aye. Aye. Those opposed, same sign. Motion carried. Commissioner Alford. I have a few things. The first one is it's come to my attention that we have the ability to, similar to how we do fertilizer regulations, we can also have some amount of regulation of herbicides. There are many folks that are putting herbicides on public lands, like in the city of Archer. They use herbicides on the parks. And in doing so, they've made mistakes and actually killed trees, trees that we planted. And so I would like to refer to staff, you know, what a herbicide regulation might look like in terms of providing, you know, training or requiring training for the folks that are actually applying the herbicides. Second. I think it's actually already required. I think there are actually requirements, and you have to get a handler's permit to be able to apply herbicides and pesticides in public spaces. So there's already requirements on that front. But, yeah, I mean, we can refer to staff, and they can bring us back what those requirements are. But, I mean, we have to take a class. We have to get the handler's license. You have to get training on personal protective gear and labels and the whole nine yards. Yeah, I know that there's stuff out there, but I also know that I don't know if it's not being enforced or if there is some, you know, exemption for smaller towns or what. I just don't know what's going on. So you're talking about a regulation that would require them to opt out, countywide regulation that would require the municipality to opt out. Yeah. Because we could do that. Yeah, we could. And then they would have to opt out of that. I just think it's worth looking into because, you know, herbicides have gotten so complicated, and, you know, the label of something will change. I mean, the contents of a labeled product will change, which means application, you know, stuff changes. But, you know, somebody goes and buys it, and it's got the same brand name as they bought last year. You know about personal use and institutional use? Well, I don't think – no, I'm saying that in institutional use, people that are trained are not – If they're not being trained. I just think we need to look at it. I'm just asking, like, we have the fertilizer rinses for homeowners. Are you talking about for homeowners? I don't know how far we can take it. You know, I just don't know enough. Public spaces are the most important thing. I don't know what we can do other than that. Okay. I know the herbicide lobby is big, so I don't know what we can do. Right now, we don't use Roundup. Interestingly, you can't hardly buy Roundup anymore. I mean, our staff does not – You can buy Roundup, but you can't buy just that one thing. You don't. Chris does not use Roundup. Chris doesn't use Roundup. Okay. I don't use Roundup. I don't either. But it – because Roundup has changed in formulation as I understand it. Anyway, I just think it's important to understand. That's the first thing. The second thing is I've gotten a bunch of citizen complaints about land, about the site for the proposed concrete plant that was supposed to go into Archer. They are doing major, major land work, like a three-story high pile of dirt and a very, very deep hole. And I am concerned about dust and other things from that work, and I'm concerned about if what they're doing matches up with any sort of permit that they got. But I've gotten a lot of complaints from citizens, and I wanted to ask staff if they would mind driving out there and taking a look at what they're doing because it's – I feel like there's environmental issues happening there. I mean, it definitely could be an erosion ordinance when we have requirements. Oh, absolutely there. Yeah. Water erosion. But I have not seen that amount of earth work happening on such a small space since – I don't know when. It's monstrously huge. Can they withdrew their application? They are moving their concrete plant indoors. Inside, yes. There's not been any permits issued by the city commission. It's just kind of happening. Yeah, there's weird stuff happening. And I'm not sure that the road that is being built out to the main road has been approved by DOT, even though they said they did. Because last time I checked, it had not been approved. Yeah. Second. Okay. I just want somebody to look into that, please. Okay. The third thing is, is I've also – I have two motions on the floor. So far. Oh, is that a motion? We'll all three at the same time? Sorry, I forgot I was doing motions. I was thinking I was doing staff recommendations to look into stuff. So I'll let you deal with a motion if you want to do it. Two-part motion? Okay. Two-part motion with herbicides and Arnold construction. Okay. That's both EPD, right? Yeah. Okay. So any further discussion to that motion? Are there any citizen comments to that motion? Back to the board. Those in favor of the motion, vote by the sign of aye. Aye. Those opposed, same sign. Motion carried. Sorry. I need to eat lunch. I need to eat lunch. That's all right. The third one is about the cottage neighborhood on Williston Road, and I've gotten a bunch of citizen concerns about that, mostly because work has stopped, and the work that was done, and so my question is not necessarily about just that, but about all projects where work stops and citizens are left in this, like, state of half construction where, you know, their road is being affected by the construction that took place with the, you know, idea that it would be fixed when the construction is finished, but in the meantime, they're dealing with a mess, and nothing's happening on the property. Are they running out of money? I have no idea what's going on with them, but nothing's happened in, like, six months over there, so. I don't know. I don't know anything about this one. Yeah. I just know I've gotten complaints from citizens, so I didn't know. It's on Williston Road? It's on Williston Road. It's a cottage neighborhood. Remember the one we had? When we approved on Austin. Yeah, it's on Williston Road, right. It's near Idlewild. Remember the cottage neighborhood that we had so many discussions about? Yes. Oh, yeah. It's that one. Anyway. Yes. How are you here, Chris Dawson? Principal Planner Development Services. I know they've submitted building permits, and sometimes on a site like that, they're going to kind of build it all at once. It definitely would have had a right-of-way use permit, so we can definitely ask Public Works to check on that and just make sure the site is secure. Okay. I just, you know, they're asking me because they're having to drive through all this must-up road stuff to get out. We can have that looked up. And I didn't know if we, so there would, that would be something that we could always ask about for any, that's a standard that any development has to. I guess what I would say is, you know, they're supposed to maintain the county's infrastructure and compliance with whatever right-of-way permit they have. So it shouldn't be, you know, kind of permanently closed, I guess. All right. Thank you. Well, I have you. Can I ask another question on that front? So if that's the case, then you'd love that. Like if a development stalls for a period of time, like how long is their building permit active? Like how, like if they get halfway through the construction and they run out of money, what happens if they have an active permit? Like how often? There's probably two different answers. So one of those is sort of the site work part of that. Probably like a couple years. I mean, they're required to maintain their site, though, in a way that it doesn't impact properties off-site. So they have their stormwater pollution prevention plan. So all of their runoff, anything like that, has to be contained in the site. They're really supposed to continue sort of in good faith. Okay. We know that sometimes that doesn't happen. In terms of building permits and their expiration, so building permits under the Florida Building Code are good for six months from the date of your last inspection. So they might expire. We have that in other places. But there's also extensions now under the statute, so not very much expires anymore. They kind of go on and on for a while. Generally, again, we look for buildings to be secured and, you know, not a hazard to the public. Okay, great. Thank you. All right. Thank you very much. All right. My last one, are you guys familiar with Smart 9-1-1? It's already done, but we're keeping it for another year. We're keeping it for another year. But I'm glad that, and I just found out that that was happening, but I had been in multiple conversations with different folks about the Smart 9-1-1 system, and I think this is an opportunity to tell folks that it's out there. Please register for it and use it, because I think if we have more people using it, then it will, you know, rise to the point where staff would never consider canceling it. But for folks that don't know what it is, it's when you dial 9-1-1, if you are registered in the system, a bunch of information can pop up on the screen on the 9-1-1 operator's console, and it will tell them anything from specific, you know, medical needs that you might have to where the key is and you're at so that they can get in the door if you live alone and you might be on the floor of your bathroom. So it can have a lot of really good information on it. I think it's a really good system. I know for me personally, I take care of my brother. My brother has a seizure disorder. Someone having a seizure can look very much like someone having a drug overdose reaction, and the fact that they might immediately and rightly, you know, assume that it could be a drug problem can delay the treatment that he might need for having a seizure. So I think that, you know, those times, these kinds of things are very life-saving for some people, and I just want to think very carefully before we consider getting rid of a service like that in the future. Yeah, I just want to let folks know, like, we got a call from some social services organizations that use Smart 9-1-1 and have been promoting Smart 9-1-1 as something that can be used for a lot of these special needs populations for just the points you mentioned, because you can put all your information in, and it only pops up when they call 9-1-1 for a 9-1-1 responder. And so, and we have a current contract, and they're working on a whole region to get all the counties around us to also have contracts, because it will show up on those 9-1-1s, too, so if you're traveling. And they are. I think Marion County. Marion County just signed one. Yeah, Bradford, I think, or Levy. Anyway, so they asked that we just, there was talk about, I think, like there was buzz about us possibly getting rid of our contract, but I don't think we are, and they also volunteered to help push more people getting on in Elatch County. It's really about 6,000 people registered currently, so, but maybe it's something we can also ask Mark to, like, think about doing another press release on and things like that. That's what I was going to bring up, and UF Health actually is interested in promoting it right now as well, because, you know, the better information that an emergency EMS brings in, the better information they have, the better information the emergency room has, which can actually really save them a lot of money and time. So, anyway, I'm glad that I was going to bring it up, and I found out just a little while ago that we are extending it for one more year, but apparently we've had it for, like, 10 years, and it's been extremely underutilized, but I'll, you know, also hasn't been promoted. I think it needs to be promoted. All right, thank you. That's all I have. I have enough. Well, I have one more thing. Okay. So, I guess I'm interested in having a conversation about us releasing the shape files on our district maps and asking for public submissions of district maps before we finalize a conversation on what we're doing with regards to districts, voting districts. So, I move we open a public process for three weeks for folks to be able to submit maps and release the shape files that were provided by our consultant, Dan Smith. Could you repeat the motion? I move that we open a public process for people to submit public maps regarding voting districts and release the shape files provided by our consultant, Dan Smith. Yeah, I'll second that for discussion. So, first of all, I think, you know, the law of the land is we're currently elected at large. So, we got a memo from the attorney regarding that. Second, you guys, I don't know if you read the Main Street Daily, but I think that the maps submitted by our consultant have a number of problems, and I'm not really interested in many of those. I'm perfectly happy, though, to receive from the public maps. I don't know what that process would be, but I'll support it. Second. I know we're voted at large, but we do still represent districts. We have to live in those districts. And I think, you know, I'll just say, as one commissioner, you know, my experience having to run as a district commissioner was very, very different than me running at large. And it really made me value what it means to be a district commissioner. And while I'm still very supportive of the at-large process, I think that the districts really matter because you represent that constituency. And in our current maps, I don't think that, okay, let's just put it this way, in my district, it's really hard for me to represent students from the University of Florida, middle-class Americans or people in our community who live in town of Teoga, retirees who live in West End, farmers who live in Newberry. Like, it's a very, very, very diverse population. In some ways, that's a really good thing because it represents a lot of different diversity in our population. But also, when there's a real issue, you know, that's a neighborhood issue or a community issue, it makes it really hard for you to really dig in and understand those issues sometimes. And so, to me, having better maps that better represent our community and the way that our community is evolving makes sense. And I think that at least looking at what the public thinks about that and thinking about what options we might have for redistricting makes sense. Where would they be submitted to? That's a, staff can figure that out. I don't know where they would be submitted to or how they would be submitted. But my goal would be that we would release the shapefile so they would have easy access to create the map so we wouldn't be getting, like, wonky whatever file types. Mr. Chair, I was just going to say from a technical standpoint, we can receive the shapefiles and we can have a mapping application that can display them and have a website up if that's the desire. I did want to say, though, to your comment, Anna, about having maps that represent different types of constituencies, in an urban, suburban, rural, whatever, while that allows us to serve that population better, it would put us more at odds with each other. I think it, well, having, yeah, I don't know. I feel like, I've seen the, I feel like the commission operates just a little bit differently since we've gone to the single-member district voting. And I kind of think that that would be, and I'm not saying I'm against it, it's just an observation. I think that might be even, we would be more at odds, I think, if we were representing different, you know. Well, I'm not recommending we go to single-member districts. We're at large now. I hope that we win our lawsuit and we stay at large. I agree with you. I just think the districts that we represent might better represent the way that our community, a way that our county is evolving. And I mean, we may not. I don't disagree. I just think it would be, I think it, I think it would be interesting, you know. Yeah. I think that's, but I appreciate your motion. Thank you. Well, I would only add that when we were at large and if it wasn't in my district, I would always ask them to go to the commissioner that's in their district to talk to them and that if they didn't get anywhere with them, please come back and I will help you. That's what I used to do. So I'm just saying, so just to add that because I think that that's the way you do it. Yeah. Yeah, so to be fair, you know, because I don't want to step in somebody's, that's his district or her district, I don't want to jump in and start helping somebody and then create an issue with you and saying, wait, why you didn't call me about it, you know. Depending on what it is, you know. Yeah, yeah, but still, still, but it's, you know, giving respect. Because I did take that call from Windsor about, oh, you represent everybody right now. Right. You represent the entire county. County, right, yeah. I believe we always will. Yeah, but I just always gave respect to that. So anyway, so we have a motion and a second on the floor. Are there any further discussions? Are there any citizen comments to the motion that's on the floor? Back to the board. Those in favor, I'd sign it by. Aye. Aye. Those opposed, same sign. Motion carries. We reconvene until five or one. Thank you.