Regular Meeting @ 11:30 a.m. - Aug 26, 2025

I'd like to call to order a Lachua County Board of County Commissioners meeting for August 26, 2025 at 11 30 a.m. Mr. Chudet, today we have the Pastor Brian Wilson of Northeast Baptist Church here to give him the invocation. If you'd like to come to the podium, if ever, would you please stand for the invocation? It'll be followed by the Pledge of Allegiance, so if you'll please remain standing after that. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we come to you today with grateful hearts to be a part of this great county that you've entrusted to us. Father, today may you remind us that we are servants of our community, entrusted with the responsibility to lead with fairness, integrity, and wisdom. And Lord, we know that while knowledge and intellect can come from man, true wisdom comes from you. And so today in the discussions and decisions that are going to be made, God, may you give us your wisdom to do not what's best for ourselves, but what's best for the greater good of our community. Father, I pray that today you would remind us amidst the discussions that are going to take place that of those that we've been called to serve here in our community, the individuals, the families, the schools, the teachers, the children, law enforcement, God, so many people count and rely on the decisions that are going to be made today. And so God, I just pray you guide us in wisdom in that. And while there's going to be a great deal of passion, no doubt, around various aspects of the discussion, may you remind us today to operate in dialogue with compassion for one another. Father, we want your blessing on this county. Lord, we want to make Alachua County greater today than it was yesterday. And so we ask for your help in doing that. And Lord, again, just remind our hearts as we engage in this meeting today that we are servants. God, help us to serve in the same way that you served us in sending your only son, Jesus Christ, to die on the cross for the sins of humanity. Father, would you be glorified in all that's done? We'll give you the praise for it in Jesus' name. Amen. I love you and I, with liberty and justice for all. Mr. Chair, that will take us to the approval of the agenda. And I'm not sure if there are any amendments that need to be made to today's agenda. Yes, Mr. Chair, I would request that the item, it's under Human Resources. This is, sorry, I'm going to verify the number, 6A, nope, sorry, 6B, which is the 2025 revisions to the non-bargaining pay plan to add the sports and events manager. If we could hear that under the item for the sports and events center in action, which is the first action item, if we could take that at the same time, it makes sense to have them together. Move approval of the agenda with the suggested change. I second. Are there any further comments to the motion? Are there any citizen comments to the motion? Good morning. Thank you. You're voting consent agenda also? Yes. Okay. So I wanted to ask attention to an item on consent where you're looking at the rules for several boards, including the equity committee, where we had requested to have a youth member. And I want to call special attention to that because that's a voice that really needs to be there. Plus, I know that there are some erudite, brilliant, fearless young people. In fact, I want to suggest Coyone Foster. Oh, wait a minute. I just anagrammed his name. Forrest. Coyone Forrest. As one example of one of the super young people we need in that. You know, and most of us are old people in that. We're chicken. We need some fearless young people. Thank you. Thank you. Anthony Johnson, Mr. Chair. I think the county manager said that item about the recruiting department that was going to be rolled into the action item. Is that what I heard? Yes. No, it's the FTE. FTE. Right. The department issue is the notification of my administrative order. So the recommendation for that particular consent item was to hear the county manager out. I don't have the ruling before me, but in the consent agenda, that item. So there's going to be another meeting for that specifically for the department? Is that what this is? No. No. I just have to notify the board in an administrative order, and then they have 30 days if they wish to bring it up. And this is about creating the department. Yes. That's. So the recommendations on that. I wish anybody could read the recommendations in this consent agenda, what it says. I printed it, but I left it in my car. It says hear the manager's proposal. Yeah, hear the manager's proposal to create a department. So when will we do that? When will we hear the manager's proposal to create the department? Is that today with item one? Is that what you're saying? We're doing that today. Is that part of the first action? Okay. Right. Okay. Yes. There it is. That's in the first action. That's what. That's not a. That's not the department item. That's the division within the department. Great. So there is a separate department item. It's to be added to the discussion. No, there's an administrative order. My administrative order creating tourism and economic development, moving it from an office to a department, it is still the same, is an administrative order on consent that is my authority to do subject to your veto, which you have 30 days to do. Commissioner Prezio. I mean, I just wanted to say on this item, I, you know, I had, I had thought that we had already approved the moving, moving of this to a department when we approved the creation of economic development and tourism merging. And so I was glad to see this on the agenda because I thought it had happened by administrative order when we did it. So we just realized we have to do the paperwork side. So it has happened even though it's on the consent agenda today, but it's already happened. So that's just, that's what, that's what it appears you're saying. And it's confusing because the item on the action item today is very similar to the consent item today. And normally you don't do, you don't mix the two. So it seems as though the two are being mixed in ways that kind of confusing to, I'm not the smartest guy in Alachua County. I admit that, but it seems confusing. Good morning. Good morning. My name is Marilyn Poland. I am the beloved wife of a man who has Parkinson's, dementia, and Lewy body disease. He's 91 years old. He sat in a chair for the first year after his diagnosis, getting stiffer and stiffer because Parkinson's has two varieties, the shaky, shaky, like Michael J. Fox has, and the stiffening one. After a year, I found out about MV Transportation and I learned about Al's Place. Al's Place is affiliated with the University of Florida and they take these people and they exercise them, they entertain them, they treat them lovingly, and then they come home with MV Transportation. MV Transportation is geared to helping all kinds of disability and the bus drivers are specially trained. I understand because I live in High Springs, I'm not eligible anymore. What happened? We pay our taxes. We do everything right. How come the bus can't come to me? We've had it for a year and a half. It's been phenomenal. Please take another look at the funding. Don't treat us that we don't live in Gainesville as outside people. We are citizens of Alachua County. Thank you very much. I have to run because I have to pick my grandkids up from school, but thank you very much for listening to me. Okay, I just want to make the record clear. We are speaking to our agenda, the approval of our agenda. Oh, I didn't know that. We are not doing public comments, so that's coming at 12. Oh, I was told to be here before 1130. Do I get erased or can I be saved? No, no, no, no. I can be saved. You're good. You're good. Oh, bless your hearts. I'm just letting you know. Okay, thank you for the next time. We're discussing the agenda, the approval of the agenda. Thank you. I'm sorry. That's okay. Good morning. My name is Mary Ann Schmink. I wanted to speak to one of the items on the consent agenda, which is the Empower Coalition grant. I'm the voluntary facilitator for the Empower Coalition over the past almost five years. I wanted to thank the county staff, Sean McClendon, Stephen Hofstadter, and especially Betsy Riley for all the work, the many hours she's put in to help us bring this grant forward. In this partnership between the county and the city and nonprofits and neighborhood organizations in our county has been a really important effort to work together to find ways to expand access to repair and weatherization services for homes to help people address their high utility bills. We've had several federal grants for technical assistance, other small grants. This particular grant from a small family foundation will allow us to pay for a solar installation on a county building and that the savings from those utility bills because of the solar panels, the county is agreeing to funnel into a community improvement fund that we will use to fund home repairs. That need for home improvement is going to just continue to grow as our climate gets warmer and warmer. Therefore, in addition to thanking you for your support for this project today, I also wanted to request that you consider adding to the fund from other sources such as the energy savings and rebates from your previous solar installations. Over the past year, we've been working with Nkwanda Jha and the Cultural Arts Coalition with neighborhood representatives from Duval, Spring Hill, Sugar Hill, and SWAG to develop a whole framework, procedures, and guidelines for how that community fund will be managed by the community itself. So we're really proud of this unique collaboration, excited to bring this project before you. Thank you. Thank you. Any further citizen comments to the agenda? Back to the board. Those in favor of the motion, vote by the sound of aye. Oh, I'm sorry. Commissioner President. I can leave the discussion, but I just wanted to bring up the Empower Coalition and say thank you because I don't know if they're standing for the whole meeting. Thank you for your longstanding commitment. I think this partnership, though, it's really small, is a great example of working with community to build a solution to big picture issues and root cause issues around energy efficiency, around the way that people have to manage their own utilities, along with creating creative opportunities for us to realize our goals for climate action. So it's very exciting. And a big thank you to the Lydia B. Stokes Foundation for their commitment to renewable energy and community weatherization. And I would ask our board, and I will comment, to consider the idea of funneling rebate funding that we get from solar into this fund. I think we already have commitment for the savings to go back into other solar projects here in the county so we can keep that process going. But the conversation about rebates hasn't been had, so I'd like to have that later in the meeting. Thank you. All right. Those in favor of the motion, vote by the sign of an aye. Aye. All right. That's closed. Same sign. Motion carries. Mr. Clerk. Mr. Chair, that takes us to the announcements. And Communications Director Mark Sexton is here to present those. Thank you, Steve. Good morning, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, Alan, if I could get the projection screen and the monitor. We wanted to let citizens know of a valuable tool for keeping themselves and their families safe, and it is the Smart 911 and Text 911 system that we have in Alachua County. We urge you to go to our website. You'll see this press release, and in it are the details for creating an account where you can go into detail on your health issues, medicines, anything that you think would be valuable for a first responder to know so that when they get to your house, they can hit the ground running and they don't have to do as much diagnostic work. So we encourage residents to go to this release. There are links on how to sign up, and we encourage you to do that. And then the other announcement, Mr. Chair, is last Thursday a really remarkable event happened at Cuscovilla. It was the agro-tourism workshop agenda. I know Commissioner Prizia was there. Your staff was shining at that. We had presentations from Holly Banner on Florida agro-tourism laws. We had the fire chief there, John Adler, on permitting and safety for agricultural operations. We had a panel discussion with Noah Shatama from Swallowtail Farms, Alan Hitchcock from Santa Fe River Ranch, Heather Boyd from Briarpatch, and Amy Van Skolik from Frogsong Organics. And you had a marketing workshop on agro-tourism with Liz Reyes and Bailey McLennan. And I just wanted to take an opportunity because I've been talking to Jessica Huroff in her shop about this. And we wanted to just take a moment to recognize the work of Bailey McLennan, who's right there. She put this whole thing together, and we just wanted to give her a round of applause. Great work. And, Mr. Chair, that's the announcement. Yeah, I'll just say it was really a great event. I mean, it was really well attended. Staff did a great job of getting the word out. It was a full house at Cuscovilla, and it was a really great mix of, I think, farmers that are doing agro-tourism and trying to learn more, and then people who are just thinking about it, you know, dipping their toe in the water and trying to learn about what the regulations are, what the opportunities are. So great conversations, great networking, really excellent job by the Tourism and Economic Development Department. Thank you for your work. All right, Mr. Chair, that takes us to the approval of recognitions. It doesn't look like we have any proclamations, so I guess we don't need that. Move approval of the recognitions, language, I guess, for the proclamations. Second. Second. Got a motion and a second. Any further discussions? Those in favor of the motion, will I sign up? Aye. Aye. Those opposed, same sound. Motion carries. And, Mr. Chair, I'm going to step down to the side podium over there, and I would invite, we're going to recognize our certified public manager program graduate, so I would also invite the board to come down and help me congratulate. Alan, if we could get the monitor and projection screen, please. So the Florida Certified Public Manager Program is administered by Florida State University and is nationally recognized a rigorous leadership development initiative designed specifically for public sector managers. Over the course of two years, participants progressed through eight four-day levels, totaling 31 days of experiential in-person instruction supplemented with homework, open book exams, and applied assignments. Throughout the program, leaders are immersed in progressive themes from individual and group performance to systems thinking, policy development, and contemporary public management challenges. Graduates emerge equipped with enhanced leadership acumen, strategic insight, and organizational effectiveness, earning certification through the National Certified Public Manager Consortium, and joining one of the largest CPM cohorts in the nation. And today, I would like to congratulate and recognize we have 11 employees from the Alasio County Board of County Commissioners and one from the Alasio County Tax Collector's Office for completing the program in July of this year. And before I start calling them up, I just want to say we have many graduates in the Tax Collector's Office in the county who have gone through this program. So we get to recognize them basically every two years when they graduate because it is a two-year program. So it is a very, very intensive program that does take two years. I went through it myself, so I can attest to the work that it takes to do that. So with that, I'd like to say congratulations and invite up those of you who are here. So Amy Childs, Risk Management. Brian Kaufman, Public Works. Christy Tyson with the Tax Collector's Office. And if we have – I know we had some people from the Tax Collector's, too, if you want to come up as well. Where do I leave off? Alicia Cash with Organizational Development and Training. Liz Reyes with Tourism. Gary Kendall, ITS. Gina Peebles, Assistant County Manager and Chief of Staff. Jonathan Criswell with Office of Management and Budget. Mehdi Benkatar with Growth Management. Misty Woods, Fire Rescue. Nadia Pendleton-Scott with Court Services. And last but not least, TJ White with Procurement. So again, I want to say congratulations to all you all. And we're going to get you to come together so we can get a picture with the board. Alan, if you could put the projection screen up and turn the lights on, please. Mr. Chair, just to tidy up some business, there was a motion to approve the proclamations, but we never actually voted on that. Oh. Oh, okay. So if we could just vote. All right. All right. Those in favor of the motion, vote by the sign of aye in terms of approval of the proclamation. Aye. Aye. Those opposed, same sign. Motion carries. Thank you, Mr. Clerk. No problem. It'll take us item number two, the Alachua County Recognitions by American Association of Retired Persons. Good morning. I'm Courtney Oliver with Florida Department of Health in Alachua County. And I'm here today with Katina Mustapher from Elder Options and Jill Old from AARP. I'd like to thank the Board of County Commissioners, the Alachua County staff, AARP, Elder Options, and CCOA, which is the Community Coalition of Older Adults, for their commitment and collaboration on participating in the Age-Friendly Alachua Initiative and the Community Health Improvement Strategic Planning Efforts. Aligning the principles of age-friendly communities with a Community Health Improvement Plan, or a CHIP, creates a powerful synergy that promotes livability and well-being across all ages, especially older adults. This includes shared goals, data-driven planning, cross-sector partnerships, and continuous quality improvement that allows for adaptive strategies that evolve with the community's needs. Thank you for your continued commitment. And Jill is going to tell you a little bit more about this. Thanks. Good morning. My name is Jill Ald, and I'm the Associate State Director with AARP Florida. And I want to thank you for having me here today. On behalf of AARP Florida, I'm here to acknowledge the County of Alachua and your leadership to making your community an even better place to live for your residents. Alachua is one of 45 age-friendly communities in Florida and nearly 1,000 in the U.S. The AARP Age-Friendly State and Community Network also includes 13 states, including Florida and the U.S. Virgin Islands. We are also part of a broader global network, including more than 50 countries across the world. The Age-Friendly Community Process represents a commitment to improving areas of community life in the built, social, and service environment in which we live, work, play, and age. Today, we are here to celebrate a milestone of accomplishment in your age-friendly journey, the completion of a five-year cycle of joining the network and progress in your community's age-friendliness. Among your community's many accomplishments, Alachua County's community health improvement efforts have embedded a lifespan approach across its five priority areas, access to care, behavioral health, chronic disease prevention, healthy living, and affordable housing. Specifically targeting older adults, healthy aging is promoted through grant-funded, evidence-based health promotion and chronic disease self-management programs through your senior centers, faith-based groups, and other community services. Transportation barriers have been innovatively addressed by the Freedom in Motion Uber program, which ensures older adults can reach medical appointments, grocery stores, and social engagements at a reduced cost. Led by your Department of Health, and in collaboration with various county departments, aging and other community providers, and older adults as well, your age-friendly efforts represent a whole-of-community approach to improving the quality of life for your aging citizens, and that includes everyone. On behalf of AARP Florida, it has been our pleasure to work with Courtney Oliver and leaders from Elder Options and the Community Coalition on Aging and the Community Coalition on Aging and their extraordinary commitment to the people of Alachua. I am pleased to present this plaque in recognition of your efforts and look forward to hearing and sharing about your continued age-friendly accomplishments ahead. Thank you very much. And would you mind coming down for a picture with us, with your plaque? We can get it to our chair. I'm the oldest plaque. I'm Mary Ellen. Mr. Chair, up next is the presentation of a proclamation recognizing August 25th through August 29th as the Be Smart Week in Alachua County, Florida. Ms. Susan Cone here, Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America. Alachua County, Florida, a proclamation declaring August 25th through August 29th, 2025 as Be Smart Week in Alachua County, Florida. Whereas firearms are the leading cause of death for children and teens in the United States, and whereas Alachua County is committed to fostering a safe and supportive environment that promotes the well-being of all children, and whereas almost every day in the United States a child gains access to a firearm unintentionally, injuries or kills themselves or someone else, and whereas research shows that the most effective way to prevent children from accessing firearms is by making sure all guns are stored, unloaded, locked, and separated from ammunition. And whereas both gun owners and non-gun owners have a role to play in promoting secure firearm storage and preventing unauthorized access by children and teens. And whereas more than half of gun owners do not lock all of their firearms securely and approximately 4.6 million children in the United States live in a home with at least one unlocked and loaded firearm. And whereas schools, hospitals, state agencies, and community organizations are committed to their crucial role in reducing injuries and death by promoting secure gun storage and safety. And whereas Be Smart Week raises awareness and promotes public education about the responsibility of gun ownership and the importance of storing firearms securely. And whereas S, secure all guns, M, model responsible behavior around guns, A, ask about unsecure guns in other homes, R, recognize the role of guns in suicide, T, tell your peers to be smart. Now, therefore, the authority invested in me by the Board of County Commissioners of Alonso County, Florida, I do hereby proclaim August 25th through 29th, August 2025, Be Smart Week in Alonso County, Florida, duly proclaimed this 26th day of August A.D. 2025, signed by yours truly, and attest by J.K. Ershbury, the clerk. Thank you, Chair Chestnut and fellow commissioners for issuing this proclamation to help us and support our efforts to reduce gun violence by raising awareness of the importance of secure firearm storage. By issuing this proclamation, you're joining communities all across the country this week and taking action to make our communities safer. We also want to thank Sheriff Scott and his public information office team for meeting with us. We had a wonderful meeting a couple of months ago, and the Sheriff's Department is starting to share some secure firearm storage education information on their social media platforms. So we're very excited about this. We think it's very important, and we're looking forward to more collaboration in the future. Alachua County is not alone in the problem of the fact that the majority of guns used in crimes are taken from unlocked vehicles. This is happening all across the country. So we've actually started a new campaign called Secure Guns in Your Cars Campaign, and we have all kinds of resources and information that are free and available to get out into the community. So we've started working with the Gainesville Police Department to target neighborhoods where firearms are stolen and see about putting these flyers up in those neighborhoods. And I'd love to have a conversation about doing the same in the county. And also, as a next step forward, I'm wondering if someone could help us lay the groundwork for perhaps posting these flyers on the digital screens in the DMV and the tax collectors' waiting rooms. I think that could be a really easy thing to do. We have these in a digital format. So thank you. It's a real joy and a real pleasure to live in a community that cares so much about its citizens. So thank you for your support. Thank you. Thank you. I'm glad to be here. I'm very excited about supporting this group. One of the things that's important to me about this is that this group came in existence when the Sandy Hook happened in 2012. And I think it's important that the county and the nation be aware of, you know, keeping guns out of people's hands and to not keep it in your cars, because we have seen a growth in youth having guns, and they're getting them from cars, unlocked cars that have guns in them. So I'm excited about this awareness. I'm excited about the PSA that we're sending to our community. And thank you for having me. Sure. Oh, sure. All right. And I'll just say thank you to all of you for your leadership. It's a real testament to have our sheriff show up to talk about gun sense and to think about the ways in which we can work together. So please reach out to me. I'm happy to help with thinking about how we can get this on all of the communication avenues that we have at the county and through the property appraisers and tax collectors. I'll reach out and see if they're interested. Mr. Chair, and I would like to say I don't even know if there are funds available for something like that, but the last one you showed me about locking your cars in the – locking the guns in your car would be a really good billboard as people are coming into Florida. Particularly we have, you know, folks coming from all over the place into Florida, and having a billboard or two with that, you know, I think would make a really strong statement. That's right. Yeah. That's a great sign. Mr. Chair, it's now noon, so that will take us to the public comments section where we allow three minutes for any item not on the agenda and three minutes for any item on the agenda, and those speaking to items on the agenda cannot speak to the item later. And if you're here to speak about a quasi-judicial zoning item, we ask that you reserve that to the public hearing. Mr. Chair, Jim Connish, I applaud you for getting out ahead of Hutch who wants Jasker's Farm out in Melrose and have Woodstock-style concerts. I think you should be way out in front of something like that, but your attempt to regulate agricultural buildings on the 10 farms subject to state best management practices is illegal and will not withstand scrutiny. And I'll give you more on that on September 25th. Basically, the city of Gainesville, Alachua County, Newbury, Alachua, and High Springs has massive add-on amounts of taxes and franchise fees drug out of the ratepayers and remitted without any charge. Mr. Belarsky does not understand what an SLA loss is and claims there aren't any, but this is a massive one. In addition to 650 billing codes, they pull pyramided utility taxes out of our hides and give it to you free of charge. You are the taxing authority, but they're administering the program free of charge, but it's worse than that. They remit the money to you, and if the bill doesn't get paid, seven years later when it's written off, they ask for the tax revenues back so you get basically an interest-free loan. To be doing this and claiming these bills are a result of our behavior is ridiculous. The bills that our people cannot pay by the thousands per month are because of your behavior, because of your utility tax, because of your pyramided utility tax. Because you get all this money collected without paying GRU a dime. Now, these bills are full of errors all over the place. The sales tax in particular is subject to all kinds of very complex exemptions. Because GRU works for you for free, they're not staffed up to make sure the church gets their exemption from utility tax and sales tax. Or the manufacturer doesn't get the exemption from sales tax, including local option sales tax and your utility tax. And the same goes for the free fire hydrants and the free streetlights and everything else you're freeloading on the backs of us who can't pay the bills. This is unconscionable, and you need to get the bills down to a point where people can pay them and not be disconnected, because then nothing is collected by anybody. Thank you. Anthony Johnson, Mr. Chair. Mr. Carnage is right there. My county tax on my last utility bill was almost $40. But, Mr. Chair, I came with the material, but I forgot it. I just left it at home. I was rushing and didn't get my material. So it's going to kind of make this kind of difficult for me, because I would like to show you graphics and show you pictures to better make my point. So, but first, before I do that, I hear you hired an IT specialist, some kind of IT guru, to run your IT. I don't recall ever having that person kind of do like the animal service person did. We talked to her. I got to talk to the animal service, Ms. Johnson, as you were going through the hiring process. And so, I mean, because the question I would have asked you was, can you actually isolate a public-facing USB port so that the public now can use it? I mean, if that IT specialist can't do that, can't isolate a public-facing USB port from the county network, then he's not worth his weight in salt. I mean, any junior middleware person should be able to do that, to now, to be able to allow the public to put a USB drive or flash drive in a USB port with no danger to the county network. But you're saying that, no, we don't have that technology, so I'm confused over that. But I want to talk about my property. I bought my house on a cul-de-sac, and because I didn't want the traffic going. I love the cul-de-sac. I've been right, well, the county allowed a developer to open my cul-de-sac, go in and do development, using my cul-de-sac temporarily for the cement trucks and the things to get to the property. But I'm on 18th Avenue. Again, if I had the graphics, I could show you all this. I'm on 18th Avenue. 18th Lane is where the land use people said this development would be using, 18th Lane. But so after the development, now they decided, you know, we're going to stay on 18th Avenue right through the cul-de-sac because 18th Avenue is a paved road. 18th Lane isn't, okay? And now all the dust is coming from the – they put down some lime rock to get to this development. But now I'm getting all this dust in my yard. I haven't even washed my windows. I hate washing windows. I mean, on a muddy day, a rainy day, the cars come out of there, mud on the tires, onto 18th Avenue, which is a paved road. When that dries, it just creates all kind of dust and everything. And I've been writing Marie Daniels. I've been – I've written Mr. Garbarati. I want to show you the letter that Mr. Garbarati gave to me saying he was going to make them pave that area so that the dust wouldn't be coming. And that letter was dated in 2022. So nothing yet, and I would like – because, again, if you had the flash drive, I could have shown you this if I'm trying to pick up papers from home, picking up the wrong set, bringing them down here to you. I just wish that you could get this USB port back up and running like you used to. There's no fear of malware or any of that stuff if you've got it isolated properly. And your high-paid IT director should be able to do that. If not, you need to fire him right now. Thank you, Mr. Johnson. Thank you. Any further citizen public comments? Wow. Mark Van Suisbergen. Hi. Hey. Interesting. I've been trying to follow what Mr. Kohn has said, but I couldn't really follow it. But anyway, it'll be interesting to find out what's really going on. It's very interesting, though, how this varies – because it can get complicated with taxes and all that. It can get really, really complicated. I mean, I'm dealing with some of that myself and trying to understand, well, how does it even work? But I really wanted to talk about, like a four-pager, about, like, how many people we can feed today and how many people we could feed, like, in 2034. Do we know how many people we can feed today? With what? Well, like, in the county, how many people can we feed today? And if you don't know that, I'll be very glad to get a couple of interns. I figured if you get the interns, because you'll probably get even more cooler interns than I can get, I'll be very glad to work with them. And I'll get you something by Christmas. And fall semester is about to start. But maybe for the office of, like, Stephen's office or the sustainability office, if you get, like, two or three interns, I can get you a paper by Christmas that says basically how many people we can feed today and how many people we could feed, say, eight years from now, given all the resources that we have, the acreage. It would be very basic, just basic metrics, nothing special, just using normal metrics, like what's the potential for this county to feed X number of people based on what we have in infrastructure, areable land, that sort of thing. So, if you would like to get some interns together, I'll be very glad. I've had over 40 in the last decade or so. They were always very productive. I'd be glad to do it for you. Because I'm very curious myself. Like, if we had to actually become resilient and, you know, feed ourselves, how many people could we actually feed ourselves here in the county? That's really a suggestion, but also an offer. If you would like to, you know, see something like that as a work product, I'm sure the kids, and given the information that we already have, we can pull something like that off. Less complicated. Thank you. Good afternoon, commissioners, and everyone here and everyone watching on the various platforms. My name is Spencer Morton. I serve on the Transportation Disadvantaged Board for Alachua County as a representative for citizens with disabilities. Bringing to your attention about the situation with the ADA contract with the city of Gainesville being insourced and taking away the TD service from MV Transportation. This is going to have a serious, very serious ramifications for both the people who live within the city of Gainesville and outside of Alachua County because they will no longer have access to transportation to their medical appointments, whether it be to their doctors or to dialysis or for emergency, say a hurricane comes and, you know, threatens our area. Right now, we have a situation where, you know, most people can be transported safely to shelters if they feel the need to go to shelters. All of this will be taken away if the city of Gainesville goes ahead with this insourcing of the ADA contract because, you know, MV will leave the service area, which means there will be no provider for people who live with disabilities. Sooner or later, you know, hopefully, you know, none of that will happen to any of us, but it could. All of us at one day in our lives could be suffering with a disability and, you know, severe enough to impair our ability to drive. What happens then? We have other options, but a lot of these people who live with disability, especially all the elderly people, can't afford to take Uber rides because, you know, they're expensive. My main concern is, you know, people go into dialysis. Some of their appointments are at 4 or 5 in the morning. I don't know. If MV leaves the area, we will have no transportation for these people that I'm aware of that is effective, safe, and reliable. So I would appreciate everyone that's out there watching on Channel 12 or the various platforms that we use. If you know or, you know, if you are a person with a disability or you know somebody who is who desperately needs this transportation through the disadvantaged transportation funding service provider or the ADA service, which will also be restricted. I would appreciate you contacting the officials, the county commission, the city, anywhere, any way you can. And I really implore the board to try to do whatever they can to take action to help us. I really appreciate your time today. Thank you. Commissioner Prezi, it's been awaited. Good afternoon, commissioners and chair and commissioners. My name is Judith Hamilton. I'm an advocate in the community, a citizen advocate for transportation and various other things that have to do with people who are visual, have vision loss and are totally blind. I wanted to just talk with you just briefly today about the situation with the transportation that is proposed changes at this point. That the people that are going to be hurt the most are going to be the folks that are outside the city limits of Gainesville, the ones who live in the unincorporated and county areas. Your places like Hawthorne, Newberry, Alachua. MV cannot sustain themselves without the additional contract. And I don't believe that the city can really have something up and running for whenever it is, if they do go through with these changes, that they can do the job properly right now, possibly in the next year or two. And I know that you all have discussed things in the future, like in the next couple of years, about making a transportation authority. And that, I think, is a very good idea. We need to include all, as far as transportation is concerned, everybody who lives in the county. It should be a county-wide funded thing and resource like many other cities do. We are there now as an urbanized area. So I ask you to please consider this and also talking about funding a transportation mandate for transportation, especially for the transportation disadvantaged people. And looking into the possibility of looking at the voluntary, they used to have a program in the county and every county in the state of Florida under transportation disadvantage at the commission level, where it was a voluntary dollar that people put into the trust fund when they purchased their tags and their registration for their tags. And I just wanted to bring those up as possibilities for further discussion, and I thank you for your time today. Thank you. Good afternoon, Mr. Chair, Commissioners, Madam Attorney, Madam County Manager. My name is Catherine Weitz, and I am a current city commissioner for the city of High Springs. And I come today before you today, actually as a commissioner, not as a citizen. You might recall I reached out to you guys recently by email about the budget situation with the county and the city mutual aid agreement. And it came up at our city commission meeting last Thursday. And our mayor had the request that we schedule a joint meeting with the city and the county commission to discuss it. He unfortunately couldn't be here, so you're stuck with me. I don't intend to get into any of the weeds or any of the details, but I'm simply coming to you as an official request that perhaps you as a commission could direct staff to see if we couldn't coordinate a joint city and county meeting to discuss this issue. Obviously, budget season is upon us, and we're definitely at the 11th hour, but that's my simple request to see if you all might agree to schedule a joint meeting. Thank you. Thank you. Any further citizen comments, public comments? Hello, my name is Soria Lindbergh. Such important issues during public comment today. I'm coming to ask if anyone on commission or county has an opinion or looked into Senate Bill 180. I was late today because they're taking out the crosswalk in front of the Hippodrome, and I know that's out of our control. And this, as I know it's a concern across the state, this is, I'm going to put on the projector just something I borrowed from the Sierra Club. I don't represent them. I'm not an officer there. But it's just some major concerns they had. And it's stripping home rule. Anyone can sue. You'd have to pay for it. So I'm not an expert at this, so I go to the people who are smarter than me. So I was just wondering if there was something that you would think of when it comes to protecting it. You might have heard that Orange County is in litigation now over this. They wanted, developers wanted to push the rural boundary. They're going against it. And here's some more specific sections. Last night, the city of Alachua voted to participate in a lawsuit in opposition of this. So I'm sure the smart people here would know more about that. So that's just the question I'm posing. And I also want to say I'm very sorry to hear about your neighborhood. I live in a neighborhood where they're building a giant development behind it. We have broken roads. And I saw a logging truck drive by, and I was like, oh, no. So I know what it's like to watch your neighborhood and want to protect it. So that's it. May we ask Ms. Lindbergh to provide copies of that to the clerk so that we can get copies of that handout? You're welcome to keep it. I left it on the counter. Okay. Thank you. Any further citizen comments? Mr. Chair, we do have a few callers. We have some callers who have not raised their hand. I will just remind you to press star 9 if you want to speak during the telephone public comment. Each caller will have three minutes to speak to anything on the agenda and three minutes to speak to anything off the agenda. And we ask that you state your name when you get into the room. So we'll start with caller whose phone number ends with 6391. If you will hit star 6 to unmute your phone, you're in the room. Please state your name. Okay. Let's move on to the caller, caller whose phone number is ending in 0316. Can you hear me? Yes. Yes, I can hear you. Hi. This is Moksha now. And greetings, commissioners. Thank you for hearing us on this. I hear some background noise. Can you guys hear me okay? Yes. Thank you for hearing us on this as the city mayor Ward's office has failed us on this issue. I am a Sears Club member that is usually coming to you about environmental issues, but I'm a paratransit community member that will be extremely affected by this. And, you know, we didn't need a whole other thing to be having to fight for. I have already met with all of the city commissioners, with the exception of Chestnut, because her schedule changed. I had also requested to meet with the county commissioners, of which I know Mary Alford cares a lot about this, and so does Ken Cornell. I know all of you do, and I also want to thank the commissioners because you're the only board that I feel within the state of Florida actually listens to us besides Pinellas County. And going to the city, some of those commissioners are awesome, but the mayor has completely disregarded the paratransit community. He asked me when I went into his office, the first thing he said, did MV send you? If you could see me in person, a lot of you know me. No, I want to make a disclaimer. George Soros does not pay any of us. We do this out of the passion of our hearts to fight for what is right and be a voice for the voiceless. And right now, we cannot have our paratransit disappear, because I want to say something that I know Commissioner Alford cares deeply about, because she was boots on the ground during the hurricane. Second, that emergency evacuation center, people will not be able to evacuate there. I am one of those people. We will not have any service for any of the people outside of the city limit. It has not been defined actually what is even the city limit. Secondly, RTS has no experience whatsoever with paratransit. And thirdly, I have requested a town hall just to deal with this issue over and over and over, because the city was so concerned about RTS4 routes, which I also was concerned about, and they took two years for their decorum and their negotiations. Well, they need to give that same type of respect to us, and they have constantly changed these meetings. And basically, I was in there last Monday to see what this was coming back on the agenda. Oh, no, no, it's not. Well, they sure enough did put it back on the agenda. And then they have their draconian TSA system set up there. You can't even go in there. And progressive voices are being silent. And I want to thank the county commission, because a lot of you care so much. And I'm sorry, but Mayor Ward does not care about us. And city clerk Kristen does not care about us. They care about silencing any voice that has opposition to what they want to push through. And I want to thank a couple of the city commissioners that you know who you are that do care. We cannot eliminate the Ixnate. Again, RTS also has several vehicle moving violations, and MV does not have that. You know, I rode on RTS one time. I was scared for my life. It was like riding on a bus. Please conclude. Thank you. I think she's concluded. Caller ending in 6391. You're in the room. Please state your name. Hi. Hi. Good afternoon. My name is Denise Milne, and I am a proud member of our city and county. So thank you for letting me speak today. Can you hear me okay? Yes. Beautiful. Thank you. I am trying to fight back tears from hearing the previous speaker. Several things that they, I feel like this is probably one of the worst days that I could speak just given the things that you all just heard. So thank you all for always listening to everyone in our community and doing your best to help everybody, but voice is silenced is kind of my cup of tea right now. I live in the Westchester neighborhood community and I'm a board member, and I am calling to voice restoration with the Forest Creek Preserve building that's going to be put on place. Things have been moving forward. And as a citizen, I have gone out of my way as well as a board member for our community of 415 people and, um, I can speak for blues Creek and, um, no, no conversation North as well. And, um, uh, one of their community, Turkey Creek that we were not notified about the conservation building that was going to be, um, moving forward on the preserve. We are all not in favor of, um, what is being put forth. We have been silenced. I have over the last two years, four times reached out with my, um, information, information, requesting to be informed of, uh, and notice of any workshops or anything related to the Forest Creek, um, property. And that was not honored at all. Um, I was there last month at the developmental review board meeting, and, um, one of the people was against moving forward and the other three, and it took quite a while for someone to, um, uh, second the motion for approval and it was basically done so with the assumption that everything was already kind of checked off, that there's nothing more that they could do, um, and it was kind of left standing, um, the conservation facility wants to build on a preserve, um, given the, um, change in property, um, lines that they did. I'm sorry. I can't think of the name of it right now. I'm a little frazzled. Sorry from the previous speaker, but, um, it's not what our community wants. It's a safety issue. It's a concern. They're going to have a fuel pump station for their equipment and trucks. This is not something that's safe. You're, you have four creeks in that area. Um, there's just a lot of things that need to be reconsidered. Um, if there's any help, please, we have reached out. No one has received a response to emails, uh, anyone in the community, um, all the other board members that have written in, no one's gotten a response from anybody, from anyone in the city or county, which is also a concern. Um, so our concerns are not being heard and addressed, and, um, we're just really trying to figure out what to do, um, so we can be heard. So we're open to advice and suggestions, but we just wanted to let you know, if anything comes forward that, and we aren't there to speak our part, it's because we're not notified. We didn't know about it. Um, we will. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Caller ending in five, five, five, nine, please hit star six to unmute and state your name. Caller, please hit star six. Caller ending in five, five, five, nine and go ahead. Okay. We will try caller ending in zero three one six, please hit star six to unmute and state your name. Can you hear me? Yes. Yes. Good afternoon, um, chair, commissioners, madam, attorney, madam, county manager. Yes. My name is Telford Cartwright, and I live in the county, I'm a taxpayer, and, um, let me cut to the chase. Um, I was unfortunately, uh, or unfortunately, I was falsely accused, falsely accused. I got arrested back in September of 2024. And, uh, to speed up, I was, um, held in the Lottery County jail from January the 8th to, um, June, uh, January the 8th, 2020, um, 2025. And I was, um, released on, um, released from the jail, Lottery County jail on, um, June the 25th. And while I was in the Lottery County jail, I witnessed, I observed, I saw the conditions. Those conditions were deplorable. I witnessed maggots coming from out of the drains and the toilet areas, um, I witnessed overcrowding while I was in G1 and G2, black mold. I also witnessed, um, the water fountains were not plugged in, affording the, um, or giving the, um, um, uh, the men being temporarily held against their will access to cool water to drink, but although the AC or the air conditioning and, uh, the, uh, uh, the air was cold, quite cold, it doesn't make, that didn't make any sense. So, um, I noticed also veterans, um, being exposed to these conditions as well. Um, one, uh, sink that provided hot water in G1, hot G1. Um, when I witnessed, I think it was 109 people in that car, uh, some members of the, uh, or homeless, um, were introduced to the jail with body lice. Um, I didn't witness a protocol in place to address body lice. I, um, resumed there was a license cessation as well. Uh, I witnessed also homeless, some homeless, um, men, uh, defecating in the, um, shower stalls as, uh, what can be, uh, what can be confirmed by some of the officers that work in, um, who worked in that pod. Uh, please conclude. Um, the guards' safety and well-being were put in jeopardy. Um, please conclude. Okay. Um, Mr. Chair, we want to give the caller ending in 5559, uh, another opportunity. So, you are, um, you are in the room. Yes, sir. Yes, we can hear you. James East. How are you doing? Thank you. Sorry, a technical problem earlier. I don't know what happened. Uh, this is James East. And, uh, some of you may remember me. I've been a transportation disadvantage advisory board member, uh, over the years, uh, for about 15 years. Uh, some of which I was a grad student and some in the last, uh, in the last, uh, 10, 11 years. Um, and, um, so I'm familiar with, with, with many of you and many of you may remember my guy, Doug Dovey. Um, the reason I'm approaching you all today, unfortunately from the home is I care for a family member that has stage four cancer. Um, and I'm calling regarding the issue with MB transportation and I'm kind of telling this, let's please not make it worse. Um, I, and many of us, uh, that have spoken today live outside the ADA corridor now because of regenerification and the cost of rent. Uh, we, we, we can't live there anymore. And so I currently, uh, stay in Newberry and, uh, during the proclamation made earlier about seniors being able to use Uber, one of your own staff members who's in a leadership role will tell you Uber is not a substitution for paratransit. If you're ambulatory, that's great. And my 100 year old grandmother or my, uh, 67 year old sister who has a neurological condition, they can't use Uber and Lyft. Now for me, um, I make too much money to get help from either the, uh, Alaska County Housing Authority or the Gainesville Housing Authority. Ironically, we had both. I either make too much money to live there and I don't qualify for assistance. So I can't pay the rent because it's not a third of my income. It's too high. And I make a hundred or $200 more a month with my pension to be able to, to get assistance without paying the bill. So I'm going to catch 22. So I can't live in the city. So what I have to do is I haven't had a haircut in two months. Okay. So what I have to do is I have to pick and choose. Um, you know, if I want to take my guide dog to the vet, then I got to pull from that. Uh, yes, I can go to the doctor with envy as he is, but envy, if that's changed, that might become a problem. And envy, as far as I've been able to research and I'm saying, does not have a discipline problem. Uh, their performance has been recognized as outstanding. Uh, the county and the city had not shown cause to dismiss them or change their contract or anything like that. And I'll be honest with you, when I was an undergraduate and I used CTS, which was, I believe, run by RTS, that was an absolute mess. Um, yes, that was in the nineties, but it was a mess right now. The community, and I would say the government and the, you know, all the stakeholders are happy with the service that we get with envy. Is it perfect? No, but we have to please conclude. Sure. No problem. Okay. Uh, caller ending in four or five, six, five, please hit star six and state your name. You're in the room. Good day, commissioners, uh, city, uh, county attorney and others, uh, in that, uh, meeting. This is Sarah Younger with, um, local group for the Sierra Club, Swanee St. John's. Um, I was fortunate to attend the, uh, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission meeting held on August 13th, where they determined their final vote on a luxury bear hunt. Um, this vote was, uh, was in opposition to, um, efforts that we were making to alert them to the lack of science in their findings. Um, back in 2016, the county, Alaska County had voted to, um, not allow bear hunts on county land. And I thank you for that. Um, but, uh, Florida has, uh, already determined that there will be a bear hunt in December. Some of that prop, uh, will probably be in Alachua County as there are areas beyond, uh, the county that, uh, uh, county held properties that will likely be open to hunt. Um, they are quietly creating this as an exclusive privatized trophy hunt because, uh, starting next year, landowners with over 5,000 acres will skip the public lottery by passing the potential season limits. They could also on private land deploy, use bait and use hounds to secure the, the, uh, harvest the bears. And they, while the regular hunters will face cap quarters, there's absolutely nothing in the rules right now that says the private landowners also will, um, some claim they do, but the rules don't actually require it, which is a glaring, um, loophole. Um, this also proposed, this rule now gives the executive director the power to approve bear hunts every year going forward with no additional commission vote, no public input, and no requirements to even follow peer reviewed science. Um, so, um, the bears who had just as of 2012 were listed up until 2012 were listed as a threatened species, um, and had been almost hunted to extinction several decades ago, um, has, has had to come back, but the numbers are still not clear, uh, because the census won't be conducted, uh, completed until 2030. So, um, our request was to hold off and actually get the science before going forward. Um, we have asked the public to call Governor DeSantis in order to voice their opinions on this. Um, he does hold the final, uh, cards here in this effort to, um, hunt bears. And, um, there is also a call for those who are bear lovers because we say bear hugs, not bear hunts, um, to consider applying for the permits and then pledging to not shoot the bears. Um, so if you're, if others are interested in that effort, they can look for our website, local Sierra club website. Please conclude. Uh, Mr. Chair, the final caller is ending in nine nine zero eight. Caller ending in nine nine zero eight. Please hit star six and state your name. Good afternoon, commissioners, Mr. Chair, Madam Manager. This is Robert Skinner in Millhopper station north calling about the four creeks park. I cannot call it a preserve, uh, since, uh, you have changed the zoning there and are planning on building a facility. And it looks like the city will be also following suit with a plan on the other side of the roadway when that occurs. Uh, however, um, the wildlife in the area, you all have created a wildlife corridor unintentionally across Northwest 43rd street. You have raised the speed limit there, and now you're looking to add additional vehicle trips, which will impact Westchester, Blues Creek, Millhopper station north. Not to mention that the capacity for the ponds does not look for my experience working with the department of transportation. And like it will be feasible enough to stop the drainage from moving to the north and intruding upon Turkey Creek, um, up in that area or Turkey Creek forest. I'm sorry. So, uh, I urgently request that you reexamine this, um, hard for me to imagine that you are actually going to build something that you call a preserve and the city is following suit all in the name of convenience for your personnel. I know there are other areas that are less environmentally sensitive with four creeks being in that area. And I strongly consider you to look at other alternatives when considering this as we move forward in these final steps before shovels go in the ground. I thank you for your time. Okay. Thank you. And Mr. Chair, that was the last caller. Okay. Ms. Robbins. Thank you, Mr. Chair, commissioners, staff. My name's Tamara Robbins. Um, I'm not sure, of course, I have no idea how closely you follow the actions of what's going on in the city of Alachua, which is where I live. Um, recently the city commission two weeks ago abruptly and kind of savagely fired the city attorney after 22 years of, um, this rush working for the city commission. Um, and then last Thursday, we, a letter was sent to the city commission that David Theriak, the land use attorney that the city has, um, sub kind of subcontracted with over the years to handle land use issues. And he currently was involved with the mill Creek sink development, the tar developments. And he was the kind of adult in the room that was directing a pause to be taken because of the county's concerns that you had registered as an affected party. So with Ms. Rush gone and Mr. Theriak have had enough, um, the city is now without legal counsel. And, um, due to some recent state legislative requirements and allowances, there's a lot more stuff that's being administratively handled at an administrative level versus going before a planning and zoning board or ultimately to a city commission for public hearing. So I'm here today to, uh, alert you, alert your staff. I know you are very interested in the, uh, issue out there regarding the mill sink and the quotes protecting our water. So I'm just saying, please don't fall asleep at the wheel. Don't expect things to come to you. Stay on it gets public records, find out what's going on with our inexperienced interim city manager, who I personally believe is way in over his head. And so it's chaotic out there and, um, bad things can happen in the attempt to create a chaos of distraction. And then suddenly things start happening that we didn't see was going to happen. And I'm asking you to please do your due diligence and pay close attention to what's going on out there. Um, on a followup note, um, to the public transportation issue, I'm not a, this is all new to me hearing about this, but the Uber transportation thing, I did some research into that a few years ago, and that definitely does not serve people with special physical needs. It barely will serve the elderly people who need it. It's not safe. I don't believe, um, it's not a good idea and certainly not an alternative choice. So I look forward to your response to what the citizens have brought forward today. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Back to the board. Commissioner Prizia. Then Cornell and Wheeler. Thank you. Um, yeah, so many things. Um, but I, I guess the one that I want to address right now is the, um, is the paratransit. I, you know, I had originally, um, planned to ask that we put that on the joint agenda with the city commission, um, and our MTPO meeting so that we could have a conversation. But given that the city has canceled our joint meeting coming up, um, I'm hoping that we could refer to staff to bring back to us what exactly is going on with paratransit, um, with relationship to RTS and how it would impact the, um, unincorporated areas and the small cities with regards to transit transportation access for the transit disadvantaged. So I guess I would, I was gonna, um, can I, I also, yeah, I also was notified, I guess, of this at the last MTPO meeting. Right. And so, um, um, called Tom who represents MV and, and started to get up to speed, uh, over the last couple of days. I forwarded you all some information or I asked Latoya to forward it to you yesterday, um, from Tom. And he also this morning sent a letter that MV had sent to the city. So I actually wanted to take an additional step commissioner, which was to a chair letter. Um, cause as I understand it, uh, there's a, still a two years left on the contract. Uh, there have been, uh, there has been an offer for MV to reduce their fees to help with the budget at the city. Uh, and that letter is being sent to you all that was sent to me, uh, last night. Uh, and I also think that, uh, we have a big issue as it relates to paratransit outside the city. Um, and so I was going to move that we prepare a chair letter that asks the city to pause any actions to cancel the current paratransit contract, which also provides CTC service for the county. I was going to ask part one, part two, that, uh, with two years left on the contract that we further requested this item be agended for a future MTPO meeting, which will happen before the joint meeting. Um, and then part three would be what you said is to ask our staff to bring back information as to how, if this is canceled on January of 26, how that would affect paratransit outside the city. Second. Yes. Three part motion. Second, second. Motion and a second. I just would like to make a comment about that. Yeah. Um, this change hill who came to our MTPO meeting wasn't able to come today, though she would like to have been here. Um, my concern too, I, I, when I first came on this board, there were questions about MV and how effective they were and that sort of thing. So, you know, it's kind of been an up and down kind of thing. So I'm really glad to see it get the attention that it's getting right now. I, um, was going to ask Mr. Morton if he had to leave. I saw his ride came. That's one of the issues too, in terms of timing your rides for these things. You can't always be in control of your time when you're depending on other people to move you. But I was wanting to know if we have any, does MV, is that our resource for knowing who the people in our community are who need this resource? You know, do we have access? That's why I asked the sheriff, you know, if they knew in the community where these folks were, um, in the neighborhoods where the the blind where like Ms. Jane chill lives, you know, are you aware? Do we have signage up, you know, to let folks know in the community that there are blind people or deaf people in this community to be aware? So, you know, uh, I would just, you know, I don't know, you know, if it's appropriate to have a list of these people. I don't know if that's, you know, uh, an appropriate ask, but it seems to me that some agency that we are trying to, you know, uh, work with would have access to knowing who those people are in the community who need the special services, because they may not even know how to access those services. And if they have to do it online or through, you know, a phone, then they would not know how to do that either. So what, what, what is, what's the, yeah, but in terms of being able to access them is what I mean in terms of to, to introduce yourself, unless you have a family member who's able to get you out there. I'm just saying it would be nice to know who these folks are in the community because, um, there's a group of them and maybe Mr. Morton knows, you know, through his work on this board that they have access, or if there's gatherings of meetings of, of these folks who can actually talk about their needs in the community, you know, if we have a way to gather those folks together to, to have a meaningful dialogue with them. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Oh, okay. Maybe you could answer for Mr. Morton. It's MV. It's the director. Comment on the motion? Just comment on the motion. Yes. My name's Gary Luke. I'm the MV GM for Gainesville. Can I answer your question the best of my ability? The VI client is a very tight knit community. They all, I mean, they go to dinners together. They speak on a regular basis. Okay. They sign up for their services through us. So we know who, obviously, who all of them are. Um, again, they're very tight knit. So they get the word out, hey, MV transportation can transport you and we transport them for whatever their needs are. My concern and the community's concern should be if the ADA services is in sourced and it is managed by RTS, we unfortunately would not be able to sustain ourself to do just the outskirts. It's, it's just not cost effective. I, you know, I could use a lot of acronyms with you, but to keep it simple, we wouldn't be able to do it. Um, that's very concerning. Well, over 50% of the individuals that we transport are dialysis. The other 40 plus percent is medical, and that's cancer treatment, severe medical appointments. Unfortunately, over the last three years, we have lost funding consistently, um, which makes it challenging. We have to prioritize. So really the demand for the services out in the county is huge, but there's only so much funding. So you have to do the most important. Um, these individuals are very concerned that if RTS insources it and we can't sustain ourselves, who's going to take care of them? Who's going to transport them? When you have a coordinated system, it works very well. So even though it may not be cost effective to do on the outskirts, you bring those drivers back into the city. Now they're productive, right? They're able to continue to work until that individual needs to go back. But Mr. Morton, say to High Springs or LaCrosse, whatever the case may be. So I plead with you and I was very relieved to hear that you may, may send a letter to the city asking for more details, asking them to reconsider this. We have two years left on the contract. At least allow us to finish executing that contract before you make a decision. Okay. Thank you for allowing me to speak. I appreciate it. I just wanted to say, I, you know, my, uh, I've, I've said it before, but my dad was legally blind and, and went through cancer treatment and he, you know, relied heavily on, on this transport system in order to get to his appointments because my mother was also having medical issues. And so I, and he lived in the county, not in the city limits. So I, you know, I, I would have, I don't, I don't know how we'd have managed. It would have been tough, but I know there's people that have much harder situations than that. And, uh, so I, I fully support the motion and I, I, I see where the con, you know, the problems with MB transport being, you know, only providing, uh, service to the county would be at a much increased cost to us if we were to continue to do that. Well, I think this, if I could, I think this motion, um, is kind of piggybacking on the motion that we passed at the MTPO meeting last week that you brought up that was unanimously agreed to by both sides, which was for us to research really the future of RTS. Where is that going? We have two years left on this agreement. This will give us some time to actually look at it holistically instead of piecemeal. And, um, I just hope the city will consider pausing, uh, from canceling the contract. So that's the purpose of, of the motion. Yeah. And then I have, I got four or five other things to respond to the other comments when you're done. Yeah. Can hit the nail on the head with the, with the idea of the bigger picture. I mean, I just wanted to bring up that across the board in almost every conversation that we have regarding access to services, socially disadvantaged, you know, medically disadvantaged, whatever it might be, transportation, transportation, transportation, transportation, it comes up again and again and again in every conversation we have. So the idea of reducing transportation options and reducing transportation access is, is the wrong direction. And, and I understand where the city is in terms of a really difficult set of decisions that they have to make. Um, and I, so I completely understand the pain and the difficulty and I know how hard it's going to be to ask them to reconsider the situation potentially, if it would save money for them to bring it in house. But I think it's necessary for us to have a more robust conversation about overall, how do we really provide regional transit? And how do we do that for everybody that needs it? Um, so thank you for the motion. Okay. I just want to make a comment in terms of MV, uh, transportation. Uh, I serve on a transportation disadvantage board currently. And, uh, I, I also served when I was a city commissioner also on that, that board. And before MV came, I think it was CTS, uh, which was horrible. Uh, which was horrible. I mean, horrible. People, uh, with disabilities, people were complaining, they weren't not being picked up. People who were on dialysis was not making their appointments at the clinic. And I mean, it was a big mess, but MV came in, uh, and straightened it out. And I think they've been running since 2012. Well, at least when I came back on in 2012, uh, MV has been there. And, uh, all of the complaints have gone away pretty much. People are pretty much satisfied, but that would be a devastating blow to this community if we lose, uh, the paratransit and MV, uh, because of budget issues. Uh, but I just think it's important that those group of citizens in our community who really depend on this transportation, uh, should really get that transportation because that's their livelihood. That's the way to the doctor. That's the way to get food. That's the way they survive pretty much. And I, I just think that, um, you know, I know things are happening federally, too, that we have no control over. Uh, but locally, I think we need to start looking after our folks who are disadvantaged in our community. And I, I just want to make that comment because I think it's important. But if you guys get a chance to, to come to the transportation disadvantage meetings, uh, you'll hear the concerns and issues of those citizens, uh, that they're currently speaking. I mean, you, you'll get their, their feeling and they're very much advocates, uh, for it because they know that that's their only source of transportation. So I just leave it at that. So, so there's any further discussion to the motion. All right. Are there any citizen comments to the motion? A quick question, Mr. Chair, Anthony Johnson. The system is still in place right now. You said it would be for maybe another two years. So I want to, my question is about the county's mobile service. You, you, we invested in a mobile health service through the fire department. I was here. We had gotten a vehicle. You're doing that service. Is that an overlapping service as it stands right now? That, that, that, that mobile fire EMS? Who are we serving with that? That's my, that's my question basically. Harold Theis, chief of fire rescue. Uh, the mobile integrated health is what he's referring to. Uh, that is to go out and actually serve public indigent care. Uh, those people that are having the gaps between, uh, medical care that don't have family practice and things like that. It's not a transportation service. It's actually a mobile clinic that we go to different areas of the community to try to serve the public. Thank you. Okay. Any further comments, citizen comments? Yes. If you like, just like to reiterate some of the comments you made. MV has been providing this service since 2003. We have over 22 years of experience. Um, as I came on as the general manager, there was some work to be done. Okay. We can't deny it. Um, I've worked extremely hard and the biggest part of that was developing teams that not know how to drive a vehicle, but cared about the individuals themselves. And the set of drivers I have and the staff I have, I would put them up against any other MV transportation division in this country. And I mean that sincerely. So that's something to keep in mind. I can't say, you know, how RTS will run it. You know, I can only say how I'll run it, but I'll put myself up against anyone. My folks care. Okay. And this could be a major impact to their, to their lives. So I'm really relieved and happy to see that you will take steps moving forward. I truly appreciate that. No one's going to do it better than we can. Okay. Thank you. And Mr. Chair, I'll just comment that my, my last interaction with MV was when we were going through the living wage. And, um, yeah, we worked with them to increase wages for bus drivers and, and they've always been a, a great partner of the county through the MTPO. Uh, and so I just, uh, all I would ask is that the city pause, give us a chance to figure this out over the next year or two and, um, and work with MV. Uh, obviously I think they've proposed some potential solutions and just, just a pause so we can work on it. Okay. Keep the service in place. All right. Those in favor of motion, vote by the sign of aye. Aye. Aye. As opposed, same sign. Motion carries. Mr. Clerk. Can I, can I go through a couple of other things? Oh, the other items. I'm sorry. Yeah. Did you conclude? Okay. So, um, so to, uh, Commissioner from High Springs, thanks for being here. Um, you know, we, I, I have been briefed by our chief. I know our chief is working with, with, uh, your staff to come up with solutions. My, my concern of doing anything that sets a precedent that then has a countywide impact is the concern I have. Um, and so we just had a joint meeting. I'm not in favor of having a joint meeting prior to our budget. We just spent a lot of time going through the budget, but I am in favor of our chief continuing to work with your staff to come up with some solutions. Um, to sorry on SB 180. Uh, I know this is a huge issue with fact and the counties are trying to figure out how to collectively respond to the legislature and to the governor. I know the cities are taking the, um, legal route. And before we join that, I want to kind of get behind where is fact, where are some, I know there are some seriously red counties that, uh, have been in the news lately. And so I want to, before we do anything, I'm just talking to my commission. I want to see where fact is. They're all going to be here in two weeks and it'll be an item to discuss. And so, uh, they'll be here front and center. And so that's where I am on SB 180. Um, on the bear hunt that Sarah brought up, you know, this was a big, big item. And I don't remember if you all were on the board yet, but the question I have to our county attorney is, can we prevent a statewide bear hunt on Alachua County land owned lands? Um, and, and what is the, is there a preemption on, on that? Mr. Chair, you're talking about lands owned by Alachua County, not in Alachua County? Owned or managed by Alachua County? Well, in, on the managed side, it would, it would depend on who retained the right to make those decisions in the management agreement. I think we manage, kind of think of land that we own that we don't manage. Okay. Um, we own certain lands that the state manages and in those contracts we did, I believe, agree to allow them to make those decisions. Oftentimes those are electric county forever properties that are directly adjacent to state properties. I'm not aware of a reason we can't, we can't, um, for the lands that we own and we manage, we can't prohibit on those lands. Yeah. So I would like to do that. And, and on those, on those lands where we allow someone else to manage, I would like to notify them that we would not like that to happen in December. If this board agrees, I just like to exercise whatever authority we have to prevent that in Alachua County, two more, and then I'll stop. And then I want to hear from my colleagues. Um, I didn't know that the four creeks park and the cut was causing such a ruckus. This is the first I've heard of it. So, um, I don't want the city who is our partner in that to sue us regarding that. So I would just kind of ask that maybe we refer that to staff to brief us on that. And then the last thing on the mill sink, I don't know what we're doing, but I know we are vested. And, um, we also have put aside, uh, some reserves in our legal fund and I would look again for staff to give us some recommendations on how we can support, uh, the city with regards to the things that we've already expressed a desire to support them on for the mill sink. So, um, I, I don't know if you all have comments about those things, but that's kind of, we can discuss this, a commission comment, but I wanted to, since it was all just came up, I want y'all to hear my thoughts. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Commissioner, uh, Wheeler, Prizia, and the manager again. I would ask you, Ken, do you, do you think it would be appropriate for us to, as a board, uh, support or have our opinions about the bear hunt sent to the legislator? Uh, the governor? I don't know if that's a stance we need to take as a board, you know, in terms of protect, because I've seen bears in Elantra County. I would hate to think that we wouldn't have that as something to look forward to, but I just didn't know if that would be something that, as a board, that we could come alongside the Sierra Club. And I just know where this board was when this was a local issue and I, and I know exactly where our community is and they don't want it. So however, our staff would recommend we, we express the needs of our community. And if it's to not hunt on Elantra County land at the very least, that's something I would, I would support. I believe we've already passed that. Like you all did that as a board several years ago. So we don't allow that hunting on our properties except for that. I was going to bring this up at our next meeting because we are going to be hearing about, um, the possibility of collaborating with the state for management of another one of our properties. And I was going to bring it up at that time, but I'm going to bring it up now. Um, I think that with the current environment of the state moving forward with things, the bear hunts also with, um, their efforts to allow for expanded law enforcement authority for, um, bodies that have some law enforcement authorities, um, that perhaps we, we, um, stop partnering with state for management of our conservation lands until such time as they not, are not doing those sorts of things because I, if they are managing our properties and retaining the rights, then they would be allowed to do those hunts and, um, take those broader law enforcement authorities on our properties. So we need to have that conversation. Um, and I, I think it's coming up at the September 9th meeting, so perhaps we could have a more robust conversation at that time. Um, but with the SB, wait, just, okay, are you? No, I mean, I was still, it's fine. You're still talking about that one? No, go ahead. No, I was still talking when, or when you, it's fine. It's fine. We'll just drop it over. It's fine, it doesn't matter. Just some bear huts covered and, um. Okay, I, I just wanted to welcome Commissioner White. Catherine, it's good to see you here. You know, I, I've reached out to the mayor and I've reached out to the CRA, you know, director up there, you know, to offer my services. I haven't heard. And the same, you know, with Alachua, I, I have contacted folks on those boards and I'm not hearing from you all. So I think, you know, at this point, from what I understand in terms of meeting, um, as I have a joint meeting at this late a date, we would, if, whereas if I'd known earlier, we could have maybe, you know, help get that going. So, um, we're going to leave it in a competent, capable hands of chief theist to help guide you all as best you can with that. But do know I'm available and, uh, Tamara, Ms. Robbins, you know, remind them that you all have a voice up here and, uh, I have nothing to lose for the next year. So, you know, I'm, I can get in all kinds of trouble. So just let me know. Just let me know more. Yes. More trouble. That's good too. And then the other thing is, um, Mr. Johnson was talking about agreements not being honored on, uh, with the understanding when that development came through, if there was a road that was supposed to have been used only temporarily, you know, I, you know, I, if you all could get some help to him to understand and maybe the rest of us, um, as to what their legal rights are and that to, um, honoring that agreement, that would be the thing that I, and I, I think that's, I think that's it. I think you covered everything else. Kim, thanks. Yeah. Um, I, I, the only other things I wanted to bring up was, um, the four creeks thing. I think, um, we approved them moving forward with that building a long time ago. Um, I, I guess it wasn't, um, it wasn't, I don't know why it wasn't noticed to the neighbors about the zoning change or anything that had to happen there with that project. But, um, I'm, I'm actually really surprised to hear that the committee doesn't want it. This is going to be a conservation land management building. It's going to allow us to manage the properties for our conservation program more effectively. And it would mean that Turkey Creek and four creeks and the other properties that are right there are going to have direct access to the staff that are made trail maintenance. And there's going to be a new, there's going to be a new parking lot there. That would mean that people aren't parking in their neighborhoods, which they've continuously complained about. Um, so I, you know, for me, it's very confusing to me. And I feel like every time we try to do something in those arenas, there's kind of pushback. And so I'm wondering if we couldn't just have a neighborhood meeting to hear some of their concerns and maybe address those in the development plan. Um, the final development plan for the building, um, because it's, it's the best possible location we have for this land conservation building because it's centrally located and we evaluated all the other properties and there was no other real site available. So I, I would just ask that as we refer that staff at staff, maybe consider hosting a community meeting to have a dialogue and see what sort of things we could add to the final development plan to ensure that the community feels like they're not going to be unduly, you know, um, so yeah, yeah. We kind of skipped over the county manager and I think she's got things to say. So this is being done. So this is in the city of Gainesville. It's already going through the process in the city of Gainesville and has passed certain development steps in the city of Gainesville. The notice is per city of Gainesville's, um, policies and regulations. So, um, before we start changing things on site plans and development plans, we need to make sure we're complying with the city's requirements for permitting, et cetera. And I don't know where in that process we are today. Um, I can have Andy give you all send an email with an update on where we're at in the process, but it already, um, in fact, I can tell you the date was already at their planning. Um, yes, it's moving through the right and moving through the process, but we're, we have to meet whatever requirements they're, they're putting for us as well. So I'll just have Andy provide an update to you all on where we're at in the process of getting the approvals for our permitting and site plans. And then if you want anything further, I mean, we can get, we're happy to come before you as well, if you want to hear more about the project, but of course we're subject to the city's regulations there that we're doing. Well, I think there's a difference between rezoning, which I think is what we're going through the city for and final development plan. But just, yeah, I would just be good to know from staff, if there are opportunities for us to, if a fence or some kind of buffering or access or something could be done that would help that community feel more secure, safer, or whatever the concerns are with regards to this. I mean, it's really going to be operations primarily for land conservation. So I can't imagine there's gonna be a whole lot of traffic other than diverting traffic from their neighborhoods to get access to the trailhead. So we'll provide that update. And then if there's opportunities in there, we'll let you know if they're where they're at. That's great. Thank you. Okay. That's good. Mr. Clerk. I was going to comment. Oh, I'm sorry. That's all right. I never, I never got a chance to finish my comments, but all I wanted, no, no, no, that's okay. All I want to do is thank the transportation, just transportation disadvantaged community for showing up today. I think that, you know, it's a big deal for some folks to get out and to do that. And, and, you know, and the folks that waited on the phone and dealt with all of that, I just wanted to thank them for using their voices and coming out and talking to us. And and I want to thank you for the motion. It really meant a lot to me. I never got a chance to sort of finish my comment, but it's, it's, it's personal to me. And I just really appreciate that. And thank you. Madam manager, can we get that letter out like in the next day or two? Yeah. And I had other stuff, but you go to the city. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. And thank you all for addressing all the other things. We don't need to reiterate anything else. Okay. Sure. That takes us with the first action item. It's the sports events center transition in addition of three FTEs. Mr. Chair, I just wanted to ask for a quick potential agenda management. I think there's a number of people who are here, staff and community that are here for the literacy item. I'm wondering if we want to move that one ahead of the, all of our staff items with regards to the world masters and all that. Okay, great. If we can move literacy up and then do. Yeah. Is that okay? Mr. Clerk, we will. Mr. Chair, that's the will of the board. I just know we have lots of busy people with lots of work to do. That'll bring us to the presentations. The first item is the children's trust of Alachua County literacy initiative update. Chair, commission, candy, Nixon, community sports services. Today, we're here to bring a presentation update on the children's literacy or comprehensive literacy needs assessment. And we have with us today, Dr. Teresa Beachy, who will give an update on that. And also we have with us peak literacy director, Leah Galan, who is one of the main providers for that. Thank you. Good afternoon, commissioners. Thank you so much. Teresa Beachy, I am the chief organizational strategist with the Center for Nonprofit Excellence. And we are very excited to be helping with design and coordinate this project that I think will have lasting effects on our community because we are at a moment with all of the right people at the table with being able to really make some collective impact. So you all have in your packet the executive summary of the framework that this work group has been working on diligently since the April joint meeting between the commission and the children's trust. So I just want to go through some of the highlights there. This initiative addresses the critical need for systemic literacy improvement by establishing a sustainable framework that addresses literacy throughout the community as an essential infrastructure that impacts economic development and the quality of life across all of our population. This is a resource realignment project that represents a growing trend of communities across the country who realize that investment in collective impact for literacy at all ages will allow our citizens to realize their potential. When we look at the strategic foundation of this, this is coming from the literacy needs assessment that you all commissioned from the Lastinger Center, a wonderful piece of work that we were able to see in April and they identified really the outline of what our community needs to do to effectively address this. And they outlined three priorities enhanced awareness and communication, focused support, and expanded professional learning. So taking those priorities we as a work group have been creating and refining an organizational structure that can really then implement those priorities in a replicable, effective way. So the initiative employs a four-team collaborative model that involves the critical partner of course of the School Board of Alachua County and our Alachua County Public Schools, the Board of Commissioners, the Children's Trust of Alachua County, many of our amazing community-based programs, stakeholders, allied partners, they're all coming together to be part of design and training and evaluation, implementation and partnership support, a community advisory council, and coordinating and strategic communications. Each team will contribute their expertise, their perspective, their practical experience, and their community connections to coordinate efforts that will impact reading achievement in all ages from pre-k through adult. We have some key assets in this community that I think historically we have underutilized. And so I'm really excited about the fact that we're able to bring them all to the table and start looking at how we can build together a sheet of music that we can all sing from. This framework leverages the Alachua County's exceptional resources that include our Alachua County Public Teachers and Staff, the University of Florida and our Santa Fe College expertise, our Alachua County Library district, which I want to give a shout out amazing folks doing so much work over there, our high performing local partners, we have several of them in the room today. And while the schools will continue to serve as the primary role for this, two community program structures will serve out of school time to make sure that they we have a parallel path. So what the schools are doing, we're going to support in our out of school time with literacy support programs. So these are resources and support services to increase literacy access and confidence in home settings. And then literacy skill building programs that will be direct instruction focused on literacy improvement and grade level reading achievement. So that way we're going to have providers across the spectrum. So whether you're a small community program like Pine Ridge that's doing tutoring and trying to do enrichment, we'll have we'll be able to develop a model that will work for you all the way up to Kids Count that's doing incredible instruction after school that's that's really a curriculum based. So whatever that model is, our team one will design the correct curriculum activities, the correct training and the correct evaluation that will then allow you to do that parallel path with what's happening in schools. And by round two, we'll have a whole series then of models where we can invite other folks to the table that want to do this in their church settings, in their community centers, in their after school programs. So we have replicable, measurable and impactful models. So again, I can't say enough about the teams at the Children's Trust, at the Alachua County Social Services staff, at the library district, at UF, the network of partners, the grade level reading initiative, the community-based programs that have really been working since this needs assessment was published in April to construct a project that will be done well. Over the fall, it will be further informed by parents, caregivers, community leaders and educators through a series of town halls and other resources strategies. So that the path forward is one that we can all believe in, buy into and support. So this framework really positions Alachua County as a replicable model for community-wide literacy improvement. Success will be measured through individual literacy gains and community level indicators for the long term that include economic development, civic engagement and quality of life improvements. That's a big lift, but I believe that we can do it and this is the moment that we've all been waiting for to collectively make that coordinated response. So you'll see in that initial executive summary, we did have a budget outline. I know there have been some changes at the county level to how that 250,000 will be allocated in this first round of implementation. We're here to support whatever the direction is. We'll continue to coordinate and work in our work groups to make sure that the framework includes the partner that you've chosen to work with initially, Peak Literacy, and however many partners that they're going to be coordinating. So that again, we're all part of that collaborative and we're making sure that the measurable and replicable outcomes are what we're getting to in the end. So we're excited about that. So I'll take any questions or any comments that you have. Oh, thank you. Thank you, Teresa. This is important work for me. I had a quick question. One of the things that I've been trying to figure out how to advocate for are identifying pregnant moms who have literacy challenges and then helping them, you know, work on that during their pregnancy and while their children are little when it's, you know, good practice reading, reading children's books and, um, you know, and it's also a huge safety issue because if you can't read a Tylenol bottle, you know, it's, it's, um, hard to correctly dose Tylenol or whatever. So I am, I'm curious how, if there's anything that fits in your model addressing that particular concern. I think that some of our literacy support programs like Yolanda, uh, Hagley's Gainesville Thrives, um, and our reading pals programs are all looking to expand on how they're able to address families, um, in, in various iterations. So we have great partners through the community that are already axing, uh, accessing that group. I know, um, CTAC funds a doula program that's working with pregnant moms. Um, and then UF has their expanded maternal health, uh, mobile clinic. So there's definitely opportunities there. And I think that as this program grows, uh, those support programs will see different pathways that they can access. So that's definitely one that we would want to be sure to. And that's what I was exactly hoping to hear because they're already, you know, they're already there and how the things could overlap and, and we could work together because I, I really believe that nonprofits working in a silo are often not working nearly as effective as ones that work in, in the web of the community and trying to achieve larger goals. Correct. I've been, um, pushing out these two pictures in my office that one is all these silos and one is all these people sitting at tables. And I said, this is where we are. This is where we want to go. Yes. Thank you. Absolutely. Commissioner Frizzi. Yeah, I just want to say thank you for all your work. I'm really excited about the opportunity to bring all the collaborative groups together and create kind of a, I mean, you're calling it a work group, but I think it's really, it's going to be kind of a brain trust of the, the organizations that have been on the ground doing this work from the beginning, the people who think about this work and study this work, the people who need this work. And I couldn't agree with you more, Commissioner Alford, like really starting to think about how do we connect the dots between maternal health and outcomes for literacy and economic development and employment and really connecting those dots so that we can get to the outcome we want, which is successful young people achieving their dreams. So I just really appreciate the work you're doing. And I know it's not an easy, um, easy set of, um, tasks we've given you. So thank you for, for your work and we're excited to see you and peak begin to move the needle right now, both in longterm planning and in short term kind of doubling our impact and getting some work going on the ground. So thank you very much. Absolutely. Thank you for the opportunity. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So I, I won't keep you. I, we had a very long discussion at the Children's Trust about Teresa. I love your title, Chief Organizational Strategist. I talk, um, to folks around the state, uh, about the envy of SeaTac and Alachua County because of the intellectual property that we have as a community. Um, I was reading the backup. Have you all gotten moved over to the chamber as of August 1st? We did. I said, I felt so metropolitan. I walked here today. Okay. Congratulations on that. Who are your seven board members? So, uh, John Barley is our board chair. You might remember him from leading Catholic charities for about, uh, 13 years. Um, he had prior, uh, experience as a, um, manager in the Carrabba's group. So he brings a lot of business experience. Um, our treasurer is Debbie Frederick, who most recently retired as the COO from university air center. Um, she also serves on a couple other, um, large boards, North Florida regional being one of them. And, um, Dr. Karen Ellers, who is our secretary, she is the administrator for the Warrington College's, um, doctoral and business administration program. So she brings some great connections for students who are looking for projects as our nonprofits are moving forward. And then our additional board members are Carrie Lee, um, who served on the foundation board when C&E was first brought to them. Um, and is currently on the Santa Fe College trustees board. So she has some great connections for us there. Um, Stephen Walker, who is a financial planner with Edward Jones. He just went through the next-gen, um, philanthropy training with the, the, um, uh, foundation and is also part of the Gainesville Young Professionals group at the chamber. So bringing in some young voices. He's at ACR, so has gone through the school system. So we're really excited about having that voice as well. Um, Victoria Stevenson, who is a Latina business owner, um, 19 years as a corporate trainer and now runs, uh, accounting services, business services, and has been partnering with some of our children's trust contracted programs already. Um, and we'll be doing a lot of consulting and, and support services for C&E as we develop our programming, um, this year. And then Laura Gruber, who is, um, the U.S. Health Physicians Administrator. So she oversees all of the U.S. Health Physicians programs that are scattered throughout the county. And I have served on the vestry of Holy Trinity Episcopal Church with her, and she is also on their foundation board. So she brings some really great faith-based experience, um, looking at foundations and charitable giving. So I think she's a, been a tremendous asset. So I needed three, I wanted five, I asked seven, and I got them all. Well, that's a powerhouse of a board, um, and congratulations. Thank you. I really am excited, as Commissioner Prizia said, about seeing the long-term systems be put in place with the short-term actions that are actually happening on the ground. So thank you so much for the presentation. It's the perfect pilot to prove our coordinated community response model. So thank you. I'd love to hear from Peek. Ms. Peek. Teresa, very quickly, the folks that you all are organizing to do the work in the afternoon to reach these kids, I would encourage you to encourage all of them to spend the day in a classroom, to see what it is the children are dealing with during their day, and what is really, um, uh, what is, what they're being expected to do in the afternoon after school, and how their day will impact that afternoon. That's a great suggestion, and Heather Harbor, who is the new literacy specialist that Dr. Patton has hired for the school system, um, is on the work group, and we're, we're actually, one of the town meetings we want to hold is at Santa Fe, uh, high school, and one of the things that we have talked about is we really want to get the input from the teacher. So, um, folks that are kind of on the ground and doing the bulk of the work, because we know that the school system's charge is this, um, but our, our community partners can support that in so many ways. So, we're just really excited to see that dialogue start to develop. That's a great suggestion. Because I don't hear teachers mentioned in these lists of activities much. Well, and, and we're really focusing on the out of school time, um, and just really taking the lead from what the school system is developing, and Dr. Patton and her team, what they're saying they're going to implement, which is the UFLY curriculum, at least in the early grades, and then whatever, uh, additional reading supports that they're working with, and in older grades, um, we're following that lead to create that parallel path. So get into, if you could follow a kid for the day, just to see the kind of day, because I'm hearing reports from classrooms, you know, that are expected to use computers, and the computers are not there. The programs that they're required to use, and only use, they don't have access to the materials they need. And for having 38 kids in a reading class, and expect the child to be able to learn from a computer, may be a little unrealistic. So please, do the research from the classrooms, as well as the ones from, you know, outside the community. That's a great suggestion, and we'll be relying on that, uh, ACPS team to, to inform us, for sure. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you, Mr. Chantz. Any else, quick question? Yeah. You mentioned Heather Harper on your work group, who else is on the work group that's... Um, so it's, it's your staff, um, it's the CTAC staff, um, we have the Alachua County grade level reading folks that are representative, um, and they represent some different providers, um, and then that work group is expanding. We're having our first bigger meeting, now that the framework has been seen by both of the funding boards, um, on September 17th. So that's when we'll bring in all of the folks from UF, um, the folks that are the providers on the ground, um, that are really kind of already doing this work. So kids count, girls play, you know, all the folks that are already doing, um, that parallel curriculum, they'll be part of that work group. And then it'll expand out from there. Once we have our town halls to see who wants to be part of our community advisory councils and what other, um, and the library districts, I'm sorry. And you know, so they're, they're all part of, um, kind of looking at this initial framework and can, and developing something that then we can present to the community as a whole to get feedback, refine, and then move forward with. Thank you. That's helpful. Absolutely. Thank you. Thanks so much. I just want to hear how you're supercharging it with the additional funding. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you so much for, um, the vote of confidence, uh, last week, um, and peak starting some, um, action, uh, happening here, expanding our action, uh, plan. Um, and so, um, our scope of work and includes, um, expanding direct literacy services to 160 additional kids this year, um, receiving, um, direct literacy support, literacy capacity building within the small organizations that we're working with that are not quite ready for, um, kind of the, the top level, right, of literacy, you know, excellent support. We're trying to kind of increase their capacity so that they are ready for those next level implementations that are being worked on. Um, and then parent engagement, of course, and adult ed is a big part of what we're focusing on with Santa Fe College. Um, the Sheriff's Office released re-entry and, um, adult ed and the, uh, Gainesville Housing Authority. So that's a large part. That's a new, um, pilot that we're going to be working with, with the, um, adults and those getting ready to study for the GED. Um, and so that's, um, that's our plan. We're really excited. A lot of, um, a lot of excited partners and, uh, community members that to make this happen. We're so busy. Yeah. Well, thank you for your work too. We're really excited to partner with you and excited to see how you integrate with the work group and you all figure out the path forward to ensure that there's good coordination and collaboration as we keep moving toward this goal of, you know, what the literacy needs assessment told us, which is, you know, we need to support the families. We need to support the kids and we need to support the teachers that are doing this hard work. So, and to speak to that, um, Commissioner Wheeler, um, we've been in the schools for the past three years working, um, bringing in volunteers to pad into two different schools. I very much, um, appreciate that response because it, it, there is, um, you know, a level of kids. We cannot repeat school in the afternoon for kids. We can't, we can't do that. Um, and so what are those, those interventions and the, the small things that we can do to support the amazing you fly curriculum that's being used in those younger years and then the other things that they're doing. So it is, um, it is on my radar to not repeat, um, what's in, what's going on in the schools for sure. Thank you. Thank you. So we're back to the sports event center. Oh, I'm sorry. Like, are we allowed to do comment? Um, my name is Jennifer Reeves and I'm with the University of Florida Literacy Institute. Wanted to say first, thrilled that this is happening. This is our wheel house. This is what we do. Um, I do want to just throw a few kind of suggestions out there. It sounds like this is kind of already a done deal. So, um, one of the things that Teresa mentioned was bringing the right people to the table. So, um, and part of that initial proposal that she made was to bring in several groups of stakeholders to make these decisions. So I'm a little bit confused because we were initially operating under a different plan in which the county had 250,000 that would kind of be help complement the CTAC funding. And we would look at lots of stakeholders and see how that would best be used and bring in lots of collaborators. But it sounds like last week that program changed, that plan changed. Um, and the stakeholders weren't really included. Um, and instead it sounds like about 25% of the overall money, um, 75% of your money is going to go to one organization, um, without any real conversation among the others. So I do, if that's already a done deal that, you know, that's the county can do whatever they are going to do with the money. I do want to stress though that you, we've done a lot of groundwork, um, in building trust in the community and incite excitement among agencies and, um, who looked at this as a transparent process that would build replicable, sustainable, sustainable, comprehensive literacy programs. Um, and that's really now changed a little bit. So I, I want you to be aware of that, that there's going to need to be now some more trust building that kind of happens. I hope that there's a plan for accountability, replicability, bringing in some of the actual literacy experts, um, at UF to help make whatever this new plan is. Um, I, I still think it's exciting. I think there's promise. If there is any room for adjustment at this point in the funding, um, I think you had 250 and now 200 is going to one agency to, to do something with adolescents and 50 is left for everything else. And I'm not sure what that will be. If you are in a position to make some changes in that, um, I would encourage you to do what SeaTac did and bring it back to staff and maybe, um, take another look and see how that money might be dispersed among different agencies. Kids count had to leave, but like they're already doing, you know, hugely comprehensive in-depth work. Um, so is my time up? Um, I would suggest that you take a look at how this is going to happen and what the accountability plan is for that money. And those are my thoughts from you. And either way, UF, we're, we will work with whatever we need to do and we will continue the work that we're already doing with several established agencies doing comprehensive literacy planning and implementation. Thank you. Are you going to respond to that? From my perspective, uh, there is a, um, real need to get something done from my perspective. And we have, um, been working on this for three years and I'm ready to get some actual output so that we can then get future funding. And so I think we've got a really good plan of short term, let's get some stuff done long term working through C and E and the rest of the organization so that we have a duplicatable system. But I, we need output and we need, um, when I go on a little soapbox here, I went on and that's a children's trust. But when you think about a $200,000 investment and, and how many kids get redirected into success, that is such a, such a great investment model. And we know we have something that we know works. We just need more of it faster. And so I think, um, that decision was made by this board. I agree with that decision at while simultaneously dealing with a long term decision. And I think by doing that, we'll have more data, which will then provide us with more opportunities for additional funding. What also happened last week as part of that motion was we agreed to agenda with the city of Gainesville this item so that we could ask them for additional funding. And I think results are going to really matter. And, um, also when we have a joint meeting with the school board, results are really going to matter. So that's, that's my opinion. I don't know if you want to add to it, but I think, you know, it's unanimous at the board. And so hopefully that's how the board still feels. Yeah. I mean, I'll, I'll just add that I think, I mean, I thought, I mean, I, I may be the understanding of where we're going and where you're coming from and what Teresa's doing are not all the way meshed because I mean, peak was at the table since the very beginning with, um, Teresa was, and has been in the community doing this work on the ground for over five years. They have the experience and are actually building capacity with other organizations. It's not one organization. They're actually putting together, you know, a group of individuals that they can work with to build capacity as Teresa's building her capacity to do this whole framework, right? I mean, she herself is a, is a, is a startup in a way, right? It's a, it's an entity that has to really build its structure so that it can support the structure. And while we're excited about the experts from UF and others coming to the table to provide some guidance, support data and evaluation, I think we also need to lean on the experts in our community that know what their capacity is, that understand what it's like when you're dealing with kids who've been stressed out during the day and teachers who don't have the resources that they need and have real success to hit the ground running and to double our impact right now, um, and to expand and support those entities that aren't quite ready for the supports that Teresa's going to bring to the table. Um, and so to me, this is just a, a sort of a jump starting and a catalyzing of the work that we need to see happening. And, you know, in an ideal world, peak literacy is in that work group at the table having conversations about what evaluation tools actually work for those people, which ones are the ones that they're, they're using that we know are evidence-based. What are the ways that you fly and the Lassinger Center and Dr. Balzer and others can support the work that they're doing as well as the work that all of the other entities are doing in this community. So to me, this is not a changing of the strategy. It's just putting the money directly in the hands of the people who are ready to go right now while continuing to support the work that Teresa's doing to build the long-term overall strategy and capacity for us to do this work at a bigger scale. And I think all of this board, we recognized even when we passed the 250,000 that, you know, Ken said, that's not enough money. And I said, well, let's start there, you know, and then, and we'll, and as we'll grow, as we see the needs and as we have the data to point us in the right direction. So, um, right, exactly. But, but I will tell you that the trust board, which we're about to get some new government appointees are going to say at the end of the first year, what happened? What'd you, what'd you do? You had a couple of meetings. No, how many kids did you, sir? How many kids did you get redirected? Right. And thank goodness we're all working together because, um, you, the, the future of that 1.1, two year more commitment is at risk if we don't deliver. Right. Yeah. So we got to deliver. I remember that now because I had said that $250,000 would have hired five teachers. Right. Remember that? Okay. Thank you. I've tried to be good. I really was trying to be good today. I really was trying to behavior. See, I try, but like I told everybody earlier, I'm getting into trouble this year. That's okay. Okay. More trouble. All right. Ms. Chair, that takes us to the, uh, back to the action items. What's the sports event transition in addition of three FTEs? And as a reminder, reminder, Mr. Chair, we are hearing the consent item along with this. So we will need also, um, an approval of that item that goes along with it. And while she's pulling up and getting ready to present to be clear, that is the official FTE on for, for one of the FTEs, we need to add it to the pay plan. So if the board approves the fact that we're hiring those FTEs, that actually adds one of them to the pay plan. That's why we put it together. Good afternoon. I'm Jessica here of director of tourism and economic development. And we're here today with a brief update about the transition of the Alachua County sports and events center. Okay. So just a brief background to kind of review where we've been. Um, the facility fully opened in spring of 2023. It's funded by $30 million of tourist development tax on the county side. On July 8th, 2025, the board voted unanimously to terminate the agreement with the operator following the notice of default on July, on June 6th. This termination is effective September 30th, with Alachua County, assuming full control of the operations on October 1, 2025. And with that, a cross-functional team has been working, um, very closely with one another on this transition process. And I'd like to just express a public sentiment of appreciation and thanks to OMB, HR, IT, um, all of the facilities, all of the county departments have been having regular meetings with one another and really come together, um, with a great vision of how we can accomplish this transition. Um, just a brief facility overview. As you all know, the facility is 130,000 square feet. We have over 90,000 square feet of uninterrupted floor space. Um, we have volleyball, we have regulation basketball courts, 21 pickleball courts, um, a cheer studio, spectator seats. Um, and we currently have office space there for the Gainesville Sports Commission. So I did want to point out for, um, our residents or anyone listening, this is fully funded on the county side through tourist development tax. This is not general fund revenue that went into the creation of the facility, nor going into the county's share of the operations of it. Um, TDT is in full alignment with the use of this, um, structure. So it is to be reinvested into tourism growth, um, such as facilities, programs, and marketing initiatives that will bring more visitation to the county. Um, and most importantly, that visitor spending and what that means to our businesses. Um, this creates a long-term economic impact and a revenue growth cycle where the increased CDT can be reinvested into other programs, um, on behalf of the board. So in looking at what the county's core goals are around the center, first and foremost, to drive economic impact by attracting tourism generating sports events, other types of events. We're doing a big music event there on November 1st, and the visitors that generate new spending, grow tax revenues, and support Alachua County businesses and jobs. Um, this also elevates our county's profile when we're hosting very public, very visible events. Um, it puts us out into the press and carries our brand alignment further for future visitation and future events. Um, we're really looking as we process this transition in ensuring the financial stability of the center. Um, we started out with the budget trying to do an 80 percent cost recovery. So that earned revenue from the center would be covering up to 80 percent of the operating costs. I think we got it to about 78 percent for year one. And then through this, we're also looking at how can we balance local access? Um, there are lots of groups that when it became public that it's being transitioned have been reaching out to staff to say, um, they would like access to it for volleyball, for basketball, pickleball, cheer, lots of different, um, ideas for local usage, which would be more the Monday through Friday during the week. Um, so it's not interfering with some of our larger weekend events. Um, so this proposed operational model, as you've seen on other items on today's agenda, creates a dedicated sports and event division underneath the umbrella of tourism and economic development. Um, this division would be led by a sports tourism and events manager. Um, their job would be to implement strategies to attract these regional national and international events, strengthening Alachua County's brand identity and ability to host premier, um, sports and events, whether those are music, cultural events, trade shows, conferences. Um, this would also support local organizations in accessing the facility during those non-tourism event periods. They'll be looking at the budget along with all the rest of it to make sure that we're, um, creating the kind of financial stability in an operating model that ideally the facility can become self-sustaining with the revenues that it generates across all of those revenue lines, whether rentals, concessions, um, ancillary income. And this individual would act as the general manager of the facility and support uses of other county facilities such as West End Park. So as you all know, this facility has been operating as a public-private partnership, um, since it opened in June. This transition plan proposes to have it as direct public management, which is government run. Um, this will maximize our oversight of the facility while ensuring alignment with the purpose of the facility as a tourism and economic development investment. Under this model, this would be directly operated by the county with county staff overseeing programming, booking, maintenance, the financial management, and more. We've talked about this. All revenues would directly go to support, um, the operationals expenses and continue to run it as a public asset for our residents. So as we look at how the facility gets booked out, what are the events and how do they come? Um, there are three primary types of events. Obviously facility rentals, that's a straight-out rental agreement where, um, where, um, an organizer comes and says they want to host a basketball tournament and we have available dates. We do a rental agreement with them and they are hosting their event. Another type of events that take place there are what we would call a bid type of event. That would be your WMA, um, your NAIA, which we're hosting this spring. So those are events that the county bids on, just like WMA. And it's more of a partnership where we're producing the event alongside them. They bring the participants and they bring, um, all of the credentials for the event. And then, especially for track season, um, the facility has been operating by creating their own track events. So when the track goes up in December and stays up till March, we want to keep that track busy, um, every single weekend and every single day that it's there. So those are some of the models that we'll be working with the track experts in our community to keep the center busy. Um, I mentioned this already, um, unlike a recreation department that's kind of planning our own basketball leagues and planning our own volleyball leagues, the county is not going to be getting into the business of recreation, recreational league programming. Um, rather we're going to be giving the groups that already are doing that, whether it's volleyball, basketball, the opportunity to come and run their leagues out of the center. So staffing, um, we're proposing three new positions to support the transition and to ensure the successful ongoing operations. That was all in your backup, the sports and events manager, um, a coordinator level position, and then the maintenance mechanic position is really the person who would be on site during rental activities. When we have clients there, we need a person from county staff to be there in the building. Um, we're still figuring out concessions. Um, so whether that would be a contracted service with a concessionaire, um, we will need some temp staffing and over hire type of staffing just to, when we have thousands of people in the building, um, we need to know that those people can be hosted there safely and securely and in alignment with an emergency action plan that the fire marshal is helping us create. Um, so I just wanted to share kind of what are some of the contracts that have come along to us through this. Um, we have eight contracts through the end of this. We're kind of parsing it out like phase one, phase two, through the end of December. We have eight groups, um, that are already on the calendar that will be hosting. Um, the November one event is a large scale music event. And then we have infinity con visit Gainesville has sponsored them for many years, um, with their kind of comic con type festival. And you can see the rest. Um, we have 12 events, 12 groups on the calendar for 2026 so far. So really once, um, we get through this discussion, staff's first job is to dig into the calendars and all of the contracts that, um, are coming. We've been getting a ton of requests to utilize the facility. And so those need to all be sorted and placed onto a calendar. So the budget year one overview, um, this is the kind of broad operational expenses and revenues that we're looking at. Um, how are we getting program rentals, event rentals, the rooms, sponsorships, obviously concessions, which we're still, um, figuring out the best model to deploy concessions at the facility. And then some of the operations. So I mentioned this before, but for estimated year one, we're looking for the revenues to cover about 78% of these operational costs. So for next steps, what our staff doing is we're exploring partnerships and rentals to continue to collaborate with existing rent, renters, engage new organizations, the ones, especially who have been reaching out. We are, you know, we're learning how to fly the plane while the plane is in the air. We are not going to put any kind of pause on anything that's being planned there. So the first order of business is plan for track season. That's January through March, um, plan and staff up the fall events, um, develop and refine what the food and beverage operations would be, the concessions for the facility, hire and onboard the three new employees that will be supporting this. And then we have the marketing side. So we're going to bring some of the marketing materials right into alignment with the county's marketing materials so that we have a very close, um, connection between our facility that, um, we've created and the branding for Visit Gainesville, Alachua County. And we need to finalize the rate sheets, the contracts, um, and work with legal on finalizing the standardized facility use agreement template. I believe that's my last slide. So that's our last slide. And we're here to answer any questions. Okay. Commissioner Wheeler. I just have a quick question, uh, about the grounds around the facility. I think they're still, it looks like they're still being planned out as to what should be next fences and all of that sort of thing. Is there, do we have any control over the future development or those? Because I was thinking, as concessions, we're talking about food that we could have food trucks that would also pay us a rental for being there in those situations and just have an alley of food trucks. You know, I know that the plan had been for a restaurant to go in there, so I don't know where they are with that. But if no, we're, it might be just something to check out to see, because I know it still looks like an industrial site in a lot of ways with the fencing that's still there. So just maybe we get a food truck alley or something in there. No? We, we, the county owns the footprint of the building. That's the building, but not the grounds. We own the footprint of the building. That's what I'm asking about the grounds. That grounds area with the fencing and, um, where some of the world masters kind of athletes village events were set up, um, that is not our property. So we're focused primarily now on the interior of the building and the activities that we can control and coordinate there. Well, that's what I just didn't know what the status of, you know, the, the owner is at this point, you know, if we could come up with a better arrangement so that it would, we would have a better, a more inviting entrance to our property. That's all I'm thinking. Okay. Okay. Good afternoon, everyone. Dave Forziano with the county attorney's office. Uh, the, the lots that are out in front of the event center, they're owned by a private entity. Um, right now there's mortgages attached to those. There's unpaid CDD assessments that are attached to those. We are trying to negotiate the purchase of those by the county, which of course would maybe be brought back to you for approval. But we're trying to work through those issues because the value of the mortgages and the assessments greatly exceeds the value of the property. Plus, as you know, a lot of celebration point is in bankruptcy right now. The court just approved basically a restructuring expert to come in and give the restructuring expert 90 additional days. This is already a very long bankruptcy. I think it's 18 or 19 months right now. So the court is helpful. And I think the creditors are hopeful that this gets restructured. Um, but if it doesn't, then the next step would be to move to dismiss the bankruptcy and foreclose on these lots. We're hoping to step in and get in the middle of that process and acquire those lots that are right in front of the event center. But it's going to be a little tricky because as I said, the value of the liens greatly exceeds the value of the properties. So you've got the owner, you've got a mortgage holder, and you have the CDD assessments, which is basically a tax lien, just like you would have a tax lien. It has very high priority. So those are the things we're trying to navigate right now. You're one step ahead of me. Thank you. That's exciting. I'm, but I don't know if there's any way that we could ask them to have the fencing gone until, you know, until that's, you know, settled. I just because of the, of the aesthetics. Yeah, those are not, that's not our fencing. That's not our lots. We don't have any direct control over there right now. Uh, we have been discussing this with some celebration folks folks, folks, and as well as the CDD folks as well to close roads if we have events so we can put up those vendor tents and, and, uh, and food trucks and have the roads closed so we can have those for events. That's all in the negotiations right now. Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much. We have Commissioner Alfred, Cornell, uh, the manager, and then Commissioner Prezio. I was just going to go ahead and make the motion to, to, to, uh, for staff's recommendation as well as for the staffing request in the, uh, in the, um, uh, consent agenda. Yes. Second. Okay. Got a motion in a second. I have to actually talk. And I did, by the way, spend over an hour speaking with staff, asking a lot of the same questions, uh, Mary Helen. So I, um, I, uh, I had a lot of questions, and I feel pretty good about the responses that I got from staff. I think they are working really hard to protect the interests of the taxpayers here. And so I, I appreciate that. And I appreciate the work that Jessica's done trying to get all this together. One more giant project. So, uh, thank you. Yeah, that's where I was going to start. I want to thank, uh, economic development department, HR, legal, OMB, facilities. I mean, this has been kind of an all hands on deck. Moment. Um, and to see the different departments working together, really, um, it's really impressive and, and great job for both the manager and our attorney that are leading that, that charge. I go back to, um, really before this building was ever even built. I can remember before I was in your seat, Mary Helen, you're now the commissioner of charge of TDC. The hoteliers, you know, saying, guys, we need this facility. Um, hotel stays are dropping and don't do a 40,000, uh, square foot facility, do 110,000 square foot facility and really do a, a regional public facility. And that decision was made by a previous board. Um, and once that decision was made, it was a public private partnership because, uh, we basically had a private entity that was going to go through the startup phase of this facility that's happened now, but it's a public facility. It is going to be publicly run and publicly facing. And the only complaints I've really heard is providing local access. You know, everyone in the community wanted this facility because I remember when I wasn't on the board, I was part of the group that built Jonesville. We wanted to stop traveling to soccer tournaments. We wanted to have them here. And, um, and so the public wants access to this facility, even though it's paid for by non-residents. I mean, this thing was paid for by, by TDC monies and will continue to be paid for by TDC money. So there is this enterprise fund value, enterprise, um, fund concept that we have to remember, but having a public building that's publicly run and publicly facing, I am really thankful of the thought that's gone into, uh, the motion, knowing that we're going to have some hiccups here and it's, we're going to have to figure some stuff out. Um, but we're serving the public with this facility, our TDC bed tax revenues continue to set records record after record after record. And so, um, I think when I look at the core goals, drive economic impact, check, elevate a lot for counties profile. You know, we presented, um, this at fact as something that, um, the rest of the state was looking at as a, as a model ensure financial sustainability. That's where we're focused right now. And we've got citizens that are helping us kind of stay diligent on that. And I will tell you that I feel so much better knowing that Tommy and OMB and there will be a person actually housed out there. So there being, those processes are being embedded into the counties processes with the clerk writing checks. You know, I feel like we're not there yet, but we'll get there. And then obviously providing local access, which over the last two years, I've heard from the volleyball folks and I've heard from the pickleball folks. And every time they call, they feel like they're competing with the operator. We don't want to compete with the operator. We want to serve the public. We want to have a facility that serves the public, um, is a regional draw provides the hoteliers with full rooms as often as possible and adds to, um, celebration point, which let's be honest was a flyer that the county kind of went out on a limb with the, with the, this, this economic model. So, um, I support the motion and support the consent item. I know there are going to be things that come up, but hearing, uh, what I just heard Mr. Forziano, uh, say I wasn't aware of, and I think it's brilliant. And I think time, you know, time is always on the government side. So time's on our side here. Uh, so let's just be thoughtful and, and let that happen. And we'll see, um, what we can do for the taxpayers of Alachua County. This facility is being paid for by non-residents. That's the thing that we have to constantly be reminded of if we're using TDC funds, those are the people that come in to our community, use our community, use our infrastructure, they pay a bed tax. And, um, that's what this is mostly funded by. And so I'm glad we've got a department. I don't think it's going to be a profitable enterprise fund this year, but I suspect over the next couple of years, we'll get it knowing who's running it to a place where it's going to be, um, a very small, uh, contribution to any of the taxpayers, if at all. So, uh, support the motion. Okay. Manager and then Commissioner Prizio. Mr. Chair, I know, uh, Mr. Forziano had already made some comments. Um, we are quite aware of all of the assets within Celebration Point that provide a benefit to our facility and hosting events, particularly major events at the facility. And we are actively working as staff to secure, um, the use of those moving forward into the future. Um, and I am confident that we'll be able to do so based on conversations we've already had. Yeah, I guess, you know, I guess I'll piggyback a little bit on what Ken said. You know, I'm, I'm, I'm trying to be optimistic about this. I have to say, you know, I came in at the tail end of this project being launched and, you know, to be totally frank with you. I was, I was never the, like, champion of this project. It was never something that I thought was the, the way I would have gone with TDC money. I, I understand why, though, after learning the limitations we had and sort of how we've been hemmed in by the state on what we can and can't spend that money on, why we went this direction. And, and I heard loud and clear from the hoteliers and from other community restaurants and advocates that having something like this could really spur economic impact. And I think the report that UF did, thank you to UF IFAS, um, for putting that together, um, really shows how much impact we have had with it. And I think that that's great. And, and I think that is sort of the point and, and, or that's the way that TDT is structured is that that's kind of the point. And so, you know, I do support the motion and I, I support the staffing. I will say this though. I, I really want the most careful accounting of this because it should be TDT money that's being spent on this. And right now we're using reserves and next year we're going to have to put this in our budget and I still want it to be TDT money. And I, you know, I want to make sure that our taxpayers aren't paying for this. And honestly, you know, the promise we made to the public to begin with was that the private sector was going to come in because they're the ones benefiting from this, right? The restaurants, the hotels, the, the people that we're talking about, you know, the shops, the stores, like they're the ones who are benefiting from these people coming in and spending money. And a lot of those right now are chains at Celebration Point and it are in an Archer Road, right? And big hotel chains. Those aren't locally owned businesses. So to the extent one that we can support locally owned businesses within this, within concessions, within opportunities for our local businesses to have access to this, to tell their stories, where we can develop events that are trade shows or things that we can provide to push our own local businesses to get into those, to the audiences of our tourists, I think is really important transportation if we have transit to downtown so that other restaurants and other businesses can get some of this economic impact. I'd really love to see us thinking about that. And last but not least, sponsorships. You know, the private sector should be as invested in this as we are because it does stand to benefit them the most. So working with the chamber to think about sponsorships for these types of events and programs in ways that we can channel with oversight and with understandings about what kind of sponsorships we want to take, how we can roll, still roll private sector money into helping support a business that is primarily helping drive economic impact to the private sector is something I'd really hope to see as we bake this further and think about what this really looks like in the long term. Thank you. Mr. Cornel. Mr. Prizia reminded something that I didn't get a chance to say. And I'm also reminded of Commissioner Wheeler at the world masters. The one side we're missing is how we are interacting with the city. It's called Visit Gainesville, Alachua County. And we've got to get transportation from there to downtown. And we've got it. We've got it. We've got to meld this county city partnership with Celebration Point and the event center with all of the events. And it really became evident during the world masters. You know, it's interesting. I don't know if you all saw, but the interim president for UF in the interview, one of the things he talked about was that he competed at the world masters in Alachua County in March. He ran, he, yeah, he ran, uh, I think he ran the 400 meter. Was it the 5k? Okay. And he got a bronze medal. And so, um, I was reading that and I was like, you know, my colleagues, they told me this thing was going to be special. And I was the one that said, don't do the world masters. I was wrong again. Um, but it does have an impact, a national impact, a world impact. And the fact that that was actually his connection to, um, the University of Florida. I think the two slides is that I'd love to see next year is our partnership with, with the city and all the things that we're doing and our partnership with UF and Santa Fe and all the things and you have health and all the things we're doing. And, um, you know, from sponsorship, I remember saying was talking about, we want to name the facility. There's millions of dollars of naming rights. I think of Morgan and Morgan, UF health, HCA. Those are the three names that come to mind. And I, and I don't know if anyone's even approached them, but there are opportunities that now that it's a public facility, if you want to, if we want to do that, we may not want to do that. If that now that it's a public facility, we have a different level of control, um, that is, um, for the public that we represent, um, that, that we haven't had in the past. And so it's something that we should start to think about. And I, I am excited, uh, about the department, about the staffing, um, about the folks that are coming on board because they're amazing people. And so, uh, thank you manager and attorney for making this happen. All right. You didn't ask for that. This was not on the, we're asking for bingo card last year. And here we are about to approve our budget and it's in there. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Okay. I just want to make a comment that, uh, I, I support the motion, but I think one of the most important part is marketing this facility. We have to do that to make it really, really successful. And if we're not going to market it the correct way, it's not going to be successful. So, I mean, I just want to make that point that, that our emphasis should be marketing that facility to other folks and other communities and across the state, because that's going to be very, very important, uh, for the success of this. So, I, I do support the motion. All right. I can, I do want to make one more comment. I, I, and I meant to make it earlier. And it's just that this is that the other, the part of the reason why, you know, again, early on, I had a lot of reservations about this is because I feel like we have put a lot of money into sports. And I understand that sports are a great recreational opportunity. They're good for youth. They keep our community active. People are into them. It's just what people get excited about. Like, I understand. I understand we're a sports community. We got big football. We got big basketball. Like, it's just who we are. We have big soccer. It's just who we are. But, you know, we also are where arts and culture meet or nature and culture meet, you know, like we are a space and we aren't investing in resource-based recreational tourism at all. Like we have the arts and culture grant, which primarily goes to like dance and theater. And we have all the sports money that's going to all these sports initiatives, but we have lots of agritourism. We have lots of recreational-based tourism that's paddling tours and bicyclists that come and ride our trails and the springs. And we could be having equal investment in those kinds of tourism, too. And so, every time we add more to our TDT budget, I become more and more aware of the gobbling up of all this like expansion that we have, right, and what we're not spending money on. So, I just would ask that, you know, our team hear that and that we think about strategies for the ways that we can make those kinds of investments as the TDT continues to grow and we start paying off some of the debt that we have, ways that we can begin to think about the expansion of what we think of as tourist investments and the ways in which we can help support the ecotourism, the agritourism, the resource-based recreation. That's part of what makes our community so great. Thank you. Okay, there's a motion. Are there any citizen comments to the motion that's on the floor? Good day. Well, what'd you say? No, I'm not going to say told you so. I'm going to say Commissioner, Mr. Chair, Commissioner Cornell, thank the staff for making this happen. I'm going to thank you for making this happen because this transition from a private operator to a publicly owned and operated facility, which you may remember I reminded you one time where your own code and so does state Florida statute state that TDT money can only be bonded to fund a capital building that is owned and operated by the public. And I was told that, well, because you have this contract with a private operator that's considered public. Well, there's no way in my mind you're going to make me think that is a publicly operated facility. And I think this may be one of the exact reasons why. If you're going to invest that kind of money, the public, you need to be accountable to us, right? And so I do have some concerns. Number one, about parking. I attended the latest bankruptcy hearing across the street, and I can tell you what, for what is going on at Celebration Point, they may be thinking they're bringing somebody in to restructure. And words like financial disaster, economic meltdown. I mean, this is not like something that is going to be able to be restructured and bailed out. There is massive, massive financial situation over there. And I mean, the TDT board, they're all behind in payments. It is a dumpster fire. And so, I mean, they called it the biggest financial disaster in North Florida, if not the entire state. And that was the expert that they're planning to spend $750,000 on a Hail Mary. And that's exactly what they called it. So I'm concerned about the whole development and the public owning a building with only the footprint of availability to access anything. I mean, you don't own the parking garage. Where's everybody going to park? And actually, Sven doesn't own that parking garage anymore either. He just happened to give it away. Not sure the bankruptcy court thought that would have been so cool, but he did. So I'm just saying there's a lot of moving parts. I'm disappointed. It's unfortunate in my mind that it's located where it is because it's such a vulnerable situation right now. And we own a facility that is in it. And things could go really south, really fast, really bad, and not come back. And you have a building there where you have no parking and you have boarded up buildings. So I know my time's running out. The parking is a major issue. I don't know where the budget came from, if it's on numbers that were presented. I mean, $650,000 for concessions, those are based on the numbers that were presented in the reports that you have seen that those numbers have never been able to be confirmed. So I don't believe them. I would only believe them if you guys are the ones that are driving it from the very get-go. But if you're basing your budget on what numbers you were provided by bogus financial reports, I'm just saying, right? So proceed with caution. I thank you for a little bit of leniency. Public access is a big deal. I mean, the building should have lights in it, windows, so you're not burning $35,000 in utilities every month. It should have wood floors in it. You know, it doesn't. It's concrete. I mean, there's so many shortfalls in my mind that happened that that building could have been made better. And just having windows all along the top to let in natural light. You have to burn the utilities, GRU, every time you go in that building, you have to turn the lights on. There's no natural lighting. It's bad design. And I'm sure you saw your email of the delinquent GRU bill for $63,000. Yeah. Thank you. Any further citizen comments? Anthony Johnson, Mr. Chair, Commissioners. Yeah, Mr. Robbins makes a good, make a lot of good points there. And, um, but you're, you know, just trying to make the best of a bad situation. I mean, just admit it. So there's nothing wrong with being optimistic, but you know, being Pollyannish is something different. Okay. So, I mean, the people who you hired, the professionals, Rad, Victus, and those guys, they were, they were professionals at this. Okay. And now, like, Rad, I don't know why, how, why it didn't work with Rad. Okay. If they couldn't make it work, I'm not sure. I mean, they're, that's what they do. Okay. You know, Victus gave, Victus gave us these numbers, like she said, that we can't go by those numbers now. Obviously, if everything had gone according to plan, we wouldn't be having this meeting today. Okay. Okay. So, uh, I just don't think that the amount of bed tax that we're receiving is going to be able to keep this thing afloat in terms of what we owe. And it's going to be operating at a deficit. If that was just mentioned, uh, I mean, I mean the 8,000, the 8 million, 8.2 million dollar bed tax. It's okay. It's all right. I mean, that's some money, but I mean, you're looking at Orange County got 359 million for bed tax. You see, there's a big difference there. So, they can have a lot more wiggle room to do things. And now with this new department, it's going to cost money. Three new, starting out with three FTEs. I learned from government a long time ago, government numbers are like car commercial numbers. You see a sticker, they see the number on the, on the TV screen for this car, but you go down there, you're not going to find a car like that. Okay. If you do, it's going to be bare bone. So, when government says three employees to start this thing out, that's, you can't do this with three employees. Run that facility? Come on. That's not possible. So, what would I, what I would recommend, if it was my motion, this is what I would do. I remember when this thing was first born, it was called the, it was going to be the gem of the Southeastern Conference. A track, indoor track for UL. Gem of the Southeastern Conference. Okay. They had gotten rid of the indoor track on campus, and this was going to do it. So, I was trying to get this thing, the facility, sell it to UL. Sell it, you may have to sell it at a loss, but it's better to do that than to throw good money off the bat. Sell it to UL. It's theirs, let them manage and let them do whatever they want with it. Take whatever money you can get from it, and go with it. I mean, I mean, you're not in the sports managing business. You're the government, county government. This is not your wheelhouse. Don't take on this thing. It's more, it's more, it's admirable to try to salvage it, but, you know, don't do it. Cut your losses and move on. I mean, if it's, the facility will still be on, it's still in town, it's still in celebration point, but, I mean, you're taking on more than you really would like to do here, I think. I mean, I mean, it's admirable to try it, but I don't think you can make it work. Thank you. Sorry, Lindbergh. I wasn't going to talk about this part, but I just had an idea while the tourist team is in front of us. Is there going to be, like, an advisory board for this for citizens to participate with ideas, or is it going to go through the tourism board? I have... Please, please, please. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah. Not the staff. I'm sorry. I have an extensive background in events. I have family that do, like, red carpet events in New York and LA, and I was just thinking of things that get attention in the media and just, like, some warm stuff for the community. Special Olympics. That would be an awesome event. Everyone would love to go support that. Esports. I don't understand it, but, man, millions and millions of dollars, and people come from all over, and they watch their kids play video games with their wristbands. There's even universities that have majors in esports, so those are indoor air-conditioned things you all could do. This gentleman brought up a good point. It is risky. I don't know if there's parameters, like, we can spend this much until this time and see how far we go, so we're not blowing our scope along the way. Because it is tourist dollars, but before I moved here, I spent thousands of dollars in Gainesville, in Alachua County. The hotel down the street, we were in it for weeks here, would come for the fest. We would come to do other stuff, so that's, like, why I moved here, because I love it so much. So when I hear it's tourist dollars, I know it's not monopoly money. It's, like, real money people spend, but just looking outside of the local community sports events, just something bigger. So if there is an advisory board or a way to outreach to things outside, or even with celebrities, I was going to bring that up for the World Masters one, too, is, can you spend a little fee to bring a celebrity down here for one of your events? Because then I would show up if, you know, Serena Williams is going to do an autograph or something, but I know this is about the building. I didn't know there wasn't windows. I've only been there for, like, a Pokemon event. I can't answer questions about that. So yeah, it is, it was nice. I love the idea if you could put food outside, because the concessions inside right now are lacking. My family is vegan. We had to eat potato chips when we go there. There's not food there for all kinds of people. So I know there's confusing things going on there, but yeah, just thinking outside the list, so I don't know if that's going to come from the sports manager you're going to hire. I hope we can look, do a national search for sports managers. Universities have sports management degrees, and someone with that kind of experience that's willing to roll their sleeves up for that. That's okay. Any further citizen comments? Okay, back to the board. Those in favor of the motion vote by the sign of aye. Aye. Those opposed, same side. At this time, we're going to yield to a gentleman, said he's going to have to leave at five. He's kind of elderly gentleman. He wanted to make a comment, a citizen comment, if he could. So I agreed to let him do that, if that's okay. We need a break. Good afternoon. My name is Harvey Plyman, and I didn't expect to get to speak to the commissioner board today, but I guess it's my lucky day. Many years ago, I had some property, and the city took away one of the lots so I could build on the property. And all these years, I've been paying taxes on that lot. And I went to the tax board office several times, and he said, oh, we'll take care of it. We'll take care of it. Thank you, Mr. Plyman. We'll take care of it. Well, nobody's ever taken care of it, and I'm absolutely tired of getting this. Now, that lot was worth $10,000 25 years ago. Today, it's worth a lot more. I'm not asking for more. I just want the value of that property when I build the rest of it. Or I want to be able to build on it, whatever. But I've got all the information here, and I'd like to present it to whomever I give it to. Thank you. And I just want to get it settled. I'm 95 years old, and it's gone long enough. I'm tired of it, and it's not right. And I want it settled before I die. I'm tired of paying taxes on property that the city says I own, but I can't use. And that's wrong. If the city took my property, then they should pay before it or take it off the tax rolls or whatever. I'm just... Tell me the address. Do you have the address? Thank you. It's probably in that information. It's over here. And that's all I have to say. And you've got all the information here, and I'd like to be notified as to what you'd like to do about it. Okay. Did you leave your phone number and all of that stuff with that document? No, my phone number... I'll take care of it. Oh, okay. Thank you, Mark. My phone number is... Mark will take care of it. We'll get it. We'll get it. Give us your phone number. You're being televised. Yeah, yeah, right. Please don't. 14 Realtors call you tomorrow. I believe that's his original tax document. I was going to make a copy. Thank you. I'll be out in the hall. All right. We're going to go to our next item. And I'm a Korean War veteran, and I know that something has to be done. It has to be done. Okay. And thank you. Thank you. It came to the right place. All right. Mr. Chair, the next item is a request consideration to host the 2027 World Masters event. I'm going to be ready for that one. I'll be off this board, and I'll have a year to train. Mm-hmm. Just saying. Oh, heck, yeah. So, what a bid? All right. Heck, yeah. So, what a bid you're going to train for? I'll do the 5,000. I wanted to see the javelin. Oh, a high jump? No, I couldn't do that one. Shot put? Yeah, I could do... I can walk and run. Bicycle. We'll have a big plaque for you, and... Awesome. But before we get into the item, I just wanted to share one thing, Mr. Chair. The Gainesville Sports Commission, who contracts with us for sports tourism and event management, is a member of the Florida Sports Foundation, and that's a public-private partnership with the state of Florida dedicated to promoting Florida as a sports event destination. At their annual summit, the Florida Sports Foundation awarded the Gainesville Sports Commission the mid-market best event of the year for World Masters. Oh, wonderful. And this is the trophy they brought back. Jolene and Emily and her team are currently out of town. They are promoting to sports professionals in Miami, so she entrusted this to us to share with all of you, and it's for display in your award case outside of your offices. So, we'll bring that up. Yeah, let's turn it around. Yeah, it is. Turn off. Yeah, put it up. Very beautiful. All right. Mr. Chair, may I ask a question? Sure. That's not the one where we're supposed to vote, is it? So, I'm going to bring that up quickly, too, because we have another award that the event is up for, which requires voting. So, thank you for sharing that. So, I'm here today not only with the request from World Masters for us to host for 2027, but to bring back the economic and visitor report that we worked with UF on during the event. So, as we were kind of gearing up for World Masters, we knew we wanted to be able to capture the story of what this event means to our community, what it means to our businesses, both related to the visitation itself and to the spending from it. So, we contracted with the UF College of Health and Human Performance, Eric Friedham Institute, and that was led by Dr. Heather Gibson, who's joining us here today. Very graciously, thank you for taking time to be here. And Dr. Alan Hodges is here, who is the economist that helped with all of the number crunching around those economic impacts. Dr. Krista Court and Dahe Young also were instrumental in this survey, as were the amazing students that they had on site every day during the event. And I really enjoyed meeting them, and they added a great addition just to the event, being able to talk with the participants and all of the people who traveled here to participate. So, with that, we have a very brief, just top-level report to bring to you today. So, the event ended up with 5,132 official registrants. Those registrants came from 98 different countries, and UF has told us there were a total of 17,433 visitors. This is the very first time that this WMA championship was held in the United States, and it's also the first international track event of its kind ever to be held here in Gainesville. So, the purpose of our study is to really get key information about the participants' behavior, their perceptions of the area, the demographics, expenditures, and to evaluate the direct and indirect impacts of hosting this event, because it is a tourism-driving event, and the importance of tourism comes down to the visitor spending at our businesses. And not related to this, but in general, over 26 percent of all consumer spending in our county is a visitor spend. So, we know how critical and vital those visitor dollars are to our restaurants, our retail, hotels, et cetera. So, with that, for the data collection, they included all kinds of attendees, whether those were registered athletes, team managers, accompanying persons, members of the media. They prioritized visitors from outside Alachua County to examine their travel behavior. They did on-site intercept studies. So, it was primarily in-person, however, we did have QR codes that people could scan and take the survey online. And, of course, it was offered in multiple languages, because we had people here from over 98 countries around the world. So, just to break down a quick overview of who was registered, the total attendance was 17,433. 16,190 of those were people from outside Alachua County. This resulted in over 112,000 visitor days and over 109,000 non-local visitor days. So, sorry, one second. Visitor spending, so they were able to talk to each of the people interviewed about where did you spend money at hotels, restaurants, retail, transportation, et cetera, et cetera. Non-local spending in the county averaged $2,134 per group or $658 per person. And, additional, so one of the very interesting things that UF was able to capture for us with World Masters is the flow of visitation. Once they left our area, if they had flown here from Europe or Asia or South America, Canada, they want to spend more time in the state of Florida. So, they were able to capture from these participants how much other time they spent, where did they go in Florida, and what was that spending like to those locations where we're kind of distributing and sending these athletes and participants to them. So, additional spending in the state of Florida, both before and after the event, averaged $1,062 per group or $328 per person. So, let me just make sure. So, this event, let me just see here, supported 135 full-time and part-time jobs, $15.14 million in business revenues, $9.41 million in added GDP, $5.17 million in labor income, $680,000 in local taxes, $770,000 in state taxes, and all of these estimates include both direct, indirect, and induced multipliers that Dr. Hodges put together for us from the study. So, we'll just go through. So, this was very interesting, too. They delved into the visitation around the people who came and participated, and I actually love this slide because it also bore out with all of the people that we met during the event. The primary reason is they are coming here to compete. These are athletes. They love to travel. They love the camaraderie of it, but they're coming for the competition. But it's very interesting, and we heard that this is very common, that one of the main reasons people travel for these types of athletic events is for the socializing and the kind of non-competition activities and meeting new people, the camaraderie that comes behind it. So, I love that they were able to capture that for all of you to see. This sportsmanship goes well beyond the track. And then, of course, there was a strong interest among people who came here, both domestically and internationally, to visit Florida. And whenever we were promoting the event in Sweden last summer, so many people were telling us they had never been to Florida before, and this coming for WMA gave them the reason why they wanted to visit to Florida and spend time here above and beyond the competition. So, we tracked just where did they stay in terms of accommodations while they're in the area, as would be expected, primarily hotel motels. But many of them did run our short-term vacation rentals. That speaks to that camaraderie piece of it where if they're traveling, they want to be able to stay with their team or they want to be able to stay with their traveling companions and have those family-style dinners every night after the meet. And then some stayed with friends and family and, of course, our bed-and-breakfast. We were very interested in understanding airport. We really heavily promoted use of our partners at the GNV airport, trying to get people to understand how they can utilize our airport and bring that extra business. And so we came out third. Orlando was the number one airport. Of course, it was a big hub for visitation from our international travelers. And then Jacksonville was higher for domestic travelers. But then we do see Gainesville Regional Airport here of domestic travelers. Nearly 30% flew into GNV, and 22% of our international travelers came through our local airport. And this is another great kind of visitor slide of the things that they were doing when they weren't competing. And to your point, Mr. Chair, they do want to get out of the location of the event and explore the area where it's taking place. And the number one activity they did, other than the track, is dining. And number two and three were visiting downtown Gainesville and visiting the UF campus. So as we look to host again in 2027, we've already had multiple kind of post-mortems on how can we be improving the visitor experience while they're here, very much so related to transportation and very much so providing those kind of structured activities where everybody meet at a certain place to take a bus to Kanapaha or to take a bus to downtown Gainesville so that we can do a better job of recirculating them into our community for the benefit of all of the other businesses. And so this really speaks to the professionalism and the partnership of the management of the event. The overall perception of Gainesville as a destination was very positive. 96% of domestic visitors had a positive impression of our area and 95% of international visitors had a positive impression. 92.5% of domestic visitors see us as a very positive destination for sports events and of our international travelers, 93% had a very positive perception of us as an event to come and participate in a sporting event again. So we also asked them about their perception of the event itself. Was it managed well? Was it professionally run? Was everything as expected when it comes to the technical side and the operational side of the track event itself? And we give great credit to our boots-on-the-ground staff who were managing all of these things. The event location got a 96% positivity rating and the overall event experience 95%. When it comes to the level of competition, it almost couldn't be any higher. It was 98.4% said that the level of competition was very high for their satisfaction level. And then with volunteers and event staff, many volunteered to be there on site. That got a 97% satisfaction rating from people who completed our survey. So I referenced this a little earlier, just what we call the flow-on visitation to the rest of the state of Florida. As you can see here, Orlando was the primary destination for flow-on for our international visitors. Domestic visitors also went to Orlando, and we learned this when we were talking with people and kind of sharing ideas of some things that they could do above and beyond. And everybody had ideas of some other Florida locations that they would be interested in visiting and spending more time in our beautiful state. And so those are the highlights from our economic impact study. And Dr. Gibson and Dr. Hodges are here if there are any technical or specific questions any of you may have. Commissioner Prezio and Commissioner Cornell. Well, I already said a big thank you. I guess, you know, I did notice that, you know, some of the dining amenities, things like that were rated just a bit lower. And I wondered if that was primarily because they were just in the Celebration Point area or if that was overall experiences in Alachua County, if that information was easy to tell, if they were rating the concessions at the site, if they were rating the restaurants in that area or if it was just dining experience overall in Alachua County? I don't think we separated out their perceptions of dining based on restaurant or experience. Really what led to that. Okay. But we did see that some of the more, like, places of discussion for next time would be centered around dining and lodging. Yeah. Yeah. I just, I guess I just, you know, I loved, I mentioned the idea of transit, generally speaking, and I think it goes especially for this, that, so I'm glad to hear that's a focus for next time, those opportunities to get people a shuttle somewhere to experience parts of our community and to experience other parts of our community that have really great dining or shopping or just experiences like the gardens, the museums, et cetera. So thank you. Good morning. Thank you, Mr. Chair. First of all, thank you to UF for the data and the time and the effort put together. I mean, I was really, really, really surprised. I see so many 90-plus percentiles. I think the biggest issue we have is how do you improve, even though it was our first time, and I know there was a lot of things that kind of we talked about on the ground as it was happening. We were going to fix this next year. But the fact that the folks that came and spent their money, it was largely they didn't recognize it, is really attributed to you and your staff, you know, the work that Steve did and continues to do. And so I'm really happy with the survey results, really surprised, actually. I was thinking we were going to be in the 70% to 80% in satisfaction, but to see the 90s across the board, I guess I would ask, is that typical from what you see of events in other places? Because it seems like, you know, we under-delivered and over-promised and over-delivered. I don't know. How does this compare to other events? Heather Gibson, UF Tourism. What happens when you look across the literature? I actually specialized in sport tourism for 30-odd years. You have an accent that shows it. Yes. I've been here a long time, 28 years at UF. What you will see is when, particularly amongst athletes, if the technical aspects of an event are good, which we did, that we showed that, they're happy. But what was also going on, and I was there every day with the students at different times, was that sense of community that really built around the event is very, very powerful. And we know that from a lot of the event studies that we do, that if you've got that sense of community, and I was talking, not surprisingly, to the British team, Team GP, and they actually compared it to the Olympics during 2012, what London was like. And so you put that on a microcosm, and so you've got people were friendly. They felt welcomed. They talked to me about going to Publix, and, you know, they had special, you know, they really appreciated the locals around them to be able to say, you know, well, when you've got a day off, why don't you go here or why don't you go there? And so, Anna, in your conversation about the natural resources, you noticed that there were people that went to the springs. They did go to the parks. They really enjoyed going to UF. That engagement in sport, they found the events on campus. You know, there was baseball. There was so... They really got a sense of what our communities are about. Yeah, they really got a sense. And the other thing that some of our research will also show is some of them were staying here for the events before. So they were here for the USAs. And so some of them were here like a month or two months even. And that was probably a lot of the ones that were staying in Airbnbs. And we know that, you know, particularly Gainesville has a very, very long history for running. We've got a great running community that goes back into 50s, 60s, correct? We're a training center for elite-level athletes in the wintertime. And I think they really felt that. Some of them were here for Jimmy Cairns. Some of them were here for the USAs. And they became members of the community as well in that respect. So, and then I don't know if you also remember them walking back and forwards across the bridge. We never see that, right? And they were walking backwards and forwards every day from hotels into the shopping. And they really did love getting out and about. And I spoke to the bus drivers that were taking them back and forth to West End, for example. The bus drivers absolutely enjoyed themselves. They loved talking to everybody. So, I think that sense of community, that everything was working well, really then translated to a high-level event. And I think, you know, we've got a very, very experienced tourism. We've got very experienced sport. Jolene, Emily, and her volunteer team with the Gainesville Sports Commission, everything came together. And the weather was fantastic, too, except for that last day. Well, thank you for really leaning in and helping us. I've always said whenever UF is there, it makes everything that we do as a community better. And so, thank you for making your students and your department just a part of the whole process. I think it's a great report. And, you know, I was the one that was a no on the last one, right? So, I'll go ahead and wait for the rest of the commission before I make a motion. Sorry. I just, one thing I did, I mean, I guess I would just ask if we're going to pass the motion as it's presented that we split out the travel. I, you know, I'm in favor of us traveling. Of course, we need to travel to the actual event in Korea so that we can be there to promote it and also so that we can sign whatever agreements or whatever. So, anything that's mandatory that we need to go to in order to get the bid, I support. But the remaining events, I would ask that they come back to us if they, if you make the decision to go to them. And so, I would either ask if we split that out as a vote or. I don't think we're doing anything that's not mandatory, are we? Yeah, there's a whole bunch of events. I don't know if you saw them, but there's a list of six events and a bunch of them are just opportunities to promote. There's Mexico and India and Italy and, you know, I just, given the amount of money we're spending on the event center and how much money we're spending generally. And I feel like with social media and other marketing tools, like, maybe we could get away with, especially with the amount of registration we had, bigger than any other WMA I think they've had yet. I guess I feel pretty confident we can get the registration numbers we need without that amount of travel. So, I would just like to pull that out so I can vote no or we can. No, go ahead and make the motion. Okay. I guess I would move staff's recommendation with regards to the bid and the letter to the former nonprofit that was operating this event to pay for the bid out of their revenues. And ask that staff return with requests for travel based on needs with regards to what's required by the WMA. On all non-required. On all non-required trips. Second. Got to move some of your second. Did you have a comment, Jessica? I had a quick comment about the travel. Go ahead. We were waiting to bring this to you today before our marketing team really sat down and kind of vetted how are we going about not only achieving the numbers that we had from 2025 but exceeding them for 2027. So, we do have to go through all of that travel and say where are the most feasible places for our staff to go combined with, as we're bringing on the SportsCenter October 1, a lot of that travels in the fall. So, we will be looking through each of those and really seeing those as opportunities to promote the destination and promote the 2027 event. So, what I'm hearing Anna say is just bring those back to us, make the argument, but everything that's required is in this motion. Okay. Okay, Commissioner Wheeler and then the manager if I could. Oh, I'm sorry. I overlooked her. That was the old light? Yes, sir. I'm sorry. Manager, I'm sorry. Oh, I'm sorry. I will say that we will do whatever the commission wishes, but, you know, the, a lot of times there's advanced planning for doing this and we may be bringing them to you in batches. Marketing is going to be critical and we did create a budget that included any necessary travel within the budget. So, it's already included in that up to amount. It would be the minimal number necessary for, to attend. The, the one that requires the most people, frankly, is, is the outdoor masters in, in, that's going to be in Daegu at the end of 26. That's the big one that we're required to staff the two weeks as we did in Sweden. But, right, right, but that's the one that takes the most people. The other ones are pretty, or don't need, like, a whole contingent of people. Okay, Mr. Chair, I did have a light on very quickly. I just wanted to say, too, that one of the things that people were asking about was the Butterfly Garden, and the Museum of Natural History was closed at that time. So, it will be open now and ready to go. So, and another thing, we had folks, too, who had issues with their housing, and I didn't know if it's, and we talked about using Cusco Willop for some of the teams that were coming in, you know, so they could work and stay together if they were having budget issues. So, you know, just as part of the recommendations going forward to make sure that, you know, those, maybe that slot is available out at Cusco Willop for teams who may, you know, be on a tighter budget. Thank you. We, Mr. Chair, we did offer that last time. I don't know that anybody took us up on those rentals, but that was offered to the team managers last time, but we'll make sure to block that and do that again this time. I don't want to take away from the hoteliers at all, but I know that there were some people at the last minute who had housing issues that were not happy with their housing and didn't realize how, that they had booked so far away from town in the outlying areas. We got a bus out there, right? Thank you, Mr. Chair. Any further discussion to the motion that's on the floor? Are there any citizen comments? Hello, Soy Lindberg. This is the item I put on shoes for today. I can say that because I work from home. I am all for this event. I think it's awesome. And thank you, Commissioner Prizia, for separating travel from the event. And I noticed the budgets included in the backup items are not in the presentation. And when I was reading through this, and my problem is I read everything and then I have questions and have to talk about it, a few months ago I was listening to a meeting and Commissioner Alford said people ask me all the time, what do commissioners do? And I tell them that I protect taxpayer money. And that really stuck with me because my first inclination before I got more involved is, like, you sit in meetings, like, do your feet hurt? Like, how do you circulate? So I mentioned before I have an event background. I have family members that do very high-level corporate events like NBC, Amazon, Apple. So when I was looking at this, and I am not here to yuck anyone's yum, but seeing that there's seven international events with this, and I know it's tourist dollars, I was wondering if there was a way to narrow it down. Yeah, exactly. So thank you for that. And when also I was looking at, my notes are really scribbly, if any of the money could be sent on bringing athletes here that maybe couldn't afford it, they'd spend the money that way. But when I'm looking at the numbers from 2025 to 2027 proposed, in 2025, the administrative expense was $430,000, and the expected one for the next one is $105,000. That's a huge change. So scope is going to change. Things change there. So that was a big concern for me. And also, sorry, put it back down. The net income is zero. So if anything moves up or down a buck or two, you're in the hole. We don't, of course, we don't want that. So it was just, I know these are proposed. I'm not an expert at county budgets, but seeing this and then all the other events that goes through. So thank you for separating that out, because that was the main concern. Yeah, I mentioned fees. I'm not familiar with World Masters. I'm more of a spectator than an athlete, so I Googled it, World Masters Event Gainesville, and all the press that I could find was local, which is great, but I was wondering how can we make it bigger? This week, an influencer from TikTok was in town promoting a margarita at Gator Beverage, 4 million views of a story about how she got kicked out of Wawa. So, like, maybe we could think about bringing some of those people in, because that gets the word out, especially in, like, my very online mind. And my talent fees, maybe spend some money on talent fees to bring in a celebrity or an athlete to sponsor it. So those are just some ideas to really maximize it. And I don't want people to be like, well, sorry, it doesn't want me to take this trip. I do, but it's like this meeting could have been an email. Like, could this trip have been a Zoom session? Thank you. Mr. Chair, Commissioner, staff, my name is Tamara Robbins. I, too, Mr. Chair, appreciate Commissioner Parizia from breaking out the travel. If this was, as the study says, such a successful event, it shouldn't be necessary to be traveling all over the globe to promote something that, I mean, you have staff that can put together really nice videos and stuff promoting the area, like you send that out. I mean, we are in a digital world of promotional stuff. So I just think that's unnecessary. And so I appreciate you breaking that out. I hope that the application will be an unredacted version. Never could get that in the last round. Everything in there was essentially redacted. So I'm requesting right now that the application be provided unredacted. It just, it, I, I, these whole study results of market studies that you guys pay UF to do. So the total attendance of the event, which included participants, was 17,433, the estimate. And only 728 of those participated in all these survey questions. So I just find it kind of disingenuine that 728 people of the 17,000-plus people are the ones that are providing all this data. So I don't think it's necessarily a fair representation of even, I mean, it's a pretty low percentage of the people that were out there that are filling out this questionnaire, these surveys. So I'm just saying, the shopping was the lowest on all the money spent, which I remember before this event. Oh, everybody's going to come here, and they are going to spend hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars on shopping. It didn't look like they were doing that. So I just, I mean, I'm glad it's out there. That's all I can say. And I actually have resigned the fact that we are a tourist county now. That's what we are. We're in tourism. And I don't like tourism. I think it impacts our communities in ways that out-of-town investors and hoteliers who, their corporates aren't here. Those hotel owners do not are from here, right? I mean, so it's providing people a job at Chick-fil-A, I guess, right, for just the same jobs of local chains. Commissioner Prizzi pointed that out, too. So, but honestly, I'd rather have people out there doing tourism than impacting our natural resources, honestly, because the more impact you put on our natural resources, the more degraded they get. They can't handle it. So if tourism on concrete and asphalt is what you guys are about, then I guess that's what Alachua County is, and preserve our conservation and natural areas by not promoting them for tourism. I like keeping them a secret for the locals. Thank you. Okay. Any further citizen comments? Commissioner Prizia? Oh, yes, please. Yeah, I guess I was going to. Sorry. Heather Gibson again. One of the things that we need to understand when we do surveys, and you see this all the time when you turn on the TV and you see a poll. They will talk to you about plus and minus 5% error rate. When we did our survey, we were looking, we were, how can 728 people represent the whole of the event? One of the things that we always do is we look at the demographics of the sample, which is 728, and then we look at the demographics of the registrants. And actually, we were really pleased. They compare very, very well. As Jessica said, we had translation. The survey was translated into 17 different languages. Every day we were updating. We were looking at what the representation looked like. And so we were actually very, very happy with the representation of the data that we had. And as I said, we were there every day, Sunday to Sunday, different times of the day, different events, because some people were coming in on the beginning of the week. Some people were coming in on the end of the week. Some people were there all week. And so we actually surveyed everybody. And so I'm quite happy there in terms of the validity, the reliability of our results. Thank you very much. Thank you. Yeah. If I can, I just wanted to reiterate that. I mean, I know, you know, 700 and some odd or almost 800 people for 17,000 doesn't seem like a lot in percentages. But when you look at, like, representative samples and data, that's actually, like, at a 95% level. That's actually double the amount you need for a valid survey result. It would be somewhere around 350. I can't do math in my head that quick. But essentially, you'd be in the order of 350 to have a valid sample size. So we got almost double or more that sample size in order to be able to get a valid survey. And I appreciate the representative nature of that. That wasn't necessarily in the report that I could see. But I'm glad to hear that because that was one thing I was going to ask is sort of, like, how many different types of athletes and countries represented in that survey. So it's good to hear. Thank you for being so robust about the work you did to gather that information. You know, it would be great if we could ask everybody the same questions all the time. But I think this is a pretty valid survey and a great representation of what we've accomplished. When it comes to the travel, I just, I'll just say this. I just, I, it's not that I don't want us to travel when we need to to promote, to your point, effective marketing. But to Soria's point, I think we could get a lot more mileage out of, you know, asking local and national and regional press to be able to tell, an international press to tell this story for us by attracting, paying one person to travel here, you know, or their company paying for them to travel here to tell the story about what it is we're doing and the opportunities that exist. It's just in us telling it via social media and other marketing avenues rather than having to send folks out to events. So, I'm, but if there's one or two that you all feel are really critical, you know, I'm definitely open to hearing that. I don't, I'm not saying no, at least for my point. I just am saying, let me hear why it's important. Mr. Chair, if I may, just to clarify, I, I worked with our citizen and refined the search a little bit to news outside of Alachua County. It was all over the world. I mean, just in my initial search, I found India, Australia, Ukraine, British Isles, sports magazines all over the world. We had an enormous amount of publicity worldwide on this event and would expect to the next time as well. Thank you. Okay. Back to the board. Those in favor of the motion will buy the sign of aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed, same sign. Motion carries. Mr. Clerk. Chair, that takes us to the second item under presentations, which is the food system workforce development program year two report. Good afternoon, Mr. Chair. My name is Bailey McClellan, agricultural economic development coordinator with Alachua County. I am here today to introduce the year two summary report of the Alachua County food systems workforce agreement with working food. This agreement supports programs that strengthen our local food system, our small farmers, and then provides also opportunities for local youth to have opportunities, structured opportunities to develop essential life, life skills. So, I am happy to welcome Shelby Dixon of Working Food to present on the year two summary report. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon, Mr. Chair, commissioners, and staff. As Bailey introduced, I'm Shelby Dixon, the executive director of Working Food, and it's an absolute pleasure to be here with you today to provide the year two summary. I'm going to share a video summary on the Young Chefs portion of this grant. That was two years, I'm sorry, of the contract. That was two years on the contract and a total of three. And then I'm going to give a summary update of where we are on the farmer value add program, which is still ongoing. Before I start with the video, I do just want to share that a lot of the technical details that we provide are in the backup documentation report that was provided versus in the presentation today. So, that's going to be ages, zip codes, participation, other demographics, as well as the recipes made for the kids and a lot of the products made from the farmers. We're going to go ahead and start with this video, so you can hear directly from the participants, hopefully. Oh, it's a video. Sorry, everyone. A few technical difficulties. The Young Chefs program began in 2020 at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Families were facing uncertainty and isolation, and teens had limited access to enrichment opportunities. Thanks to early support from the Alachua County Community Redevelopment Program, we were able to pilot a creative solution, online cooking classes for teens, with meal kits delivered directly to their homes. In partnership with the Greater Duval Neighborhood Association's OutEast Youth and Chef Carl Watts of Chef Empowerment, we launched the first Young Chefs cohort with five teens, ages 12 to 17. Meal kits were packed with fresh, local ingredients, including produce from area farms. Classes were held bi-weekly over Zoom, with students cooking alongside Chef Carl, step-by-step. In the second year, we installed a new youth garden at the Duval Community Garden with GDNA, which the kids proudly named the Garden of Eden. This gave young chefs the opportunity to grow the foods they were learning to cook with. Younger kids from the neighborhood joined, too. And since then, dozens of youth have participated in gardening, art, and cooking classes in this space. Hear more about this garden partnership from Andrew Miles, Executive Director of GDNA. Well, hi, my name is Andrew Miles. I'm the Greater Duval Neighborhood Association. We have a community garden here on the northeast side of town. And with the youth gardening partnership that we have with Brooklyn Food, we grow a lot of different types of vegetables. And we have the kids that come out and have harvested, and as well as prepare for meals. But with all of that happening, they also learn so many different things about gardening. And about how to grow food, and how to take care of a garden, and what all you need in a garden to make it really functional. So they're learning a whole lot to pass on for years to come, and so forth. With this partnership this year, we've been doing it for quite a long time. So we have some kids that have gotten to be much older. They started when they were like 12, and so forth, and younger. And they've been there now, and they're like 16, 17. And so now they're actually mentoring the younger kids and working with them in the garden, and so forth. So it's starting to be a generational thing, because we also have our seniors that come out, and other adults that work on the other side of the garden, from the youth. And so they get a chance to help out the adults as well, as well as learn the gardening skills from them. And so it's been a real intergenerational type of experience, as well as learning a skill that can be passed on from one generation to the next. Young Chefs is more than a cooking class. It's a pathway for youth to gain real skills, build confidence, and stay connected to their community through food and gardens. Chloe, a teen who's been at the garden for years, tells us more about her experiences. My name is Kalitha Chloe Hill, but mostly everybody calls me Chloe here. And I'm 15, I go to GHS. And I'm a high school intern at this garden. And what I do here is a variety of things. That's just more than gardening, of course. So I help the younger children around the garden. Well, obviously we garden, we plant stuff, but we also do lessons about plants, what's biodegradable into the grass, into the dirt. We also learn about worms, insects, other things like that. It's not just gardening, it's also a broader term. And we also, like today, we're also doing cooking. And so it's like a group activity that we'll do as a group, of course. No one is left out, everyone gets to eat. It's a very fun overall environment. This year I will be a high school intern, which I'll be paid, but I'll be a group leader to lead other kids around with my other three interns. So that is what I do here at the garden. I really wish for more people to join the garden. It's very fun. I like it here. And it's an honor to be here every single Tuesday. And I want more people to come so I can have more fun with more people. Thanks to continued support through the Alachua County Workforce Development Grant, the Young Chefs program has expanded in both size and impact. In 2023, we launched a Young Chefs pilot in partnership with Project YouthBuild. An eight-week elective for teens and young adults focused on food safety training and certification. The program quickly became a student favorite and had strong engagement and outcomes. While we will not be continuing this elective, during its three-year run, it served as a valuable and successful model that can be adopted and carried forward by other organizations beyond working food. Young Chefs Teen has continued, serving dozens of teens through monthly in-person classes with our longtime partners at GDNA and Chef Empowerment. The return to in-person programming has created even more space for connection, teamwork, and mentorship. We also launched a version of Young Chefs for elementary students and hired four graduates of the teen program as paid interns, including Chloe. These interns now co-lead classes, helping to maintain the Garden of Eden and supporting newer students. This year, the teens made major contributions. They helped lead six kids' cooking classes, cooked nearly 100 meals as a team, and designed and installed permanent food forests, a lasting gift to the neighborhood. These teens are no longer just participants. They're mentors, role models, and ambassadors for what this program can become. Each year ends with the Young Chefs Pop-Up Restaurant, where teens prepare and serve a full, multi-course meal for their families and friends. This year, the fifth annual pop-up was an incredible success. Students were so proud to share the meal they had made. During the closing ceremony, Chef Carl, along with Andrew Miles and Carla Lewis of GDNA, presented awards. They spoke personally about each teen's growth, not just in the kitchen, but in life. It was a powerful reminder of the impact of community-led programs that provide mentorship, consistency, and care for youth as they grow. Nothing compares to the strength of a community organization like GDNA that is interwoven with the community, responsive and deeply committed to young people. Parents also shared meaningful feedback. One said, They were excited to go every month to experience different cooking methods. Others appreciated that the program helped their teen build friendships, gain independence, and try new foods. Many reported that their teens were now cooking more at home, both for themselves and their families. It's also a clear example of what's possible when our local government invests in community-led solutions. Thanks to ongoing support from Alachua County, Young Chefs has grown from a pandemic response into a year-round leadership pipeline, grounded in cultural relevance, strong partnerships, and real outcomes for youth and families. We're proud of what we've built together and even more excited for what comes next. They say it better than I could ever dream. Before we move forward and talk about an update on the farmer program, I just want to share, getting a little choked up, just how meaningful this has been. This is a five-year program that's been supported by Alachua County, and you have actually seen the kids grow up in it. And while this specific part of the contract has ended at the end of last school year, I am thrilled to share that we are going to be able to carry forward Young Chefs kids and Young Chefs teens, thanks to a local community foundation's support. And I also learned this past week that Project Youth Build will be continuing this as an elective. They've been able to use this case study. They've been able to share all of the amazing data and testimonials that we have from this to carry it forward. So thank you for helping us lay a strong, strong, meaningful foundation to carry forward work that feels immensely important, both throughout our community but also personally. With that, I'm going to jump into the Farmer Value Add program. And when I came and spoke with you all last time, we had really just launched this. So as a reminder, we had six months of planning around this program. During that, we did a lot of farmer engagement just to see who was interested and how we could bring this forward. We initially spoke to 20 farmers, and of those, we had 17 who expressed interest. So these were growers who said, I definitely want to do this program. Let's meet. After we had one-on-one meetings where we discussed all of the things that are involved with making a value-added product from your farm, we then had nine farmers enter the contract phase. So these were nine separate growers that said, I'm really interested. Please hold my spot in the kitchen. It is super important to note that we did all of these surveys over the summer. And Florida's summer months are our very, very quiet farming time. So most of these farmers had time off work. They were not going to markets. Everything was in cover crop. And so when it actually came time for enrollment, we only had four enroll because four of those interested farmers said, I actually don't have time to do this. Now that I'm in production mode, the thought of adding something else to my plate just feels like way too much for me to take on. And then of those five enrolled, we currently have four participating. So we did have one farmer leave the program midway through the year, and I'll talk a little bit more about that. And as I mentioned, time is the biggest hurdle, right? Farmers are marketers, they're growers, they go to all of the farmers markets, they're producing, they're prepping. And so adding something else was something that many people said, we love the idea, we want it to happen, but we're just not sure we can take it on. The second biggest hurdle was regulatory requirements. And so many of these farm products require more in-depth regulation, whether that be a HACCP plan or better processing school or other versions. And when they sat down and realized how much work was involved, they said, you know, maybe I'll table this for a later time. The program has many benefits, but it started out with one-on-one consulting for every farmer that was participating. And everyone had very different needs. So we had some people who made it through this period in, you know, three to four weeks. And we had some who were working with us for over three months. And because of that, we had variable start times. So it's important to note that not all the farmers were onboarded and in the kitchen at the same time. It also helps fund specialized equipment purchases. And this has largely gone to support a commercial dishwasher, which is extremely important if you are canning or working with animal products or anything else that requires sanitization. But we've also been able to purchase some other items as well that farmers have requested. And then after that, it goes to a 100% kitchen and storage subsidy for 12 months. So all the farmers participating in this program do not pay working food for that first 12 months in the kitchen or for their storage. They then receive a 75% subsidy for the next six months. And then we bump it down to a 50% subsidy for four months and a 25% subsidy for four months. In the beginning, we had planned on doing a shorter subsidy period at 100%. But we realized that farmers actually needed a way longer runway to be successful before they took on that financial burden. And we also realized we were going to have lower than anticipated enrollment. So we wanted to be able to extend those benefits as long as possible. Of the current participating farms, we have Bambi's Organic Country Farm and Store, Exotics, North Florida Elderberry, and Oyster Catcher Shellfish. Carraway Farm started and left about halfway through the program when he realized that working an off-farm job, working an on-farm job, and then adding value-add was just too much for one person. We got amazing feedback from him on how we could set up support systems and expectations in the future to make sure that everyone felt like they had what they needed to succeed. And here are some examples of the farm products made. So we have some ready-to-eat meals from Bambi's, some hot pepper jelly from Oyster Catcher Shellfish, and then some balsamic vinegar from North Florida Elderberry. A vast majority of these products are sold throughout farmers' markets. Almost every participant is doing at least two of these key local farmers' markets. So that could be Alachua County, Grove Street, Hale, High Springs, or San Felasco. We have also seen markets outside of our area and retail stores as far north as Georgia and Tennessee for North Florida Elderberry, who have really expanded their production. In terms of outcomes and impacts, in the first year of this program, so July 2024 to June 2025, farmers collectively used 576 hours in the kitchen and generated $95,045.34 in gross revenue from the products that they made. We had one farmer report a 10 to 15 percent increase in gross revenue, despite actually losing money that year because of hurricane-related losses. Another saw a 20 to 30 percent sales increase, and then one farmer reported a 300 percent increase as they transitioned all of the produce off of their farm to value-add instead of traditional market sales. I broke these down into two figure charts because I do think it's really important to note that we did not have all the farmers in the kitchen until the, I think, October or November of 2024. So we started out with one, had more join in September, and more join in November. So in the first six months, we saw 213 kitchen hours, 3,183 products made, and almost $35,000 in revenue generated. For the next six months, those numbers were much higher, and it's super important to note that we had an unexpected and extended emergency closure of our facility for an entire month through April and May. And I don't need to tell anyone that April and May is hands down the busiest time of year in Gainesville, especially for food sales. And so we actually expected that these numbers would have been substantially higher had that not happened. You see that in March, we were at almost $12,000 in revenue and 100 kitchen hours, and then that dropped off pretty drastically for April and May due to that closure, unfortunately. And I do think it's important to note that beyond the numbers, we had farmers who said that this helped them expand customer engagement. It helped them diversify their products. It gave them a little more seasonal flexibility. And we had one farmer say, this has been a way to revive and bring money back to our farm. So overall, we're hearing that this has been a really positive experience. And I just want to say again, thank you so much for your support of this. We have seen lasting impacts within our local community of kids who are learning how to be gardeners and land stewards and home cooks, but also with our farmers who are helping to diversify what this region can produce. Because Alachua County can grow so much food, and the more that we can produce here, the more that we can supply ourselves, the more resilient that we are. So it's just been an absolute joy to work on this project. It's been our true honor to collaborate with all the community organizations and growers. And I'm just, yeah, very grateful for it. I'm happy to answer any questions you might have. Okay, Commissioner Preziad and Commissioner Wheeler. Well, thank you. I'm going to try not to get emotional. You know, I have not been able to be involved with working food like I would have liked once I got on the commission, both on purpose, because obviously I didn't want there to be a conflict of interest, being that we fund them, but also just the amount of time that this job takes really kind of made me realize I needed to step away from a lot of the community work that I do, which frustrates the heck out of me. But it is just so amazing to see where we've come and how far planting the seeds of a community-based program that really works with the people and that are closest to the issues and the challenges makes, what a huge impact it makes. So it's really, really exciting. Thank you for the hard work that you've put in to see this through and to also see how it can work, how it can change as the needs of the community change and the organization changes and grows. So just really, really exciting stuff. And I guess to my colleagues and to my staff, what I want to say is, you know, I know that working food is, she said it a little bit, but I don't think she really, really pushed this out there. It's really kind of changing their focus a bit, and the kitchen side of things is sort of wrapping up. You know, they pushed it as a use case, and we showed that with the cooler, with the investments that we made in infrastructure, we can incubate businesses, and we can create a catalyst. And I think that, you know, not just with this program, but with the overall kitchen, you have a waiting list of like 100 people, or it was like 45 to- I think it's over 125. 125 people on a waiting list for kitchen space. Now, of those, maybe a quarter of them would actually, like this, they drop off, right, precipitously when they start to realize all the energy that it takes. But those are people interested, and I would say at least a quarter of those would probably actually make it to being in a kitchen incubator that had business rep around services, kitchen space, and the opportunity potentially, and this farmer one makes a really good point for it, co-packing, where, you know, you have staffing that can do the heavy lifting of taking the raw products and turning them into products and then putting your label on them and providing that regulatory support for a lot of the things that we've been talking about and potentially marketing their products outside of our local. Like, they're doing it at the farmer's market, which is exactly where they should be because they get the majority of the revenue then, right? They get all of the profits that are recognized versus having a middleman. But being able to get those into wholesale stores, being able to get those outside of our county, and being able to promote our own county, as we've talked about from an economic development standpoint, that's what that food hub feasibility and business planning process we're going through is all about. Because if that food hub can provide some of those services, potentially a kitchen for processing and co-packing, potentially marketing and outreach to other wholesale markets and our own wholesale markets, regulatory compliance and support for food safety, I think we can really see that this kind of impact, the small impact we're having, but big in people's lives, could be magnified so, so much. So I'm excited that you have the data and information and that working food has done so much to show our community what's possible when we invest in our local food system. And I just wanted to say thank you. Thank you. It's been a joy. Okay. Commissioner Wheeler. I just want to thank you for the invitation I got two years ago. I guess it was summer before last where I got to come and eat with the kids. It was really fun. It was fun. I enjoyed it. You know, we're a little late. We got there at maybe, what, six to eat, and maybe by eight we did. It was okay because it was really fun and entertaining to watch them scurry in the kitchen to make sure everybody had their food. And it was really good, really good. So I appreciate that, those efforts on behalf of those kids in our community. Is there a place that we have where we have all of these products coming from working food foods to be marketed together, you know, as a product of a result of working foods? Yeah, that's a great question. And honestly, staff has done an amazing job of trying to bring this forward. And so if you want to share, you can. But yeah, we've been able to get some of these products out. But I will say before Bailey jumps in that a vast majority of the individuals who are working in the working food kitchen right now are not delivering shelf-stable or, like, retail-ready products. So it's a lot of ready-to-eat foods or a lot of, like, sauces that need to be refrigerated or things like that. So they can go out into the retail market, but it's just a little bit harder to push. But I just do want to give kudos to staff for trying so hard to make sure that there's multiple sales outlets. And that's exactly what we're doing. You know, our merge department. Now, I come from the tourism department, if I haven't met all of you. And so now merging over into economic development with the ag background, pushing where can we connect our residents and our visitors on the tourism side with local foods produced from our value-added farmers on the shelf-stable. We're shifting even some of our promotional items in our department, some of our outreach engagements to the community and outside of the county to local seeds purchased through working foods, local shelf-stable products, the North Florida elderberry jellies and vinegars. So we're shifting some of our thought process to really be pushing to the local foods and getting those into the hands of our community. And with farmers markets as well. And we, if you haven't checked out the Visit Gainesville website, we just launched a homegrown in Alachua County landing page where all of these, as we build, as we begin building out this list of our farmers who are producing products for purchase, they will have a home on the Visit Gainesville website. That's exciting. I'm, you know, as you're talking about this, I'm thinking about the tourist center that we have outside of High Springs on I-75. You know, if there wasn't some, we got to get a shelf for some of those things where tourists come in looking for Florida memorabilia and that sort of thing. Yeah, it's definitely an idea to consider and even maybe not something for purchase, but at our, you know, we're in the thought process now of beginning rack cards and brochures and where can our local food system have a place to live at our visitors' bureau, the lobby, downtown. Right, because, commissioners, this is something, too, that I've been asking them to do. We've done it. This is what's happening. It's not only just the product, but crafts, you know, that are coming out of Hawthorne soaps and bug spray. I just gave Sean a bug spray that's being, you know, produced in Hawthorne. We don't know these little businesses that are happening. You know, the farmers are beginning to get the notoriety that they need, but there are other producers out there, you know, the cottage industries that we can certainly promote now that we've got these things merged. You know, so I'm really excited. It's not just fine arts. We have craft arts, too, here, and I just, that's the other side of what you're doing, you know, is those kinds of cottage industries, too. And if we could get an indoor market somewhere where we could have the farmer's market on our weekends outside and the inside, and this is why I need to get the name of that guy that you are, have been kibitzing with for the old grocery over there off Hawthorne, you know, which would be a really good place to put something like that. And I'm sure with the facility, there would even be a bigger kitchen facility and a space like that, too. So I'm just, I'm with you, Anna. It's just a, you know, coming from a different angle. I just also want to add, too, that while it is not specifically a part of this contract, it is a result of this contract that Working Food will be piloting an online farmer's market early next year. So a lot of what we heard from the growers, artisans, food producers, craft makers, was that they wanted to be able to expand sales locally, but sitting at more market booths was not an option for them. And so I won't take too much time. I know this has been a long meeting, but I do just want to let you know we're working on this so that residents will be able to order online. Growers and artisans will be able to get a pick or make list so they don't waste anything. They'll send it to a centralized distribution spot at Working Food. We'll divvy up the bags and we'll have a pickup and delivery day. Perfect. That's great. That's great. Thank you. Commissioner Cornell. Be very brief. Working Foods was introduced to me by Anna, you know. Buy a cooler and let me just do this and get started. And what it's turned into is really a local movement of homegrown food that we didn't really have in Elantra County five, six, seven years ago. So I'm very grateful. The video I was listening to in the back as I was trying to grab a quick bite to eat, I just had to come watch because it's powerful. You know, when you can empower an entire family by teaching a teenager or a kid how to prepare a meal and prepare your own food, I mean, that's good stuff. That's God's work. So thank you for doing that and for being a part of that and continuing to build this, build and lead really this local food movement, which became really eye-opening to me when Anna came on the board from a standpoint of a resilient community can feed itself. And so I appreciate all the work you're doing. It doesn't always have to make a profit. You know, you're by example showing people that they can be self-sufficient and they can create new businesses and they can, you know, if my neighbor can do it, I can do it. And so it's really a good presentation and I'm glad, you know, we made that investment. I would love to understand how we can help power this movement that you're talking about and increase what we're doing with Young Chefs for Kids and Young Chefs for Teens. I think that is really how you can generationally change a family by teaching them a skill, a trade, and just the whole empowering feeding my family, you know. Feeding my family is just powerful. Absolutely. Thank you. Thanks. Mission Alfred. Thank you. I want to thank Anna for her vision in all of this and creating, you know, I'm a foodie. I love food. I cook all the time. That's my stress relief. It shows when you look at my belly. But I really, you know, I enjoy food. I appreciate food. I do my own canning and gardening and all of that kind of thing. I have my chickens and my ducks. And so when I see that spread out into the community, it really, really makes me happy. I mean, we're making our community more resilient, but we're also making it healthier. We're making it more delicious. We're making it just a better place to be. And I also want to thank all the other food champions that are out around the county that are making this happen. And because it has, it's spread to so many other organizations that have embraced the food and gardening culture and the resiliency culture. I did want to ask our staff, you know, we have in a couple of weeks, we have folks from all over our state are going to be here for the FAC conference. And often when I've attended conferences and other places, you get things from the county. And sometimes they're really cool things from your county. And sometimes they're little chotskis that are made in China, which I honestly prefer to not bring home. So I really am hoping that, you know, we represent our county well in how we share, you know, things about us, whether it's World Masters, whether it's a FAC conference, whether it's whatever. It's like I'm going to remember a jar of barbecue sauce more than I'm going to remember a key chain with, you know, an outline of Key West on it or whatever. It's, you know, those things make an impact to me. And I hope that we are thinking as a county in that way as we share information about our county. We've got some awful cute alligator key chains, though. Yeah, but how many key chains do I need? Just for these people. Yeah. Okay, okay. Mr. Chair, that's exactly right. I think that's in the direction we're trying to take some of our promotional item ordering and, you know, pull back maybe from some of the key chains and maybe shift to some more locally sourced products. And we're still looking into what that looks like and at the capacity that is needed and the rate that we are needing to move those items through the tourism office and what's realistic. So we are looking into that as well. Well, not everybody needs to get the same thing. And that's understood, too. So thank you. And with the Florida Association of Counties, their conference coming in the next couple weeks, that is something we've considered as well. And we are still working on the back end to say, like, what does that piece that they take home look like from our county? And we have incorporated their – so our department has been organizing the full-day agenda for their tour throughout the county. And they will be stopping by the Field & Fork UF Food Campus with Commissioner Prizia to get a taste of what's being grown locally. And we can speak to that there as well. Fabulous. Well, thank you. Thank you for saying that. I appreciate it. Thanks a lot. Let us leave. Thank you. I'm giving these – just to your – I guess two things I wanted to say. One is I think there's two things that aren't – that haven't been said that I want to make sure get clarified or that there's opportunity for. And I'm not sure what next steps are in those. One is that this is a model. Like, what we did here, like, is a – is really an important model of what we can do with government money. Like, we took government money. We made minor investments in infrastructure, and we made major investments in programming. And we created a model for how we can address root causes and how we can support nonprofits that are beginning to work together collaboratively to make more impact than they can on their own. And where limited capacity, black-run organizations that haven't been able to access power or money from government agencies in the past are able to do that by working with an organization that was already built and had the capacity to do that and then supported them to grow and learn. And I think that – I just – I want to point that out because some of our other government agencies in this community haven't been able to do that. And they've actually created barriers or made it more difficult for those organizations to access their funding because of the amount of expectation they have around evaluation, around reporting. And we want to have accountability. We want to make sure that people spend government money well and that we're making the impacts we want to make and that money is not being used, abused, whatever. But I think that there's ways to do that successfully and to build capacity in our community over time and ultimately work ourselves out of a job, even working food in a way, right? To work ourselves out of a job, to raise up the leadership skills of the communities we're working with so that ultimately we don't have to be in those communities. They can work for themselves. They can advocate for food justice and food sovereignty for themselves. So I just want to point that this is a model and I really appreciate it. And to the extent that you can help tell the story about that model to our other institutions in this community, I think is huge. The second is the incubator piece. And I think, you know, Santa Fe reached out to us and the city of Gainesville and I went to a meeting with Commissioner Brian Eastman, the Santa Fe seed incubator, which is housed at the Blunt Center and with working food and others. And there's real interest to do something much like what we've done with the diesel mechanics program out at our public works for us to collaborate and work on how are we, how do we build the kitchen incubator that we really need? The city is interested in it. We're interested in it. I think, you know, we've, we've invested in it this far. And I think there's interest from Santa Fe as well. So I guess, you know, I would just, yeah, like I want to refer, well, it's retaining chefs, but it's more about incubating food-based businesses. So we have these food-based businesses ideas, right? Like it's chefs or, or moms who make hot sauce in their kitchen or the, you know, the Palestinian woman who has a really great recipe for dukkah or whatever. And they make it in their kitchen and they're like, I want to make this and I want to sell it on shelves at the grocery store, but I don't even know how to do that. How do I go about doing that? And wanting to take, make a business, but not being able to get there. And that's what Working Foods Kitchen was doing for a long time was providing some of that support. But they've realized that while they've created the use case for that, it doesn't, it's just, it's like the, the scale at which it's needed and the volume at which it's needed, their kitchens couldn't do that. Their staff don't have the expertise for that and that it's time to sort of give the use case over to the community, to us, to the city, to Santa Fe, to the people who can potentially build an incubator at that scale to use their data and use case to be able to potentially build something meaningful. And so I guess I just want to refer to staff, you know, if you guys are okay with it, that we ask them to explore those opportunities with Working Food and Santa Fe and others. And make sure that that conversation is connected in with the Food Hub conversation as we move forward so that we don't lose the momentum that we've built with all of this investment around food-based businesses and food-based business incubation along with supporting the youth. Yeah. It looks like as part of the, our economic development departments. Right, just what they're doing to start the conversations. They've got the data at Santa Fe. It's got some interest. The city's got some interest. There's been some meetings, but I just, I guess I just want to make a motion that we refer to staff to continue working on it so that they have, you know, the charge to go and just keep these conversations going. I don't know what will come of them yet, you know, but there is a lot of interest and Santa Fe's got some, their eyes on some spaces that could work for something like this. So I just want to keep the conversation going. I'll second that motion. I'll second that motion. Any further discussion? Any citizen comments to the motion or something? Back to the board. Oh, wait, wait. I think there's citizen comments. Oh, okay. Let's see, Darren. At this point, I don't know what to say. I haven't eaten all day, so I'm a little dizzy. But I just want to, it was well worth it because working food is so deep in my heart in this county. And where working food has come so much with all of your support and Anna, a vision that you were able to share and spread out with all of us. I really appreciate and all of you and the staff, so it just ties in, it's so big in that you all have supported and persevered with this collaborative vision that is emerging and strengthening. I was at the CCAC the other night, and you're going to be looking at the climate action plan. And the first chapters, agriculture and food security, it is fundamental to water, to energy, to land use, to our social and economic well-being. And so that you have supported all this and have a staff that gets it also and is willing to work as hard as you all do. You know, it's so hard to, some days you just want to, I want to go hide in my garden and not think about the bigger world right now. So I acknowledge and thank you all for your willingness to be in public service right now, for the vision you have of what it means to collaborate, to build a local and regional resilience. And it takes, it's not all these silos, and you've been brilliant, and the staff, Sean, and Betsy, and Stacey, I mean, just so many people. We're an amazing county, and we've seen it all afternoon in presentation after presentation, but keep the food central. We have the best darn hot pepper jelly that Val makes, and the elderberry jelly. I shop at the farmer's market for almost everything nine months out of the year. That's where I get all my groceries, and we have amazing food, and thanks to working food, we have, we're starting to get the value add and expansion. So sorry I'm kind of all over the place, but thank you. I have huge gratitude, this county is a bright spot in the world right now. So may you feel supported and keep up the good work, and all of you, too. Thank you. Back to the board, I guess. Those in favor of the motion, vote by the sound of aye. Aye. Those opposed, same time. Motion carries. Mr. Clerk. Mr. Chair, that takes us to item number one under the public hearings, and it's adoption hearing for Z25-00007, comprehensive plan amendment for water supply planning. Tough act to follow. Mike Castine with growth management. I do have a short presentation. It's the same one at the transmittal hearing, with an additional slide indicating that the Florida Department of Commerce and the state agencies said no comment on the item. But I'll be glad to go through it for the public's benefit. I would move. And the board, or? I think we've already, I mean, we have already seen it. We've already done the presentation for the public. I'm not sure that we need the presentation again. I do have one quick question, and that is just on the, we talked about the intergovernmental coordination component. And I guess I just wanted to be clear when it comes to the future demands on our water supply and how the municipalities are participating in this conversation. I'm guessing that they have the opportunity to weigh in on this water supply planning process and that there's, like, connectivity to the High Springs and Alachua and Newberry, because they're the ones that are growing like gangbusters. So, interesting to know how they join in with this. Yes, and overall, this is governed by both Florida statute and administered isn't quite the right word, but the water management districts then are the next body of authority. In fact, Commissioner Alford mentioned at the transmittal hearing that y'all can bring these up with your joint meetings about coordinating with them. I do know that the water management districts are working with the other local governments in the latter county to ensure that they get water supply plans and that they are adequately coordinated. Yes. Excellent. Thank you. Well, I would move that we adopt the amendment to the comprehensive plan for the water supply planning. Second. Got a motion and a second. Any further discussion to the motion? I just have a really quick question. Are we, and are we looking in the surrounding areas to, I know Levy County is looking at the big thing that they've got going on with the trying to pipe water to Cedar Key? You know, we've got the Black Lake and all those issues. You know, we're kind of in the middle of a lot of activity that's questionable. Understood. Alachua County is not itself a water supplier. I, part of our, so our, so the majority of our coordination on other jurisdictions and water is through the water management districts. As well, the, the, you'll be hearing about this a lot in the near future is the basin management action plans about getting phosphorus and nitrogen out of water. And that is more of a regional coordination. I understand it's a different type of water, but ultimately it all comes back to water and intergovernmental coordination and communication. And so that will be another way to facilitate that. Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Okay. Okay. We will have a motion. I vote. I vote. Have you made a motion in 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? Back to the board. Those in favor of the motion, vote by the sign of aye. Aye. Those opposed, same sign. Motion carries. Mr. Clerk. Mr. Chair, that takes the item under two, under public hearings, the Spring Hills North Community Development District dissolution. And, Mr. Chair, I do not have a presentation. I do have a map. This item is to recognize that the Spring Hills North Community Development District, and that is the location shown on this map north of 39th Avenue, surrounding on the north side of the I-75 interchange there. There is a community development district that was established in 2022. No activity, development activity, or infrastructure activity has taken place in that area, and the community development district board has declared themselves inactive via the statute. The action that is indicated in the statute for the county commission to take is once a community development district has declared themselves inactive, Florida Commerce has received that petition and also declared them to be inactive, that the county commission is supposed to take the appropriate action, which is to dissolve or terminate the community development district. So that is the action that's before you today. Is there a motion? I've got my light on. Oh, I'm sorry. Because I was going to make the motion. I move approval of the dissolution of the Spring Hills North Community Development District and authorize chair signature. Second. Got a motion and a second, a couple of seconds. Are there any citizen comments to the motion that's on the floor? Mr. Chair, I just have a question if you don't. Okay. That area, that's the area that we were concerned about water, the flooding that we've had along that stretch of road on 39th. We do have some history, and the great Ramones here, of some flooding probably right on the west side of this map at 39th Avenue. Right, right down there. Yes. Across from the golf course. Yes. Yes, gotcha. Okay, great. So will that stay in the ownership then of the people who have that land? Is that? So there is a preliminary development plan approved over this property. It's the Spring Hills Transit-Oriented Development, so that stays approved. On the other side. It's not out of the question that, you know, I'm really not sure what the proposal is from the current owner, whether it's to sell the property, to move it along. It's not out of the question that a future community development district may come in and want to be established as well. But that doesn't really have any bearing on this action. I gotcha. Okay, thank you. Just want to make sure I knew where it was and what we... Thank you. Okay. Back to the board. Those in favor of the motion, vote by the sign of aye. Aye. Those opposed, same sign. Motion carries. Mr. Clerk. Mr. Chair, it takes us to the third item under public hearings, the public hearing for the proposed vacation of a portion of the Platt of Carlton Grove. We vacate the portion of the Platt of Carlton Grove. Second. Got a motion and a second. Good presentation. Yeah, very good. 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. All right. Those opposed, same sign. Motion carries. Well, thank you. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Okay. Do we want to do the attorney, manager, and commissioner comments at this point? Sure. And then when we come back later, we don't have to do it. Sounds good. All right. Does the manager have any? None. Attorney? Not today. Not today? Okay. Commissioner Wheeler? I have a question. I've got a couple of calls from concerned people who are living close to where the asphalt is being dumped. Off at 53rd. And concerns about the hours that they are being dumped in the night when they're trying to sleep. So, but it's our land. It's our property. It's our property. 53rd Street. Yeah. Come on back. Yeah. I'm sorry, Ramon. I was going to. Is it noisy? Yeah. Evidently that there are people that dump asphalts being dumped in the middle of the night in the recept, wherever it is that we're dumping that up 53rd. Is there any way to control the night traffic there? Well, Ramon Cabarrete, the public works director. We have been addressing these issues with the contractor, Watson. The road was specified to be done at night because the traffic, you will get a lot more complaints if the project was during the day than it was during the night. We, Watson has just, I think, late last week or maybe yesterday, went ahead and changed the type of trucks that they've been using. Hopefully, Lord willing, that will also actually lower a little bit the volume, but construction is construction. And the dump trucks are dumping the millings right there in what's called our 20-acre site. But we are trying to work with them to minimize, but unfortunately, construction equipment is noisy. They most likely have at least another 30 days of milling and resurfacing, if not more, depending on the weather. One of the concerns from one of the people I talked to is that he has to be at work at 4 o'clock in the morning so he doesn't get to sleep. You know, his sleep options are scarce, and so it was really beginning to be annoying to the point where it was really bad. And so are they running all night long? They are. Between 6 and 6 at night? Unfortunately, Commissioner, yes. Their construction operations, they close the road around 7, 7.30, and they work until about 6 o'clock in the morning. Okay, but in terms of taking the asphalt stuff that they're taking up, is that right? Smilling and resurfacing the entire night. I got you. Okay. They take it up, they dump it. Dump it, and they pay it up. And they're having to mill and pave the same day. That's why it's taking a little bit longer because other operations, sometimes they just mill for the whole way, and then you wait three months, four months for them to come back and pave. The problem that we have on this roadway is that there are areas of that roadway where actually, we're actually milling about six inches of asphalt in there right now, which is a lot of millings. It's several passes, and we're putting down four inches. So we cannot just go mill six inches and leave the drop off. So they're having to mill six, and pave at the same night. So it is a slower process than usual. So we have been trying to work. We're working with Watson to try to minimize it, but construction is construction. Okay. Okay. So for about 30 days? At least 30 days. Don't please say it's going to be 30 days. At least 30 days. It could be more depending on weather and how equipment behaves during those processes. And then we'll have future projects at some point too, right? We have projects all over the county, yes. And, you know, when you have traffic as high as northeast, northwest, 53rd, and other roads, I mean, we have to specify night work because if not, we will all be receiving a lot more phone calls because of the traffic complaints at that time. Will those millings end up making a mountain like we've got off 15th? There will be mountains, yes. There will be piles, yes. And those millings are being used by Public Works also where we need to. We also, by the way, some of these millings are being taken directly to smaller cities, part of your in-kind services, directions that we had that you gave the staff. So, yes, they are being piled right now at 20 acres. And in other projects, they're going to other pits that you own as the Board of County Commissioners also. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. That's all I have. Commissioner Prezio? Yeah. So, I brought this up earlier, and I wanted to just gather y'all's input. So, we have this new fund that we've created with the Lydia B. Stokes Foundation and the Empower Coalition that we passed on consent today, which is essentially this solar array that the grant from LBS is paying for. We'll be generating cost savings, right, because we aren't paying the utility bills, and we've agreed to put 90%, I believe, of those cost savings into this fund that's going to help continually fund energy efficiency improvements by the Community Weatherization Coalition like they do with our rental program and others. But it's a very small fund, and we have a very big need, and right now they're working with three communities, SWAG, Greater Duval Neighborhood Association, and I believe Porter's is the third one. But I don't know if any, but they could, our staff could confirm three neighborhoods. I know it's Duval and SWAG, and they have a third, and they've really come up with a lot of really great ways that they can expand the Community Weatherization Coalition's impact in those neighborhoods to not just be working with rentals through our program, but working with homeowners that are low-income and have really high power burdens. And to, you know, Connish's point, like a lot of people that can't pay their bills and are getting their lights turned off on a regular basis. So they've come up with a community-centered plan to do that weatherization, but they need the funds. And so I was going to ask that we direct staff to explore directing our solar rebates, not our savings, because our savings right now goes into our energy efficiency upgrades and additional solar. But our rebates are things we apply for. Sometimes we get them, sometimes we don't. That any rebates we get from solar arrays or other energy efficiency projects be directed into this fund that could then support energy efficiency upgrades for low-income residents in our community. Second. I totally support the idea because I think that in our focus on housing, we often talk about the cost of housing, and the care and cost of housing are what sometimes drive people out of housing. So anything that we can do to lower the care and cost of housing are good. I'm a little concerned that if we don't – I know we don't always get the rebates, but sometimes we factor rebates into the cost analysis of doing the project. And so I don't want to not do a project because we wouldn't have the rebates. I don't want there to be an unintended consequence to that. So I guess I would ask that you modify the motion to say that unless that rebate was considered critical in the project's initial inception. Oh, I'd just say if they feel the rebates necessary for the project, they could bring it back to us for consideration, and we can either vote to put additional money in the solar project or take the rebate. Does that work? That's a good way to do it. Yeah, I just didn't want there to be an unintended consequence for us not to do solar projects because the rebates wouldn't be funneled elsewhere. Okay. You have to change the financial considerations. So, yeah, okay, good with that. Thank you. Okay, we have a motion and a second. Any further discussion to the motion? I just wanted, Mr. Chair, just to say two community action agencies also has federal funds for help for this sort of thing, and if we're not tapping into those resources, then we're missing an opportunity to share. So just see. So we should connect them with CWC? Yes. Okay. Yes. And I think they have been at some point, but I'm not sure they're actually using them like they could. Okay. Okay? I'll make sure they circle back. Yes. Any further discussion? Are there any citizen comments in the motion? Back to the board. Those in favor of the motion, vote by the sign of aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed, same sign. Motion carries. Commissioner Cornell. I just have a question that I was going to ask the attorney if they could give us an update on. Do you guys get these? Yep. Yeah, I saw it. Okay. So it reminded me of the live oak issue that we had, the last issue of the champion live oaks that we, I guess, we brought an action against the developer or the builder and just wanted to know what the status was. So, Mr. Chair, that's the Veterans Way project, in case it rings any bells to you. That property was owned by a trust. That one had multiple violations on the property, and we were kind of chasing down which ones were which and where we are with those. The tree issue had to do with a number of trees that were being removed. We said they were regulated trees. They said that they didn't have to get permits from us because they qualified under a certain exemption. We disagreed. The special magistrate disagreed. In that case, they kept taking down trees. So at some point, we filed for an emergency injunction, and the court told them to stop. They didn't stop. We filed for contempt. The court, you know, gave them penalties on that, and they stopped cutting. So once they stopped cutting, the injunction piece went away, but they also appealed the special magistrate's order saying that they didn't qualify for the exemption. The exemption says that if you have a forester or an arborist say that your trees are an emergency, you don't have to get local approval. We said that their documentation was insufficient, the court agreed with us recently, and that's where that one lies. Now, we were chasing down a little bit to see if trees had been replanted or else they just owed us, and we think that they just owe us a big number that has not been paid. How much is it? I think we're chasing that one down. So as far as we know, trees aren't coming out. There's still another pending case on them for at one point it was building without a permit, but that part has gone away, but they were moving a lot of dirt without permission. So that one's still pending. Okay. So we are still pursuing an action against them. We have been successful in our special magistrate hearings. We have completed the process for the trees, and it's just owed money. It's beyond the point where they can appeal that. Yep. And then with the dirt, there are a couple issues. One is that the beneficial owner of the property isn't the person named on the trust, but we brought them both to the special magistrate because he was the one physically moving the dirt, and he was the one who claimed he was the beneficial owner of the property. He's claiming he shouldn't have been brought. That's one case. The other piece has to do with whether, you know, we had sufficient evidence to prove that they moved that much dirt. We had neighbors that said, you know, we saw these many trucks go by. The trucks had, you know, tons and tons of dirt. As far as our estimates were, far triggered the number where they should have come to us. They are also making some technical arguments that are more, you know, in the legal realm, like, you know, that they didn't get due process and they weren't properly noticed and these kind of things. And that is fully briefed. We're just waiting to hear from the court whether they want us to argue it or we'll just rule on the paper. And so the amount that he owes us, is that an Alachua County lien on the property? Is that how that works? Right. So the administrative fines, as in the daily fines, it becomes a lien by operation of law. On top of that, we have permits that they have to get after the fact, which are twice the cost. And we have something called an irreplaceable and irreplaceable and something, a fine that just basically says you can't put back what you took out. It's not a matter of just going back and these are, this is costs irreversible and irreplaceable. And that money goes into a fund for trees. A question about that. Are we allowed to surveil a property? Can we put up a camera and monitor what's happening on a property that we have concerns about? No. We just can't do that? No. No. The case law is pretty well developed on how we can collect evidence and what we're permitted to do to collect evidence. That would not be permissible because that's an area, especially in areas that aren't right on the road, they would have a reasonable expectation of privacy in that. So, yeah. Thought it was worth asking. Our best evidence so far in this has been the neighbors. Neighbors. They're allowed to surveil. As any neighbor would. Yes, as any neighbor would. If they're in a legal place. Okay. Thank you. I'm still hoping to hear from staff an update on what's going on, if anything, that is county-related with the Maddox Foundry property that is now Arnold Construction. And I didn't know if y'all had heard anything yet. Steve Hofstadter sent an email earlier today. Oh, I haven't seen it yet. You guys were probably sitting in here when he sent it. He said that they got all their necessary permits, including one from our city of Archer and water management. And all of their constructions is in conforming with those permits. Okay. That's what I needed to hear. Thank you. They said they were continuing. I had not seen that yet. Thank you. That's all. Okay. I have one item from the Rebuild Together North Central Florida. They're asking us for a letter of support for a USDA rule development housing grant, and they just want approval. So, I wanted to bring that before the board to get approval so we can do that for them, if that's okay, for the board. I move that we provide a letter of support to rebuild together for their USDA application. Okay. Sounds great. All right. Any further discussion to the motion that's on the floor? Are there any additional comments to the motion? Are there any citizen comments? Mr. Chair, is that a letter we already have, or do we need to draft that for you? No, it's already draft. It's already draft, so I'll just need an approval to get to that. Okay. And so LaToya can work on formatting it and all that for you. Okay. Just wanted to make sure we didn't need to assign that. Yeah, he sent it with it. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. So, those in favor of the motion, vote by the sign of an aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed, same sign. Motion carries. Thank you. I'm rushing, y'all. Yeah, but you know, you probably need to go get some new break. Yeah. Okay. So, we'll reconvene at 5.01. Thank you.