Hey, good morning. It is, what is today? Today is January 27th. I'd like to go ahead and call the Electro County Board of County Commission's meeting to order. Before we do that, though, we've got an invocation from the senior pastor, Dr. Carl Anderson from Upper Room Ministries, who will give the invocation. If I could ask everyone to stand, and then after the invocation, if you'll join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. Rev, welcome. Good morning. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, God, we thank you for this day and for the privilege of gathering to serve our community. Thank you for the men and women entrusted with leadership and responsibility and for the opportunity to work together for the good of all. We ask for wisdom beyond human understanding, clarity in decision-making, and unity of purpose as matters affecting our county or discussed today. Grant discernment, integrity, and compassion to each commissioner, staff member, and participant in this meeting. May every conversation be guided with respect, every decision shaped by fairness, and every action aimed at the well-being of our citizens, especially the most vulnerable among us. We ask for peace within this chamber, corporation among differing perspectives, and outcomes that promote justice. Oh, my God, promotes justice, progress, and hope for our county. And, Lord, we pray, God, for peace outside the chambers. Oh, God, we pray for peace in our city, our county, in our neighborhoods. God, I pray, God, hallelujah, that respect, hallelujah, will continue to be with one another. God, we pray, God, even in this cold weather, God, that you would bless the unhoused and those that are most vulnerable, the seniors. God, I pray, God, to keep them covered and warm, God. God, I pray, God, that you continue to bring healing among the nation, healing among our state, healing among our county, healing among our city. We ask, we also continue to pray for those who are yet, yet struggling and needing assistance on a daily living. God, I pray, God, for that you would just work a miracle right now. Well, God, we are grateful for this opportunity to serve, and we commit this meeting into your hands. We ask these in your name, we pray. Amen. Amen. Thank you, Rev. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it's one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Okay. Thank you, Rev. Thank you all for being here. And with that, Madam Manager, are there any changes to the board or commissions to the agenda? Okay. Before I get to you, Madam Manager, Commissioner Prizio. Yeah, I just have one, one comment on an item on consent. I don't want to pull it, but I wanted to point it out and take an opportunity to ask a question. It's 9A. It is our annual landscaping services contract, and I read through it. It looks like it's primarily sort of the mow and blow, like, maintenance-type operations, but there is some additional services in there under three, and there is material installation and planting services. Are they the primary person that we use for installation of landscapes, even for new construction and existing buildings, or do we have another contract for that? Do you have that answer? I don't have that answer right away for you. I don't believe so for the new construction, because that falls under the project management of that particular construction, but I will verify that. If you want to pull this off to get the answers to your questions, I can do that. Okay. No, that's okay. I just, I guess what I want to say to, I guess, staff and my colleagues is, like, I think this is fine. There's nothing in this contract that concerns me in terms of moving it, but what does concern me is the quality of some of our landscaping, especially in the downtown area, as we're trying to sort of, like, work with our downtown advisory board and the city on, you know, advancing, getting downtown cleaned up, and I, you know, like, I have some photographs of our landscaping areas in downtown, and I think we could do a lot to spruce them up in terms of, one, identifying and, like, creating examples of what we want for xeriscaping and low-impact landscaping in places where there's lots of people, and two, for doing, helping the city with the efforts to beautify downtown and try to keep it as a beautiful place. I know it's a hard space, because there's lots of people, but I just wanted to bring that up and also to sort of push that forward as potentially a conversation in the future. The person who can answer that question just stepped in to save the day. Awesome. Hi, Travis. I'm trying to have a breath. I was running from upstairs. I didn't hear all of that. The question was, is this, does this contract for annual services with landscaping include, have it under additional services that has some installation stuff, but are they the primary that does installation at our existing buildings and does plantings? They are. So that is written so that it's what you described first, the general maintenance, and then we broke it out so that we can ask them to come in semi-annually, you know, put mulch down, you know, all those type of things. You know, we want to add plans. We want to do that kind of stuff. Okay. Well, it's not necessarily anything in this contract, so I would move that we approve the agenda as presented, but I wanted to just bring up that I would like for us to have a conversation and consider how we're doing with our landscaping at our existing facilities, in particular in places that have high traffic and downtown and places like that, and consider working with like environmental protection and others to maybe use those as demonstration spaces and spruce them up a little bit to support the downtown cleanup efforts. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. So we've got a motion and a second to approve the agenda and the consent agenda. Commissioner Wheeler? I just want to add to what Anna is saying there, too, in those spaces, too, that maybe we could also implement the little signage we were talking about in terms of pollinators. Pollinators and... So using it as an education... Yeah. Yeah. Got it. Thank you. Yeah. I love that. Good point. Okay. Thank you, Commissioner. All right. Anyone from the public wish to speak to the motion on the floor, which is the adoption of the agenda? Seeing none, back to the board. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? That motion is unanimous. All right. So we've got an agenda, and the first... Mr. Chair, we're going to let Claudia come up. Yeah. So before we get to the announcements, Commissioner, we just approved on consent the... I don't know if we approved it, but we have our new medical examiner. Yes. Ms. Tuck, you're recognized. Claudia Tuck, Director of Community Support Services. I'm pleased to introduce you officially our new proposed interim medical examiner pending approval by, of course, the state's attorney. We'll be submitting a letter for approval from the state, but happy to introduce to you Dr. Malad Webb, who is joining us, and he would like to speak to you. Dr. Webb, welcome. Thank you for being here. Thank you so much. It is an honor to be here today and to have the confidence of Alachua County as well as the other counties within District 8. I look forward to a fantastic and long relationship, including the commission and the community that we live in. Thank you. Okay. Well, welcome. Welcome. All right. And Mr. Chair, you did approve the interim contract for him through the fiscal year on consent. Okay. Excellent. All right. So, Madam Clerk, I guess we have announcements, and I know Mark is not here, but okay. Josh is going to show us a video, I believe. I am. Hello, Chair and Commission. Mark is out sick today, so I am filling in. The first thing I wanted to talk about was we have a brand new app for everybody to use called My Alachua County, and we want to encourage everyone to download this app. It gives you notifications. You can submit all sorts of information to the county if you need to get in touch with someone or anything like that. It's basically the shortcut to get what you need from the county. You can go to our webpage, alachiacounty.us. It's right on the home page, and we have download links for the App Store and for Google Play. You can get the app on Android and iOS, so we really encourage residents to download that, and we have a nice big QR code for everyone to scan so they can download it. And the other thing I wanted to do today was to show you a video that we made about the Jimmy Carnes Invitational we had a few weeks ago. This is the first event that they do at the Sports Event Center every year to kick off track season, and it was a huge success, and we went out there to get some video of it. Indoor track season is here on the Jimmy Carnes track at the Alachua County Sports and Events Center. Each year we kick off with a very special event, and that is the Jimmy Carnes Invitational that's hosted by the Gainesville Sports Commission. It is named for the same person that our track is named for, which is Jimmy Carnes track at the Alachua County Sports and Events Center. It's usually one of the first track meets to kind of kick off the indoor season in the nation, which is great. So we have a lot of college teams just starting their indoor season, as well as the youth component from ages between 4 to 19 years old for Saturday, Sunday. Our athletes all are excited every time we come here and love the facility and just rave about it. We're really excited. We always do pretty well here, so we've had some performances, had a school record already followed a day for us. This track was specifically designed for this space. It is a Mondo track, and for those that don't know, Mondo is the surface that's used in like the Olympics. So it's a hard track, makes it faster. The Alachua County Board of County Commissioners approved this amazing center and brought in an incredible track. So we're really lucky to have this elite, you know, Mondo track here in the state of Florida and in Alachua County. So we have a lot of world record times, as well as some MCAA times, which is exciting. Today in the very, the first two events today, three of our five athletes either had their best indoor performance ever or their best performance ever. Last year, we had some people hit national qualifying marks here. So we're looking forward to doing that again this year. And with track events running almost every weekend through March 7th, there will be plenty of opportunities to break records and to raise the bar for the county's tourism economy. Indoor track season is booming in Alachua County right now, which is great. This weekend, we should have well over 3,000 visitors coming into the community for this specific event. And then you'll see similar numbers anywhere, depending on which meet, anywhere from 1,500 to 3,000 visitors coming in each weekend, subsequently during track season. To have this facility has altered our program. You know, before this facility opened up, every indoor meet was a six to nine hour bus ride. And, you know, we're spending a lot of money. We were limited in number of athletes we could bring. Having this facility has allowed us to now, instead of bringing 30 people to a meet, now we're bringing 50, 60, 70 people to a meet. I think it's great for our families, too. We have a lot of Florida kids on our team and they have families that are nearby. And so it gives them an opportunity to be able to come and be able to watch the compete. We love coming here and look forward every time when January hits because we know we're going to be coming to Gainesville. I'm just excited it's here and hope it continues to be here for years to come. And Mr. Chair, those are the announcements. Okay, thank you, Josh. That's a great video. I would be remiss if I didn't recognize former Speaker Pro Tem, Representative Clemens in the audience. The legislature, through his work as well as Senator Perry, provided an appropriation for that track. Latchford County had a lot of millions of dollars to build the facility, but the actual track was over two million provided by the state legislature and led by Speaker Pro Tem Clemens. So thank you, Chuck. I didn't know that was going to be shown today, but I'm glad you're here to see it. Yeah, appreciate it. Okay. All right, let's move on to our board and committee items. Madam Clerk. We have Equity Advisory Board appointments, appoint one applicant to the vacant citizen at large position, and appoint one applicant to the vacant alternate position. You have two applicants. You have Kylie Blount and Daryl Bagby. Are either one of the two applicants here today we should speak to there? Yeah, come forward. Yeah, if you could just introduce yourself and give us your thoughts. Good morning. I wanted to say my son participated in Jimmy Carnes, and it was wonderful. He had a great time, so I just wanted to mention that. My name is Daryl Bagby, 35-year resident of Gainesville. Moved to Alachua County to go to school in 1990 and decided to make it home. In my previous position, I was VP of operational excellence, but I was also a member of our equity and inclusion board with the company, and it was a really good opportunity to try to balance making operational decisions, fiscal decisions, but also keeping equity and inclusion a big part of all the decisions that we made. In my new career, I'm a mortgage loan originator here in Alachua County, and I really wanted to throw my hat in the ring. I wanted to participate more in the community and look for opportunities to give back, so I appreciate your consideration. Thank you for applying. Yeah, appreciate that. Okay, I don't see Kelly here, so Madam Clerk, you want to just do a roll call and we'll see who's going to be our new position, and then we'll do the other one as the alternate position. Okay, can I start with Commissioner Alford? Daryl Bagby. Commissioner Chestnut? Regular seat. Citizen at large, position? Yeah. That's me? I'm sorry. Blount. Okay. Commissioner Wheeler? Daryl Bagby. Commissioner Prezio? Why not? Like, why not? No, I'm just kidding. We'll go with Daryl Bagby. Okay, and I'll say Bagby. Okay. Do I hear a motion? Move Daryl Bagby for the citizen at large and Kali Blount for the alternate position for the equity advisory board. Second. Got a motion, a second. Any discussion? Seeing none back to the board. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Congratulations. Welcome to the board. Thank you. All right. All right, we got a round of applause. That doesn't happen often, Mr. Dagby. So, because, yeah. Okay. All right. So, we're about 15 minutes before public comment. So, I think let's go ahead and move to action items, Madam Clerk. And we'll, if we're not done with these, the first item by noon, we'll break for public comment. And what's the first item? Okay. First action item is animal enforcement update. Okay. And the recommended action is to, one, authorize the chair to sign the attached memorandum of understanding. Two, request to advertise for a required public hearing. Three, authorize a corresponding budget amendment. And four, direct staff to provide quarterly updates to the board over the next year. And Ms. Peebles, you are recognized. Good morning. Gina Peebles, Assistant County Manager, Chief of Staff, and current Interim Animal Resources Director. So, joining me today are Undersheriff Josh Cruz, Lieutenant Herlocker, and Captain Bennett. At our August 5th special budget meeting, the board discussed transitioning animal enforcement responsibilities to the Sheriff's Office. Since that time, staff have been working with the Sheriff's Office to develop a contract transferring certain animal enforcement responsibilities. Through these discussions, it was determined that a hybrid enforcement model would provide the most effective and efficient approach. Under this model, the Sheriff's Office would assume responsibility for criminal animal enforcement, including serving as the initial point of contact for animal bites and dog fighting cases, while the county would retain responsibility for civil animal enforcement, including serving as the initial point of contact for sick wildlife and animal abuse or neglect matters. Shown in this chart are our calls for service by category. Assist, LEO, which is law enforcement officer services related to owner incarceration, medical transport, death, or final eviction. Quality of life are services related to barking and running at large. Public safety are bite, aggressive strays, and sick wildlife. Welfare would be abuse, neglect, and dog fighting. And other are services such as participation in our Citizens Academy, civil and criminal trials, and providing education to our citizens. Our current organizational chart is shown in this slide. The memorandum of understanding included in your packet provides for the transfer of three existing investigator positions, all of whom have successfully passed the Sheriff's Office pre-employment screenings, as well as one vacant supervisor position, along with all associated equipment. It further requires the parties to jointly develop an operations manual that will clearly delineate procedures and responsibilities between animal control operations remaining under the county and those of the Animal Services Bureau operating under the Sheriff. Approval authority for the development of the operations manual, as well as any subsequent revisions, is vested in the sheriff and the county manager or their designees. This would be our revised organizational chart for those employees remaining under the county. And so our next steps would be to authorize the chair to sign the attached memorandum of understanding, authorize the request to advertise for the required public hearing to amend chapter 72 of the Alachua County Code, authorize the corresponding budget amendments to transfer funding to the Alachua County Sheriff's Office and direct staff to provide quarterly updates to the board over the next year. The necessary code changes would allow the Sheriff's Office to issue citations for civil infractions observed during their criminal investigations, therefore not calling us out to those calls. And this hybrid approach would ultimately strengthen public trust while advancing the county's animal welfare goals. And with that, I'd be happy to answer any questions. Okay, we've got a couple of lights here. So Commissioner Alford, you are recognized. Thank you. You may know that I've spent a couple hours talking to a citizen and driving by a house where a some dogs have been locked up in crates and left outside during in unclean circumstances during this really, really cold weather. And, um, animal control, animals, um, services has gone by several times to take care of it. And, and, you know, after a couple of talking to's, they clean up and everything, and then they go right back to what they were. So I'm hoping that, um, that when the sheriff can go by, or not the sheriff himself, obviously, but the sheriff's department goes by and makes that same visit, it'll have a lot more weight. And that would is it. So when a, uh, animal services employee from the sheriff's department goes by, will they be in uniform? Will they have a badge? What will be different? Because I, I, I'm really concerned about this kind of situation. So, so yes. I was going to say, it sounded to me, if you would clarify as well, it sounded to me like that would be considered a welfare call, which isn't something that the sheriff's office would be handling that would still be under our department. Unless, unless the welfare call goes, progresses. And then as I understand it, we would have the opportunity to ask the sheriff's department to go by also, because it's a, it becomes a cruelty case after it's a welfare case. Right. I would say after a couple of warnings, um, she's going to most likely, uh, currently I say she, um, the director over there is going to route that call over to us to follow up on because it's kind of exceeded that civil infraction and it's fallen into the criminal realm. And then we would take it from there. Um, yes, things change when the sheriff's office gets involved. And yes, when we respond, we're in uniform, all of our employees will be in a uniform. It's likely it's going to be, uh, a polo shirt or something similar to that over khakis, um, with a star on it. All of our vehicles have, um, sheriff's office insignia is on it. So it's going to have a badge on it. Um, so the investigators, although they are not sworn, they will still have some identifying features, uh, separating them, um, from animal control and making them a part of the lots of county sheriff's office. If you've ever seen our FSTs, they all have, uh, badges. Okay. Excellent. I, I, um, I know this is a controversial change, but I feel like especially given the problems that we've been having with dog fighting and other things like that, that this is a necessary step to, uh, try to get things, um, to take better care of our animals, basically. But thank you. Okay. That's all I have. And I'm happy to make the motion unless there's other comments. Uh, commissioner Wheeler and then commissioner Pritzia, and then we'll look for a motion. Uh, no, go ahead. Pritzia was first. Oh, commissioner Pritzia. Oh, I asked. I just wanted to say, you know, I, I was in support of this to begin with. I'm still in support of it. And I, I actually appreciate the hybrid model. I appreciate that you all took the time to sort of explore it and to think about what makes the most sense for our community, because we certainly, you know, don't necessarily need someone in a uniform showing up for somebody who maybe is experiencing a experiencing a mental health crisis or challenged in some other way with caring for their pet and just need some extra food or some extra support, um, or coaching. Um, and I do think our animal control folks have done a good job of trying to handle those cases with some compassion and empathy. Um, and so I'm hoping that that can continue, but having the added backup for those cases where it's a clear case of criminal neglect or, um, or dog fighting or any of the other components, I definitely think having someone showing up, um, with the ability to move that forward in the due process makes a lot of sense. And one thing that I am a little concerned about is as you've mentioned, I think, um, to me in, in the, in passing, I've talked with others about it is the managed intake component, um, and how we handle bringing dogs into our facility that are in these animal control cases. Can you talk a little bit about how we handle that? So, um, yes, the shelter currently operates under managed intake and just as our officers and investigators do now, if for example, we do have to bring animals into the shelter, they communicate with our shelter supervisor and we make room for them. So, uh, we certainly can reach out to our partner agencies and ask them to pull animals. Um, but that, that is one of the most compelling parts that is of interest to me is that we would have that open line of communication so that we understand that these animals are coming in and we can properly care for them. Okay. I just want to make sure we can take care of them and that we do have the space and that we are prioritizing, you know, community, public service, and like helping people with these challenges because, you know, I get not a ton of calls, but I get a fair number of, you know, uh, updates from individuals throughout the year of, like, I called about this dog and they just left it here or, you know, they're not picking it up even though it's a problem. And so I do think as we get into the next topic, we need to think about how managed intake is working or not working in terms of managing the issues that are happening with animals in our community. But, um, I'm all in favor of this and I think it's a great pilot and I like that we're going to have these regular updates so we can talk through what's working and what's not and continue to refine that manual and the processes in the way that we communicate. Can you conclude? Yeah. Commissioner Wheeler? Yeah. And thank you. Thank you both for working on this. This is, makes me a lot more comfortable for both of you in terms of the way that we have been trying to organize. Uh, Gina, this isn't a whole lot different from the way we have been operating, is it? So the primary difference is that we would have three of our officer investigators that currently work for the county, they would transfer over to the sheriff's office. We've also not filled a supervisor position for some time. So that position would transfer over and they would be responsible for the sheriff's new animal bureau division. Okay. Okay. So, um, I, and we're also putting together a process where everybody understands who's in charge of what and who's to be called. That would be helpful. I think for everybody, both of our agencies, you know, to know exactly who to call and win. And, uh, sometimes we overlap and I understand that too, but we work well with the sheriff's department. So I, I don't have any concerns about that anymore. So we plan on having monthly meetings. If you decide to go with this process, um, where animal control and the animal services bureau meet monthly for the first year, because we know there's going to be growing pains that are going to have to communicate through. It's going to ebb and flow. And we'll figure out what the best, you know, algorithm is for routing calls. So, um, it's going to be a little bit of a learning curve. Um, and, uh, but we, we do have a plan and we understand that that's going to happen. I do want to, um, you know, me and the assistant county manager have been working pretty well together on this project, but we have to give credit where credit's due. And, uh, this hybrid model was actually presented to us by deputy Perry Kuhn, which I think a lot of y'all know have been in rural services, animal control type investigations for over a decade. And this was his idea. And, and we were like, well, why don't we think of that? So, um, it does kind of make sense. And, uh, we thought it would make you all a lot more comfortable. Well, it certainly does me. So thank you all so much for the effort. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yeah, real quick. Um, can you put the slide up that shows the number of calls and just so, uh, public safety would be routed to the sheriff? Presumably. Like, could you, could you have the colors too? Because I can't see the words up there. Oh, I'm sorry. So the orange and the, uh, is the orange and the green, the idea of those would be routed to the sheriff or not necessarily? So, uh, depending on basically the way that the call is explained to the call taker, it would be routed. So for example, somebody may call in that it's abuse and neglect and, uh, our officers would take the first initial pass at that. And then they go out and it's like, wow, this is severe. So we need our partners at the sheriff's office. The sheriff can be involved in all of those actually. Absolutely. Absolutely. So, uh, the responding agency may say we actually need the opposite agency to come. And that happens now, you know, where we respond to, um, maybe something that we think is dog related and there happens to be wildlife involved. And so we'll have to call our partners at FWC. So it happens often on the chair. Did you want to add anything or no? Just we, we, in the MOU, you're going to see where we've, we've kind of like believed that 51% of certain calls, uh, are going to most likely fall. What's kind of the educated guess to animal control. And then 51% of the different calls are going to most likely fall on law enforcement. So we're calling it the first point of contact. Um, we may make contact with the complainant on that and on a phone call and go, oh, this is obviously an animal control call and we'll route it over vice versa. They may do the same thing. This is obviously a law enforcement call and then they'll route it over. Commissioner Prezzi. Oh, I, I guess I'm wondering about how, uh, how we're going to go about like training the call takers about this. Is that like, cause I know sometimes it's a 9-1-1 thing. So it's our people on the phone figuring out where to route these things, even if it's not an emergency or people calling the non-emergency number of the sheriff's office and then them having to route it. So are we doing like, are we planning training for the call takers to understand the right? Yeah. Okay. Okay. Some, some call taker training going on and we've already started working on questions and how we route calls and how we can screen them out before we have to, because most of them, I would say the majority of them come to CCC and then we push them to animal control. So we want to go ahead and grab the ones that are obvious and route them to, uh, this new animal services bureau if we can, as opposed to bouncing them back and forth. You got a quick one or I do have a quick one. Okay. Um, the, the, um, since you're here under sheriff, could we get an update on the dog bite case from over the weekend or do you have any information on that? No, ma'am. Ah, no. Okay. Well, in that case, I move staff recommendation. Second. Motion and second. Commissioner Wheeler, did you have any? Just a quick question. And this model that we have now, no one at the, at the, our offices are going to lose their job, right? Nobody out at ACRs. That's correct. Nobody loses their job under this model. Thank you. Okay. So we've got a motion and a second. We're about to go to general public comment. Is there any public comment on this motion? Does anybody want to speak to this motion or no? Okay. Let's bring it back to the board. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right. All right. That motion is unanimous. Thank you under sheriff. Really appreciate it. All right. This is, uh, the first opportunity that we have for the public to speak to us about anything not on the agenda. So we're going to get to, um, animal shelter update and animal resources, comprehensive update. You'll have an opportunity to speak to that. Um, this is for things that are not on the agenda. So is there anyone from the public that wishes to address this board on anything not on the agenda? Come forward. Yep. You'll just introduce yourself. Hi. There's a light system. Yeah. Pamela Blasetti. Hi, Pamela. Good morning. Good afternoon, actually, by now. Um, I just wanted to bring up the fact that last meeting, Anna had suggested that you create a special meeting specifically for the issues with ACARS. And I think given the fact that we have so much shifting going on right now, new leadership, we've had one of the worst live release months we've had in three years recently. We have now a question of where are we going to be putting all those dogs that the sheriff's department is going to be bringing in. We still have that question pending. There's just a lot of shifting ground. I think that it would really be nice for us to have a meeting devoted specifically to animal, animal shelter. I also feel like the animal welfare committee would be a great resource at that meeting because they are so professional, have so much feedback that normally doesn't really get anywhere. I'd love to see them be more involved in how things move on and evolve. And I just also wanted to say that in terms of, you know, we haven't been given an update on the new director and the new veterinarian, but I feel that the new director really needs to be, I hate to see us take the easy way out. It really needs to be somebody who's got vision for where we're going next, which is really going to entail a lot of abilities to create and execute community programs, which we do not have right now. Also engaging our community, balancing a lot of high stake decisions with compassion. I think it's a really big, big job. And honestly, it's hard to find somebody who has all these qualities. I know it really is. But looking at where we're positioned right now, I think that person has to be somebody who really has vision of where we're going to go next, not somebody who's been around for a long time and high kill environments and going to lean on that because that's not what we want. It's not what we want. So I'm asking, please don't take the easy road. Let's do the interviewing. Let's get somebody great because we really need somebody with vision right now. Thank you, Pamela. And we are going to have a comprehensive update later in the meeting. Excellent. And so if the board then decides that we need to have another special meeting, they'll certainly be the opportunity to do that. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Anyone else wishes to speak to anything not on the agenda? If it's not on the agenda, come forward, introduce yourself and give us your thought. Is it about animal services or something different? Come, come forward. Yeah. Oh, Commissioner Prizzi reminded me, if you need to leave and you wish to speak to something on the agenda, this would also be the time to do that. Yeah. Yeah. But you only get one shot at it. Yeah. Yep. Welcome. If you'll just introduce yourself. Excuse me. I'm Chad Preston. And I've sent each of you commissioners two letters now concerning Eastwood Preserve and problems that it has caused. And I don't have a lot of time to go into all of them, but I would like to say that it was kind of left out that taking 51st Street and giving it to an entrance to the new subdivision. That 51st Street is connected to 50th Street and 49th Terrace by 20th Avenue. So when you pass the plan as it was developed, you have inadvertently given three streets entrance to the new subdivision. I don't think I live on 50th Street. I personally don't want to be an entrance to Eastwood Preserve. So I've suggested in my letter of January 5th that I sent the commission that we take 20th Avenue between 50th Street and 1st Street and we put steel bollards there to block that off. It only, there's only two houses on 20th Street, 20th Avenue between 50th and 51st that still gives the vehicles like trash trucks and delivery trucks a place to back drive in and back down because that's what they do. Yes, it would inconvenience a little bit, but you know, we're talking 75 to 100 cars and it's going to be a bondoogle. I just would ask the commission to really consider putting those bollards there and stopping all that traffic coming through the entire subdivision. Thank you, Mr. Preston. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Anyone else wish to speak to the board? Come on up. Go ahead and introduce yourself and give us your thoughts. Good afternoon. My name is Keith Nichols. I worked at Electro County Animal Resources as a kennel technician from the period of August 2023 to September 2024 and I'd like to bring to your attention the conditions that are at the shelter right now and urge you to please put in the forefront of your proceedings building and constructing the new shelter. The existing shelter was built in the 1980s and the kennels are very rusty. There is a major infestation of rats in the kennels in the shelter. The rat droppings fall into the dog's waters. There is insulation falling that kennel staff has to sweep up daily insulation from 50 years ago, which I have no idea if that's dangerous to our health or not. So I left for my own mental health and physical health is why I left the job and I feel bad that I had to leave my staff members who are still there. Now two years later some of the same staff who are Alachua County residents very hard working dealing with this stuff day in and day out and I feel that the current shelter is not fit to serve how our community has grown and even if we do get a new shelter I know it's also a potential idea to leave the existing shelter as a place to send animals that are part of an investigation or cruelty but I would strongly advise against that just because of the way the shelter is already falling apart and if you couple that with the fact that it may not be you know having animals there on a regular basis now it's not going to be maintained even more I just think it's a really bad idea to continue operating anything at that current location. Thank you. Thank you. So again we are going to I'm sorry so again we are going to talk about the shelter this time now unless you have to leave is for anything not on the agenda is there anyone else that wants to speak to us about anything not on the agenda Mr. Cartwright and then we have Mark is there anyone after Mark okay I just want to I know there's a lot of folks here and I want to give them the time for for that item Mr. Cartwright go ahead you're welcome. Yes good afternoon commissioners chair my name is Telford Cartwright I'm a resident here in Alachua County Florida um and um I need to I need to speak on something that um could be relative to um a national um situation and it involves human trafficking take for example um traffic ticket quotas arrest quotas are unlawful here in the United States um and usually uh well most often arrest quotas do not require valid probable cause let alone evidence and usually they're conducted because of um policy and revenue production uh purposes so and arrest quotas could be associated with human trafficking um take for example I was uh arrested by a member of the city of Gainesville's police department here in the city limits on September 8th 2024. I've since gathered or obtained the incident for slash investigative report and it states due to conflicting statements a lack of uh bodily injuries and a lack of proper calls I could not be arrested um a thorough and proper investigation occurred although because of um a much thorough investigation I was arrested at the city of Gainesville Florida's police department's headquarters I will later find out my then minor daughter was found at a location um I did not check this morning and it slipped my mind of who represents that district uh she was later found to be in a house or at a house with her alleged boyfriend who I knew nothing about and as a loving caring and concerned father I did uh what a loving caring and concerned father would do and responsible father that uh by notifying the uh city of Gainesville Florida's police department and then although the investigation turned on me for some particular reason I have written a article in the Alatra Chronicle stating that yes I am the victim of a male gender bias and anti-father policy process under the color of law and I just I strongly suspect that this is a policy that the city of Gainesville has been engaging uh with its or its police department has been enforcing along with the courts or certain members of the courts here in the eighth circuit and by the way here in the eighth circuit probable cause hearings are not conducted thank you Mr. Carwright thank you for your comments all right next speaker please mark and then we'll go to the phone lines hi hi hey so Indiana is about pollinators but um so the um and we're gonna go for the airbags um so the planet basically spends like the majority of its time trying to get rid of heat that's really all it's doing it doesn't care about humans doesn't care about cockroaches it's really just trying to get rid of heat and uh it's like oh can i push them over there can i push them over there all the water because it's where like 90 of the energy is stored that comes from the sun and it's trying to how about around this island how about underneath this thing and it's just pushing away the heat all around these continents there's even currents that come from the pacific and go all the way south africa move to iceland and it comes back you know on the floor and humbled current and stuff i mean imagine it going around the world trying to get rid of this heat and so and this takes thousands of years to get to this sort of equilibrium where basically the ocean and the atmosphere has got it all figured out and we're on this very very stable plateau and once you leave that plateau and if you look geologically of the last 800 000 years every time we leave the plateau it's vertical it's not like gradual it's vertical because it's not like an orchestra with a hundred players it's more like an orchestra with like 10 000 players and you take away the drum set in the middle and people go well what's my rhythm what am i supposed to do and it gets chaotic real fast suddenly so and right now we've got this white thing excuse me white thing here white thing here's like this the other white thing is like this and it goes like this like this like this this summer and then summer and then very soon and this is winter it's winter winter and it's going to go up and it can't and the striations of all these atmospheric flows there's newly in five degrees you know it's going to not know where to go or it's going to start wandering so we could have like a spring that's from the yucatan and we have a fall that's from like virginia or the other way around it's going to happen just like that seriously and it's kind of like those kids when it's on one of those like electronic skateboard type things we know when they're you're going like this and they're going like 20 miles an hour maybe even doing tick tock while they're doing it all of a sudden like this you know when one of the wheels falls off and you wish you were wearing a helmet nine years nine years and the only thing that can glue together our ecosystem is those pollinators it's the pollinators not ai and not a billion dollars for the board of adaptation they'll be present for life i'm kidding but seriously yeah pollinators thanks mark i would say uh you're really lucky that we've got some awesome animal service volunteers here today yeah they they were supplementing and helping uh in the background so thank you he was dropped over the fence with the collar and the leash yeah well thank you thank you for your comments okay anyone else in chambers before we go to the phones all right let's go to the phones and then we'll get back to our agenda uh josh anyone on the phones yes mr chair we did have a couple of callers let me get zoom pulled up right here we have a caller whose number is ending in eight zero seven four you'll need to hit star six and you are in the meeting my name is carrie wise i'm from gainfield and i called today because reports that alachua county shelter is killing dogs claimed as an unadoptable and it is no longer qualified as no kill can you hear me okay we sure can thank you yes okay okay so i've seen real solutions to saving condemned shelter dogs when communities are asked for help on social media dozens of private individuals reply to these postings with offers to donate money for medical treatments offer to foster or adopt or maybe transport the pup to a new home so i've never seen alachua county animal shelter take advantage of this free community outreach to ask for help even though it's now listed as a volunteer opportunity on the shelter's website so i sent an email on january 15th offering to volunteer to get a program going um i said i would like to take photos of the dogs on your youth list to post with details on facebook and other social media as a dog at risk needing urgent foster adoption i watch many of these announcements across the country and they get excellent results with several answering the call to help through fostering adoption and donations i have my own camera and can take care of the postings myself i can also answer questions on the comments of the post and send interested adopters fosters to whoever whoever you designate at the shelter i can start immediately would someone please call me and the same day i received a response from may mauer the animal resource administrative coordinator and she said good afternoon while we appreciate your interest we do not maintain a predefined euthanasia list decisions are made on a case-by-case basis taking into account both behavioral and medical considerations we do not publicize euthanasia decisions as doing so can lead to unnecessary public distress and misunderstanding this is not a service we would request or expect others to provide so i responded with another email saying thanks for your fast response may then please tell me how we can help rescue these dogs at the greatest risk of being killed to open up space at your shelter i would like to volunteer in this capacity so i haven't received a reply to this yet and i fear that more dogs have been killed in the past 12 days you know i do understand that publishing information about dog schedule to be killed could be a public relations problem for the shelter but i've been in public relations uh i've been a consultant for most of my adult career and it is creating a much worse public relations nightmare to kill dogs and hide it so my proposal is simple and straightforward use volunteers to run a free social media campaign that tells the local communities that the shelter needs help on facebook there are over 356 000 members in alachua marion and levee counties alone and those groups i can go to the shelter tomorrow and start the road of the program by taking photos and writing short stories for posting this coming week we could pile with just two to three to start and we don't need to wait for a new building to save more lives and care for more innocent animals at the shelter so i would i'm requesting please consider my proposal thank you miss wise thank you for your call next caller the only other caller we have is a caller who has their number blocked so the only other call in the room you'll need to hit star six it is your turn oh hi can you hear me yes we can hi this is mocha and i had a couple things in regards to this um as somebody that is an animal rights activist and has called numerous times to gpd and animal services who seems to do nothing i want to know that this new plan like we're really going to be able to do something and i just want to also add some of you know about that situation that took two years to finally arrest the drug and dog fighting ring and it was only because they went to another neighborhood and more activists saw them and they finally did something but those dogs were put at a lot of risk and the other big issue is that animal control will say well you need to give your name and all of your information for us to even do anything and then what does that do that puts us at risk i got attacked filming those dogs and that is not an okay thing and i want to know that the sheriffs are actually really going to do something because all these dog cases are usually drugs as well and i have two that i've been calling about and i want to say this publicly because this needs to be known 16370 southwest 133rd avenue and archer has abused dogs outside and kenneled totally no food no water for constantly long time since july that i was made aware of it of last year and then 1108 northwest 7th avenue directly across from the quinn jones center that woman abuses her dogs throws them leaves them in the street they're left outside and that needs to be done something about um and i know those of us that are calling and we're not going to be able to speak later i would like to see the animal shelter be mandated a no kill shelter and that we could learn from humane world uh and aspc on how to do that and i'd also like to add do not work with zionist uf on building a new shelter utilize the county's own land save that money and then put it into the shelter and i will agree with the person that spoke earlier sadly that shelter is run down i feel like the people do a lot that are volunteers and employees are really trying their best but it looks like a third world country over there and then lastly the bat incident i know mary helen knows about this this was a serious thing and i don't think anything was done about this i would like to ask for the contract with iq fiber to be immediately terminated and no more underground fiber to be tearing up land and wildlife habitat those bats were shoveled and beaten and thrown and not iq fiber still running around putting in underground fibers so people can have internet so there needs to be not just that incident but some mandates also when they go in and they're building or they're going to do roof construction or what have you in a place where these bats which are a protected species are nesting because it's not till after the fact that something is happening and again all of our phone calls you know nobody's coming and ever doing anything so i really want to see how there can the sheriffs are really going to do something about this and really what i would love is if we could have the asbca and humane society be like animal officers how they do in other cities like new york and seattle that would really be helpful and i'd also like to see ongoing discussions about this so that the community and the sheriffs and the animal services and whatever other organizations are going to be part of it continue the dialogue and continue creating solution thank you for your comments malta anyone else josh no that's it sir okay let's go ahead and close public comments so um if i could just ask for all the beautiful people out there when we hear something that we really like uh and we're going to probably hear that a lot if we could just kind of do this instead of clapping we're trying yeah that would be great that way we know that you agree with that as opposed to creating a place where we have um we just want to keep the quorum in the chambers and then that that way everyone can speak whatever they would like to speak so if y'all could just do that for me that would help me a bunch and i appreciate it all right um madam manager the things that i heard today in public comment um i believe our staff is addressing on the um i'm sorry yes yes yes yes yeah we'll get we'll get to the animal everything except the animal services stuff we'll get to but um uh on the iq fiber if you could kind of look into that and maybe give us an update of manager comment and then on the um east east lake preserve i think that's being handled um by the final development plan so i don't i don't know if there's anything for us to respond to that and i can that the iq fiber i'm i can either do it now or at manager comment oh go ahead if you want to give us a comment so they are a subcontractor of at&t that has been out there doing that um and the incident that she's referring to first of all we the county and our animal resources does not regulate or have anything to do with bat issues um that issue was reported um and it was being handled by fwc um and investigated by fwc um and then the health aspect of that was being investigated by the health department so we we don't deal with those particular things and as far as the the entity on that if if um because we've now heard this a couple of times if when that investigation is done if you could provide an email to this commission about what happened and how it's concluded or wrapped up yeah if we are able to get that information we will because it is the fwc that is doing the investigation okay well if we're not able to get it let's ask for it and then that way we all know what happened and how it's not going to happen again is that okay yeah yeah okay all right go ahead is that it yes we we don't control they are out there putting fiber in i'm sure you've seen them all over the place i do what i would say though is that they're in our right-of-ways and and to the extent there are things happening in our community that are not in accordance with their contract as a subcontractor or a main contractor let's at least figure it out yeah because i know it's a big concern when i mean we dealt with all this a year ago and so i don't want to kind of relitigate it but thank you all right any commissioners any comments from the public comment or are we ready to keep going yes i'll just say that i you know there's a lot of comments already and we haven't even gotten to the comprehensive update but i i have a list of things from the last time folks were here that i hope we'll cover during the comprehensive update and if we don't i guess i'll just ask the question i'd ask staff to review the comments and make sure they cover them so let's say if they do let's give them that shot all right awesome all right so madam clerk next item animal shelter update yes animal shelter update will be the next action item all right so the recommended action is to select the new animal shelter location this is something we have been working on for many years if uh point two if the uf site is selected to approve the agreement for the ground sublease in substantially the same form as attached authorize the chair to execute same when finalized by both parties authorize the chair to sign the sublease in substantially the same form as attached when the county manager determined that the site is acceptable for the development and operation of the animal resource facility in accordance with the agreement for the sub ground sublease to authorize the chair and any corresponding budget amendments to undertake the county's due diligence if the wiesman track is selected to authorize staff to amend the pd as necessary to allow this use and with that uh miss peoples are you making this presentation yeah okay you are recognized welcome so again uh gina peoples interim animal resources director so the current shelter was constructed approximately 50 years ago and its kennels were designed for short-term stays of three to five days with the county's life-saving approach the facility no longer meets modern standards the commission has already set aside 30 million dollars for the construction of a new shelter staff have visited the tampa humane society in marion county's newly constructed shelter and will also visit the jacksonville humane society this friday both citizens and staff have expressed strong enthusiasm for this project we already have our architect borelli and cm at risk all rich with the bacon group as a sub ready to kick off design once we break ground it's estimated to be a two-year construction both proposed sites have pros and cons which will be shared in the following slides so with regard to the university of florida site the pros are of course the proximity to the uf vet school and small animal hospital they're within walking distance to and from the shelter medicine program and emergency veterinarian services it's a highly visible location convenient for ancillary services including an animal cafe pet pantry low-cost spay neuter services and bus routes for staff and volunteers and there's also outreach opportunities because of its proximity to a large number of students faculty and staff from the university that provides increased volunteer and foster opportunities but of course some of the cons are that there is a one million dollar land lease it's a smaller 12 acre property and it's about eight and a half miles from the current shelter with regard to the weisman track its pros are that it's one and a half miles from the current shelter so it's convenient for our staff caring for dangerous dogs criminal case animals and other non-adoptable animals the county would save one million dollars on a land lease which could be reinvested in the shelter construction it's a larger 100 acre property and there would be no decrease in economic opportunity in eastern alachua county and what i mean by this is that there's approximately 40 jobs that if the uf select site is selected that those 40 jobs would then transfer to the uf property rather than remain on the in eastern alachua county but of course there's cons to this site as well so uh proximity to the uf vet school it's about eight and a half miles away we do lack bus routes and it is a pretty remote location so the chair already did uh indicate which what our next steps are so staff is asking that the board select from one of the two proposed properties and that if the uf property is selected that we authorize the chair to sign the documents there is a period of due diligence so once the county manager has uh indicated that all of the appropriate due diligence has uh been successful then we would ask the chair to um sign the sublease and substantially the same form is attached and uh as well as the development of the operation of the facility in accordance with agreement with the ground sublease and then if the weasement track is selected construction cannot begin until after the board signs the state provided reverter documents and updates the plan development to allow this use so assistant county manager missy daniel she'll be providing uh some more information on the pd and a presentation coming up shortly okay thank you um and i know there are some folks from uf here madam manager or did you want them to speak or are they just here to answer questions well i was hoping they would come forward and at least um say something i think that was their plan um the i will say with either site there are additional steps as you heard but i am confident that when the board makes the decision whichever site we can go ahead and move forward with design because i have no concerns with regard to the extra steps that are needed at either site okay former speaker clemens welcome representative thank you for being here thank you chairman thank you commissioners for allowing me to come i'm chuck clemens i'm the vice president for government and community relations at uf and and it brings back uh memories to sit at the dais i'm much more comfortable over here sir than you know hutch said that a couple of months ago he liked being there better than here well i'm gonna let my hair grow out like hutch in just a little while and have no cares in in the world um but i'm here today representing uh interim president of the university of florida uh dr landry and our chairman of the board maury husseini who's met with each of you on different topics um we don't have we don't have a bias or favor as to which decision that you make what you think is in the best decision of alachua county and the residents that you serve what i am here to say is that we want to be your partner uh with the veterinary services no matter which site is actually chosen uh that's a financial decision and a tactical and and strategical decision that you would have to come to and answer answer to the folks that you represent i know that the passion uh for solving some of the challenges with uh the the stray dogs and and the fighting dogs and things like that's very real and then the criminal follow-up for those who are habitual that that's very real too um also i'm here to share uh we have two assistant vice presidents that are here uh you know probably both of them uh karen thomas and trevor schneider who is the vice president for uh real estate at the university should there be questions asked uh should you choose that answer um i do bring some news that the dean of the veterinary school is made public announcement that she is retiring she served as the dean for the vet school for five years and she is going to retire so dr landry has begun a nationwide search for the new dean uh at the university of florida's college of veterinary sciences and so that will be another opportunity to open uh new partnerships with uh he or she whoever is chosen to lead the veterinary school so mr chairman thank you for the opportunity i'm looking forward to uh taking back uh whichever decision that you make and then we will uh open the doors for a very robust uh beginning of a long-term partnership to provide not only that medical but uh the medical side of that but perhaps some other benefits as well that would add value to uh to the partnership okay thank you chuck thank you all right commissioners um so we've got some decisions to make are there questions for our staff or for uf or um if not i'll i do okay i've got commission i was just waiting because i really haven't heard much from all of you all on this and i okay commissioner wheeler and then commissioner prisley okay i got thoughts when y'all are done dina the question i have for you the the 12 acres that we say that is accessible through the uf are they 12 all that can be used or there are there any that are not usable of that do you know i i don't i just didn't know you know from them the travis can answer some of that that if that's all usable you know some of the land that we look at it's not all usable and i just didn't know thank you travis hey um so some of the property is um they have some storm water on there some retention there's a pond but majority is usable okay so it would be the whole 12 acres that we could use then of that majority of the 12 acres not a full 12 acres so okay so okay because i think size was one of the things too in terms of growth and that sort of the expansion that we were looking as a possibility so that would be limited on that site compared to the weisman track okay great thank you um and gina the the agreement are we still working on an agreement with the actual vet school in terms of who uses what and who's doing what so uh yes we are still interested in uh revitalizing the clerkship program uh so students that are enrolled in the veterinary program would come out to the shelter and i don't believe that that's contingent on if one site is selected over the other i believe that we would still work with the university regardless as they have been all along yeah i mean there's no change in the agreement right um mr chair that is actually what um mr clemens was referring to for you is that regardless the relationship between the vet school and the county is is an important relationship and partnership that we will diligently work to put pen to paper to make sure that that is memorialized moving forward okay okay thank you thank you because i know that's been one of the holdups too so moving forward past that is going to open up some freedom for us the and i know some of the folks have been concerned about um the old shelter and the efficiency of the old shelter but i can remember times when we put dogs out at cusco willa before we were ready we put dogs dozens of them at the armory you know so we really have needed backup for hoarding cases like that and so i would you know i would i really like the idea of keeping the old shelter for that even an old shelter is better than no shelter when we're trying to take those people those those dogs in and having it in close proximity on the weisman property makes it more manageable in order to deal with those things and i know that on the weisman property that we're looking at it's close still of you to brown there's also more industrial growth that's going to be going out there so there's more growth headed unto the eastern part of the county and so the idea of it being isolated um i don't think for me as problematic as it was at one point you know where i was concerned but i i like the idea of using those two shelters together i you know for those who have not been to the shelter in a while i've been riding herd on that since i came on this board there have been big improvements there may be rats out there but they got cats out there too so it would be really nice to turn some of those cats loose and i know i'm being facetious but at the same time um there have been a lot of improvements out at that place and i think that the workers who are there now understand that we're trying desperately to get this new shelter done so that we can improve our our services not only for the animals but for the people who are working with these people who i have a great deal of respect for because i couldn't do it i've already taken three animals home from there and i don't have room for anymore and so i i understand the kind of heart it takes to work in a place like that but i also i also understand the the toll it takes on hearts like that and um and it's we want to make sure it's a place where people are comfortable to come to too and enjoy the beauty of the place and if you all have had a chance to talk with some of the folks who work out there now i think they do have a very strong preference and if you have spoken with them or taken the time to speak with them you will know what that preference is um so i think that is all i wanted to say thank you very much thank you commissioner commissioner presia and then commissioner alfred i'll be right back yeah i have to say i'm very torn you know i really am i feel like one of the things that's the most important thing that we can do for our shelter is to have it be a place that people want to come and adopt animals and to have it be a fun an inviting space the space where people can interact with the animals i think the animal cafe is a great idea i think the dog park is a great idea i think anything that we can do to enhance the space and make it a place where it's about animal flow in and out as quickly as possible and not necessarily about housing animals long term right that's not the ideal scenario and to me when i look at these two locations it's a no-brainer that the site on archer road is the most visible site and it's a site where everybody's going shopping it's a site right next door to a pet store and you know walmart and all the places people go for pet food and animal other things um and even vet clinics are right around there so from that perspective it feels very much like an ideal location and i work at the university of florida as you all know so i i know very much what proximity does for student engagement a lot of our students don't have their own vehicles a lot of our students can't get from point a to point b especially if there's no bus service which there is not um and i i really think that's an invaluable aspect of the site that's at the university of florida i really do the ability for those students to just walk across the street and volunteer all the apartments that are there the amount of love and energy that those animals would get and the amount of attention to your point and exposure to the the caller's point um that those animals would get i think is is a really really big deal and shouldn't be discounted and sir i see you shaking your head and making all kinds of comments and everything you'll get your chance in just a moment i would appreciate if you just wait your turn um when it comes to the wiesman track like yeah it's great we save a million bucks i love that i love saving taxpayer dollars always it's always one of my most you know my biggest and highest goals is to be efficient with taxpayer dollars however i i guess i'm also not 100 convinced that this is going to be the best location for the shelter in the long term because of other things that are going to go out there like we're trying to we're trying to like create that industrial site to be like a full-blown industrial site right to try to attract companies and have as much property as we can for those companies to create economic development in eastern eladro county and if we gobble up a big or at least a portion of that site with a shelter and then we have we have to have compatible uses adjacent to that shelter and all those things i think it starts to limit our capacity in that regard so it does feel a little like a catch-22 for us you know as we're trying to do economic development and solve a government's challenge so i see problems with the wiesman site and i see opportunity with the uf site the one the one kind of pro i see with the wiesman track is not having to spend money on the lease the other i go i was i will say the other is the proximity as you mentioned the other shelter but frankly you got to convince me that we should keep that shelter because i've i don't spend a lot of time out there and and i have to be honest with you that's because like the gentleman that came up and spoke i can't handle it like it really puts me over the edge to have to see those animals in that condition and it's why i've been advocating new shelter new shelter let's get the new shelter and pushing um so i don't i don't really know why we would hang on to that shelter i feel like we have money to build a new shelter let's build it so that it has the capacity even if it's a backup capacity it's a some kind of a you know space that is just empty that we can pop up kennels for courting cases i don't know what it looks like but i feel like we could solve this problem innovatively with a new shelter so that we don't have to keep the old shelter and be up keeping that and maintaining it and spending money on utilities and maintenance of a building that we've already said isn't functioning as it should be functioning for our animals so i think i need a lot of convincing on why we need to keep that shelter um in use um and why that proximity so those are my feelings i feel a little bit torn but i have to say um right now i'm really heavily leaning towards the site on archer road thank you commissioner commissioner alford then i'll give some comments and we'll look for a motion and then we will hear from the beautiful people out in the audience um i i just want to say i agree with almost all of what you said um i was a student i didn't have a car i um i couldn't get out to i i remember i had a cat that um got out of my house one day and i wanted to go out to animal services to see if he was out there fortunately a neighborhood found him and brought him back to me but you know i i didn't have a way to get out there to to see if my cat was there that was um really disturbing to me as a grad student and i um i've been following this whole discussion on social media a good bit and one of the things that i found really disturbing is that there's a lot of mistrust about surrounding our animal services and i think a lot of that has to do with um a an appearance of transparency and having our animal services in the middle of of uh where we all live and work and travel all the time there's that's transparent and it's very obvious how we're treating the animals the animals would be um you know where anybody could stop by any time i i i also know that one of our goals is to provide more care to animals that belong to some of our lower income residents and those are people that don't have the privilege sometimes of being able to get into a car and drive to a remote location even though that would give animals a more of a chance to walk around on 100 acres we're going to need volunteers that are going to have to do that work and those volunteers have to get out there and not all the volunteers have the privilege of being able to drive down um that far away it would be a 45 minute drive from my house to where uh the weisman track um that's you know that's that's uh that's a lot so i i think about those things um i think that um there's also an environmental cost if we're going to have adoption uh events like we do now we have to load animals up and take them somewhere and i i i see pup uh i see i think a rescue uh group back there and i know that that's something they do too is loading animals up and taking them to adoption events we wouldn't have to do that we would be right there and could put the signs up on the road i i just feel like we would have much stronger and healthier adoption um numbers at the location um by campus so i share a lot of your thoughts um commissioner presia and um i i you know i also have some am torn because i i do see the financial benefit of a million dollars but you know when you start adding up all the costs of moving animals back and forth for adoption events and trying to get people out there and the environmental cost of people driving back and forth to volunteer that's that adds up pretty fast in terms of environmental cost as well so those are those are my thoughts okay thank you commissioner commissioner wheeler you want to hear from me or you know not yet i want to ask them questions about the bus thing are you all saying that people will be able to load their animals on these buses coming and going to the shelter i don't understand no i don't understand the bus connection that you're talking about commissioner presia yeah the answer that question is no i'm not assuming people are like loading up their animals on the buses very rarely are people taking animals to i mean there's people who call about animals running at large or there's people who catch an animal and need to bring them to our shelter those aren't the people i'm talking about i'm talking about the hundreds and hundreds of volunteers that dedicate their time and energy to be at our shelter and the opportunity to recruit hundreds and hundreds more of college-age students who are looking for community service looking for public service opportunities student clubs that want to do this all the vet students that are right there many of whom don't have cars and want to be a part of this yes we'd have a clerkship but how many of those clerkship students would have the vehicles to get themselves out to the shelter for me the proximity to a shopping center to a university that has a vet school to the population center of the southern part of our county to me is really valuable and i do think that we should be building facilities on public transportation positions and in activity centers like we're pushing our developers to do that to build in activity centers right to to build on public transportation so that people can have access to services and to me an animal shelter is a critical service that we provide as a government and it should be on public transportation let me ask you all this question then do you think 10 to 12 acres is enough prop land to do the shelter that we want to do in the way we want to do it we're not talking about cafes we're talking about walking areas for dogs you know we're not trying to take care of the people who are coming to ogle the dogs we're talking about areas that would serve the community who are working with those animals who are trying to walk them or exercise them i don't know that that is enough land to do that if you are talking about a site in town for me the better site is coppers that hundred acres over there that's about ready it's ready to go we just need to negotiate with them for land the thing is there are other opportunities i'm not saying to take it out of the community but the traffic congestion you're talking about all the the park you know all the shopping that is over there for me is an issue it's also an issue during game time when there are people who are over in those areas who are also doing but it's it's traffic and and the students that we're talking about know maybe the the folks from the shelter of volunteers there can talk to this better than i can but i know that we have students who come in adopt animals and then leave them or turn them back to the shelter when they leave so i don't think that catering to the university community is as strong as catering to our county community who actually is dealing with the animals at risk people who are dropping their animals on the county line over the county line because we've been in no kill shelter people who are you know dumping dogs in the outlying areas they're not i think there's more i'm hoping that some of the folks who are here to talk will address some of these things that i'm sharing with you because it's that information from those people that i'm sharing with you now can you tell me what your problem is with the site because other than the fact that it's only 12 acres which i don't think it's a problem in 12 acres is a lot of land and i mean right now location is one of the problems for me the location the idea what about the location that it's busy it's right yes that it's right archer road right you it you know you talk about mary you taking 45 minutes to get from there it takes me 45 minutes to get from here out to archer it's you know well it does i mean i drive it all the time so okay all right all right hold on hold on so i'm not trying to conclude and then i want to go to the manager and then i'd like to give some comments okay okay thank you but do you finish i'm going to conclude okay all right um uh manager lieberman and then i'd like to give some of my thoughts and then we'll see if we get a motion so mr chair i believe that commissioner presia addressed the bus question it wasn't about people carrying animals on the bus it's about the ability of both staff and volunteers to access the shelter um without having to have a vehicle um but um with regard to the space and the 12 acres um depending on how we structure i mean there's no nothing that prevents us from going up um you could always place office if you wanted to build a two-story for example and place offices up top to make more of a footprint there are ways to make you know less of a building footprint but in addition to that i want to be very clear about the wiesman tract and ultimately that would be a decision of the board but i would not recommend to this board exceeding it would be 15 to 20 acres at most um preferably 15 um so you're not talking about a whole lot more and the reason is because it is directly across from our transfer station and adjacent to what we call eco loop which is to be um developed for industrial and so um the expansion of that as we're going to talk to you about um we we want to make sure we have adequate space for other uses um to for economic development so we would not be utilizing the whole site for the shelter it would simply be the front portion of that that we could utilize um around the wetland buffers because there also is considerable wetlands on that property okay thank you um madam manager so let me give you my thoughts um colleagues so first of all uh to you thank you all for being here um and chuck for your comments about leadership and leadership is changing uh and um just you know i've said oftentimes as a double gator that i am partial to when something large in our community is happening when uf is involved and they are committed um it really adds a lot of opportunity to the community and i feel that way and while i really appreciate you saying this is y'all's decision and we'll support whichever decision you make the fact that um uf is making land available to this community is is is a big deal it's not a small deal it's a big deal it was a three million dollar deal which is probably the value and now it's a one million dollar deal which to me is also a big deal that's uf saying we want you here um and we want to work with you and from my perspective the fact that we have uh you know one of our top five institutions in the country saying that that means a lot to me and i would say that this community deserves to have a top five facility in the country which is why i think many times we've taken so long to get there because we want it to be right we have allocated 30 million dollars to build this facility i've been thinking about it for the last 12 years and it's taken too long too damn long and it's time now to do it right not for the next couple of years but for the next couple of decades and while i appreciate uf saying we'll support you wherever you are i know exactly what commissioner alford said proximity matters and it will put a spotlight on making sure that this facility is run correctly operated correctly is responsive to our community and so that that is causing me to really think about the university's site as the best location now that doesn't mean that it's going to be perfect in a couple of years but to hear the administration say to us we want to be involved in helping bring best practices to hear that there's a new dean coming in that they're recruiting we are recruiting a new director there's opportunity now to fix this and to get it right for our community and quite frankly our volunteers deserve that they have been with us i see some that have been with us since the first day i was on the commission and i see new faces that have never spoken at this commission but that tells me how important this is to our community from my perspective from a proximity standpoint having lots of students close by matters my son works at the vet school you know when he goes to the vet school that's that's where he is that's where he mentally is and there are an unlimited number of students that really are tied into this as what they want to do for our community so i think proximity does matter because it's hard to get out to the shelter if you don't have a car and and if we're not going to you know that shelter was built as a kill shelter it wasn't built as an adoption shelter and we've tried to fix it and there's just too many problems with it and so um if we keep that building we're not going to staff it it's going to be a vacant building for overflow for bad uh cases that that hoarding cases but i don't even know if that's the right thing i think like commissioner prizia said it's really about in and out it's not about storing and so i think we have an opportunity and i know our architect is designing a facility that can handle those large cases so that we can adopt dogs out with regards to the million dollars i think i've already addressed that i it is a million dollars that's a lot of money we can spend a million dollars by doing something wrong in a week and we've done that before but from the standpoint of a million dollars i look at a million dollars on campus is a it's not a lot of money it is it is an opportunity that uf is basically saying through that price we want you here and we're committed to you that's how i view that and i thank the university for for getting us there and and maury for getting us there um with regards to um lower income individuals you know being on a bus route gets people to work gets people home from work gets volunteers to the facility gets people home from the facility gets um people that want to get educated to the facility home from the facility and so that to me uh you know when i when i saw the con no decrease in economic opportunity in eastern alachua county i don't view it that way i actually view it as a better opportunity folks in eastern alachua county will have an opportunity um to get to the facility a lot easier than they would uh out at the other site i do think 12 acres if managed correctly and designed correctly which we have the opportunity to do that can work um and i don't view a pro as being 1.5 miles from the current shelter to the new shelter i don't view that as a pro because again that was a shelter that was built for a completely different reason um and and i it would be my goal and my hope that we are designing a facility that um isn't designed under the mechanism of a kill shelter it's designed as a mechanism of the of a caring shelter that allows for adoption so i am um after hearing you all and and i and certainly my mind can be changed when i hear from the public but i am in favor of sas recommendation for the uf site and moving forward i did have one question because gina mentioned the due diligence period in the um agreement it says 60-day inspection period is that the due diligence period you're talking about gina i i believe so she says don't be an attorney let the attorney be an attorney dave welcome i think it's afternoon good afternoon uh dave forziano uh we have 120 days for our inspection period yes with an with with our sole option to extend it for national 60 days if we need to okay so we have to do so so but that's to do everything that's to inspect the site that's to inspect the demolition and restoration that uf is going to do that's to get our all our approvals through uf because they're their own little government so all the different site plan approvals we have to go through their process to get those approvals so that's within that 120 to 180 days yeah they are a big government yeah it's there they are a big company okay thank you um so let me speak to that um commissioner wheeler because i think it will address how i feel about the copper site so my only real concern with the uf site is making sure that we are engineering noise best we can so that when noise goes off of the site it doesn't go on top of bivens lake and across and disturb the people that live there it is close to archer road so i think if we can make sure that the sound the noise is directed that way we don't have conflicts i think the copper site is surrounded by neighborhoods and i i am concerned that that would create conflicts we don't have those conflicts with noise out at the industrial site but we do have conflicts with regards that that's an industrial site and to some of the points that commissioner prisius said i don't i don't want this to be an industrial site i want this to be a welcoming caring um uh how do we take care of animals site uh and i've walked through different buildings and campuses on the university of campus and um i know that together with them we can build a really special uh nationally known site like we have a national event center like we have an amazing ifis center i think with uf and with our community and with this board we can create something that this community has deserved for more than two decades and certainly for the 12 years i've been on this board so those are my thoughts um got commissioner prisia commissioner wheeler and then we're going to need a motion yeah i i actually was just i was i was just going to chime in on the economic development stuff to say that i agree with you on it not taking away from that in fact i think opening up that additional land for expanding the eco loop is something i've heard from staff you know the more space we have the more opportunity we have for larger businesses that have wanted bigger sites and haven't been able to figure it out so i actually think it can expand economic opportunity um rather than limit it for eastern elantra county and i was going to move that we move forward with negotiating with the university of florida for the new animal shelter on the site on archer road second so staff's recommendation okay yeah mr chair we've already negotiated so it's this move forward with that with the plan of building the shelter and the the staff's recommendation for the uf for the uf site one through three well one two three yes okay all right we got a motion in a second commissioner wheeler you are recognized yes thank you um the noise that you all are talking about whose noise and well what about the noise of sirens and fireworks going off and crowds from the university i mean you know those also affect the animals and we're talking about quiet spaces where animals who are already stressed need to be in a quiet space if you're talking about noise concerns then let's also talk about the noise activity that goes on in a busy city when the university is here where there's game days when there are fireworks that go off every time there's a touchdown or whatever it is there is you know these are the things that stress animals and unless you have them in a contained area with the doors shut where they can't hear that you know then you're going to be dealing with the stress level for animals that you may not be thinking about and i'm also concerned about the the number of volunteers that we have at the center now gina maybe you can answer this question for me how many students do we have that are actually out there coming to volunteer compared to the number we have that are coming from our community so i cannot answer that question i know that the university clubs they do adopt the shelter for various projects we have 50 slated to come out in march for a number of projects 50 50 yes students from a club um i know that we do the summer love and adoption uh that's also in partnership with the university and so but that's not ongoing that those are just for special projects right to the best of my knowledge yes yes those are activities that they can take credit for having giving volunteer hours for as opposed to the people that are driving from wherever they come from in order to serve at the shelter mucking stalls or mucking cages right the students don't come in to do that right no no they they assist with other things so our volunteers they generally the fun stuff yeah they do more of the fun stuff not not that kind of stuff and this is what i would like you all to see i don't feel like that you are getting the strongest messages that you need in order to make a proper decision for this shelter and i'm hoping that maybe the people who are here will be able to do that but i think they're they're not we're we're counting too much on a moving target the university has been a moving target with the eco loop it's been a moving target with our medical examiner it's been a moving target for three years when we've been trying to get this vet agreement made three years y'all and now we're looking at a couple of presidents later and a board that's changing at the vet school i just don't know how you guys can put that much confidence in partnering with a group of folks that are still pretty unstable themselves we are stable here i have a lot of faith in our board and our staff and i don't so much in partnering with the university at this time very loud and clear thank you commissioner um commissioner priscia and then the manager and then we're going to move the public comment i guess i just wanted to respond i i hear you about the destabilization of the university with the changes in presidency and leadership and change in dean those sorts of things but what i will say is nothing is changing about the university of florida being the number one employer in our county bringing in a huge chunk of our population in the county and needing to be a partner with us in the work that we're doing and in this instance it's a lease and we've got a lease and we've got a document that protects us and that our i trust our attorneys are making sure has the right provisions to protect us and to protect the university so that we can be good partners with each other and the rest and the location is a good location like if you what you want is inflow and outflow if what you want is for people to shop for animals and get their pets at our shelter instead of at pet smart and at puppy mills then this is the better location because it will be down where everybody is shopping where people are going to think about the things they want to buy and the things they want to do and where they're coming and going from work and they can stop by on their way home to see that kitten they saw on facebook like it's just a better location and i hear you on the things like sound and stuff but that's why we have engineers designing our building and can design it in ways that they put in good insulation for the animals to protect them from the noises and the sounds from archer road or from fireworks at the university but i think i i i hear your trepidation and i think that regardless of all those things which i've also thought about i still think this location is way more powerful in terms of meeting the goals that we have of adoption and no kill being our primary focus for how we're building this shelter mr chair may i respond um let's do the manager first and then you may respond and then we'll go to public comment so so mr chair i just out of fairness to the university i want to be very clear that the three years that we have been waiting is not because the university has stalled this agreement and i have kept in contact with each of you to try to explain my rationale why i have not brought this lease forward when the lease was three million dollars i wanted some other value to bring before you to show why we were going to pay three million dollars um and we we had not gotten that operational agreement in hand yet and i did not want to bring it without that piece um meanwhile while we were um working through those issues staff was diligently trying to find an option b for a site we looked at several sites we investigated several sites and we also started the process to remove the deed restriction from the weisman tract about two and a half years ago it took us that long to get to the governor and cabinet so um when the university came and said you know we will we're authorized to reduce this price down to a million that really changed the dynamic of bringing this forward now even if we did not have that other operational piece so if it has taken three years to get here it is on me for waiting to bring the lease forward until and but meanwhile we were diligently trying to find an option and we were trying to free up the weisman tract as an option b but it is it was not because the university was creating issues with getting that before you okay commissioner wheeler and then we're going to thank you to to to continue with the volunteers that we're looking for for students do you feel like that that we are trying to gather volunteers from that pool in our county i don't know how to say this rather than depending on our community i know we're depending on our community leaders our volunteers that are coming in from the community but it sounds like we're trying to accommodate volunteers from the university more than those folks and another question that i have for you about what you've said is it's not a question it's a comment that people who really want to adopt are willing to drive to the shelter to get there to do it and and those are the ones who are most seriously um invested in adopting animals if they're willing to go that far to get there um again my question is are we trying to engage the university or to the extent that our community leaders and community volunteers don't feel comfortable going into our facility you know how do we have that balance how do we find that balance yeah and i and if i could respond yeah i i think it's both all the above it starts with our community um and i think we have an opportunity if based on proximity to expand the amount of folks that are um working in this field i know that our volunteers have been working tirelessly and oftentimes at their own personal sacrifice and so that's how i would answer that all right let's go to public comment so here's how i'd like to do this if we could if we could make a line at both of the podiums if you could introduce yourself we got a light system three minutes green means go yellows 30 seconds red i'm not going to like cut you off if you'll just wrap up your comments if you like what somebody says when they're done let's hear it like this that'd be great thank you and um and then after we're done with this part then we're then going to talk about current operations and i know many of you are here for that so hang with us and we're going to get to that as well but we got to get through this first so um okay let's go let's get started just introduce yourself and give us and if i if i may just clarify i would we'll have the opportunity to speak to the comprehensive update as absolutely yeah so you so this is to the motion on the floor about where where we want to be for the next three decades and then after that we're gonna have a presentation from staff that they are hopefully going to address some of the comments we heard at the last meeting and then you'll have another opportunity to speak to that afterwards so okay thank you for that clarification thank you so my name is patricia antonici and um to be honest i am also torn between the two sites i don't really know what the best is but i do i would like to bring some thinking points to the board's attention in in your consideration um one thing as commissioner wheeler mentioned is that you know if if somebody wants to adopt the incentive has to be for the adoption and not because it's on a whim because they're passing by the building and it's convenient and they stop it and think oh let me grab a dog that's really not the kind of adoptions that we want to uh encourage um and also i want to emphasize that to me uh the location is not necessarily the biggest priority because we need a new shelter that's that's certain but what happens to the dogs that are housed at the shelter is really the priority um the the current shelter has had some significant improvements but it still needs repairs um there was mention of cats being there to catch the mice unfortunately some of those cats were mauled by some of the dogs so it's not really an ideal situation there is still insulation problems um and i would just like to emphasize that wherever case dogs are housed uh that facility must be monitored staffed and well kept but the trade-off is that we also want we don't want space for those dogs who are unfortunately probably going to be slated for euthanasia at some point to take from animals who potentially could be adopted because what we're having right now is euthanizing for space and so whatever whatever location we choose for the shelter i would like the board to be mindful of the fact that we need to have sufficient kennel space or an off-site site location for case dogs that does not take away space from the adoptable side um and in talking about dogs i don't mean to leave out cats and other animals that are at the shelter but dogs are the ones that are at the greatest risk um cats are adopted out at a higher rate um they don't take up as much physical space to house at a shelter so that's why i think you're going to hear a lot of emphasis on dogs i just want to make sure we love all the other animals as well um and then uh just to point to the search for the dean at the uf uh vet college i know that we don't really necessarily have any any say in that but i would really hope that there's going to be some focus on a new director who has an interest in shelter medicine and will like to partner with us in that regard um oh and another big important thing for the new shelter location is heat and ac those are things that are kind of lacking in the current shelter they do their best but um like on a day like today the dogs are probably not having such a great time so that's all i have on this particular issue thank you thank you miss miss antonucci okay next speaker i'm new i've never done this before so i just announced myself as my name is felicia patrone i live here in gainesville florida i actually live literally right down the street from um the humane society of north central florida right down the street i can stand in my front yard and see the gates and honestly i can't hear the dogs and i'm a block away and they're outside like the doors are usually open so you can if you're on the property you can hear them but i wanted to also say since i live on that side of town that coppers was a super fun site and there was a lot of problems with cancer and stuff in those neighborhoods around there i don't know how what a good idea that is to build anything on top of that you know it's cleaned up but still i appreciate you mary helen um i wanted to say too that i volunteer i was going to say yeah we're talking a lot about dogs so you can imagine what's happening to the cats but um i volunteer with a lot of animal places in town that i won't talk about but um the students the uf students are jewels like they come in and they are so excited about helping and they they put their heart into it but i have to say also the students aren't the people that are in there every day like they have our students are wonderful but they have classes they have tests they are they are so busy and they do this out of love so sometimes we get our student volunteers would be like once a month or something so it's not like we have them all the time um but the students are important um i wanted to say since i live on this side of town and um we're talking about the 51st street area um is i'm am i hearing that it's 100 acres but we'd only be able to use like a small part of it 15 acres okay so why don't we say 15 acres instead of 100 because it's not really 100 um i'm sorry i'm nervous i really appreciate i appreciate that you're doing great i appreciate that we live in the united states where we can do this i really do um so i also said long term is long term service long term bus service and accessi accessibility doesn't seem like a long-term in term problem because if you're going to build all this industrial stuff out there how are those employees going to get there are they all going to be vehicle having employees or like will in 10 years you build a bus thing down there you know um uh i hate to say the last thing is uf does a lot for the unit for gainesville they really do but i kind of have issues with partnering with uf in case it becomes all about uf and what kind of benefits is uf getting out of it other than the animals i'm worried about like uh using community animals for animal testing just making money off of that kind of stuff like i'm new so thank you very much thank you felicia thank you for your comments all right next speaker hi pamela blissetti again um unfortunately i don't find either one of these sites to be a total 100 slam dunk you know i just don't but um i was wondering i remember when we first started talking about the uf site there was going to be some accommodations coming from the vet school of veterinary help you know there was going to be a full-time from what i remember a full-time veterinary person staff member coming to us and i did read through most of the lease and it is a sub lease let's keep titling it properly i did read through most i don't see any accommodations to that at all i don't see anything in writing about what we're getting from the university what is our arrangement with them i don't i don't get it all i see is the real estate stuff so is there something that we have in writing now that we're getting from them or we'll address that when you're okay okay great and then i just also want to say that this is going to take us two years minimum and especially with the uf site they have to demolish the swine unit and then you have inspections and so there's a lot of time we really have to take a little slice of that money and do something with our shelter right now and i need to understand what is the standard operating procedure with these neglect and hoarding cases we can't go on this mass euthanasia every time we have one and again when i was volunteering there that was not happening so i don't know why suddenly it's shifting into that but it's not where we want to be so are there is there a standard operating procedure for this i'm sure there is what is it has it not been followed and if it is being followed then does that involve alternative sites if site if so let's identify those and make sure we use them but that in order to keep that facility for the spillover once we have the new shelter it's going to take some money it's going to need some money so just remember that in your budget thank you pamela thank you for your comments all right anyone else anyone else want to speak to this particular item brian come on up thanks for being here good afternoon commission uh brian bisher um i have 25 years of experience in the vet space having owned and operated veterinary emergency hospitals and also having a business as an executive coach of veterinarians so i have some experience in this area i know you guys are more familiar uh with my experience related to water quality but uh that that that's my hobby this was uh my full-time job um and so one of the things that i've seen over the years in being to hundreds of these facilities is that it's important to know uh who's in charge right and my concern is that involving university of florida while it seems like it's a good opportunity um in my experience there's no such thing as a free puppy right i mean we all we all know that um eventually they do cost some money down the road um and just as this situation right i would um hate to see having another voice added into decision making process i guess is my my concern is that it's a county facility the county should be the ones that are in charge of it um and have that sole voice and this is a fantastic opportunity for the county to develop quite a robust facility right that could be state of the art and much needed all around the country we know that but wow if we could create something that's state of the art right here in alachua county for alachua county um i think that would be a huge statement so thank you thank you brian that's really our goal i hope um okay anyone else on this item hi there thank you um i just wanted to um yeah there you go um i just wanted to bring i'm just a local volunteer work with some of the local rescues and um kennels here in the area that our main goal is to help the shelter however we can um and our goal for being here today was to bring a face um to the animals that we that in at the end of the day we're here for the animals and that's the goal um so we have it's been mentioned a few times that the goal of the shelter of course is to get dogs in and out the reality is that's not the case we have recently at our local kennel taken in a few dogs from alachua county who have been residents in that shelter for well over a year we have downstairs and i invite everybody to come and meet her before you leave we have lily who has been a resident at alachua county for well over a year um and she was potentially facing euthanasia within the last couple of weeks just because she's been there too long and there isn't enough space um we have another one of their newer pups downstairs who uh risked being overlooked because the resources just aren't there there's just not enough room so i think that it is always the goal um to be in and out and we never want to see dogs sitting for long terms in a shelter but i think that it has to be a key point in all of the decision making and in the processes um to realize that there are a lot of dogs at alachua county right now that have been there for way too long and that has to be considered because dogs that have been sitting in a shelter for a year or longer are not going to be addressed the same way as the litter of dogs that came in last week or two weeks ago um so i think that's something that just i just want to make sure it stays kind of on the forefront of the planning and decision making um because we it is a factor and there are way too many dogs there that have been there for far too long tell us your name katherine mcguire sorry okay katherine thank you um for bringing a face yeah uh next speaker hi good morning well my name is phil singer i've been involved with animals here in alachua county for more years than i care to to count um it seemed to me that much of this meeting was about u of f and not really about our shelter um i think that that uf um choice is i'm not crazy about the other one but i think u of f choice is poor it puts it in a part of town where our you talk about shopping nobody's going to go from pet smart to the university to go look at a dog they're just not going to do it there's no parking it's too busy it's just not going to work um that kind of argument to me doesn't work we don't want people to stop by the shelter on the way home and look at the animals then you end up with animals that are returned we want solid stable long-term relationships between these animals and the adopters the other problem with the u of f location is um we all know what happens when school gets out and the number of animals that are abandoned in this town goes through the ceiling so we're going to make it easy for people who really most of them don't have a stake in this town they're here for three or four years and then they're gone i don't see that we're going to provide huge adoption opportunities for people who are not going to remain here i think putting it in u of f in the back or no actually where the swine unit is is right there in archer road i just i don't think it's a good idea i don't like the weisman tract either because now we're limited to 10 or 15 acres we probably need to find a keep with the funding save the million dollars from u of f i know what i would do with a million dollars uh that's a lot of money if you want you could use that to fix up the existing shelter for a time while we're we're trying to figure this out but i'd like to see that commission find a better county-owned site that has the potential for expansion you want to make a world-class adoption center then we need more room than 12 minus wetlands minus whatever at um at u of f and no more than 15 acres at um at the weisman site i live on 10 acres i couldn't imagine putting a world class adoption center on that on a site that small i just couldn't do it and i think that that um putting it in the center of gainesville behind the university targets the wrong type of people to be adopters yes it might help with volunteers but you heard that students are during the holidays there are no volunteers they all go home that's when they need help the most okay they're not a stable i would not want to um place the facility there because we'll get we might get more volunteers i just think that's a bad idea okay all right thank you very much thank you for those comments okay next speaker how many more after this raise your hand okay you're the you're the last speaker so bring it home i probably won't share an alt house um i've been listening to all of you and what strikes me most of all is the lack of pre-planning and strategic planning um i think the last speaker talking about the number of acres that are needed i ran a non-profit myself and i can tell you as soon as i bought a new building and thought we were in heaven i knew we were not in heaven because i immediately knew we needed more space i think that's a real consideration um the point i wanted to bring out and i know there's going to be people speaking to the other considerations here tonight is that i don't know if any of you know about virginia satire she was a famous psychotherapist she was hired on many occasions to do studies on industrial situations and proffer her expertise in psychoanalysis and how things could be improved the thing that virginia satire is most famous for is that she didn't herself decide what was going to be improved she went to the employees the staff the people who would be most affected by her report and we have not gone to our staff they are the keepers of the true knowledge that no one seems to be taking advantage of here tonight they know what's hard our young speaker that just spoke she knows what's going on she knows about noise she knows about um placement she knows what works and what doesn't work we have not used the best resource we have and that is our employees we have not gone to them furthermore we have no strategic plan i just asked the gentleman from uf i believe about what is the majority of 11 acres is it seven that's a majority that's not big enough is it eight is it nine he informs me that it's probably around 10. did any of you know that before you came to this meeting tonight did any of you think about that did any of you have the resources and the information the material to make a decision on this tonight this is the first time i'm hearing about coppers even being a potential site which i think is great we've amended that site it's further inside town uh we've done very little pre-planning or strategic planning and we haven't used the best resource we have which is our current employees who deal with this every day who know the the dilemmas that they face i'm i'm really disappointed i'm very disappointed um miss prisya when you talked about not wanting to put that shelter or keep that shelter out there it sounded to me like you misunderstood what we were about to do i i know my time is up but thank you miss alto thank you for your comments okay um all right we'll go ahead and close comments on the motion and we've got um all the lights are on did you want to speak you'll come on up yeah you'll be the last one and then then we'll go ahead and bring it back to deliberations my name is linda rougeau and i know i've talked to a lot of y'all over the years about the situation i'm really surprised that we've only got the two options after all these years you and i have talked many times i've texted i've sat in your office and there was always i i'm getting texts from somebody i'm not even sure who it is but they were talking about the west end golf course was that ever considered having the shelter out there right on newberry road and i mean just moving it there we've already got the land i had suggested even a satellite adoption center there once when i found out that you know y'all it was taken over by the county but what has that even been considered i don't think now is the time to vote on these two i don't think these i think we need more options okay thank you linda all right um okay commissioner so certainly we don't have to take any recommendations and we can continue to search um let's go ahead and we've got commissioner prisia the manager commissioner wheeler and then commissioner alfred so i guess i just wanted to i guess very firstly respond to the the woman who spoke towards the end we actually did do a plan we actually hired a consultant to come here and to have conversations with our staff and with the community and to get input and feedback on everything that was necessary and how we could build a world-class shelter and that presentation was given to us i want to say two years ago or a year and a half ago or so um and so you can find that on our website and we had a lot of conversations and we tasked our staff with finding the best locations and it's not without trying they have been shopping for land for this for a very long time and i think we could keep on shopping but every day that we keep on shopping we keep on moving the needle on the shelter that we needed like we needed when i started it was one of the first conversations we had when i got on this commission five and a half years ago and it's still one of the most pressing needs that we have for this county is a new shelter and so i don't want to wait any longer you know i don't want to wait for the perfect site because i'm afraid the perfect site will never show itself i i think we're just going to be spinning our wheels and the idea of coppers was commissioner wheeler's idea but it isn't a i don't know that we have any viable information on that as a possible location for the shelter so i mean i appreciate her bringing it forward as a concept but i just want to put that out there it's not something that we've explored um because it was still in cleanup phase and it is a superfund site and turning dirt and all those kinds of things is a real challenge on sites like that so long story short we did do a plan um this has been a deliberate process there has been a lot of energy and effort and conversations put into it so i just i take a little bit of umbrage to the idea that we're just like winging it here and we just showed up today and we're like making this decision um we've put a lot of energy and thought and effort into this and we have had a lot of conversations with both our team and the community about this and so you know i i hear you i didn't hear anybody tell me they really wanted the wiesman tract or they really wanted uf tract all i heard was that you all don't like either one and but we have to choose one because we need a shelter and we need to move forward we don't have other options this is what we've got and i think you know that's why i made the motion for the university site and i think the university site is the better of the two sites because i think it's more accessible i think it's more central to our community and i think that we also when we're weighing all the things that we're doing for the county we want to do what's right for the animals what's right for the community what makes that that place better and we want to think about what we're doing with that other piece of land and how we can maximize that for the community as well and the wiesman tract is in is in an industrial area that we've been focused on industrial development and focused on economic development for our community and so to me that both things make the decision to go to the university site the right decision i i know it's not ideal i do i hear you that i know it's not ideal but it's just the best option that i think we have so okay thank you um madam manager if you can wait because i actually have a question for you and if you can go last we'll go commissioner wheeler and then commissioner alford one of the questions i had was for you michelle when we were talking about the wiesman property i thought 20 acres was what we were looking at as i said 15 when i was just talking i said 15 to 20 acres i would not have said more than 20 acres the decision on and if you own it so you could tell us 50 acres what you decide directly affects what we do with the rest of the property from the economic development piece i would not i would not recommend more than 20 and probably closer to the 15 side because um you're going to need buffers significantly there um from the industrial but also because we do believe that there is a um significant benefit to the economic development piece that's one of the reasons i had my light on nobody said it was only going to be 15 that is your decision to make based on what you want to do with the property as a whole we've never been able to do anything with it um because of the deed restriction that that took us a considerable amount of time to to work through thank you and the other question i have is if we're going to build a state-of-the-art 30 million dollar facility do we really feel like we have to squeeze it into a make it fit that space just because it's available and connected to the university of florida and the copper site i've been checking with steve regularly on that even um commissioner desmond duncan walker and i have been looking at that property too for use that the city would have as well on one side of its industrial yes there are neighborhood on the other side it's 100 acres and so it's not something i'm just talking out my butt it's something that i've really been paying attention to because i have been looking for sites michelle will tell you for three years i've been throwing stuff at her the west end is we we set it up for for the world masters so that got a that got a purpose but i can tell you that the lee brothers also offered us land over there on some of theirs and that was discounted because of the growth that was coming up around there too and the possibility that it would be in a in a um an area where there are other developments coming in so we've been looking at sites and if steve was here he would tell you that that site at coppers is ready for something and and he was going to be setting up tours at this point so you know we need to be aware and commissioner duncan walker didn't even know that that site was there she'd never seen it she grew up in gainesville and never seen it so this is a piece of property that that is prime that we are not giving enough attention to so um yes i think that's all i need to say thank you very much commissioner alford i felt like i couldn't uh not defend the students to some extent there's over 61 000 students at uf and many of them have pets and many of them are very good pet owners and so the idea that you know um it it and i know that's not what some of y'all met but it sounded like you know all students are bad pet owners but so many students are very good pet owners and i've seen the bad ones and i've seen the good ones but um most folks that adopt pets do you know i see them at the dog parks i see them in pet smart i see them walking their dogs and i've talked to them as i've knocked on their doors running for office and their majority are very good pet owners and i uh just wanted to say that because i i uh i just felt like that was misrepresented okay thank you you conclude okay michelle a couple questions um so brian's point about operational control when does that happen with regards to you know this is a county facility we are asking to for uf to you know be as engaged as possible on the from the vet school we currently have a relationship we heard uh representative clemens talk about um wanting to expand on that relationship but with regards to operational control it lies with the county correct absolutely yeah can you talk about how that is um how staff is looking at um entering into that agreement with uf yes so operational control is always uh lay with county um the vet school has always had some type of relationship with the county for well before when i got here um and had provided a vet for goodness i don't even know how many years like i said well before i got here um the relationship was never memorialized in writing and that's where we feel we need to be now to make sure that um those lines are clear as to whose responsibilities or whose etc and that's what we've been working on and that is what um the university what they spoke to here and their commitment to do that and to get that memorialized in writing um so that's what we're working to have that memorialized during the due diligence period or after the fact because it's not going to be built for two years right well and they're they're involved to some extent now we we rely on them and their shelter medicine um experts the the professors when we need help i mean they they recently have reviewed you know some of our pain management policies they when we call them for help they are there to help um they have one of the top shelter medicine programs in the country um and so uh we maintain that relationship as far as the operational piece yes and as far as committing that to writing and um how they're going to involve their students moving forward we will hop right on that after this piece when we decided to move forward because we need to get the shelter built and um we did not want to wait any longer for options cde to come along um we thought i focused on this okay question question two during the due diligence period um will there be discussions with regards to how the facility will operate how it'll be located are we only doing diligence on like title work and site prep and right like what kind of due diligence are you talking about because this we have an out if we're not happy but we're proceeding as if we are today we are committing so what what is the what's the due diligence what what like what will you task your staff with doing consider it like a real estate due diligence right so it's surveys it's um you know is the site suitable um i'm sure there's the whole list in the in the agreement it's it's the typical real estate type transaction um and also in in speaking with uf about some of the time frames because i know there's also that design piece in there um with them involved through that process too that's going to be a pretty seamless um quick process you want to add anything yes uh manager's correct it is a typical due diligence you win a real estate transaction the express out provision that gives you the ability to walk during that inspection period for any reason or no reason whatsoever yeah okay so you know all right it's a unilateral right for you to walk now the flip side of that is is that once you that in that inspection period expires then there are limited outs after that point okay that's fine um okay so commissioners um i would like to move forward i very much um have heard a lot of the negatives about the uf relationship i i think we're missing many of the the pros uh and and i hope that um working with uf and our county staff um after uf hears the priority that i hope we're going to give to our staff over kind of operation procedures standard operating procedures i think we need to commit um some real financial resources to the current facility because this is going to take two to three years uh and i and i i think as we are committing those resources if we decide to do that um we'll have a couple of things first of all we we've got to fix some of our standard operating procedures and we've got to make that facility as good as we can make it um for the animals that are currently there and i think we need to start to reestablish i think someone said a loss of trust reestablish trust in our community with regards to the priority that we're taking uh for this shelter so that's that's a next discussion um but i'm i'm willing to do that and i'm ready to do that if you all are um and i hope that the uh university of florida is hearing the priority that this commission places and i know this community places on really having them involved in in a real positive and productive way i think it's a real opportunity for both the county and for uf to show this community um what a priority uh animals are to this community and again i appreciate all three of you for being here today so that you can hear directly from many of the volunteers and the advocates that are are the speakers of the animals that can't really speak but it's been a priority of mine for 12 years anna you've heard for five or six mary helen i know for more than the eight that she's been on this commission and and i know um mary and chuck feel the same way so that's this commission's priority and we hope that we can we can really talk about um the relationship in a really productive way moving forward okay i don't know if i said something that caused lights to go back on but um there's more lights so commissioner wheeler and then commissioner prisio well if you're going to be putting money towards the shelter until the new one is built i would urge each of you to go out there and speak with the staff yes because the staff was not looking at this direction okay thank you commissioner prisio i guess my question was to the point with the um veterinary agreement and the sort of partnership agreement with the university of florida i heard you say this and then that all right so you're saying you would sign and move forward with the lease and real estate agreement and then do a partnership agreement on the i am not yeah i'm not that the site is with us paying less for the site you know the site itself the relationship with uf is is very important but it's going to be very important regardless if we're on the wiesman tract or the uh uf site right the move moving forward where we put the shelter it's really we're saying look at the pros and the cons of the site itself um but we are committed to moving forward with putting a formalized uh agreement in place with the university with the the vet medicine program um moving forward i think you've got a lot we've had a lot of changes operationally from our side they're going through changes operationally with the dean and so those things are kind of settling out but it is a commitment that we are moving forward which we would regardless of what site okay thank you that's that that was the clarification yeah and mr chair if i could just on the site i think i need to be clear and i know um the the person who brought this up i has already stepped out but we did look at west end um that was when we purchased that would that be a location we also had meetings with santa fe about potentially being out there we have a master park plan we have gone through that's that own plan we did look at that though as as a and it's just with the way the houses were set there and it just wasn't going to be viable so there there have been many places that we have looked at and had meetings and you know did property reviews um what did the consultant when we got that report i i was remiss and i was trying to find it again i looked at it a couple weeks ago but i can't remember which meeting it is i can't find it on the fly what was the recommended minimum acreage for the site there wasn't a i don't recall a recommended minimum there was an ideal ideal was 20 but we did not um but not all the parcels and places we looked at were that and if i you know if i was not comfortable moving forward right i think what we've what i've talked about and and i've you know hillsborough county has a shelter that's uh i believe it's them that i've seen it's um i've talked to staff we're going about going up to give more of a open space footprint you know offices surgical suites those things do not need to be ground floor tampa is the hillsborough county one yeah yeah so hillsborough county marion county and jacksonville are the three that stops going to in the next month okay uh all right any further discussions on this commissioner alfred did you have anything else i i just i wanted to ask a question um is the and this might be a question for uf is the um agreement that we're looking to make it with partnering with uf is that contingent and dependent on them hiring the new dean or are we moving forward with a agreement outside of that well that's a question for them but outside i saw outside coming from that yeah okay that's just that's just that he was just making that point i believe and chuck correct me if i misspeak here that new leadership is coming in right now and so there is an opportunity um for more collaboration i just wanted to make sure we weren't waiting on the new dean before we no no no no we're not waiting on anything no and and we have the bones of one right now that has kind of been sitting there for quite some time that we're working from okay all right great thank you yeah and it is my hope that with you have here today and with that search going on that part of you know that search is hey this partnership with alachua county tell us how you've partnered with animal shelters in the past and so on and so forth so all right we've got a motion happy to add to the motion that we ask our facilities department to meet with staff at the existing animal shelter and bring back a budget for doing renovations on that shelter necessary so that we can keep it yeah and i will tell you we as staff we do intend to come forward and provide a recommendation to maintain that facility so i think some level of renovation or improvement would make sense but we'll we'll bring that forward to you as well we're going to add that as a fourth part to this motion if the seconder agrees yes absolutely okay so we've got a three-part motion and we just added a fourth part which is yeah travis you heard that um uh and in the next after we're done with the next part let's maybe even give them a range of dollars because i think dollars are important you know you could say twenty thousand you can say four hundred thousand but they're different recommendations based on what you said what is the full cost of doing a real renovation okay well that's so the next discussion we can talk more about that based on the needs that we hear that we are all right so we've got a motion you understand everybody understand the motion four part motion we we have people from the shelter here we haven't heard from and i don't know if it's not public comment is closed on this motion we can hear from them on the next question um if that's okay i mean unless commission you want me to open it back up again they chose to not stand up and talk okay okay all right all those in favor of the motion say aye aye any opposed no motion passes 3-1 commissioner wheeler in dissent and commissioner chestnut out of the room okay so we have a direction on the shelter thank you for that madam clerk what's the next item the next item will be animal resources comprehensive update okay i know most of you are here for that um and the recommended action is just to hear the update it is my hope commissioners that after we hear the update we actually give direction unless the update is just so great that we are overwhelmed and and we don't want to yeah so with that right as peoples you are recognized you know people's uh interim animal resources director so first i'd like to thank the commission for your continued support of animal resources and for your last motion to finalize where our new shelter will be located i'd also like to thank our county manager for allowing me to serve as interim animal resources director i am so impressed with the amazing team we have who care deeply for the animals in our care and i'm proud to have worked with them for the past five months finally i'd like to publicly thank facilities procurement omb the county attorney's office and public works for their help over the last few months staff developed our new mission statement which is more concise and easier to remember alachua county animal resources is committed to care community adoption reuniting and education with respect to hiring a new director and veterinarian we engaged with an outside consultant to conduct a national search to recruit the most qualified applicants for both positions several months ago conditional offers were extended to two veterinarians however one candidate was hesitant to relocate from out of state and the other who had one year of experience expressed concern about managing the level of complex medical cases handled by municipal shelter in the interim we've secured five relief veterinarians one of whom volunteers her time and established partnerships with local veterinary services providers for spay neuter services and emergency medical care as of friday we've had 33 director and two veterinarian applicants we hope to conduct veterinarian interviews as early as next friday our medical partners include the humane society of north central florida operation catnip vcop newberry animal hospital ccvs and uf the shakespeare animal fund a local 501c3 has offered to provide up to 500 per month towards emergency medical care for our animals we retained an external consultant to review our medical protocols our animal welfare advisory committee is being asked to provide input on several medical protocols including our pathway protocol so we can ensure we are providing the best care possible for our animals the committee includes two veterinarians whose guidance and expertise are highly valued we are also seeking to revitalize our shelter medicine program partnership with the university of florida through which shelter medicine students would once again participate in a clerkship program at our facility i'm also excited to announce that our lead vet tech mike louderer who's also in the room is a finalist for the florida animal protection and advocacy association's employee of the year award he was he was nominated because he stepped up when our veterinarian left assuming responsibility well beyond his assigned role ensuring continuity of care regulatory compliance and operational stability we find out in early march if he's selected at animal resources we operate under a managed intake model as recommended by our partners at the university of florida the aspca and maddie's fund this model is designed to regulate the flow of animals into the shelter enabling us to provide higher quality care increase adoptions and reduce euthanasia by preventing disease and overcrowding managed intake is widely recognized as a best practice in animal welfare according to best friends of animal society 63 percent of u.s shelters achieved no kill status in 2024 in 2025 acar again achieved a 90 plus percent live release rate and for the second consecutive year was the leading adoption agency in the county processing more adoptions than any other organization i would like to thank our citizens for raising concerns regarding our reported live release rate for the month of december in response staff conducted a comprehensive review of the data and identified an error in the original report our software company was contacted and discovered that when we updated our adoption subtypes in early december to comply with paperless checkout the new subtypes were not mapped correctly up to the report a review was then done on the mappings to be sure they were correct and accurate and a thorough review of the past calendar year was performed this review included an animal by animal review of intake and outcome statuses to be sure that they were correctly mapped in the interest of transparency we will continue to post the original december report as well as the corrected december report all animals euthanized during the month of december were euthanized exclusively for documented medical or behavioral reasons for a municipal shelter these decisions are sometimes necessary for public safety and are never made lightly representatives from all shelter divisions participated in the decision making process while our policy requires concurrence from at least two supervisors these cases received approval from three supervisors and the decisions were unanimous amongst all staff involved the corrected live release rate for the month of december is eighty eight point two one percent for dogs only it was eighty point seven percent included in your packet is the pathways flow chart and protocol which will be presented to our animal welfare advisory committee for review at our february meeting one speaker at our last meeting referenced the need for an improved spay neuter strategy i intend to ask the animal welfare advisory committee to consider recommending a revision to the animal code concerning the definition of a hobby breeder in my view any intact animal constitutes breeding currently the code allows hobby breeders to produce up to two litters per year i am therefore recommending that owners of intact animals be classified as breeders and required to obtain a breeders permit unless a licensed veterinarian provides a medical exemption our new director may have other suggested updates to the code once they are on onboarded we currently provide food and other animal related resources to residents in need and our officers will do the same in the field to keep an animal with its owner currently we don't have a designated public space for this service we hope to offer a pet pantry as well as free or low-cost spay neuter services at our new shelter additionally a speaker from our last meeting mentioned the importance of medical and behavioral support both before and after adoption we will soon be launching a partnership for a free app called petzel which was developed for shelter and rescues to provide post-adoption resources to our adopters on a fun note a scout is working with us on his eagle scout project likely building and installing a daughter cat agility equipment and we're working with it to develop a pet harmony style app to help potential adopters find their best match of available animals kudos to our outreach team for the amazing support they provide to our volunteers and fosters in 2024 we had multiple hurricanes and emptied the shelter twice we did not have storm fosters in 2025 and had 260 more fosters last calendar year our outreach division makes regular rescue pleas to nearly 180 animal welfare organizations last year 36 of our rescue partner pulled 448 animals i would like to specifically recognize the humane society and puppy hill as they regularly pull animals from us the sheriff's office has also expressed interest in reinstituting the paws on parole program this spring through which six of our long-term behaviorally challenged dogs would receive basic obedience training from female inmates providing valuable employment skills for the participants while improving the dog's adoptability we are also working with kuskawilla staff to bring campers to the shelter for a field trip this summer our 2025 adoption events resulted in 32 adoptions for our jacks mega 116 adoptions for the first day and 268 adoptions for the month of august for our summer loving acar after dark with 34 adoptions whisker wonderland 47 adoptions for the first day and 151 adoptions during the month of december and we had three community vaccination clinics a speaker at our last commission meeting suggested that volunteer staff tables at community events to inform them of our many programs and services this is currently handled by staff but i concur it's an excellent idea and have asked our outreach team to consider this moving forward our officers responded to more than 5 000 calls for service last year and i believe i speak for all of the officers and investigators and thanking you for approving the hybrid enforcement model earlier today with the sheriff's office they are a close-knit team and will continue to work together one of our speakers from our last commission meeting was concerned that an animal left the shelter without receiving its rabies shot or microchip our protocol is to microchip and vaccinate all incoming animals on intake unless it's unsafe to do so or unhealthy for the animal our officers are now providing microchipping services in the field to animals impounded on their vehicle to help us return animals home quicker quicker and with that i am happy to answer any questions okay commissioners uh commissioner alford and then commissioner prisio okay so according to the math we euthanized 541 animals last year i just took your numbers that you put up there and subtracted the adoptions and the return to owner and the so do we have statistics on um why each of the i know you you very carefully make those decisions but do we know how many of them were for behavioral problems how many were for medical or both or are we tracking that so for the statistical analysis that you're requesting no we did not have that information available that i'm aware of so i'm understanding from staff that we can't just generate a report it would require a line by line so animal by animal review and manually do that i think going forward that would be a really um useful thing to to be able to report on um i think that um yeah it's it's yeah it's it's a change to database it shouldn't be that hard and i think having those statistics is part of being transparent with the public about what we're doing and i i think the transparency is is um is really important and you know while there was a some early discussion about how it is uh hard to um talk about the fact that we are euthanizing animals i think that um being open about that is is um i think really helpful in terms of helping people understand how important it is to adopt from a shelter and not from a puppy mill for instance and by the way i love the fact that you are uh talking about um basically requiring spay neuter by having a requiring a license for folks that um yeah but i guess my question is um that might be seen as a financial deterrent for pet ownership so are we going to do that hand in hand with programs to provide those spay neuter services to folks that might be financially um find that financially difficult i i believe that that makes the most sense so yes commissioner i mean i know that the humane society provides spay neuter services to folks that can show their um that they're on um certain kinds of aid but you know that those aid rules are all changing right now and so there's going to have to be a different way i think for us to look at people's you know financial vulnerability and um so i just want to point that out but i i really appreciate you going in that direction i conclude thank you thank you commissioner apricio thank you for the update i'm excited about 33 applications for our director i hope that there are several really good qualified candidates who are excited about a new no kill shelter and the opportunity for our care mission to be fully realized um i guess my i have a couple questions i first i think i think i i'm a little concerned about the idea of managed intake i understand it's a best practice so i'm i'm happy we're doing that and i and i know that people who understand animal care and welfare know a lot better than i do about this but what i'm concerned about is that just because we don't have room for that animal in the shelter doesn't mean that that animal doesn't need shelter and much like we're leaving unhoused individuals on the streets because we can't figure out housing we're also now leaving animals on the street because we can't find housing and so i guess i understand why managed intake and i hope that as we're building our new shelter we're thinking about that accommodation and what that means and what the percentage of the population is that tends to be on the streets at any given time like point in time counts like we do for humans and what can we do to make sure that we have enough kennel space and or pop-up kennel space to accommodate those fluxes right especially like i know like it's kitten season and we all of a sudden we have a ton and then it shrinks back down and we tend to build it for that that normal population versus that bubble population like what can we do with our new shelter or construction to accommodate that flux um so that we can take the dog that's eating somebody's trash and pooping on somebody's lawn and at large and find it a home instead of leaving it on the street to be hit by a car or annoying its neighbors or whatever um so that's my comment my second is on our flow chart which i guess is more about euthanasia than it is about managed intake um but i guess i am interested in the flow chart for managing like how do we make a call on like what dogs we leave in the field versus what dogs we are mainly it's dogs cats don't tend to be as big of a problem but what how do we make the call i mean it should know you don't have to answer that right now but if we could get that like what are the calls that the animal control folks are making in the field i would be really interested to know but for this um who does the full behavioral evaluation on rather the animal exhibits unmanageable levels of aggression so we do have a behaviorist on staff however it's all staff's responsibility so this animal is seen by our medical team it's seen daily by you know fed and clean daily by our kennel staff so all staff in the shelter are empowered to add notes into our software so that they can communicate with each other because again we're seven day a week operation um and we want all of the staff to be aware of what's going on with that animal who makes the call like at the end of the day who makes this yes call and it goes down to euthanasia so that is the team decision so at this point we have the supervisors and we have conversations about those animals whenever uh there's there's concerning notes then that's so it's like a weekly conversation that supervisors have and then they make and then those supervisors like vote and make the call like we're it takes a minimum of two of the supervisors to make the two supervisors okay so it's like a a vote ish okay but thus far since i've been uh the interim uh director it's been unanimous okay um really of everybody that's been present in the room it's been unanimous okay i guess that that's important to know i guess that like of people who are present in the room a little bit concerns me because like who because if there's somebody who doesn't agree are they just happening to not be there on the day that you guys are making this call like i just want to make sure like that that makes it that's how it makes it sound i think to the public you know i'm i'm sure that we're doing our we're doing our protocols but i'm just i think we need to be like pretty clear that when we're making those decisions we've got all like all the available deciders in the room to vote on that yes that is correct and then who makes avail like who does the um does the animal have an adopter after the holds or like how does that all work like who's managing the adoptions and like trans and like she was talking about like wanting to be able to like advertise dogs that are close to euthanasia and i know there's stuff in here about us advertising and please and like who's managing all of that so generally that's our outreach outreach supervisor however i'm very proud that uh other staff have also stepped up to make please to other relationships that they have outside of the the normal uh group that we reach out to but we don't do that to the general public no not to the general public um again there's certain animals that they require very specific care so for example if it's a german shepherd and we have a german shepherd rescue we'll reach out to the german shepherd rescue if it's an animal that's in our custody because it mauled somebody we're not making that call we're not bringing it to the public's attention it's going to be taken care of public safety is our hands down number one priority and who does the behavior and quality of life evaluations so i again i would uh say that that would be our behaviorist okay and can i get the list of things i guess i'm interested in understanding like what are those calls like what are the things they're looking for for the unmanageable levels of aggression like what are the warning signs like what's that sort of checklist you guys go through in your mind to say this dog is you know unmanageable or and same thing for that quality of life like what are our quality of life standard requirements because i think that will also go to some of the conversations with travis about renovation and to you know new shelter construction like what do we want to make sure that we're looking for in those minimum standards as we begin to like move forward with trying to bring the shelter up to a standard so that would be really helpful um and i think my other question is licensing i'm really excited to hear you say that because i was been pushing pushing pushing on this licensing and making sure that our breeders are being licensed and being charged for being breeders and i didn't realize we had a loophole for folks so i look forward to that loophole being closed and i agree with commissioner alford and i'm wondering if we couldn't use some of those licensing dollars that we're bringing in to support a few events for low cost or no cost spay and neuter um kind of holding harmless those hobby breeders if they're going to bring in their dogs to be fixed in order to not have to pay that fine then we would go ahead and offer a couple events with maybe some of those volunteer vets we've managed to recruit to do some low cost or no cost um spay and neutering events both for them and and for the public because i know we haven't been able to offer it at low cost right now just because of our vet but maybe if we were able to just do an event or two um where we had that option that would be really really great so i just wanted to throw that out there and i think those are all my comments okay thank you um madam manager and then i'll give some i've got some questions yes as to the one comment that was made regarding um space and the concerns about having space particularly when we have like large seizure cases etc that is one of the reasons we are coming forward to you recommending that we maintain the current shelter when the other one is constructed is to house the unadoptable animals so that we make sure that the space in our shelter that the public goes to um is for the adoptable animals and when i say unadoptable animals i'm talking about bite dogs um dangerous dogs um criminal seizures um those types of cases where we have to hold them until we gain custody of them or until a criminal investigation is done those are not available for adoption and sometimes we have to hold them for extended periods of time that will allow more space in the shelter and what the public gets to see they're not going to be you know in our current shelter you go in and it's blocked off from seeing animals that are not adoptable but they're there um we'd like to keep that space open for everybody to be able to see all of the animals um so that's one of the proposals we're coming forward to you and i think that will help resolve that issue um for the most part and i also those types of cases that we would keep their track primarily with what the responsibilities you just gave the sheriff's office so to your managed intake point and the concern about that there is a place for them to take those animals that they're seizing for criminal purposes or what have you that is separate my only concern is that if we're gonna if we end up spending five hundred thousand dollars on our old shelter to renovate it so that it's up to you know so that we can feel confident that we're putting those animals i mean a lot of those animals maybe there's a bite case or whatever but again i guess i think of it i try to think about the animals similar to how we think about humans and the fact that like you know if we're gonna especially animals that are in a part of a hoarding case something like those animals don't deserve to be in a substandard space just because they were part of a hoarding case and so i i if we're going to spend that much money on renovation like maybe we spend it in expanding our additional shelter to have a space that's specifically for holding i don't know i don't you i i will leave it to travis and the team to make that call does it make more sense to renovate our old space or to expand the new shelter to accommodate those kinds of cases but i do feel like i want to make sure no matter what we do that's why i was saying i'm gonna have to make a good case like whatever we do i want to make sure that we're bringing that shelter up to a standard that it's not like these these animals are being punished in regards to how they're being kept versus the animals who are adoptable you know clearly understand that point i just was responding to the point about space um and that was one you know so that um the public really that the adoptable animals are to the public facing location like available yeah available right and that doesn't mean that an animal can't get moved from one location to another perhaps it's a you know a criminal seizure and once they are cleared or we get ownership of them and we're able you know so um but that was one of our thoughts behind that uh maintaining that i hear you commissioner alford and commissioner wheeler and then i'll make my comments yeah i just wanted to i wanted to uh talk a little bit about the same thing basically which i and i guess the other big thing that you might be using that space for michelle would be for quarantine because i know that's been a concern in the past that we've had to quarantine animals due to outbreaks of i would say overflow quarantine more than just quarantine because we're really looking to design this shelter to minimize the transfer that was one of the things that when um our consultant came and spoke to the board they talked about is how you can basically construct a shelter to minimize that transfer because sometimes you don't know when they come in that that they may have um been infected with something that is contagious um and i know that um gina has seen you know she's been visiting shelters lately um and has seen some designs that do just that that that was kind of what i was hoping to hear and then i guess my second concern also was addressed a little bit by commissioner presia but um i i told y'all the other day i i have a german shepherd and i've had that dog for a year he was arrest she was a rescue and it's taken a year for her to be able to be in the same room with me and eat because she is so timid and i know that timidity is something that is sometimes considered a trait that makes an animal less adoptable but i'm hoping that if we do have animals that are separated for lack of adaptability for behavioral issues like that that we still have opportunities for um volunteers and animal behavioralists to work with those dogs to help increase their adoptability over time because i i feel like just because an animal's been mistreated and has had an awful life that um they should be given at least a little bit of a second chance to to be rehabilitated and i know that's an expensive proposition but i'm hoping because my dogs turned out to be a really wonderful dog and i think that might not have been the case had it been um in a shelter after being rescued so okay thank you conclude i conclude thank you uh commissioner wheeler i think to that point that the people who work in the shelters recognize those kinds of behaviors and you know know how to how to help discern what kind of animals can actually be rehabilitated especially if it's an extended period of time that they're working with them but my question michelle is how much is the acreage is that our old shelter is on now do you know i think it's 13 13 but there's a lot of wet the site that it's currently on has a lot of unusable space right i i remember that but i also remember at some time when we were talking about going up you know putting it you were talking about renovating the shelter of the old shelter to a certain level before we move into the other one but we also at one time we're talking about putting a second floor on the existing facility um so i don't you know i i don't know where we i'm just throwing that out because i'm i'm saying that we had considered that as an option and then it went away but if we're talking about two stories on a building and the same amount of acreage even though there's wetlands there's wetlands on the university property as well right and the wiesman there there is on both right so what we're looking at is about the same size lot of what what we're looking at to build a new one our our current envelope we are encroaching we are grandfathered but we are encroaching in the wetland buffer currently and we would have to to do new construction we would either have to um get an exception to that or or change the footprint to get out of the buffer um and there are also some other issues there that i think make construction difficult that is one of the options we at at one point that's all i wanted to point out that was an option that we had looked at you know with the same amount of footage and if we're talking about going up on our new building that's something that we considered at one point for the old one i'm not sure it could and i'm not sure about its actual construction whether we could even go up on the existing building if we wanted to i don't think we thank you mr chair thank you um marion okay i've got a couple questions gina so this flow chart is very good thank you for providing it and and i was really when i first looked at it i was concerned because it looked like there was four or five places where conduct a behavioral quality evaluation if they don't meet it they could be euthanized but after hearing you say that those decisions have been unanimous that gives me a level of comfort i only noticed three or four transfers out and i would love to see a lot more transfers out and so that's those are my kind of my comments carrie wise who's called in to me was the most impactful person that i heard because she said we have an army of the community that wants to help here and maybe we need to give you all more resources to engage that community and so where i am commissioners is i'd love a motion with some direction that gives this department specific resources to enhance the ability to adopt dogs even those that maybe have some timid behavior um characteristics or you know there are there are rescue organizations in every breed that have dealt with those that breeds bad dogs or unadoptable dogs and i want our staff to have all of those resources available to them that's that's where i am right now and so i'd love to see when the recommendations come back from staff or us give directions to staff that they provide us with those recommendations because i also think that that will lead into better standard operating procedures for the new facility it'll also lead to a thought uh thoughtful how how we are really designing that facility um to handle those dogs not to not not to not and cats um so that's point one my second point is if we say it's going to take two years it's going to take three or four and i don't have three or four years of of in me patience i just don't i just don't have it anymore like i'm i'm like past it and so if that means it's going to cost us a little bit more money i'm this commissioner is ready to spend it because i want that facility yeah what i say when you say done what i what i say is staff has what they need um the volunteers have what they need uh and when we vacate it to uh the the nicest facility in the country or when the top five facilities in the country it is a usable facility for emergency situations that um we're not ashamed of it's not it's like this is a great facility we're not staffed but it can be staffed up and ramped up and we have overflow um i don't know of any other counties around us that are making this investment but we need to we're alachua county and so we just i just need staff to hear me that um you know i don't know what the budget is for the facility i know it's zero right now but we have reserves and i'm ready to use them and i i want michelle to hear that i want travis to hear that when he goes out there um you know he he's asking what do you need like what what are we going to need for the next 10 years at this facility right now what do you need and what are you going to need when you're not here and you're in the other facility like what do you need and then as far as community resources maybe we need to hire another person to help mary i don't i don't know um or may may maimauer where's may is she here may yeah maybe she needs help um because um the community wants to help us and so i i want us to come back with a recommendation where we hear you community and we we um we're going to make this happen so cafe in there that's um that's where i am i mean i'm i'm mostly concerned about our our staff having the resources that they need um and our community seeing the county's commitment to where we're headed but where we currently are right now like you know we're not moving into the new house for three or four years but we got to live here and and we got to have we can't let this i feel like we had this meeting three years ago yeah we already had this yeah and and it's been yeah it is but we've also had turnover and people are doing their best and um but you know maybe maybe the conversation i need to be saying this is directly to the manager that this ultimately falls on us and you and so that's where i am on this i hope the recommendation isn't penny wise and pound foolish i hope it comes back and it's robust uh so that the community understands that we're committed so i don't know if we need a direction i don't know if y'all want to do a motion but i'll hold the gavel if you want to make it we already made the motion on the renovations yeah and yeah and and we have made a lot we have invested quite a bit in the shelter and i think you know um but i under but i understand that there's still more to be done so when are we going to have that when are we going to hear this again because what i heard the community say at the last meeting let's have a special meeting and this is that special meeting and then what i heard again from pamela yep pamela um you know at the end of this discussion oh you are going to have another special meeting so i want to like when are we going to talk about this again so we can take what you've already given us awesome thank you um you've heard today's discussion and you can go back and have some more kind of thoughts and bring back um you know what we're going to do so mr chair let me suggest um we typically do a quarterly update on all the numbers and the information in the shelter and i do think it will take some time for travis to be able and his staff to be able to really go in and look at what are the items you know what have we already done and where that investment has been so we can point those things out but also what are the options of where we need to go um we will also have a better idea with our um a and e firm on you know how um on design estimated you know and our manager at construction manager at risk on design estimated budgets we're going to have a lot more than we know today yeah i mean we could we could bring you what we know and what information we have um at our next quarterly update on the numbers to you to look at um improvements yeah so it'd be april so the second meeting in april yeah and and that would yeah and that way we would be able to properly assess that come back with options we can do that along with our next quarterly update and like i said our a and e team will have already started moving forward with um with design starting on that um and so we'll have a lot a lot more information that we can bring to you at that point okay so i'm happy with 90 days so commissioner prisio i was just going to go ahead and move that we asked for that renovation update ideas to be brought to us within 90 days along with the information regarding that we've requested with regards to the managed intake and um euthanasia flow chart and also um updates from the animal welfare advisory committee with regards to their input um on the the efforts that you're bringing forward to them the low-cost spay neuter and those sorts of things so the euthanasia and the euthanasia statistics um process for the database okay do i hear a second second they have a motion a second and the staff is in your intention that when that update comes back that it's not just physical but it's also what additional resources to help with the euthanasia issue is that i can add that yeah and any in from and any updates with regards to resources needed to continue to support our volunteer coordinator and staff in utilizing our community for reducing euthanasia numbers and increasing adoptions you okay with that mary i'm good with that yeah that was really specific and what i was looking for so thank you commissioner for adding that okay hey chuck welcome back um yeah so uh we decided on the uf facility just so that you know okay um and we are asking for we just got an update on where we are and we are asking for another one based on what we heard to come back in 90 days got a motion on the floor and we're about to open it up to the public to hear on that motion all right so um james do you understand the motion i do and i just wanted to take a moment to really brag on our facility staff so we've had a number of issues since i've been out at the shelter our um let's see our gas line went down we didn't have dryers and hot water their staff came right out installed electric dryers for us they have we had a wish list so travis had some money assigned in his budget and so we were able to prioritize and install lighting in some areas that are pretty dark it's pretty dark in the morning whenever myself get there at seven in the morning so they installed lighting as far as the rat situation we have a contractor critter pro we are very on top of that so i understand the rats were falling out through the ceiling that has not been the case since i've been there so just kudos kudos the shelter looks amazing um just even little painting here and removing broken wheel stops there and everybody's really come together and it's so appreciated and so thank you so much to travis and his staff for being out at the shelter multiple times every single week it's appreciated kudos travis yep and travis is going to give us a quarterly update and a couple more agenda items okay so we've got a motion um now's your opportunity come on forward give us your thoughts on what you've heard see what we have missed and thank you for uh being here with us go ahead hello good afternoon again my name is patricia antonucci um i have volunteered with acar for more than three years at the bocc meeting on january 13th i brought several concerns to the board's attention through a series of questions first of all i want to thank the board for being so receptive to what we have to say and for sounding like you're real champions of the animals in light of what we've heard today i would like to now pose some questions to acar asking that you consider them with a clear focus on animal welfare and live release practices and provide answers to the bocc and the community perhaps in that april meeting that has now been set i realize that this is actually public comment and not q a but it's sort of my only opportunity to ask these questions if there are other chances for volunteer input i welcome that right now i just wanted to pause for a moment to note that while we are talking about numbers statistics and budgets which are all necessary evils we must also remember that what's truly at stake here is sentient life and i don't know if i could have the overhead yep just stick it right there overhead please okay so what we see here are um 10 dogs um from acar that were that were euthanized um in the month of i believe november and december um i have reviewed akars pathway documents and i remain concerned that the focus is on animal control versus animal welfare the 10 dogs shown here were euthanized in ways that i believe violates the the pathway protocol set out again these were dogs that we as volunteers knew and we do not agree with the decisions to euthanize um i will kind of get back to that in a minute but i'm not sure if we are saying that our car is currently accredited as a no-kill um shelter or not but the um 87 80.7 apparently corrected live release rate for dogs in december um i don't know if that's including these 10 dogs who are not networked and who are euthanized on a very rash decision with a very short period of time to um commissioner prisia's comment about the sort of uh disingenuous potential potentially not saying that was your word but um reference to unanimous by those who are in the room i think that is a dead-on uh observation because there were key staff members who were not present for those euthanization decisions um and i would ask the acar to mandate that the behaviorist be present for all euthanization decisions going forward because my understanding is he was not present at the time um we do understand that acar is man is continuing as a managed intake facility and turning away strays and foundlings finders are told to release the dogs back to where they they found and again we have this issue because they're still euthanizing for space in the new pathway that was presented uh it looks like um mass the commissioner for additional the commissioner board for additional time i've sat they could yield their time to you okay thank you thank you um sorry kim i just jumped in what she said okay um so it looks like there's a push to evaluate dogs for euthanasia after they've been at the shelter for three months i'm not sure how this is not considered as euthanizing for space i would like to know what the average day of a dog prior to adoption or rescue is and what the national average is uh this is zumba she was adopted after 464 days in the shelter and teeter another long-termer was adopted at 291 days i would suggest that if we're concerned about time spent in the shelter the things we need to be looking at are enrichment for the dogs as they're staying in the shelter that will prevent de-escalation and behavioral problems that might lead to euthanization again we are also concerned that the persons making the decisions with regard to which dogs are euthanized have not had direct hands-on interactions with the selected dogs again the pathway didn't seem to have been followed when these 10 dogs were euthanized i would like there to be some understanding that dogs will be nervous when first interacting with medical staff and giving a grace period for that perhaps having the behaviorist present to facilitate initial interactions with medical staff and also i would like to proffer that euthanization should require a sign-off by a behaviorist and other members of the outreach team who have actually interacted with the dogs hopefully multiple times in advance of any decision to euthanize um i'm just going to flip my screen quickly very nice um so i would also like to emphasize advanced notice of plans to euthanize we heard from a community a member that was was told there is no euthanization list i question how that's possible if there are weekly meetings about what dogs are at risk how is there no list available to the public um and if there aren't that means that the decisions are being made with less than a week's notice which doesn't seem sufficient for an evaluation um i would like to know how many days will elapse between the the portions of the uh the flow chart that allowed for rescue plea and the next step because of course once you make the plea you have to give the public time to respond and i'm also interested in the the um phone the caller's uh idea of pledging to rescue i know myself i have done that in many cases for dogs all across the country um and then finally i would just like to emphasize that in vetting the candidates for the awkward director position i think the first question should be do you like dogs i i think it's something that's simple but maybe overlooked um and cats as well and i would like to make sure that those candidates have significant experience at a successful um high live release rate shelter and emphasis on hiring someone with experience on the adoption and foster side and the same with the veterinarian thank you thank you all right next speaker good comments hi my name is i'm chris stoichi you probably saw me here last time talking about um the uh spay neuter um i'm going to say what patricia said basically we all are very much on the same wavelength with her um one of the things that i'd like to with a managed intake one thing that um commissioner parizia had mentioned about what to do with all the stray dogs and the managed intake now i was one of the um uh volunteers there during crate days i'm sure you've heard of crate days mary helen we were certainly there and and we don't definitely do not want to ever go back to that i mean that talk about quality of life i think they're better on the street i mean that may be a horrible thing to say but um crate dogs were or just it was just a mess that was just not a way to live um so what can we do about that and i think i was trying to make the um the point about spay neuter and we heard from our um shelter director that they're going in a direction of low-cost spay and neuter but i think we also one of the points i made last time was meet people where they are we may not get people being able to take their animals to the shelter for these spay neuters um making uh places where they can do that is really important i know there's been um mobile units that have gone out into the community to do to do that um obviously with the uh the backyard breeders that might be a well a very good um way to get them also on board uh with that um when i first came to gainesville and we had a a shelter dog it wasn't a shelter dog it was a somebody had it at the feed store and we adopted the dog and um i called the shelter and they actually had vouchers where you could go to a vet um there was a list that would have uh they would give you a low low cost and i was very poor back then and went out and got it and we got her spade and um that might be another excuse me another um path to follow or go down the line or just i really really believe that we really need to start where the problem is occurring and that is too many dogs out there and um one way we can definitely fix that is spay neuter microchip clinics i know there were some previously and i think that's that's also another thing just to i think there were three last year um microchip clinics if we could enhance that too because i think that really helped we want to get the dogs back to where they belong if at all possible um so i think that's what i wanted to let you know about and to thank you for taking us all so seriously i mean that's been very obvious and we really really appreciate it thank you so thank you thank you for your comments okay next speaker hi pamela blissetti again um i don't know what's going on with the numbers and i don't know why they're so difficult to get right because even i am struggling with them i went through all of the reports for 2025 that are posted on the website and i came out with an 88.85 live release rate of course that was december still sitting at 79. then when i went through a different i think it was the quarterlies it came out as 89.56 so i don't know somewhere along the numbers just aren't driving i'm not getting it so i'm disappointed in that i feel like it should be a little tighter um who was not in the room when that those decisions were made was the behaviorist and the adoption coordinator so if who was in the room is animal control and i i sympathize with their dilemma of coming in with these dogs where do we put them but if that's who's making the decision there's a little bit of a conflict of interest here and i don't know that they've ever even worked with those dogs my husband is a regular volunteer they are new half of those dogs and said at least half of them were very adoptable so i'm having trouble buying this whole scenario it just happens to be when there's a we just happen to euthanize 26 dogs when there's a big case coming in it just doesn't drive the one thing that's not being counted also when callers call in and they're told we don't have room release the dog or release the animal there's no accountability for that where are we accounting for that how are we planning for our future without knowing what is going on there because it's happening on a daily basis it's happening constantly so i don't know how we're gauging the need of the community without actually you know doing some record keeping on that so i just want to suggest that that could be shored up a bit thank you thank you all right anyone else any other speakers okay go once go twice all right let's bring it back to the board thank you all for uh your input the staff for your comments um commissioners any other discussions uh miss leaver mr chair i think it is important to say publicly and i'm i know you as the board know this there's been a lot of things said about operations about how things happen at the shelter um you know we've already expressed appreciation for for travis and his staff but i also really want to make sure that i express sincere appreciation to all the staff who work out there every day and you know the comments that are made and such i know that they they feel those and i want them you know to know that we all appreciate them and how hard they work very very much and um we couldn't do the job we do without them so i just want to make sure that they hear that thank you for saying that commissioner presia and then commissioner yeah actually i mean michelle kind of took the words out of my mouth i was actually going to one say thank you to you all you've been sitting here so patiently this whole time listening to all of this and i'm sure it hits home it's really hard to hear critiques or criticisms and also just frustration you know knowing that we've been trying with the new shelter and these new ideas and it keeps being kind of a moving target for us um because of leadership because of facilities because of locations and so just a big thank you and an apology to you all for all that you have to deal with as a result of just shifting sand some of which probably could be in our control and some of a lot of which we don't have a lot of control over but we're trying our best um and we really appreciate your input and i a big thank you to commissioner wheeler for going out there and being our eyes and ears on the ground you know we each kind of have our things that we we pay close attention to and i appreciate that you pay close attention to this one um i guess i wanted to say i am 100 in agreement the behaviorist absolutely should be and must be in the room making decisions about whether a dog is too aggressive so i would like to add to my motion that the behaviorist be required to be at euthanasia decisions as a fun at and because that just doesn't make any sense to me that the person who's most qualified to look at a dog and decide if they're too aggressive wouldn't be in the room and i'm i don't know whether they were or weren't but i i hope that for our policies that that would be the case moving forward that we would add that to our policy so i'd like to add that to my motion that we update our policies to include a behaviorist at all euthanasia decisions um and the only other question i had is on the um microchip clinics are those just like is that like a free clinic what are what are the microchip clinics so we often have um groups that reach out to us that they want to do vaccine clinics they want to do microchip clinic they the community comes out of the woodwork to help us at the shelter and i'm so grateful for all of their efforts and so whenever we do have those resources step forward we i i'm pretty sure always say yes and we just coordinate a really great day and time we try and market it on our social media and that that's generally how that happens okay we have the blood mobile coming out on valentine's day so if anybody's interested in donating blood we'll certainly waive fees for all uh blood donors awesome well i just wanted to throw out there it sounds like that's another one along with the the spay and neuter clinics maybe there's something we could do there um in conjunction with the licensing work that we've been doing you know so people who they're getting their pet license it's a great chance for them to get a microchip maybe we can offer a deal there they pay their licensing free they get fee they get a free microchip or something like that so just an effort to try to incentivize people on that front thank you mr alford yeah yeah just echo on that i mean i have you've heard me say i've got four cats and three dogs and um i really hate going to the vet because whenever i go to the vet they want to sell me every thing in the world and i'm like you know i can save more animals or i can do all of these things for my dog that you think i need to do but i have to choose and so having those i think having those clinics are so important so that people can get the necessary required care for animals without being subject to um hard cell tactics at the vet and not that i don't want to give my animals the best care um but i wanted to uh comment on patricia antonucci's comments because you made so many good suggestions and you had a obviously a list that you had written down and i tried to take notes but i wasn't fast enough so i was going to ask if you could please email those suggestions to us so that we can um have them you can email us all at bocc at alatra county dot us yeah you conclude i conclude um okay before i get to the manager um what is the timing of the 33 applicants when can we expect to have um an offer and a new director mr chair so the uh application period closes this friday and uh because there are 33 of them are outside consulting firm they have to go through and vet all of those candidates so i'm hoping that late february early march we can conduct the interviews and that hopefully it's on an april agenda for board confirmation okay and as part of the the questions is one of them about a successful you know their experience with a successful shelter and we can certainly make that one of the questions and and maybe how many dogs and cats do you currently have living in your home yeah well i mean i i mean yeah we can make that but i think um patricia had some pointed that i thought were really effective questions that um i would like to be added to that list so if you can when you email when you i know you monitor our bocc when that list comes through if you can make sure that we are asking the right questions that's important thank you okay michelle did you have anything yes i would just from an operational standpoint and i know we have staff here so they can jump in if they don't agree my concern with the board's direction that absolutely the behavioral list has to be present what if that behavioral list is out for three weeks on fmla what if we have so from an operational perspective as an absolute i do have concerns i understand the the point but i am you know or if that individual is no longer you know an employee and we're in a search i'm not sure from an operational perspective as an absolute that a hundred percent works and i'm kind of looking at staff if they're gonna say nope absolutely and it may be months before we can make such decisions that's the only thing that concerns me with that as an absolute yeah i guess i'll respond and mary you know from my perspective if we if that is a an issue then you should bring that back to the board and say we're having an issue our behavior list isn't available and then we can say well get someone at uf or do something else or okay that's fine but it will cause a level of accountability that i believe from my perspective is probably needed until we can um change the level of trust in the community but i don't know mary i i was going to suggest that or perhaps um we could substitute the veterinarian because most veteran veterinarians have training and i i see the community is okay with that idea but veterinarians have training in animal behavioral science stuff so i don't know is that is that an option that staff feels like could be managed so whenever we do have a veterinarian on staff they are part of the team that has these discussions um something that my staff had just suggested is that our the the behaviorist supervisor does participate in these conversations and so if it's okay with the board we either have the outreach supervisor or the vet uh the behaviorist and then of course the um veterinarian would be a part of the group regardless and currently the outreach supervisor is part of the team you know unless she's sick or vacation or something like that i'm okay with that i'm okay with that okay and and i and we're getting a lot of nods from the audience yeah i'm i'm fine with that as long as we've got a process i just want to make sure i and i don't i don't i genuinely don't think it was intentional but you know i mean making the the decision to euthanize 10 dogs is a big deal you know it's a lot of animals at once it's going to cause a stir in the community i also think a heads up to us a heads up to the manager like this is happening these dogs have been a problem for a while their behavior they're deteriorating in their cages it's time to make this call and the behaviorist agrees with us like would be helpful so that we can manage those expectations and have those conversations with people in the community as well so that's a that's not an emotion but it's an aside like it would be much appreciated if we're in a situation like this again that we get the heads up and we can ask the question so we can ask the questions as well thank you okay so we did modify that as part of the motion seconder is okay with it uh any further discussions from this board on the motion okay all those in favor of the motion say aye aye anybody opposed the motion is unanimous okay so that's the 5-0 thank you uh staff thank you gina thank you michelle appreciate you all being here and uh thank you all very very much yep okay we'll see you uh at the end of april if not sooner okay sounds great all right madam clerk let's move on to the next item this will bring us to request to advertise an amendment to the plant development zoning for alachua county property located at waldo road and northeast 63rd avenue weisman and eco loop properties and miss daniels are you doing this one mr chair i have a team okay you are recognized you and your team are recognized i may need help pulling finding the item folders okay good afternoon mr chair commissioners missy daniels alachua county manager's office um we've got several people here this really probably in the end it won't it's not my item but since it's so many departments i'm going to go ahead and start um just giving you reminding you where the weisman and eco loop properties are they're up behind and beside levita brown and i'll show you the site before i go back to the language so this is the site you can see what's already out there and everything in red is part of the plan development we're going to be talking about um as you know in december thank you to your county manager the reverter got released off of the property we're waiting for the official paperwork i've been told by the state that we'll get it by the end of this week there'll be at least one document for you to sign because we're replacing the fairground placing the fairground restrictions on the ag and equestrian center where our fairgrounds is and removing them from this property so the placement may require also the state has a first right of refusal on the weisman property where the fairgrounds restrictions were or still are but are about to be removed so that's one of the issues that we're bringing the plan development request to amend the plan development to you the other is as you know waste-based industry at the eco loop has not materialized we've brought several different groups to you that wanted to go out there hasn't happened it's not it's just not been the market for it at this point so um we need to amend the pd anyway because it has all the reverter language about the fairgrounds but we would are proposing to amend the zoning out there which does cover the eco loop and the weisman property to remove that reverter language of course and then to broaden the industrial uses allowed and we can have a conversation about how broad those go and we've got gus and sean here and jeff here to talk about the process and any questions you have with amending the pd if you need it just showing you what's in the master plan now there were a ton of conditions a lot of those will stay a lot of them will go with the reverter there are a couple of paragraphs about the fairgrounds language but we would bring that to you in a form that you can actually see it and here you can see the site plan that was adopted as part of that plan development and again we'll get into that when we bring you back the changes um so there's some some different areas that are in the plan development and their specifications you've got some conservation management area out there that's already there that andy has been managing that was approved as part of your plan development public fairgrounds is what will go away waste related industrial services and then you've got some roadways and other things out there this is all part of what's on included in that plan development that you adopted again you see i know this is hard to read but just showing you all the different conditions so the waste related and the fairgrounds we definitely are removing we're suggesting that we open it up to uses allowed in the land use which is heavy industrial for the whole site and those uses in our code if you and this is the just for the plan development language of what's out there what we can market we know there are some uses that you're not going to want to see out there that are industrial we can add them into the pd that they're not allowed but also remember even if we kind of open it up to all uses under our um have heavy industrial land use that you always have the right to say yes or no because it's your property so any use anybody that we find that wants to go out there it is going to come to you because right now at least for the eco loop we're doing it as leases and you know in the end if you decided to sell off pieces it would still come to you and you would know who what was going there and and could put restrictions on it um so we are recommending that of course you remove the fairground use reverter language that we broaden the industrial uses and we can have the conversation now about what those include and um then we wanted to let you know and and gus and sean went to these meetings they can talk to you about this but changing the uses just on the eco loop part we're just going to make it consistent with weisman now so that the whole property allows the same kind of uses to come in unless you want them differently because they're all under the same zoning right now those changes getting away from just waste space not that waste space wouldn't be allowed but getting away from that were discussed at your advisory boards and gus and sean can give you an update i think we have talked about that in some cases when we've brought partner i mean potential people to you but if you have questions about that so um at this point we would recommend if we have a good enough conversation right now we would recommend to go ahead and start with the neighborhood meeting let the growth management department start working towards the rezoning and then bring you back the changes if you would rather see them first and maybe one of your off tuesday meetings where we could discuss what we're proposing it really depends if you decide to open it up and say any heavy industrial use now there are uses that we can't do because of the airport as well besides the uses that you guys don't want to see out there so that does restrict it as well but with that that's a quick overview so good okay commissioner alford and commissioner presia um i i personally would like to hear what the neighbors have to say about what they would like to see out there also so in terms of that um i i would propose and move staff's recommendation okay do i have a second second a second motion second okay thank you commissioner presia and then commissioner wheeler yeah i was just going to say i i'm i'm all for expanding the definition and for everything that we're kind of moving towards i think it's the right direction we clearly we're way too narrow and i think in terms of our focus which is why we haven't been successful but i do think we do need to keep some guard rails around what we want to do out there and not just be like throw the doors wide open to heavy industrial um especially given the challenges we've had in this community with some of our you know some of our business partners and the in the incompatibility with neighbors and things like that because i know there aren't a lot of neighbors out there but i want to make sure what we're doing is meeting the values that this community has and and what we want to see in terms of the types of employers and the types of businesses we have in our community so i would love to just see it come back to us after you've had the neighborhood meetings and you've kind of made the call about what that language looks like for how we're going to expand the definitions of what's allowed out there um and i would just i know staff already know this but i would just ask them to keep in mind the ideas of a circular economy um as we think about that and when you say come back are you thinking like um staniel's recommended in a tuesday meeting yeah i am too that's a good idea okay commissioner wheeler i just have a question do we have anybody online that we're looking at for either place that you know nothing nothing okay all right thank you okay thank you so my my only comment is i'm i am a firm firm believer that once the um the the army reserve is up and running we're going to have a lot of opportunities for that space and so i'm i'm interested in hearing what the neighborhood meeting comes back staff's ideas are about opening it up at that tuesday meeting prior to us adopting it but i i think please make sure that we include them in the neighborhood meeting so that we contact the reserve because i think we're going to have subcontractors that are going to be servicing that facility that are going to have opportunities for that area um whenever you're finished i'll finish mr chair um i just wanted to to clarify the motion um in terms of the procedural step for growth management so the the pd rezoning will require a neighborhood workshop per our code and typically at those we you know we go forward with a proposal um what i may suggest is that um from staff's perspective and we'll have a discussion internally but we would go we never have a problem from an application procedural standpoint if an applicant proposes something broad gets neighborhood input says okay we're going to make changes we're going to have additional buffers here we're going to reduce this use they're not allowed this use and then we'll come forward with a staff recommendation but in terms of just expeditiously moving the process along we would intend this neighborhood workshop to be the official neighborhood workshop where we're moving forward with the pd and then it can it can get narrower from there but we'll probably start pretty broad so if you're hearing from neighbors that it includes a bunch of industrial uses and we'll we'll be very upfront about that with the community yeah i'm okay with that okay is everybody okay with that any objection okay yep you've got consensus on that all right so we've got a motion in a second any public comment any of you all want to talk us out of the motion nope okay great let's bring it back to the board all those in favor say aye aye all opposed motion is unanimous excellent thank you mary thank you missy um so much okay okay let's move on madam clerk next item is the do-si-do presentations presentations all right so facilities management master plan quarterly update and the recommend action is to listen to travis good afternoon mr chair i'm board travis parker facility director and i have kind of taken this plan and it was the do-si-do and we talked about the master plan i've kind of incorporated a lot of other projects into it to kind of give you an update it is not all-encompassing but i do touch on the highlights so we'll start with the courthouse that is our largest project right now we have target dates finally if you've been out there you've seen we have we've actually started work we are working on the storm water we're i'll get to that here in a minute um so the the building pad for the cep is really the start of what we're doing we need to get that ready so we can get them in first um you know previously i've spoken about the process and how we need to move one group in and then get another one in um so that we don't hold each other up so central energy plant so that is um the the first step so we're looking forward to march 16th um that is our target date we hope to hit that um so that we have a pad ready and we can get hoffman construction in there and they can start you know building that portion of the project um right behind that we hope to have the parking garage pad ready uh may 18th so and then you'll see shortly thereafter june 8th we hope to have ajax mobilizing so what took us forever to get to this point we're we're trying to you know make up some time now um and we're doing a pretty good job of that regarding the courthouse um we expect to see ajax deliver us the um 100 construction document gmp if you'll remember i brought one to you guys um maybe two months ago for the early release package so we can start ordering some of those long lead items this will be um for the actual construction of the courthouse so all encompassing of that courthouse we hope to see that mid-february towards the end and then hope to bring that back to you sometime in april um for your review approval if all goes as planned we hope to have the notice to proceed to them in april and they mobilize in june um to actually start constructing the courthouse goal is to be fully complete by march 2028 i say that and i have bolded it um because i've stood up here several times and i say this is our date this is our date you know and and every time something seems to come up so that is our target goal so we're gonna we're gonna focus on that i put this in there um not so much so you can see it now but so you have it in backup you know documents so this is kind of the timeline of where we are now and this red line is where we are so we're kind of just getting started but you can kind of see between now and june um all the steps in the site work to get us where we need to be some progress photos these are a little dated um they've made some progress since then but you know we're getting utility structures in um a lot of demo that type stuff um some more photos of that that's the courthouse um this another portion of the the master plan is fire rescue headquarters and the eoc so we are working on that um just some key information so original substantial completion was october um that was 180 days um we approved a time extension for asbestos abatement we had to do containment it it took some time so they extended their contract we also have decided to replace the air handlers which we weren't going to do we're going to reuse them but once we got them down from the ceiling now is the time to replace those before we enclose them they're um they're going to get tight everything gets tight you know so now it just makes sense to replace them now so that's what we're doing um so so the lead times on that equipment um did extend us a little bit but our revised substantial completion is february 9th are we gonna have a party we'll have a party i'm gonna have a lot of parties okay so so february 9th that's substantial completion remember we got to go through punch list um 30 days or so um to get to final um and that is assuming that they meet that february 9th that's a monday that's close so after completion that kind of moves the the the pieces so fire rescue um where they're currently located would move to the armory emergency management would move there as well um we expected to take several months probably to get the entire process done everybody moves settled you know feeling good about it um in addition to the work that the contractor's doing we're also doing work we're painting the armory landscaping those type things that are separate from the contract itself and then our project is also moving forward goal to be fully complete by may 26th kind of same thing just so you have this this is currently where we are now our finished schedule so you can see towards the end of february we're looking to final punch it some progress photos um they're at the point now where everything is um drywall patch paint um they're got they're they're getting ready to paint it now um this coming week so once they get that in once we get the air handlers in and we'll start um be able to get the floor in um air handles kind of air handlers kind of held us up just a little bit by replacing those um but we're getting close um second floor is in uh mezzanine uh elevator all of those things commissioner alford i i i'm sorry to interrupt while you're doing this but looking at these pictures um made me want to ask i assume you've done some energy modeling and stuff how energy efficient is this building going to be i mean it's an old building i know so we we haven't met with synergistics yet as far as adding it to the list and seeing what that looks like um enhancing the air handlers what we did have in there um was dated um and you know remember we're we're putting all new duct work and all that type stuff in there too so um it is a it is a a block building uh full block building yeah yeah i just um well i guess if you know it was a somebody else was doing the work they would have to submit energy calculations and all of that sure yeah we have um you know our mechanical engineer and it can provide some of that data to you but you know replacement of windows all those type things that we've done to try to enhance the the envelope of the building um should help us oh yeah it should i just i'm just surprised we don't know okay thank you epd growth um another part of the plan was that movement so um epd moves to the existing fire rescue headquarters um doesn't require that much once we get in there we've already been working through some of that process we're still working through our existing building facilities um working through the plan to what that looks like to accommodate the staff that we that we have at growth to make sure that it you know functionally works for what they have okay so outside of the master plan um moving into um east tumbling creek so gray construction is working on site now um just some history change order one was approved for unforeseen conditions um we brought that back several months ago um we did just approve change order two which is zero cost um for inspection delays um semi-permanent power um you know extending completion to february 13th so that's our substantial completion they actually anticipate hitting that um without a doubt so they'll they'll come to us say we want to um do the walkthrough we'll go through the final punch expect 30 days after that you know to get through that final punch list so why why april um that's given that they're going to meet that february 13th they're confident that they can meet it um i'm not saying that i'm not confident um i just think that there's out stuff outside of that as well so like the contract isn't all encompassing you know we're still waiting on signage um to make sure that it's available you know get delivery mailboxes all those type things because i told several people january on these yeah i mean we've been fighting for that um to try to get it there some progress photos um you can kind of see um the facade we've got all the concrete down um exteriors are are pretty much done it's amazing interiors are getting close um still required you know there's i think seven different buildings um here so you know they're working through them a modular building has been um delivered in place you can see it there on the left you put weather stripping into that door yes yes mary's doing the inspection he may so um kind of same thing with forest edge um some of these um some of these dates are are different now um from what i made this presentation we hope to have building a or the contractor hopes to have building a completed by this friday um through the punch list and and all those items and then building b which would be the the second story portion you know the second building there um the following friday so you know two weeks from now so we're going through the last reconciliation change order to close out you know any changes that we had um i will say that part of the project we didn't include um for that one like we did in the budget in was signage mailboxes all of those type things which we're able to get included in here at no you know no cost once we work through that final portion again i say april 26 we're also currently in there working now um landscaping all those type things that weren't included as part of the project we're working on that now go ahead yeah so i want to say something about landscaping in general and i think now might be a good time since you're talking about this project i mean some of them it sounds like we do the landscaping some of it it sounds like we you know it's part of the project i guess you know again i just i really we're doing so much construction and we have a real opportunity to have that landscaping be an example of what we expect and want our commercial commercial landscapes to look like um you know that have the zero escaping that have the really nice native plants that look good and ultimately don't need a lot of water um i feel like right now our strategy is like the least landscaping possible so we don't have to take care of it and i i'm just hoping that as we get all of these upgraded facilities that we really focus on the landscaping being demonstrations and opportunities so i don't know where epd fits into your whole like project list in terms of checklist if they're on the team that talks about things and looks at those sorts of things but if we can just think about that when we're coming up with and this since this is residential like what we would love to see a multi-family residential landscape look like like being able to utilize these things because then our staff can use them when they're having those conversations with the developers we can point to these locations as the examples i would really really appreciate it i'm uh fully on board with that so i think what we've done previously you know we would do these things where you know i mean it was left out you know just left out of the contract you know so we're trying to pick up you know these pieces but you know for the courthouse that's all included um you know and and that stuff you know we met with lacy you know what do you think all these type things so um same thing with fire rescue headquarters uh met with lacy what you know what's our plan um went through um you know what the board adopted you know as far as landscaping codes and such so um we're trying to consider all of that in the process so understood the photos so i i was mentioning um you know some of the stuff that we're doing you kind of see the dirt there on the second story building you know we're going in there and removing all the existing you know stumps and all that type of stuff um and some of the interiors here of those units both the units have full kitchens with a full refrigerator and in both of the apartment okay sunrise um we're hoping to get painted um get painting started on both of those units um next month um we also have a contractor going in um to a unit upstairs and downstairs um to remove asbestos that's in there now um you know it's not it's not touched but once we we start to mess with it we have to we have to evade it so we're going to do that um we're going to expose and while we want to see what um what all is there so you know things that we learned from you know the previous you know renovations you know let's get it all out there so we can see it so we're not going to be hit with change order after change order so um you know cameraing you know things like sanitary lines all that we're doing that now to avoid the the future me standing in front of you guys with that um so we're working with the housing authority to on on some of the stuff that we're currently doing now you know as we wait to get through this process our plan is to do um eight units um at a time four upstairs four downstairs to minimize the the amount of you know corruption that we cause to the folks that are actually living there um it's an open gov we're waiting on a couple things from the architect a couple changes to the project manual as soon as they're in we're gonna release it so we can get that get that project started land conservation complex um a and e's complete um we received the 90 um pedestrian beacon plans today um so we hope to uh it's in open gov now i'm gonna put those in there um and we could try to get that one out um on the street it's ready to go rural collection center um gustin his team met with our team and the uh a and e um this past week so we're starting that conversation that's out in newberry um planning design for that what does that rural collection center look like um how it fits gus's needs and and what does he want all that type of stuff so um we just did that this past week so that one is moving forward um this was a preliminary design i think gus changed it today um so we're gonna make adjustments to that but just to give you an idea the parcel of land in newberry and you know how we'll lay it out fire station number 25 um tech city we received few percent design construction documents remember there's this is a reuse so we're looking at pretty much the same station however the first two stations we had some mechanical things hvac things that we wanted to not reproduce in the third one so kind of have slow walk this one just a little bit until we were sure that the engineers understood what we were saying and that we're not going to duplicate that we they did hire a new engineering group our our architect did lunch group so we're going to try something different this station so minimal changes from the other two small minor reduction square footage the facade though does change because it is in tech city and they're you know trying to to match what's existing in there so you kind of see on this elevation um some of the awnings you know solar panels um those type things so things that we're going to utilize anyway for coverings we're going to try to utilize um solar um because we could put solar on the roof but you're never going to see it so we want to try to identify these are you know the things that we're doing you know to me and and plus you know um help or exceed you know the energy use what are the weird diamonds on the windows oh that's just a note uh disregard those yeah yeah they were okay it's not a design it is not no i was like that's not okay no so um you kind of kind of see here um from this view what that looks like and again those structural components are to match what is in there you know we ran this through mitch glazer and he said these are things i'd like to see um i will say last week we ran into a um an easement thing uh with duke you know so we might have to adjust some of this um but right now at 50 this is the design open to feedback on that too you know we can relay it back to um mr glazer is there is there a building going next to it at some point i i believe it's a park a park because there's that big blank wall it was usually you would see that if there was another building going yeah there's a park there maybe we'll get a mural on it noted um fire training facility um we've reopened this now that the farmers market has you know vacated and actually gone to tech city so um eda is back on board they're working through design now that we're going to look at what does that facility look like you know if we're not working around um allocating space for the farmers market and what does that look like on the weekends all that kind of stuff so as the concepts are developed um we will bring that back to you all um for review i believe chief will be doing that um we are going to tour uh northport their training facility next month um to gather some ideas two comments on that one commissioner um at the legislative day last week uh the two senators and the three representatives are very much in favor of our appropriations requests for that uh and then i spoke to mitch actually this morning and last week they had over 2300 people at the farmers market it's been very very successful while we're sheeped at tech city uh the last slide is basically our capital so outside of the projects that we're doing large construction projects we have a lot of other projects so um these are preservation projects um we have about 9 million and 60 active projects so things like chiller replacements spoiler replacements a lot of work at the jail um you know a lot of the the door replacement that is in open gov now we're going to solicit for that replacing dishwasher machine rooftop units at the jail window glazing um you know the warehouse build out renovations in various fire stations so we have a lot of other projects going on that are not encompassed in that master plan or those other larger projects but just to kind of give an idea of you know we're doing those things but we're also you know working through all these preservation projects as well and that concludes my presentation okay commissioners questions uh commissioner alford on the pod renovations at the jail is that's going to require them to um reduce jail populations in order to allow those renovations to move forward no we um right now we generally have one that's that's open enough or or or we coordinate with them oh it's too bad okay okay okay commissioner frizia i think they're working pretty hard on getting jail population down i i they are working they are working on it um so i appreciate that um i i wanted to ask a couple of things i guess um about the apartments um i know we have the um container home that's also going to be going in we have the pilot one and we have the land associated with it for additional units how when is that project starting and how many units are we able to cover with the existing funding that we have so right now um that the civil site work for that portion of the project um has been well it was coming to you guys for award it had already been bid um but we're working through the funding now um so when the contractor um you know we put 108 days on those two apartments um feasibly it just couldn't be done um so you know some of that funding we were allocating for that portion is going to you know pay for some of the portion that they didn't get completed by september 30th the contractor so we're working through the the funding side of that now so as soon as we get that worked out we're going to be bringing you the award for that civil site work for the second for the second phase yeah container home container home portion of the project and that site work would be for all whatever all all the units yeah it'll it'll be for all the units it's it's basically setting the site ready so all we have to do is deliver units gotcha okay thank you chris rufford i forgot to say something i just wanted to say travis we really really appreciate you it's so wonderful to get these updates and i you look a little tired i hope you're getting enough sleep and i'm aging in dog years but i i did want to say that i this is just such a great change to get this level of communication and detail and and i i just wanted to say thank you so yep ditto ditto ditto yep travis thank you great work um and anything else commissioners on this item all right let's keep moving then travis appreciate you very much all right madam clerk next item that will bring us to update on forward focus initiative okay recommended action is to receive this presentation as well he's trying to talk him into staying up here to give this presentation but he's leaving good afternoon again commissioners missy daniels um i might have a presentation for you travis's seemed to lock up it wouldn't go away and now mine won't open well in that case let's blame mark because he's not here he's watching though yep so mark we are blaming you for that but you've got help is on the way there you go here sean again appointed to a board if you're not here we can't appoint mark no sean saved the day thank you okay good afternoon again um so we want to update you it's been just over a year since you gave us the direction to go out into the eastern part of the county um i'm going to start and remind the public and everybody where we were and then i'm going to turn it over to sean for our exciting summit we had in october and where we're going um and i will just tell you also that we are giving this same report we're not going to go through the entire thing with the cities but you asked for the western cities to hear about our project as well so we have this going i think the first one is in a couple of weeks archer with archer yeah um so that was mary's direction it was yeah yeah i just i've gotten questions from other places yeah we're going to tell them about we're going to give them the whole report so they can see the kinds of things that we've done or the whole powerpoint but the presentation will be a little different because they haven't heard about it yet so if you recall when we were here before we had laid out a three-year plan and the first year was going to be listening the second year was going to be really figuring out what we were doing and the third year was all about getting money to do what the projects that we can't fund or that are bigger so we like to say three years lasting impact and we really hope that happens um just talked about the three phases so if you remember the study area was um it started kind of as a resident who came from island grove about the 301 corridor area and we expanded it so it's basically the eastern third of the county that we've been holding our meetings in which is about 18 000 people a little over almost 19 000 people population in that area that was defined uh 210 000 acres 594 square miles you can see the residential units commercial acreage and agricultural acreage which of course is very high for the eastern part of the county again here's the three phases so the first phase was the community profile and what we've done with that is a series of listening sessions we went out to all over that eastern side of the county and held our listening sessions and had really good input and and a lot of people showing up at most all of them we also created a community survey that we sent out and a lot of that sean will talk about that in a minute but informed our summit that we had in october but we got a lot more input from the community that way i think you should all be getting our newsletters that keep getting sent out our intern we have him until may and then he's going to law school but he's been he's been incredible and he's been working really closely with sean to get those out to let everyone know what we're doing we have ours in city page which is also a quick way for people who are signed up for that to see what's going on and then they can get to our actual project website page with all of the information we had our year-end summit in october to kind of bring together okay now we've had all these listening sessions we invited people back with some subject matter experts a couple of you guys attended that and we got an economic mobility and opportunity grant in the middle of this that helped us hold that summit and helped us do a lot of work and sean and i went to two different locations with icma to meet with colleagues that also got this grant and to also get trained on a lot of the software and the data that's out there and how we can use it so it was a really worthwhile grant and just happened to fit right into this how much was that grant it was 24 000 yeah that's good that's great and and we spent it with um with our intern and with our summit and we're able to really it it really helped us move forward and gave us a lot of ideas that we probably wouldn't have had this might be where i transitioned to him so i'm going to transition to sean and he'll tell you about our summit and where we're headed and i will say we also tried to get another grant with icma to get a person if you remember in the beginning we told you we might need a person who's well versed in these types of things to come in and analyze once we get our data and help us figure out projects to move forward we did not get that grant but that is still on the table because we still have because of the grant we still have the funding that you've allocated to this project as we move forward and with that i will let sean talk to you thank you missy sean mclinton economic development manager for lots of county very please be here uh this has been a great experience for us again this is a a multi-disciplinary effort um i think that's why that we've made such progress uh and have so many deliverables to review with you at this one year review i want to especially thank uh commissioners uh wheeler and commissioner prisia for attending this summit again that was meant to be the the culmination of what we're doing we're listening we're we're here first to understand what's going on in this part of the community a big part of the community it doesn't have a lot of the advantages of the the central lodge county or western lodge county but seen such explosive growth over the past 20 or so years because there's such diversity uh diversity of populations diversity of history and there's no one uniform answer to what the future needs to be and that's what we're trying to to develop with them hand in hand figuring out what are next steps supposed to be uh in the lead up to the summit uh we issued out a survey and the survey was mostly about getting those um quantitative questions that could help us focus in on what are the things that we need to discuss in a qualitative way so that's what led to the the three one-hour topic discussions where we brought in subject matter experts and again i'd like to just a very quick shout out to the folks that helped us out with post-secondary education and workforce you had such a matter experts uh christine brown and bishop stokes for health and well-being uh charlie hutchfield and sharon serency as well as early childhood and youth that would be simon souk and mia jones so these are all people that either are you know university of florida affiliated or they are local leaders in these subject matters that we asked to come in and help lead these conversations with the community it wasn't just staff saying these things it was people that were either academically uh uh engaged in these questions or they were actively engaged inside of the community doing this work so we're really pleased with that because i think that added a lot of value to the conversation uh some of the key themes of course were that emerged out of the survey questions and also about what we learned as part of the icma economic mobility and opportunity were developing workforce uh looking at health services and thinking about early childhood issues uh some of the things that came out of the survey work as well that we heard over and over again that were really important to the community were the state of the roads the quality of internet access and food access as far as kind of the pre-summit work with the survey work there was a great interest in uh the post-secondary programs or lack of access to them this is geographically separated from a lot of where the major universities institution areas are so it's it's hard to get to where you need to be um there are limited job opportunities if you pull any numbers uh from uh just looking at on the map information from the u.s census uh there's there are a limited number of economic opportunities in this part of the community right now uh and also which came up in the survey were the transportation barriers so as part of the conversation we had um some of the discussions uh you know expanding fiber next or that can ameliorate some of the the transportation barriers that exist you know can alachua county partner with uh existing providers maybe find ways of of of getting uh the internet connection that they need how can we promote uh more uh trade school opportunities was a discussion point uh career source was a part of the conversation so uh their work with apprenticeships was a major part of the conversation as well as how the county can support small local businesses and exploring a santa fe college satellite campus so like a lot of this uh centered around that as we understand it santa fe college is looking at an opportunity in hawthorne right now we're very excited about that that's a one of those central big block issues uh that's a longer term commitment not something that's uh really classified as an early win just yet but we're really uh enthusiastic about that because that could be transformational for east side especially with all the transportation issues and having access that seems to be really central to the workforce opportunity there um was career source involved in any of these uh takeaway discussions i'm just curious because it seems like there could be a real role here so christine brown actually helped to lead the workforce conversation and she's with career source right so but is there further discussion about how career source could be a partner in achieving some of these takeaways or are we there we're not there yet never mind i'm just stepping ahead you're you're you're jumping to my final slide okay i'm sorry so i i think that uh that is a very valid question i i think as we go into year two uh and uh the spoiler alert um i think what we're going to need to be able to do is to go back to our subject matter experts to go back to our all of our institutional partners and uh create stakeholder groups to be able to further explore these questions there's going to be things that uh and this is what we told folks in hawthorne at our very first meeting they said well are you going to wait to the end of year three to get something done and what we're telling everybody is that if we can fix something now if we can fill that pothole if we can repair that stop sign if we can do the things that we are fully capable of doing we're going to do those things right now those are our early wins for the things that are going to take us a little longer to figure out we're going to need help we're going to talk about this we're going to figure out a strategy and a plan that's really what year two is about as we go on to year three of thinking about what those possible funding sources are okay yeah sorry to interrupt i just was curious about no no please feel free to ask questions um health and well-being again uh charlie hutchfield and uh sharon cerncy helped us with these questions again seeing a lot of barriers uh as part of the survey work and in terms of availability options within the communities there uh the rest reference long wait times and cost and again transportation rearing its head again as an issue area being able to get from here to there um uh health and well-being is often tied into the question of availability of of of quality food services and uh a lot of these folks they they live in eastern alachi county but they have to travel into the center of the community to be able to get their groceries for the day so not a lot of food options again top takeaways of our qualitative discussions at the event we want to bring these essential services closer for the residents there and explore partnerships again working with institutional partners and how can we uh create food access to non-traditional models i think you know we're exploring some of these thoughts right now certainly um the unfortunate government shutdown that we all experienced in october through november it uh propelled staff into an opportunity to um think about alternative mechanisms and i think we learned a lot from that experience and we're we're building upon that as we go forward because a lot of the solutions to that happen to have a source in eastern alachua county so thanks to our partner uh froxon organics who based out of there they were providing some of the resources to the family resource centers so we we think that uh as we we look for solutions sometimes they can be found right in the middle of eastern alachua county which is very encouraging uh in the survey talking about children's needs uh there is a need although the the the demographics for eastern alachua county tend and trend to be lower than central and western alachua county there is still an overwhelming need for according to the survey that we had for child care for ages zero through five uh after school programs were a high priority teen programs and teen job opportunities again one of the very first conversations we had in hawthorne uh some of the high school students there were talking about it's it it costs too much to fill up my car to go take a job somewhere and there's we need to have opportunities in our community here so how can we help with that that's what they were asking us at the time um a lot of takeaways on uh early childhood uh issues and and again these are things that actually we're we're in conversations with commissioner alford about on a regular basis we're exploring many of these same issues uh looking for opportunities for institutional spaces uh thinking about where we can have partnerships uh and how do we have uh other add-ons to uh create uh uh job opportunities within those sectors so none of this is is uh unique to eastern alachua county i think all of alachua county are experiencing these same conditions of this service sector has had exponential growth and cost what we really have for child care services is a problem of affordability not necessarily so much of availability but that's that's kind of contingent upon where you're at there's some deserts there's some there are some child care deserts and so within uh the the eastern alachua county area we hear more about child care deserts than we would within central or western for availability of services now i'm good again some of the cross-cutting themes across all the sectors that we hear uh how how can the county help to address the digital divide um you know that's primary for getting people connected and making people uh feel better connected to commerce to government services all the things that uh are necessary uh the transportation out challenges uh it's it's a it's far away and they aren't connected transit out there um they have a desire that each one of these communities a mccanopy is different from a gordon is different from a melrose and all of them have their own take on what they would like to see for health care services or child care services or what their economy to look like and we're trying to recognize that that it's not a one-size-fits-all answer when we come back with a solution so a desire for small-scale community-friendly solutions that's what we're trying to answer these questions with uh and there's a strong preference to preserve the rural character you hear that over and over again uh from from all the groups out there uh they they do not appreciate it when people come into our county and dump their waste and our our county preserves we get an earful about that they they do not appreciate when there are you know the agricultural lands are are being run over they want to preserve the scale and scope of things as they are and they also want to have you know things amenities in their communities as well so it's a it's a very complex conversation that we're having with all of these communities so year two again we've got things that we can have early wins for the things that we think we can accomplish and we're trying to catalog those and work those through the various departments things that are under our control there's those intermediate steps and then there's a long term that's what year two and year three are going to be about building towards and also in year two is building that partnership implementation working with community community task force working with our institutions and and uh figuring out how we can best synthesize what we've heard and then what we also know in terms of data sets and that you leads to year three and that's about implementation year three is either implementing grant opportunities or or figuring out what the bigger questions that lay before us there's some things that are beyond our current uh capital resources so we're going to have to look for assistance and we're going to always continue to engage with these communities because these are not one-offs uh this is going to require an ongoing commitment to continue to work with eastern alachia county and keeping our focus forwarded and that's all okay thank you for that presentation we've got commissioner wheeler and commissioner alford and then commissioner prezio thank you sean that's a great report uh you guys have really been covering a lot of ground and i appreciate that um i i have a question um from the summit i met someone there who was living in the cross creek area who's just new newly moved in and was trying to build a spot for themselves and him and his family and the point that he made to me that i'm stuck in my head that i haven't addressed yet with this board is you know the population of some of the smaller communities are older folks and yes they are interested in maintaining their rural character the other side of that though is what it does is cut down on opportunities for the younger people to actually build businesses in those areas and so i it just hadn't occurred to me that we needed we needed to look at that dynamic as well um older folks like me you know we're settled want to just kind of just kind of hang out you know we're ready to be done and we don't want to see all this new stuff coming in but we do want our kids to stay and work you know next door there's nothing to work um so i i think that's something that we need to kind of keep in the back of our minds too because uh we focus a lot on children and child care but not so much on elder care and uh i think you know the uh the emphasis that you know the children's trust is put on the needs of of the younger ones is important and i know that there are different agencies working you know with elder care and that sort of thing but i don't think as a board we focused on that and it might be something that we need to somehow integrate into our conversations as we are looking for resources especially in the outlying areas that have no uh transport where i have transportation issues um so you know we that wasn't anything that i put on the list when i was there uh but hearing it from this fella i i realized that we don't talk a whole lot about the needs you know we talk about food deserts so we talk about getting food out into the community but maybe that means taking the next trip and getting the food into the community um homes of those people or having access or um getting the mobile units out there to not just be looking at the young families but looking at our elders that are hiding out in the woods you know so anyway just sharing that with you that was something i took from that uh summit but thank you so much for the focus on that side it's been a lot of fun i do want to get back out though to uh rochelle you know where they talked about the facility the building i don't know if it was the old school or not so that we could actually turn that into a community center which is what they were talking so when you guys get that going let me know thank you thank you mr chair okay commissioner alfred and then commissioner prezio i i appreciate your comment commissioner wheeler about uh connecting folks to services the older folks i think i i answered my question not the comment but i think the key is connecting people to services that um you know we want people to be able to age in play so connecting them up with services to help them achieve that safely and those kinds of things is probably you know when you've got folks that are transportation limited and are limited in their connection to the internet all of those things it's harder to connect them to the services that are out there so um i i think that's uh you know transportation goes sort of both ways sometimes but i what i wanted to say um is i have not heard one negative comment about this entire process i have heard so many good things from peoples from leadership from waldo to hawthorne when i met with the new hawthorne uh city manager he had only great things to say about this whole um process and so i i just and and he had said that he had heard from so many residents that they were just so pleased that we were doing this so i really wanted to pass that on that um i i don't think that um i think you guys are doing a great job i just uh the entire forward focus team you see you know everyone here at one point in time from county departments has been a part of these conversations so it's a it's a broad county effort it is a broad county effort and i think it's a very successful one too so i just wanted to say thank you for that and um i i think that the all those communities are really appreciative of the time and effort and focus that you not to double use the word the focus you guys are bringing to them so thank you good comments i couldn't agree more commissioner presia yeah i definitely echo the thanks to everybody for being so collaborative and thoughtful about the approach i know you know i think what struck me the most about my experience at the summit and and in your presentation is this idea of this sort of uh tumble this sort of wrestling match in individual's minds and in our community and in our counties around wanting growth and economic development and not wanting change right and i think that at the core and at the crux of a lot of what the work is going to be is going to be how can we how can we foster and facilitate change that gives people the space to voice their challenges and their and their issues with things and have dialogue and conversations i think that's what we've seen in some of these successful developments in eastern elapsicone already with the housing development that's going in off hawthorne road right the developer took the time and energy to have conversations and dialogue with the neighbors and slowly but surely win them over to the to how they could do this in a way that would work for everyone right and so i think that's going to be a big big part of this work it's it's yes it's finding money for projects but i think a lot of it is also facilitating the dialogue and conversations with people around projects that are going to happen or might happen um and helping them understand and have an opportunity for feedback and input into those so that um their concerns are heard so i just appreciate the thoughtfulness with which you're approaching this and um i know it's not going to be easy but i'm excited about the future and i'm excited how local food systems can be a part of that because you know i think it it's clear food access is an issue and it's also clear that it's a hugely agricultural area i mean it's 11 acres per person you know if you do the math like it's a lot of land and not a ton of people and so there's real opportunity for us to think about that to think about ecotourism to think about conservation lands and protections as a as a part of that conversation around economic development payment for ecological services like all sorts of things that we could innovative things that we could be doing that might drive economic development without compromising people's rural ways of life so exciting stuff and i really really appreciate all your work um on this and the only other thing i would say is um you talked about sort of the next steps being kind of like data analysis and kind of like crunching information is is the idea that that would then come out as um like some kind of a report with some strategic goals and activities or what's sort of the outcome of of phase two it's yeah the action plan it's still early steps of taking what we've learned and we we do have some some drafts that we're organizing our thoughts around okay um but a lot of it's taking you know again what we listen to and pairing it with uh economic data that we can say well this is this is what the trends are this is the direction we're heading unless we do something different unless we engage with these the the germs of the ideas that the community has where they would like to go and further develop them so that will be that work okay thank you yeah uh my comments are sean you know i was at the first meeting when the arrows and the spears were flying um and where we are today uh is a really really different place and i attribute that to really the staffs leaning in on all of those issues standing tall and saying we hear you you know we really hear you i do think that as we move into uh year two we're going to be able to implement um and partner with many of our folks that live out there that work out there that recreate out there anna mentioned food systems i know we've had discussions about family resources connecting career source connecting the children's trust connecting santa fe and what's really neat to see is that each community has a uniqueness of how those things are connected mccanopy is really really different than melrose which is very different than waldo and and hawthorne and windsor and rochelle they all have their own uniqueness and how we connect with the support of the county resources to each of those communities the way they want to be connected is really really important um cross creek i know i probably didn't say somebody but i mean they're there are they're each um they each are having a voice and i what i'm hearing from the citizens is that they really appreciate the attentiveness and the expertise of the county staff and the support of meeting them where they are as opposed to us saying here's what here's what we have to do and that's not here's what we have to do it's how can we help you build your community um while still maintaining that rural character that is so important to the people to the 18 000 people that live on 210 acres 10 000 10 200 10 000 acres you know i mean 18 000 people that live on 210 000 acres so that that is uh yeah that's great so great job um the one last thing i wanted to say is i think it's really important i mean we keep talking about sort of transportation as a barrier it just comes up it comes up every single time we talk about an issue rather it's food access or health care access or child care or workforce development like it just continues to come up and so i i think it's important i don't know that we need to have a whole forward focus presentation at mtpo but i do think that it's worth it for us to emphasize that we've done this listening session and that we've worked on an entire third of our county and had those conversations and that transportation disadvantage is a is a key factor that's coming up again and again in every in the surveys and every single listening session um and i think it feeds into the conversation that mtpo is needing to have about regional transit so i just hope that this is something we can provide to the mtpo um as more fuel for that conversation as it becomes relevant yeah because it really does build into from the city's perspective east gainesville and how they're all connected so okay great sean thank you uh chuck i just want to add that i know the transportation is an issue um i remember when um alachua started getting the uh distribution centers and uh transportation was an issue from folks like from gainesville or east gainesville to go to alachua and to come back i think the city of alachua uh spent some money on a bus to do that but it didn't last long because of the cost and that's the problem i think a lot of the rural areas are going to have because of the cost and um you know but if we could expand the regional transit system into those communities you know if it's twice a day or something i think that that would help those folks in terms of employment all that stuff and vice versa for folks to go there you know i'm just saying so i think it's important yeah so i just wanted to add that that's all okay thank you commissioner okay sean missy thank you all and staff for the presentation okay madam clerk next item it's a big one next item will be land conservation projects uh okay i'm gonna mess this up lachusa yeah that lachusa okay connector connected less k2 track option contract to purchase real property okay six million dollar to complete the acquisition there's six recommended actions i won't read them all but um any you're recognized this is a big one it's a good one great thanks very much mr chair commissioners andy chrisman land conservation program manager and i'm here to present uh for your consideration the option contract on as the clerk did very excellently pronouncing lock luciferous connector less k2 um property this is a fee simple acquisition um included in the motions here is a partial assignment potential were we to be awarded a grant that has been applied for to provide assistance funding reimbursement funding for this acquisition that's a typical component of this type of presentation that i usually give um and i'll provide some additional detail on that as we proceed it's one parcel approximately 521 acres currently zoned agricultural with a rural agriculture land use on this map it's right in the center of the map it's that red colored area and you can see directly across county road 325 is the la calusa wildlife conservation area um slightly north up county road 325 is marjorie kinn and rawling state park there's also the county boat ramp there and then the rhymes acquisition that we made about a year and a half ago from the same family the property also fronts orange lake and on this map it's an aerial photo you can see in the red outline that's the property that we're presenting today and you can see that front edge on orange lake there as well the property consists of a mix of upland and wetland habitat basin marsh that's the area going up to orange lake upland mixed forest mesic flatwoods depression marsh basin swamp zero cammock and improved pasture a good portion of the grassy open area is improved pasture it falls within the la calusa forest levy protect levy prairie connector project area that's a high ranking project area within the alachia county forever project area system it's also within the florida wildlife corridor it's in the orange creek basin surface water improvement management plan the cross creek special area study again approximately two miles of shoreline on orange lake and of course orange lake is an outstanding florida water as well that's it that's all that's a pretty good list it's a good list this is a really good property we envision a wide range of potential recreational nature-based recreational opportunities on this property particularly because of the fantastic fantastic vista looking at orange lake that the property affords and the extremely high wildlife diversity that we've already observed on the property primarily birds migratory waiting wetland and upland birds and of course it provides a connection between the lake itself and the la calusa wildlife conservation area that is managed by water management got some images of the property looking out towards orange lake in these current use is agricultural the family has a cattle lease on the property this is a really beautiful picture of a cow uh we get to keep the cow that's right well uh one of the benefits of this property's location also is that um as you've heard stacy greco the water resources program manager talking about the b map allocation and needing to meet those nutrient reductions um changing agricultural uses through land conservation is actually a b map credit that can be claimed so we would not keep the cow um and some some images here um uh in upper right that's our um conservation lands negotiator um staffed in our office by alachua conservation trust michael bird i know you don't frequently get to see him one of our land acquisition team members and in the lower left is a one of the items on the property that's a um slight human like alteration improvement it's an elevated berm driving area that crosses the property for previous management of the property and looking into some of the intact hardwood uplands that are on the property sort of on the southern part and then just some beautiful tree pictures as well so as i mentioned it's a fee simple assignable option contract and that assignment would be from the county to alachua conservation trust dependent on this north american wetlands conservation act grant however we have gotten an indication unfortunately that the project didn't rank high enough to likely be funded for that grant award so we've kept the motion about assignment in your recommended actions in case there is a change but it doesn't look as favorable as we were hoping we would intend that the county would retain management of this site and um potential closing would be in june of 2026 there are a few non-standard exceptions the the prior landowner current landowners um patriarch did establish a plat called hayman's pasture on the property with a vision of developing a portion of the area closest to county road 325 there's a reservation in favor of a state of florida should be state of florida um buffer along county road 325 for widening of that road and then of course the normal exceptions that you see when there's wetland areas or waterfront areas related to riparian rights public use of the waterfront and navigational access to the waterfront as part of establishing the hayman's pasture plant the the landowner patriarch of the landowning family had a vision of having a fly-in um community there and that is what exception number eight relates to there is a just grass airstrip on the property um it's never been utilized for aircraft um the vision that it was placed on the property for never came to fruition but that's what exception eight relates to that airstrip is um listed on faa um airstrip maps but is not open for use and it's never been open for use it's never been permitted through the county for use either andy how big is the um plat of hayman's pasture how many acres is that i'm sorry i don't have the answer to that question but it is if i go back um to a map here it it primarily relates to the area kind of adjacent to county road 325 it doesn't extend out into this area um so whole property is 521 acres i really could just guesstimate a number like maybe 80 but i'm not sure but when it says the exception is all matters related to that plat does that mean he could further develop it in the future no because we would be acquiring the the property so it was just subject to that recorded plat exactly exactly which we will now own right put in the registry and not develop correct correct yeah yeah misunderstood thank you okay i may not explain it well um and then there is one currently unrecorded exception related to a a utility easement that um clay electric holds that we will get recorded um we don't have uh um any concerns with 1947 that many of them are unrecorded yeah we have a minute he does this stuff doesn't he he's too young to have been involved in that one um the purchase price is uh five million three hundred ninety five thousand dollars with estimated due diligence of ninety eight thousand hundred and fourteen um and a total expenditure request including a 10 contingency or buffer of six million forty two thousand four hundred and twenty five dollars and we have as you mentioned six um recommendations which i'm happy to read if you would like me to i don't think so do you all need to read it yeah we read it okay is there anything significant that or outstanding from that that the main one is that's the a unique one is related to that assignment which we again we left that motion in with just in case hopes that yeah there could be a chance of getting that grant funding um but aside from that um very very standard yeah so we've been working on this one for 20 years this originally went on yeah the active acquisition list i believe in 2006 yeah so you know i would move staff recommendation i don't know what we're worried about if that's if but this is that's great so we've yeah we would the program's been in place for 25 years we've been working on this one for 20 and it's here so it's here we've got a motion and we have two seconds yeah uh any further discussion is that an old light i had a question i forgot what it was and all of that but i did have another question has absolutely nothing to do with this when i was a kid um orange lake was full of floating islands and i was curious looking at the layout of this property if some of those floating islands had landed there and had become part of this property oh that i remember what my question is this property looks like it's in really good shape in terms of like invasives and that kind of thing it is it is in good a shape as it appears or it is um the family that owns the property is uh been a very good steward of the property and and probably also you know maybe a little bit lucky uh with regards to some of the invasives that can establish through wind or water um obviously there's um pasture pasture grass in the pasture area so that's not a native plant but not necessarily an invasive plant um but it is it is a really beautiful property has has the property like changed over time have we looked at it in terms of that i was just curious about the whole floating islands thing do you know about that um so we have looked through the historic aerial images that's standard part of what we do um early in analysis of one of these properties and um we haven't seen like accretion of that lakefront um or dramatic noticeable change you are correct that orange lake does have those floating islands and that's a big part of management of the open water there especially i heard a lot of them had kind of like uh taken root on the sides because as the water levels had gone down yes yes but um we don't we didn't observe that that was necessarily part of the lake i was just curious but it could be yeah it wasn't really a important question i was just a curiosity question but i was curious about the invasive so that's great awesome okay commissioner presia yeah my only question yeah large chunks that really connect the dots between a bunch of the acquisitions we've been trying to do so very exciting um mine is just a question about the management cost estimates um i noticed in there like you talked it has a lot of trailhead public infrastructure stuff which i'm really excited about um because i think you're right about this property it's one that people are going to want to come out to so they can watch birds and things like that um but i guess i is this is this all is this is all in the beginning phases of this project it looked like the bulk of the the dollars reflected in there and i think the one thing that really caused those management costs to be high was we estimated two hundred thousand dollars for an observation platform assuming you know that they're that that kind of elevated view when there's a lake on a property is something that's pretty desirable where we are with the program now is for infrastructure of that scale and nature should should it be able to be permitted which is something we would have to work through as well internally within the county process um is we'd be applying for partnership funding for um something that's that costly but we think that it would be a very suitable installation there and then i believe we included otherwise we included some reforestation though we would want to keep the vista open there may be areas that do get replanted and um some hydrologic restoration related to that elevated berm kind of service road that crosses the property as well to make sure that the water is flowing appropriately thank you okay uh any great presentation we've got a motion we've got two seconds any public discussion to the motion seeing none let's bring it back to the board any further discussion all right all those in favor say aye aye any opposed that motion is unanimous great job thanks very much forward to june question for any real quick um now that the water levels are are so low we've got invasives that are right along the border lines of all of our shorelines you know i don't know if now is a good time for us to get out there and try to just we can hand remove it at this point can't we the some of these areas that you know i don't know if we can activate some of our volunteers or to get out and actually remove some of this stuff now that the water's so low um you know it what yes that is a um an action that can be taken in times of drought does provide unique access to areas that are often inaccessible um i think every site has got its own unique challenges but um even just speaking about this particular property trying to to walk out to the water there's a whole transition area where it looks like you could walk but really it's not um yeah so i went out there this weekend it is as it's as low as i've it's ever been in my that i can ever remember i don't know if you all have been out there does the state ever have any um plan to do what commissioner wheeler said no not really i didn't think so okay in the prairie basin you mean like managing the invasives out there i mean when it's as dry as that i can speak from personal experience having been the biologist there at pains prairie previously um you can actually drive out in the prairie basin to access some of those invasives when it is that dry yeah so it does increase access maybe not to every area but i don't know if that was something we could put out there you know at some point where we could actually activate a group of folks because i even the canal like the connector between little lake and lake alto you know it would be a place to start yeah okay okay thank you thank you um thank you that is yeah so i think that takes us to closing comments closing comments all right so we got a second opportunity for public comment anyone from the public wish to address this board by once going twice close public comment okay county attorney bob you got anything for us okay county manager michelle you got anything for us yes on the agenda i mentioned that we were going to be bringing to you the questions on the current monitoring contract for florence um steven hofstetter is here to discuss that the position we're in currently is that contract um the reason i've brought it this way the contract's going to expire before your next board meeting we just got some of the last results back last weekend this well this past weekend or the weekend before i mean it just we just got those back so i will leave to steve to let you know where we're at but if we do uh if the board does want to continue that i will also need to ask you to give me money to do so um i believe steve has talked to them about the terms i if i think 125 000 would be safe based on that so um in order to get that done but i will let steve take it from here okay steve take it from here all right thank you uh manager uh steve foster county's environment protection department just to kind of summarize where we are if if you remember the board made a motion in jan last january to come back within 60 days for a strategy to provide air quality monitoring of the florence cnd landfill and so in april you made a motion for us to do six months with four locations one of them being a control and by the time we were able to get the contracts put together with the consultants and get access agreements with property owners for those four locations we initiated the air quality monitoring in july so we will be concluding our six months of air quality monitoring at the end of this week so this is the last week of the air quality monitoring so we have asked the contractor to put together a summary of the results what i can tell you preliminary preliminarily is that none of the hydrogen sulfide gases which is that egg smell that's such a nuisance to neighbors none of it met or never reached an exceedance point of of being a violation of the permit or being a health problem i will note however that humans have an incredible ability to smell hydrogen sulfide gases at an extremely small amount even at the levels we had i guess yesterday and i can show you what the results of yesterday look like we did get a complaint that they could smell hydrogen gas hydrogen sulfide gas um yesterday we did have a couple of hits of um particulate matter uh so we did particulate matter at uh 10 and 2.5 which is 10 uh micrometers in size to down to 2.5 micro meters in size and to give you what that means is if you cut your piece of hair um perpendicular it's smaller than that piece of hair is is what a 10 micrometer size is so that's kind of the dust issue that we can we're concerned about we did have a couple of hits however when again we'll get the final report but the initial report uh showed that most of those were happening at night or outside of the typical time that the operation would have been taking place so those were other types of causes like smoke or um dust blowing up from storms and things like that so we'll get those results uh finalized but we wanted to come back to you all because um based on our results we didn't have any evidence that um they were outside of parameters uh of exceedances based on requirements so we wanted to give you an opportunity as part of the motion you said please come back and give us an opportunity to determine whether we want to continue uh with the operation yeah i mean i would like to but commissioner prisio um yeah i mean it sounds like they're increasing activities so i think continuing to monitors to make sure we're you know like if that increased activity does increase something that we haven't caught to date it sounds like it's worth it um also there was a comment we got in an email um mentioning that um much of the seems like much of the gas and smells tends to be in the southern portion um and we actually have a park in that area that perhaps we could locate so i don't know if we're able to relocate one of those monitors um to that area but it does sound like maybe we would want to monitor that area more than some of the other areas um so i just want to bring that up i don't know if you saw that email it came from suze mache um but just thought i'd bring that up i'm happy to move that we continue um our air quality monitoring program for and then come back again i guess in another six months and we'll second motion two seconds we got a good chance of the passing um any public discussion any further discussion all those in favor say aye aye any opposed motion is unanimous okay steve thank you for that update and we'll continue to monitor that i know the citizens will be happy with that okay anything else michelle nope okay uh commission comment mary helen you got anything very quickly steve don't go away just for fun would you talk to me please that i'm not fully you know what talking about coppers thank you okay mr chair steve hostender environmental protection again i guess an update on coppers is that um we finally have some motion with uh department of transportation what was holding it up uh in terms of cleanup efforts and um controlling the contamination on the site was that department of transportation didn't want to mess with their pond so it looks like we've gotten to a situation where they're making modifications so the next step and potentially the final step to conclude um containment strategies is to put in a slurry wall that is basically an 80 foot deep trench like a saw being cut right down in the ground that will create a containment barrier for the contained soil any soils outside of that area will be put inside that buried area and will put something that will prevent um stormwater and percolation from moving that plume once that has been complete that will hopefully conclude the strategies for containment and we'll move into only monitoring at that point and who doing that work steve over what period of time it's contracted uh beezer is the owner of coppers it's the copper side um cabot was completed in 2020 so we're on the copper side um i don't know the the company name doing that but i have talked with our hazmat petroleum team once we get a little bit information on when that's going to happen we're going to come back to the board uh to give you guys an update on um when that when that operation is taking place because i think it'd be something you all might like to see as well excellent yeah that's great thank you steve good update thank you okay you got anything else no i have no words okay yeah that's great that's great thank you steve got nothing you got anything i do a couple things first um i just want to give you a quick introduction in the back is kathleen ojeda she's my new intern um she came on in november right before the holidays so she's kind of just getting her feet under her um but if you see her around the office that's who she is and um she's been working with me a lot on number one promoting find help which is an online resource guide that the safety net collaborative has been focusing on as well as the children's trust and the county as a kind of a one-stop resource guide that we can use for social services and really trying to get all of our social service organizations to claim their organization in that online database make sure all of their hours and their address and their programs and services are up to date in there so if you're they go in so yeah they can they update the zip codes they serve and they can put in the programs that they offer they can put in the services they offer and who's who qualifies for those if they have parameters it is and the people they scour the website for information so your organization may already be in there um but you can claim that organization it verifies that you're actually a member of that organization and then it'll allow you to update all the information and so we really need people to claim their organizations update the information so that it's up to date it'll allow us to better track referrals um and how they're working and prioritize funding and resources going to areas of social service need um it'll help have have less dead-end referrals um and long term i think the hope is that we can also potentially connect the dots between find help and 2-1-1 so that we can have like a seamless like rather you need a phone or you're looking something up on the internet um or you're walking into a united way office we'd have one seamless kind of set of database of database of resources that are available for our community so and find help with national organization find help is a national organization that provides the service free online um they are they do have some paid services on the back end and uf health and hca and other organizations are in a paid relationship with find help now to incorporate it into their epic database so it now is on your my chart and their social services folks and are using it as well so it's another reason why we've kind of chosen it as the focus so that we can can coordinate better with healthcare providers and others that are doing social services referrals um so if you're on a board of an organization or if any of the organizations are listening or you're interacting with them um kathleen has developed some flyers like why find help and then a cheat sheet about how to update your organization that we have available um and we're happy to also help organizations if they need a little help with that um but we're excited about that and so that's one of the things that kathleen is working on and she is a um uf student so we're excited in public health so perfect project for her awesome um other thing two of the other things i have is um one latoya is going to send you an email that i sent to city commission and city staff with regards to something called a farm stop um it is a model that's not a farmer's market and not a grocery store it's kind of a hybrid model that fits in between those two things that allows farmers to consign their stuff imagine those a little bit like a grocery store one of those antique stores where you go in and there's like the stalls for the different people and they're consigned and then there's a centralized checkout where they can even buy the things kind of think about that but for farmers and um it's working really really well around the country there's models there's lots of successful models and there's one in particular in ann arbor michigan that is now providing technical assistance and support um for how to build successfully and i really think it could be a solution to our lack of ability to find a grocery store for the ehedi cornerstone site um because you know the city's now gone through every step they could possibly including unsolicited rfps all of the steps and just really run up against it and so i think a potential collaboration on this concept could be good i send it to them there's a presentation in there there's some more information about how you could get more information if you're interested so i just ask you to take a look at it and i'd like to add that to our joint agenda for the march meeting with the city of gainesville if everyone's okay with that yeah i'm okay yeah sounds great and then the last thing is an email that i got you all probably got it too um but it was from yes you did it was from kristen young it was on january 22nd and it's essentially talking about um ada access in our meetings um and i and she's she's not wrong um you know it's wheel it's really about wheelchair users and other limited mobility users being able to access the podiums and for public comment and being able to you know communicate with us successfully um so i just wanted to bring that to our attention and ask that as we're thinking about what to do in grace night and reorganizing and even in here we have this spot but like the microphone you have to you know what just if we're thinking about ada accessibility um for public comment and interaction in our meetings if we could give that that was sent to gina who sent it to jackie chung correct it was said to jackie chung and also i think there's a a um a difference and we're going to deal with staff on that you have seen where you've had people come before you to speak when we have meetings and there's staff that steps up and makes sure that the microphone's moved that the chair is moved so that they can roll up to that location and so we have people there to step up and address that and we're going to work with that um on a staff basis for other meetings where we utilize this space um but it also is being it also has been referred to jackie to look into as well and we certainly hear you on the design of any new space which hopefully will be in a couple years wonderful and i know we were doing some updates to grace knight coming up so i thought that might be an opportunity too to have a similar setup or something so anyway just wanted to flag that and that's all i have okay great the only thing i have is um one thing i want to pass out to you all the annual report of the children's trust so they um published if you get that to the clerk they published that to um yesterday and that shows the work that the trust has done over the last year um you know if you're on the library board you're used to seeing a pretty impressive annual report this is uh equally impressive in my opinion um and there's a lot of information in there about the four goals of the trust what was accomplished and what we're looking forward to yesterday we had a workshop and we finalized the strategic plan which is the second round of the strategic plan and we will approve that formally at our march meeting and then we spent two hours and went through uh kind of an implementation phase uh kind of an implementation phase the trust is going through a uh self-evaluation of um uh this idea of non-profit life cycles have you guys heard about this non-profit life cycles this book no okay so um let me attempt to give you um what what the trust is doing so maggie labarda and mary chance brought forward this idea that we have 80 non-profits that we fund and it would be really good if we worked with the community foundation and the center for excellence to help those non-profits not just from a funding standpoint but help them identify what stage they're in um based on startup growth mature or termination terminal and so before we as a trust thought we should do that with those 80 organizations we did it for ourselves so we started this process a couple of months ago and yesterday we did a workshop of here's our self-evaluation of where we are and the things we need to do we then provided this book non-profit life cycles to every one of the non-profits and we're asking that they take the time over the next year to think about going through their own self-evaluation building in this idea that we want to help build their capacity and we want to put resources at the trust into allocating um time expertise and dollars into helping them build their capacity um and so our board's all in kind of on that and uh yesterday i said that it was one of the the best meetings that the trust has had uh from a workshop perspective and um i thought it was so good that i wanted to at least let you all know about it um and i would like if if you all agree to refer to staff that they get with c-tac the community foundation and the center for non-profit excellence and maybe bring back um a presentation to us at a future policy meeting so we can see kind of what's in so you all can see what's involved in this and then see if this is something that we want to maybe incorporate with the non-profits that that the county works with because i feel like our reliance on our non-profits in this community is going to only accelerate i feel like between cap the community resources that we're trying to work on the east side forward focus all the non-profits that were attempting to help that they they could really benefit from this and if you all agree with that then we can try to set up some sort of processes over the next year or two to help build capacity in the non-profits that we work with that's my thought good so um it's kind of a lot for a commission comment but i wanted to refer to staff or at least have you all think about it and then maybe talk to marcia talk to um teresa talk to barzella get an understanding of that and then maybe at a future meeting once you guys have um talked then i'd like to refer that staff okay that sounds great yeah i think we and we do have standing we have standing direction to staff to work on capacity building with our non-profits i think this goes right into this as like a frame as a frame considering this as a framework yeah i'm certainly happy to refer that stuff so they can explore it too while we're exploring it because i thought we're going to explore i would love to get your staff's feedback and input on what they think how they think this could fit in you know what i mean like so i'm fine to make the motion to refer that okay well that'd be great okay motion a second for so what i wrote and it was refer to staff to get with ctac the foundation center for non-profit excellence bring back a presentation to the board at a future policy meeting um about how we could incorporate this non-profit life cycle approach um to help build capacity for the non-profits yeah i guess i would like to rather than saying we're going to i would like to ask staff to consider oh consider yeah yeah yeah yeah okay because i feel like i would let you know what i mean yeah they may have a different idea they may have a different idea or they may have already started down a path because we've given them standing i just don't want to like deep to make them take a right turn if they've already gone down okay i don't know where they're at in that okay yeah is that okay yeah yeah i mean from my perspective my only interest is end goal helping build capacity yeah and and and us having a mechanism by which we can help them the trust is utilizing this one um i guess mary chance and the continuum and meridian is and we had the we had the facilitator there yesterday and she um she and the board collectively and staff collectively identified that the trust is in a high growth stage um and it's different for the trust because we're a special taxing unit we're not necessarily a non-profit you know we have a 12-year life that will either get extended or won't but it was still a really good exercise and they nailed it they like they nailed the you know many of the internal challenges the system challenges that we're having and it really was an effective meeting so okay thank you for that referral any discussion any public discussion back to the board all of the favor say aye aye any opposed that motion is unanimous the only other thing i had was um we've got uh our next county meeting is february 10th and i think we've got wildflowers scheduled for that evening that's the only thing that's scheduled uh and i've asked staff in the event that we don't i think we can finish that in one night but in the event that we can't they're looking at calendaring the 17th as well so that um so i wanted you all to know that and then i think staff's going to be getting with each of y'all because we've got to kind of identify what's the date where export day starts and ends as far as export take communication so um i think they're scheduling meetings i have my meeting with them this morning before this meeting but you'll hear you'll be hearing from them over the next week or two chair when you're finished i remember something yeah um that's all i have yep the school board is going to be handing meetings you know holding meetings in the various schools i would encourage all of us to go to the ones in our district and listen to the people who are coming the community members who are going to be coming to talk about it's just good information just hearing what constituents have to say about the schools in our districts they're having like eight meetings aren't they yes yeah so we can just you can pick and choose you know but it might be a good idea just to go and uh and then a salute to the plan board up in alachua they worked really hard over two nights to address the uh address the um development that was being presented up there too yes sylvia yes amazing job oh my goodness yeah they were the superstars for sure and they really were the ones who gave the appropriate information that the board needed in order to make the decision because everything else was up here up here up here and it was really hard to follow but but sylvia and her team got it down to a level that it was just pure and simple and uh mr hayes's conclusion was pretty impressive that first night i have to say it was really really good yeah this is great it's great okay closing argument was yeah yeah it was really good amazing too okay guys i think that's it for today and we will stand adjourned thank you