Regular Meeting @ 11:30 a.m. - Jun 09, 2026

Good morning, everybody. It is 1130 on June 9th, and I'd like to go ahead and call this Board of County Commission's meeting to order. Before we get started, we'd like to start with an invocation, and today we have Pastor Adolfo Gomez, who is going to lead us in an invocation. Pastor Gomez is with the Ignite Life Center, and if everyone will please stand and join me after the invocation for the Pledge of Allegiance. Yes, Pastor, welcome. Thank you for being here. Good morning, everyone. Let us pray. Gracious God, we come before you today with gratitude in our hearts for the opportunity to gather in service to this community. We thank you for the blessings you have bestowed upon our city, for the people who call it home, and for those who have accepted the responsibility of leadership. We ask that you grant wisdom, discernment, and integrity to all of our leaders as they deliver on matters that impact lives for countless residents. May their decisions be guided by a sincere desire to seek the common good, to promote justice, and to steward well those entrusted to our care. We also remember the citizens of this community, those who celebrate victories, those carrying burdens, and those whose voices often go unheard. Inspire us all to be neighbors with compassion, extend grace, and pursue the well-being of one another. As we begin this meeting, may our thoughts, words, and actions reflect wisdom, civility, and a commitment to serving others faithfully. We ask these things in your name. Amen. Amen. Thank you. Okay. Thank you for that invocation. And the next thing we have is the approval of the regular and consent agenda. Are there any changes? Commissioner Prizio. Yeah. I just wanted to ask if we could please push item 2A on consent to our next meeting when Michelle is present. Okay. So is there any objection to pushing 2A? No. Okay. So let's go ahead and push 2A off. I would also ask that we move 0, 2, 3, and 4. So that's our manager, our legal, and our commission comment to follow K so we can handle that this morning in the morning session as opposed to the evening. All right. So move with the addition, I mean with the removal of 2A to our next regular meeting and to move commission and manager and public and attorney comment to the end of our day meeting. Yeah. Following K. Okay. Great. Do I have a second? Got a motion and a second to adopt the agenda with those changes and the consent agenda. Anyone from the public wish to speak to the motion? Seeing none, back to the board. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion is unanimous. I know Commissioner Offord will be joining us shortly. She is en route, I understand. And so the first item on the agenda, Mr. Clerk? Mr. Chair, up first is the announcements and communications director. Mark Sexton is here to present with us. Okay. Mr. Sexton. Good morning, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, a couple of things to share with our residents. As you know, hurricane season began on June 1st. And Jen Grice, our emergency manager, has put together a really incredible thing called Storm Ready Story Time. It is a way for families and children to come together. She's got great activities and hurricane kit assemblies and all kinds of things going on. And they're reading a great story about being ready. It's called Henry and the Hurricanes. Emergency management people from all over the county will be reading the book at these sessions. And if you go to our website and you look at the Storm Ready Story Time press release, you'll see a schedule of all the different times that that's taking place. So it's a great program. We encourage families to participate. On a more serious note, not that storm readiness isn't serious, but, you know, as you know, Mr. Chair, the county commission was very interested in putting out accurate information on data centers and both growth management and legal and communications. All of us have worked together to try to come up with something that is very clear. And you can go to our main website and you will see large scale data center is heavily in a big blue box in a big blue box. Yep. We didn't want anyone to miss it. Nope. Um, but the language in it is, is very clear. It makes it very clear that there, uh, that is not a use that is allowed in Alachua County right now. It also makes it extremely clear what would the, the, the process that would have to be gone through and what the commission would have to do to change that. We also made it clear that the commission is concerned about these facilities as well. So there's a great deal of information here. And, um, maybe most importantly, the how to stay informed section. We have, um, links to sign up for our press releases, our meeting notices, our newsletters. We have links to the county's website for agenda and reports. We have a link to the growth management page. And I want to take a minute to show folks that when you click on that link, it takes you to the growth management's email list where you can look for specific developments that you want to stay abreast of. And you will get, um, emails directly to your inbox about those specific topics. Now, we don't have any applications on data center. So what Jeff and his team did is when you go to development application and you click that drop down arrow, future data center projects is a topic that you can select and that will automatically get you those, uh, notifications. Um, so we encourage people to, to read this. There's contact information. If you need more information, it encourage you to, it encourages you to sign up for our new text alert system, my Alachua County, and also to follow us on Facebook, Instagram X and next door. And, uh, Mr. Chair, those are the announcements. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Sexton. I, I, especially want to thank you for this. We had a very brief commission comment discussion about it a week ago. Great suggestions, um, Commissioner Prizia for, uh, many of the things that were implemented and thank you to legal and growth management for jumping on that and the communications department. Really appreciate it. You're welcome. Super. Okay. Uh, next up we have the approval of recognitions. I'll take a motion to approve those. So moved. Second. Motion and a second to approve our recognitions. Any discussion from the public? Back to the board. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? A motion's unanimous. Mr. Clerk, what's the first one? Mr. Chair, up first is the presentation of a proclamation recognized in June 15th through the 21st as Men's Health Week in Alachua County, Florida. Okay. And we've got the Honorable Chuck Chestnut, the fourth, going to read that one for us. Thank you, Chuck. I like that. Thanks. I don't know if there's anyone to accept it, but anyway, I'll start. Anyone here to accept it? All right, Chuck, it's all yours. Okay, it's all me. Uh, a proclamation declaring June 15th through June 21st as Men's Health Week in Alachua County, Florida. Whereas Men's Health Month is a part of an ongoing international effort to educate men, boys, and their families about the importance of preventative health screening, early detection, and healthy lifestyles. And whereas nationwide, men have a life expectancy that is approximately six years shorter than that of women and experience higher rates of chronic disease, including diabetes, obesity, cancer, heart disease, and premature mortality. And whereas Men's Health Month provides an opportunity to recognize the mental and physical health needs of men and boys, while encouraging fathers and caregivers to serve as positive role models through preventive care, healthy living, and help-seeking behavior. And whereas the growing epidemic of death of despair includes death related to suicide, substance use disorders, alcohol misuse, and homelessness underscores the urgent need of raising awareness of recognizing and undiagnosed depression, depression, mental stress, and emotional distress among boys and men. And whereas the centerpiece of Men's Health Month is the National Men's Health Week, a special awareness period passed by Congress and signed into law on May 31st, 1994, and observed annually through the efforts of Men's Health Network to build healthy empathy, recognize, and understanding of unique health needs facing men and boys. Therefore, through the authority vested in me by the Board of County Commissioners of Alachua County, Florida, I do hereby proclaim June 15th through June 21st as Men's Health Week in Alachua County, Florida, newly proclaimed this ninth day of June, signed by our chair, Ken Cornell, and attested to by the clerk, the clerk, Jess Irby. Thank you all. Okay. Yeah, do you mind? Okay, Chuck, thank you for doing that one. All right. And I think our next one was going to be done by Commissioner Alford, but Mr. Prizia is going to jump in for us. Mr. Kirk, what's our next one? The next one is a presentation of a proclamation recognizing June 21st through June 28th as Amateur Radio Week in Alachua County, Florida. Okay. If there's anybody here to accept it, you're welcome to come up. Yeah, you are here to accept that. If you could make your way. Commissioner Prizia is going to present that to you. Got her running shoes on this morning. Thank you, Commissioner Prizia. Yeah, I appreciate that. Okay. Well, standing in for Mary, who I know finds this very close to her heart and really appreciates all the hard work that we have in our community as volunteers really helping us to make sure we get communications out in emergencies. I will be declaring June 21st through June 28th as Amateur Radio Week in Alachua County. Whereas amateur radio has historically played a significant role in developing worldwide radio communications and continue to provide a bridge between people, society, and countries by creating friendships and sharing ideas. Whereas amateur radio operators have provided countless hours of community service to local organizations and during emergencies through the decades. And whereas amateur radio operators of Alachua County and neighboring communities offer free technical training to all interested citizens. And whereas Alachua County recognizes the uncompensated services of amateur radio operators that provide essential emergency response organizations, including two emergency response organizations, including the state of Florida and Alachua County. Whereas Alachua County Emergency Management and the County Fire Rescue Department value the partnership of our amateur radio operators that have provided what they've provided during hurricane season to support emergency communications on behalf of impacted residents and shelters. Whereas amateur radio week in Florida is an opportunity to honor and recognize the valuable work that radio operators provide in dispensing public safety information to the citizens of Alachua County in Florida. Now therefore through the authority vested in me by the Board of County Commissioners of Alachua County, Florida, I do hereby proclaim June 21st through June 28th as amateur radio week in Alachua County, Florida. And it's signed and sealed. And we're very, very grateful. All right, Chief Taylor, who do we have here? Yeah. Yeah, thank you so much. I appreciate you taking the time to out of your busy schedule with this. In my mind, communication is essential to community. If we don't have communication, whether it's at the family level or here at these type of meetings, but I urge everybody to think about how are we going to communicate with each other when the internet and cell phones go down. So thank you. Thank you. Yeah, good point. I just want to add thank you commissioners for all your support. Yeah, thank you. We appreciate what you guys do. Guys and gals. All right, did we get a picture? Yeah, let's get a picture. Okay, thank you, Chief. All right, super. Mr. Clerk, next item. Mr. Chair, up next is the CSS Clinical Programs Commission on Accreditation of a Rehabilitation Facilities Reaccreditation. Okay, and Ms. Daniels, who do we have presenting this one? Okay. Good morning, Mr. Chair. Josh McCumber, Assistant Director of Community Support Services. Today, I'm pleased to present the board with a certificate of accreditation that shows the county's continued commitment to excellence in behavioral health services, specifically the residential and outpatient programs for substance abuse treatment. Florida statute and the Florida Administrative Code require that all substance abuse treatment providers in the state be licensed by the Florida Department of Children and Families and accredited by an approved accrediting organization. To maintain compliance with these requirements, Alachua County renews its license annually with the Department of Children and Families and undergoes reaccreditation every three years with the Commission on Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities, which is CAR. CARF International was established in 1966 as an independent nonprofit accrediting body that promotes quality, value, and optimal outcomes in health and human services. The CARF accreditation process is much more than just a compliance review. It is a continuous quality improvement process in which experienced surveyors evaluate programs against internationally recognized standards. For us, it was several hundred standards, and they work collaboratively with organizations to identify strengths and opportunities for improvement, and the identification of improvements with our programs were in the single digits. Accreditation demonstrates accountability to the individuals we serve, our community partners, and taxpayers. It confirms that our programs meet rigorous standards related to quality service, operational efficiency, fiscal responsibility, measurable outcomes, and stakeholder satisfaction. This accreditation reflects the board's ongoing support of high-quality behavioral health services and the dedication of the county staff who work every day to ensure that our programs meet the highest professional standards. With me to present this certificate of accreditation today are our staff members of Opus and Metamorphosis. With Opus, we have our clinical supervisor, Megan Hamlet-Moore, Dana Vincent, and Melina Castro-Boucher, which are counselors, and I'll let Rebecca introduce Metamorphosis staff. My name is Rebecca Hunt. I am the clinical supervisor for Metamorphosis. With me today is Ms. Christine Parrish. She is our clinical lead, and I also have Chelsea Davis. She is our administrative assistant. And unfortunately, I was not able to get some of my other counselors. They are back at the office or working third shift, but I have Counselor Keith Woolard, Sherelle Mofo, I can hardly say her name, and then Joelle Romulus. He is our newest counselor, and we have Don Mentor, and he is our third shift residential technician. And we are very proud of the work that we did. As far as excellence is what the pin says for CARF, and that is what we do every day. Thank you. Mr. Chair, Commissioners, Claudia Tuck, Director of Alachua County Community Support Services. We hope you're as excited to be receiving this as we were to receive it. And we couldn't have done it all without Ashley Baird, our accreditation manager. She really helped steer the ship as we were all learning the process. So we would like to invite you down to receive the certificate as well as a commemorative pin. Okay. Big deal. Thank you. We'd also invite the county manager and the county attorney. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Congratulations. Mr. Chair, that takes us to the board committee items. The next item is the Rural Concerns Advisory Committee update and the annual work plan and accomplishments report. Okay. I think we can do that. Let's go ahead and get through the Rural Concerns Advisory Committee annual work plan and update. Dr. Clauser's here. I see. That's all. That's right. And phenomenal. Morning, Mr. Chair and Commissioners. Ken McMurray, Growth Management. I'm the staff liaison for Rural Concerns and we have Dr. Rodney Clauser, the Chair of Rural Concerns here this morning to present. Okay. Dr. Clauser, welcome. Thank you for your service. It's in a multiple times a year. It's usually once a year now or a few times a year. That's right. I've seen you anyway. So I just listed. I'll be as quick as possible and leave it on a few highlights and then if you have questions, you can follow up. You can see what the primary responsibilities of the Rural Advisory Concern Committee is and we've tried to focus on those as much as possible. I'll use this. Dr. Fother, we're going to want you to put that microphone a little bit closer to your mouth so they can pick you up at home. Committee members are here. As you can see, we have a full committee right now. There is an issue I'll bring up at the very end. I don't think it's really a major issue, but it was brought up by the committee. So we'll be filling five vacancies this year. And if you have people who continue on, you know, that's pretty good. If you're hunting for new people, that can become a lot. So it has a few people a little bit concerned on that. As well as, and I don't know if it's official or not, but obviously Cindy Sanders, who's been on for years representing the extension offices, moving on to, I guess, a career ending position at the university here shortly. So she'll be going off. We've still used this tier approach, rural health and service delivery, rural economic development, rural policy concerns, with the emphasis on the last two areas of it primarily. And we did spend a lot of time on the service delivery. That related to county broadband. Ethan was out several times. We talked about that. But we focused more on a couple things in the last, oh, probably eight to ten months. One's the Food Hub Feasibility Study. And Bailey's been over with us several times. And Avi, who's heading that study through New Ventures, he's also visited with us several times and we've provided input on that. On rural policy concerns, Andy Crispin's almost a permanent member of our committee. It seems out. She's out there all the time. And the property appraiser's office has been out there quite a bit as well. And we've specifically been following how you go about on the value of conservation easement. And so I think we've had a good discussion on that and everybody understands that now. We've provided input on the Unified Land Development Code. We had the rural law enforcement deputies out and had a discussion with them about what they do and the issues associated with that. And obviously that brought some people from the east side of the community in for that discussion and the concerns they had. We tend to have nine or ten meetings a year. We did that in 24-25. We're headed the same direction in 25-26. You can see there we submitted a couple opinions to the board related to amendments to land development code. We submitted a letter related to the Board of County Commissioners concerns regarding the Wildflowers music event. I will say we had a short discussion afterwards. A couple of committee members went to it. And they said overall they thought it went very well and orderly. So it was good to hear that after all that discussion. And we also submitted the letter to the Board of County Commissioners extending our sunset date. We appreciate the recognition you give to people that serve time on the boards. John Nix serves on numerous boards. And he's instrumental on the rural concerns and we appreciate that. We all need to focus on how we better inform our citizens and the importance of agriculture producers, rural communities, and rural areas. I'm doing a little bit of helping the university with one of the leadership programs they're having right now. And what they don't realize, so if you were sitting on this dice in 1980 when I came and made a presentation, you found out Florida's continually ranked in the top eight to ten states in the market value of agricultural products sold. I believe in the last census it ranked 21. So relatively we've been sliding. Glatchville County, that's not the case. They've made relatively strong presentation we did last year. You know, there's been a little decline in acreage, not a lot. Still a major agriculture, beef production area, as well as there's the vegetables and other activities that are going on. So Latchwood County is doing well, but overall there's sort of a pressure there in Florida. It's been sort of on a downward trend. So we'll leave that with that. That's just a short of what we've been doing. If you've got any questions or comments, I'll be happy to answer them. We do. We have some questions. First, thank you, as always, for your service and to all the board members who serve. I know it can be a lot of work to take the time to be at these meetings, and we always give you guys fun and lively things to discuss between wildflowers to agricultural easements. It's no shortage of excitement at your board, I'm sure. I did want to bring up I really appreciate you all addressing the property appraisers stuff. We have continued to get, or I have continued anyway, to get feedback that there's challenges with the agricultural appraisal process. And I know that's not our board specifically, but continuing to liaise with their appraiser for ag and helping him to understand and educate him on how our agricultural systems work here I think is really important. We found that he's had challenges with cover cropping systems, with dry areas that are non-irrigated but still part of farm systems. The list goes on and on that I get calls about, and so I do think there's still a lot of opportunity there for education and coordination between our board and our extension services and our property appraiser on how they're handling that. And I think that's still going to exist. I mean, Ryder, who sort of heads up the ag division there, he's got some experience that property appraiser is still relatively new. Yeah, he's pretty new too. And there are some challenging things. There's a lot of properties in Lashwood County. And so what you tend to hear is when the issues come up, it's not quite right, whatever the reason might be. And so it's a learning process. The other thing because, unfortunately, over my career at the university I was involved with, it's too much. But the property appraiser and the guidelines presented for appraising property in Florida is done through the Department of Revenue. And so they train the people in the property appraiser's office. They give them guidelines on discount rates and different things like that. And then it's for the county to say, if we want to change or bend that a little bit, they've got to go in and support that and document it and be more aggressive about it. Right. And I think that's something you gain through experience and work over time. But it is an issue. The other thing is there's just too many properties for one property appraiser, for one person going out and trying to appraise it. Yeah. Well, I just wanted to say thank you and just continue to stick on that issue. I can tell it's still a major issue for our rural areas. Sure. And we're just excited to have y'all's input as we continue with the food systems work that we're doing with local food promotion. And just thank you to the board. Sure. Yeah. I'll just say, you know, I talk to folks around the state. Alachua County is really a microcosm of the state of Florida. We have the urban core with the city of Gainesville. But outside of the city of Gainesville, we are a rural community. I mean, we are largely half of our population is largely rural in nature. The work that you all do, the board is a list of who's who in the rural community in Alachua County. It's great work that you all do. Really, really appreciate it. Only question. So I'm glad to hear that Alachua County is kind of maintaining its leadership role in ag. The state going from 8 to 21 in the last 46 years. Is that because of development pressure? Well, it's a lot of things. So one thing, citrus freezes. You know, it sort of started with their citrus diseases, canker and all that stuff that came along. People got changes in consumers, diets and markets. You know, orange juice sort of went away. So you lost a huge commodity right there. Then there's the development issue associated with it. Florida is basically large producers in two areas. One is sugar cane. Okay. And the second is fruits and vegetables. And so you've got a lot of small fruits and vegetables. So you've got a very relatively small strawberry industry down in central Florida. But it's not going to get a lot bigger. There's not a lot of potential. There's a somewhat limited growing seasons with those crops in Florida. You have disease and pest problems that you don't have in other places. And the consumer is hunting for a market for us. Whether it's a strawberry or a grape, they want them year round. And so, you know, we're not going to be doing that. And then, obviously, there was a major effort by the state in the 80s when they relocated the dairy industry from a lot of South Florida. And they moved it up this way. And that's when Suwannee and some of those counties became that area. So there's a variety of reasons. And, you know, the production in Florida is especially challenging with the weather and the hurricanes and the heat. Okay. Great answer. Thank you for that. Commissioner Alford. Thank you. I am curious about, you know, the agriculture numbers going down and how much, you know, some of that's disease and heat and all those things. And has there been a discussion in your group about relating that to climate disruption and looking at changes like we have in our climate action plan to do the research to find the best crops that are most suited to changes in weather patterns? Yeah. So there's not been any direct discussions. You know, there's secondary and tertiary discussions that happen anytime you bring stuff up like that. But the thing is, it varies so much over the state. Alachua County is relatively simple. And it's because you've got still a significant livestock texture here, as well as some of the small areas of a vestibule, say primary and stuff like that. You do some beef grazing and different things like that. You'll do some hay and different things like that. But relative to diversity and specialty crops you have in other parts of the state, it's completely different. It's completely different. Thank you. Okay. Anything else? All right. Just one last thing. Yes. So here's the thing the committee brought up. Ken and I have talked, and I appreciate Ken and Ben's input on the staff as well. So we're going to have five vacancies. That worries some people on the committee. And we've been going along with that. It's probably not the best thing to have five with terms all expiring at once, because sometimes it gets drug out. But if that would be ever of a concern to you, Ken and I have discussed it. Just let us know. And we could come back with some language, tweak it. It could maybe stagger it a little bit more. Ideally, we'd like to replace three or four every year. That would be ideal. But five is not completely outlandish, but it seems a lot to a lot of folks. Yeah. I think two to three at a time is probably much better. Does anyone object to them bringing back some words for that? Yeah. Okay. Please do that. And we'll have communication folks kind of reach out to try to promote some more applicants in the coming weeks. Sure. Well, thanks to you and all you do in the support in the county. Thank you. I would just say that as you're reviewing that, I know you all have certain seats that are like sort of required seats based on certain entities. And historically, those have largely been like ag related. But there are other things that are rural concerns besides ag. And I think what we're hearing with our forward focus, which I believe you guys have had a presentation on, is a lot of the social services concerns around health care and around transportation needs and those sorts of things. Right. So if there is a need or a thought to have somebody that's more in that social services safety net realm, we do have our safety net collaborative and our food systems consortium that both kind of work in that arena. Right. And I know would be very interested in serving. So we can certainly get the word out through that network. And we had a person about a year ago who was in the health care area. Yeah. So it would really open the application. And so it would be great if we could get that back. And he decided he got a permanent job and left Alachua County, I think, or left being able to have the time to work with us. Well, we can certainly get the recruitment out through those groups, which I think will really help this time around with the five seats. Okay. We appreciate it. Okay. Thank you very much. All right. I think that takes us to public comment, Mr. Clark. Yeah. So 12 o'clock is when we like to hear from our public in the morning. We'll do another one in the afternoon. And if you will come on up, introduce yourself. We've got a little light system here. Green means if you want to give that to the clerk. Give it to the clerk. Yep. Green means go. Yellow says 30 seconds. And red means give it to the next person to speak. And I see Mr. Diaz. Welcome. Good to see you. Hello. My name is Luis Diaz. Hello, commissioners. I'm bringing you my written statement so you guys can follow along. Thank you. Um, Tontioga just got approved for its phase 22nd. Thank you. Um, but before the county can release the permit for construction, Alaska County Public Works wants us to sign a new taxing SID funding. Where the county gets funding for future maintenance, maintenance for future roads. Um, we're in agreement with the collection of all these funds. We're not in dispute of that. However, we're in this disagreement with the evenly spread among the lots of different sizes and values. We are a traditional neighborhood development that implements home site lots of different home sites and values within the same phase. We understand that this is different than your standard quick cutter neighborhood. This phase 22 is made of 60% of large lots that cater for large homes. The three or four, uh, car garages plus golf carts with large frontage and sidewalks. 40% of the phase is made of small lots with maximum two car garage and small street frontage and sidewalks. One of public works consultants argues that the impact on the roads is similar to all, all lots. But over our 25 years experience tells us different. You cannot argue that a family of four to six in a 4,000 to 5,000 square foot home with three to four car garage will have the same road impact as an empty nester on a fixed income on 1,800 to 2,000 square foot home with a two car garage. Especially when you consider that the part of the funds are for sidewalk repairs and large slots have double or triple amount of sidewalks. Please ask public works to allow the SID agreement to be brought before you to discuss his approval. Again, we're in favor of the implementation of the tax for all the funds requested by public works. We're in disagreement on them even spread across all the lots evenly as this will hurt for folks in the lower end of the markets. It has been two months since we have been in a deadlock over this issue and our phase construction remains on a standstill until this gets resolved. Thank you very much. We will address that as soon as we're done with public comment. So just hang tight with us. And it's not often that we have someone come up and say they are in favor of taxing. So thank you for that. Next speaker, please. Welcome. Hello. Hello. My name is Tom Morris. When I spoke with you last, you were kind enough to respond to my thoughts. Yes, but the responses I got led me to believe that I was communicating poorly because they had no relationship to what I was asking. To clarify, what I'm asking is that growth in the community and development be accomplished without sacrificing the lifestyles and property values of homeowners that exist. Yes, that's the point. Now, I have been told by the chairman this morning that he has signed the commitment that I ask you all to sign and to set that as your goal and to overcome whatever obstacles you can possibly overcome to live up to that goal. And I really appreciate the leadership of the chairman. I have not yet seen his signed commitment, but I'm sure I will soon. And I ask each of you to follow the leadership of your chairman and do the same thing and not only do it, but to make a public statement that you have done. It's the right thing to do, and I want you to have every member of your community to know that that's your goal and that you intend to follow it as strongly as you can. And once again, Mr. Chairman, I was much encouraged this morning when you indicated that you had made that commitment. Of course, I believe it's the will of this entire board that there was nothing in there that was contrary to what each of these members have practiced while I've served with all of them. So thank you for your comments. My pleasure. I will see you the next meeting to see what progress the others of you have made in that regard and how you've decided to make it public. Thank you. Thank you. We'll see if we can work on a parking space for you. It's good to see you. All right. Next speaker, please. Mark, come on up. Yeah. Bring him up. There he is. It's so quiet here. Yes. It's a nice quiet Tuesday. Give it time. It's not over. This is amazing. I've never used that thing. Hi. Good morning. I was going to talk about soils. Yeah. Soil. But I looked it up. I started Googling it. And then it turns out there's clay. There's silt. And then there's sand. And there's a spectrum. I never knew that. And this one, you know, retains no water. Basically, no water, water. And this one just goes straight through. And then silt is basically the, you know, the foundation of soil. It's sort of in the middle. Anyway, more and more of our soil is turning into sand. And I can show you many pictures and all that. And it's a great part because of the whole mowing thing. So you see these patches. And then what happens is, you know, it's Thursday. I was mowing Thursdays. But it hasn't rained in three weeks. And then mow anyway. And then the grass that is there is kind of like struggling for moisture. You know what I mean? And only some can win, if you will. And then they survive. And then you have these sort of little patches in between. And it turns out that you can turn soil into sand in about, like, four to six years. If you just go at it, you know, a hard way. But for sand to recover back into soil can take, like, decades. Like, decades. Because all these leaves need to come back. They need to sort of decompose. And it needs to get thicker and thicker and thicker and thicker. And that can take decades. Just thinking, you know, because more and more of our soil is turning into sand, which is really hard to recover. There's sort of this thing where if you do this whole mowing thing. And, you know, you mow the edges. You let the sand. You have these worms. And they're like, mmm, roots. You know what I mean? Like, somehow, like, communicate that, you know, soil is, like, good. Soil is the reason you're here. And soil is the reason I'm here. Soil is the reason that we have birds, that we have raccoons. Soil is the reason we have life on the land. The ocean is a different story. But soil is the number one thing. And it's so easy just to make it happy just by leaving some of the leaves there. And we've gotten into this habit over the last couple of years. They say it started with this French guy. I forget his name. It was Louis XIV or something. He was the first one to actually have people, you know, at the time, with scissors do the lawns. And at that moment, it sort of became like a cultural thing. And we just took it over. But anyway, soils are super important. And they're really easy just to not mess up by not doing too much with it. So that's the soil. I'm learning. All right. Mark, thank you for your lesson or today's lesson. Appreciate that. Soils also retain water better. Yes, they do. Anyone else in the chambers? Mark, anyone on the phones? No one on the phones? All right. We'll go ahead and close public comment. And Commissioner Prizio. Yes. I guess I hear loud and clear Luis Diaz's issue. I think he's got a real point. It doesn't make any sense to me either that someone who has a lot of frontage and uses a lot of the infrastructure would pay the same amount as somebody who does not. So I would ask that we refer this to staff and ask them to come back with as quickly as possible so that his project can make it through with a recommendation with regards to a revised standards so that it can be based on the lot size or based on the value of the property. I don't know exactly how that would work, but we have other models where we're doing phased fees based on sizes. Our buyer fee is that way or stormwater fee is that way. So I would imagine this could be similar. So I would just ask that staff either bring that back to us or revise the standard in-house and make sure that this is moving forward in a way that is fair for everyone involved. Okay, we have a motion. Do I hear a second? Second. Second. Got two seconds. So that's good. Commissioner Alford and then Commissioner Wheeler. Yeah, I just wanted to say that, you know, maybe it's the number of garage bays or something like that could be the thing, but we have more mixed income and mixed housing size neighborhoods coming forward. And so we need to set this pattern because I think a lot of our rules have been set up for neighborhoods that are very homogenous. I mean, road furniture makes a lot of sense because if it's a small lot, it's going to have small furniture with big lot, big furniture, but I feel like staff might have better. Yeah, I'm going to leave it up to staff, but I think there's a lot of different ways that could be approached, but I think that that makes total sense and we need to think about it. So, yeah, and I have some other comments once we dispense with the motion. Okay. Commissioner Wheeler on the motion. I can hear Ramon now saying everybody's using that road. You know, it's not, you're not just using the section that's in front of you because that, you know, we've heard him say that before. My question is, is this a county road then going through this private community? Yes, these are those. When we brought it forward, Ramon brought forward for us and we voted to have it be a situation. Because all of these communities, these neighborhood roads weren't getting the attention that was necessary for them, but they're really only serving the people who live in that neighborhood. We had now have this taxing program where those neighborhoods basically pay a percentage into a fund that then gives us the money to be able to keep those roads up. We voted on that. It was a policy change that we made about two years ago. Yep. I just, you know, with all that we have out in the county that's serving the bigger community to have to focus resources in a small. Well, that's the point. They tax themselves. Instead of us using our funding that's for everybody on the roads that are only for those neighborhoods, the neighborhoods themselves are paying for their share. It's our timeline. You know, it's our staff. It's our timeline. No, but it's all new developments now. That's how it has to be. Yeah, we recognized when we passed that policy a couple years ago that those roads would not make it to a road maintenance list because we're so far behind. So we passed that policy that new roads develop their own road maintenance special improvement district. Using crews, though, that may be scarce. No, no. This is setting up reserves so that when those roads need to be maintained, there's money there to take care of them. We were going to have to maintain them either way. They're our roads. Like, they convey them to the county. So we have the responsibility to maintain them no matter what. Do we have to take them? Just because they're conveyed to the county, do we have to take them? Corbyn, you want to kind of remind us of the policy discussion that we had a couple years ago? Mr. Chair, Corbyn Hanson. A couple years ago, the idea was that we would have these roads that are coming in, they're being dedicated, they're being accepted by the county. Because we want to have that interconnected grid system, we want to have development patterns come in in a certain manner. So ultimately, we do want the roads, but the additional responsibility and liability for maintenance, we wanted to offset that. And be able to have the people who benefit, the homeowners, pay for the benefit they receive from those roads. Gotcha. My confusion with this is that often it's not the money situation as it is the access to crews who can actually get in there and do the work. You know, and if we're using crews to get in there for a new development rather than using our, and I'm talking about our in-house folks. Yeah, this doesn't necessarily mean they have to use in-house folks. It's providing a mechanism so that the funding is there for repairing and maintaining it in the future. And generally speaking, that calculation is, public works could probably speak better to this than I can, but we look for a way that we can say not every home is going to be the exact same, but we slice it into each individual unit. There's an average of a certain number of people who might have a certain number of cars and that generates a certain number of trips all based off of the calculation we use. And so we can't say easily that one development has less impact than another development or one type of home has less impact than another type of home. Well, we can't do it easily with the calculation that we have right now. That's right. That's what I mean. As far as ways that we can do it, we could work with public works to try to come up with what other options we would have for calculating that. Okay. We've got Missy and then we have Commissioner Alford and Commissioner Prezio. Mr. Chair, I think Corbin hit it. I was going to say the way it's set up in the code right now is the benefit to the parcel. Yep. So it's irrespective of home size, but we hear the question. Ramon can jump on Zoom if you want him to, but we can also bring this back to you. Yeah. Okay. The motion is to bring it back to us. Commissioner Alford. I just wanted to point out too that neighborhoods like Tioga are very large and they have lots of sub neighborhoods within the neighborhood. So maybe it makes sense to look at it that way too, rather than parcel by parcel, we can look at it by sub neighborhood by sub neighborhood. I don't know what Luis thinks about that, but. Okay. Commissioner Prezio. Yeah. I guess I just want to say, I hear you. I guess I just, I feel like in every other instance that we even incur, we're sort of doing fee based services, stormwater impact fee, you know, all these other ones. Fire rescue. We have sort of a process by which it's sort of like, this is your home. This is the size of your home. This is the impact. There's some base level fee that's charged no matter what. Right. Because paving the road is paving the road and they're all going to drive on the road. But then there's this calculation that we do that basically, or they're based on the value of the home or maybe the road furniture, whatever it might be, that then accounts for the fact that there may be increased impact when you have a larger piece of property that's worth more money and has more cars and more things going on. So I do feel like maybe there's some middle ground we can strike. And I know this might take a little bit longer than you anticipated. So the, you know, I think the question for you becomes sort of how do we, how quickly can we get that done? And for Mr. Diaz, who's already been in gridlock for two months. I can't speak for Public Works, but I'm happy to work with them to see what other options we do have. I just know that in my discussions with them, the calculation that we do have built into this, it makes this difficult, this particular request. So we would have to look at what other options we have. Okay. So we've got a motion to refer us to staff. Is there any further discussion? Is there a one-time fee or is this a yearly thing, a tax? This is an annual. Annual tax. Okay. Yeah. Spread the cost out. Spread the cost out. Marion County's got, I think, hundreds of these. So perhaps we can place a couple calls. I don't think we need to reinvent the wheel. I tend to intuitively agree with what I read and what I heard from Luis. I'm familiar with Tioga. There are units that house one or two people. There are units that house nine to ten people. There definitely could be some nexus for a variable fee. It doesn't have to be overly complicated, but I think it just needs to accomplish the goal that we set out a couple of years ago, which is to set aside enough money to maintain the roads going into the future. Okay. Back to the board. All those in favor of the motion, say aye. Are we going to take public comment to the motion? Oh, I thought I opened it up. Oh, I'm sorry. Public comment on the motion. Yep. One last addition. I'm not trying to... I'm sorry, Luis Diaz again. I'm not trying to make things complicated. That's what I came up with is 60% to 40% because it was 60% of the area was the larger lots and 40% was. So I'm trying to make it simple. Okay. And, again, we're trying to get the same amount of funds. Yeah. I like simple. I like what you came up with. Okay. Any other public comments? Okay. Back to the board. To the motion to refer to staff. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That motion is unanimous. Okay. I know we've closed public comment, but I saw some of our distinguished guests come in from Santa Fe. So is it okay, board, that I open it up for public comment? President Brody, come on up. We've gotten through public comment. We're kind of moving quickly today, but we all received your letter, and I wanted to give you an opportunity to speak to the board. We certainly appreciate you being here today. Thank you. Commissioners, I really just came to say thank you. Thank you for two things. One is your partnership with us for the county public works building, where we launched the diesel mechanics program. You may or may not know that program filled the capacity on day two. Oh, wow. Wow. That's great. I'm worthy of a press release. The other thing that I want to say thank you to you for is 83rd Street. We have 70,000 visitors visit our zoo. We have upwards of almost 100,000 visitors come to our Spring Arts Festival. We have visitors come on a regular basis to our performances and to our planetarium, to Earth Science Museum. And we have 20,000 students that travel the road every single day, let alone our employees. And moving the timeline up for North Worth 83rd Street is going to have a tremendous impact. And I just applaud you for moving the timeline up, and I applaud you for the partnership that we have together. And I look forward to continue partnerships between the county and Santa Fe College. I want to say thank you. We got some lights here. So hang tight. We're going to go to Commissioner Prizia, Alfred, and Wheeler. Yeah. I guess I wanted to pass back thank you. A big thank you to you all for the collaboration. I'm really excited to hear about that filling and excited about potential future opportunities for similar certifications and other trades. And particularly in the food systems world, which is the world that I'm very passionate about, but also in many other places. And I wanted to send my apologies for not being able to be at the gala at the last minute, but I heard it was a rousing success. Yes. And I just wanted to say thank you for your work to be committed to economic development and upward mobility and jobs that don't require long term education, but can get done with certificates, with short term degree programs, and give people tooled up to the skills they need to do the jobs that are going to help them reach those goals. Thank you, Commissioner. Commissioner. Commissioner Alpert. Yeah, everything that Commissioner Prizia said, and I also wanted to say we need to connect again about childcare. Let's do it. Because that's an ongoing conversation. But I also wanted, I made a promise that I need to keep. In the fall, we had a celebration of life for my brother at the planetarium. And the director of the planetarium came in on a, I believe, a Saturday evening to do that for me. And he did such a fabulous job. And I told him I was going to tell you how great he was. So I am telling you now that that was fabulous. So thank you for that. That is a wonderful resource to our community, and it was a great place to have a celebration of life. So very kind. There's your public thank you to you and to 300,000 other folks watching. Okay, Commissioner Wheeler. That's very nice. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Brody. I just wanted to remind you there's a really good road headed to Hawthorne. I know. It's an excellent road. There's no bumps. There's no holes in it at all. Smooth sailing. Thank you so much, Dr. Brody, for even considering all of that. And working with us on it. Absolutely. Thank you, Commissioner. And then I'll wrap this up, Dr. Brody. So, yes, at the gala, I mentioned to you about TeamWorks with the Children's Trust. Goodwill was at our Children's Trust meeting yesterday. And they were commenting about the success of the TeamWorks program. And I brought up our conversation. And he responded that he's already been in touch with Santa Fe and that you all are already working collaboratively together. And a huge thank you for that. Absolutely. It's making a big impact. I will say to my colleagues, commissioners, in my 12 years, I can't remember a better relationship with this board and Santa Fe College, largely due to you and your leadership team. They are really, really great. And we thank you for that. And I will say at the gala, the man at the podium there multiple times recognized your commission, your county commission, as a partner in the success of really what we are doing for our entire community. So, thank you. Thanks all of us. Yeah. Thank you for that. And I really appreciate you coming today. Thank you. Okay. Have a great day. All right. Have a great day. All right. We will close public comment again. Oh, you want to come up? Okay, yeah. It's open. Let's go ahead. Sorry we missed you earlier. Hello. I thought I'd take this time to share a few thoughts that are on the same theme. First of all, if for any community to grow, it takes turnover of money in that community. For decades, the east side has not had much turnover of money in their community. When they get paid today, tomorrow, they take that money to the west side to buy the goods and services that they need. That's been going on a long time. I think you all know that in order for a community to grow, for some of the unsavory activities that go on in the community to disappear, there needs to be good business there. There's a prime opportunity for this community, for this commission as well as that of the city to get behind making sure that rather than just focusing most of our money on taking care of emergencies. And I'm looking at some of your faces and I'm amazed, but I won't go there. To just focus on emergencies and handout kinds of activities, we encourage your staff to, when they're budgeting, to look towards budgeting some funds to do more economic development kinds of activities. Because we know that that is the only way that we're going to start to address some of the issues and the poverty. And right now, we have a prime opportunity to address that for 20 or 40 years. The east side has been waiting. And the only way to do that is to have more consumer focused activities going on. That means a place for small businesses to operate. And we have economic development committees and economic development departments and CRAs and all of that. But yet, nothing has been done in that regard. So, that's my little picture on that today and you will keep hearing that. But I know you all know that we can do better. It's long past time for us to do better. I first brought up some ideas of this kind more than 20 years ago. And so, that does not reflect well on all of you who have come and gone over the years who lead this community. With that said, I'm going to switch to my other hat now. The Electraway County Community Remembrance Project. Our Truth and Reconciliation educational program is, as you know, do not have a dedicated source of funding. So, we're doing some fundraising. And we're having a great event. A Ha Ha Hallelujah Christian Comedy Show on June 20th at First United Methodist Church. And we'd like to see you all there supporting that. And we are appreciative of everything that you've done in the past and will continue to do. And thank you for the time. Okay, thank you. And appreciate the comments. It was largely two and a half hours of the joint meeting between the city of Gainesville and the county yesterday. Where we really addressed many, many, many of the things that we are working on and continue to work on. Which all don't happen fast enough, but they're starting to happen. So, thank you so much. All right, so I think we'll go ahead and, did you have anything on that? I guess I just wanted to encourage Ms. Lee to look at the backup from the joint city county meeting yesterday. We had a joint meeting with the city of Gainesville yesterday and discussed all of the investments and the work that we're doing in East Gainesville with regards to economic development and community support services. So, I would just encourage you to look at that backup and one of the particular projects is in fact a small business development incubator being put together by the CRA at Cornerstone. So, anyway, I would just encourage you to look at all of that and think about it and continue to have the dialogue and feedback. But I think people are hearing you and many, many others who are telling us economic development is a primary focus. And the work we're doing with Santa Fe, like he just mentioned, with the jobs program and others are the investments that we're trying to make. So, we are hearing you. We're not ignoring you. I just wanted you to know that. Thank you. No, we're going to close that up. Okay. Mr. Clerk, next item. Sure. The action items. The first one is the extension of sewer lines outside the urban cluster to the city of Archer and city of Newberry water system interconnection project. Okay. And the recommended action is to approve the attached resolution to allow for the extension of sanitary sewer lines outside the urban cluster for the Archer to Newberry wastewater system interconnection project. Mr. Chumley, welcome. Good afternoon, commissioners. Ben Chumley with Growth Management. This item is a request for board approval for the extension of a sewer line through the unincorporated part of Alachua County outside the urban cluster. And this is for the city of Archer's and the city of Newberry's wastewater system interconnection project. As you know, the city of Newberry is constructing a new regional wastewater treatment plant within its city limits. And the city of Archer and the city of Newberry have entered into an interlocal agreement wherein the city of Archer would collect and transmit wastewater from within its city limits to Newberry's new wastewater treatment plant, which sits within the city limits of Newberry. And that force main will extend through some parts of unincorporated Alachua County, which is outside of the urban cluster. And so that prompts a requirement under the Alachua County comprehensive plan for a board approval. So here is a location map of the proposed force main. It will run from a pumping station within the city of Archer north up to US Highway 41, which is also known as State Road 45. And then it will run north, northwest along the west side of US 41 into the city of Newberry, where it will connect to a Newberry lift station, which is located around Southwest 30th Avenue. The force main is going to be eight inches in diameter. And the total length of the force main is about 44,500 linear feet, which is about eight miles. You can kind of see on this map the gray shaded areas. Shaded areas, those are city limits of either Archer or Newberry. And much of the force main route will run, will be running within either the city of Archer or the city of Newberry. But there are a couple of places where it would run through unincorporated Alachua County. Those unincorporated areas are designated as rural agriculture under the county's comprehensive plan, which is a maximum of one unit per five acres on any development that might occur there in the future. And as I mentioned, the cities of Archer and Newberry, they entered into an interlocal agreement. That agreement grants Archer 175,000 gallons per day capacity and Newberry's treatment plant, which is the equivalent of about 700 homes. And my understanding is that Archer intends to use that capacity to transition many of the existing homes and businesses which are currently on septic to this new wastewater collection system. The comprehensive plan identifies certain criteria upon which the board could base a finding for approval. In this case, well, all four of the criteria are shown here, but in this case, staff would suggest that A or B would be a potential basis for item A. This project would convert numerous septic systems within the city of Archer to sewer, which would have a public, excuse me, a public health benefit by reducing nutrient loading into the environment. As you know, Archer is located within the Santa Fe River Basin Management Action Plan or BMAP area. And so converting septic to sewer in BMAP areas is generally a desirable outcome in terms of water quality for the county. And for item B, this project would enhance the safe, effective and efficient delivery of centralized sanitary sewer services within an existing urban service area, that being the city limits of Archer. So staff believes that this is consistent with either A or B of policy 3.1.5. And the resolution which you have in your backup identifies both items A and B as the basis for approval. So staff's recommendation is to approve the resolution allowing for the extension of sewer lines outside the urban cluster for the Archer Newberry wastewater interconnection based on a finding of consistency with policy 3.1.5 A and B of the comprehensive plan potable water and sanitary sewer element. And I'll be happy to answer any questions. Okay. Thank you. We've got Commissioner Alfred, then Commissioner Wheeler, Commissioner Prezio. Okay. Thank you. I'm going to put my engineering hat on for a minute and talk about a few things that weren't addressed in the presentation. First of all, this is a force main, which means individual homes can't tap into it. It is a only can be tapped into by a development. I spent a lot of time looking at this and based on what I saw, there's really only one property between the two that's large enough for a development to go in. And we have other protections as the county commission against that. And then finally, living in Archer, I dig less than a foot and I am hitting limestone. And it's that way over a lot of the city. And that means that a lot of the septic tanks are going straight into our aquifer and affecting water quality all over the region. And not only that, the septic tanks perform poorly. And so we have many houses where there's a real public health issue with the septic tanks there. So I'd like to make the motion that we accept staff's recommendation. Second. Second. I got a motion and a second. Thank you, Commissioner Alford. Commissioner Wheeler. That was my question I was going to ask, Mary, if, and you can tell me too, between the two of you. If we're not, if these homes individuals are not allowed to tap into it, who are we serving? We're serving the whole city of Archer, but we don't want to encourage development all along that force main. Oh, out in the outlying area. Out in the outlying area. Oh, I see what you're saying. So the force main connects basically two, it connects two lift stations. Okay, I'm with you. So the pit, because I know for 40 years there's been issues with sewage right on top of the ground. Like you're saying, it doesn't go down or, I mean, it just rests on top. So, no, thank you. Thank you. Mr. Chair. I guess I find it curious that neither Archer nor Newberry are here for this item. First of all, it's very bizarre to me, given that this is a multi, multi, multi-million dollar project that they're working on. My concern, I guess, is that I have nothing with regards to the financials of this project. Is this project fully financed and paid for already? My understanding, and again, I can't speak for the city of Archer, but they have received grants for the pumping station and for the force main construction. Okay, so it is fully funded. It is. The connection is fully funded. I believe so. Not the individual connections are not yet fully funded, but there is some work to get more grant funding for that. But there will be probably some cost, which makes sense because people are already paying for septic tanks. There would be some cost for individuals to connect. Given the situation we're facing with regards to Archer's financial challenges and the potential with property taxes really impacting some of our local municipalities, is there anything within this context of this project that could ultimately land in our lap when it comes to financial obligations that we need to know about? Can I address that a little bit? I actually asked that question to staff, and they feel like that this is pretty low risk given the amount of grant money that has come in for this project. So, because that was exactly the question that I asked. And, I mean, at some point, yeah, there's always that risk if we take over any of the small towns that we're going to end up, you know, having to deal with their water systems, their sewer systems. And the environmental impact. And the environmental impact. Yeah, but the environmental costs to the county could be equally as much. Right. If we were to take on that as an environmental challenge. I think it's much better to deal with this right now while we've got the grant funding and everything is set up. That's my thoughts. Ms. Torres, did you want to add anything? So, Mr. Chair, theoretically, if they lose their charter, then the county becomes responsible for their debts. The statute is set up to create a municipal taxing unit that is basically the limits of the city and to tax those constituents for the debts that were incurred for that city while it was a city. Do we have any idea what the agreement between Archer and Newberry is? I heard you say 175 kilogallons a day, but is that a commitment that they're going to be delivering that by a certain point? Like, are they relying on that volume to be able to operate their wastewater treatment facility or is that just they're setting aside that volume? So, Archer and Newberry have executed an interlocal agreement which does provide for the 175,000 gallons per day capacity. So, I believe that means that that capacity is set aside specifically for Archer. If they wanted something more than that in the future, I think they would have to work with the city of Newberry, too. My question is more that, like, is there a date by which they have to start delivering wastewater to Newberry in that agreement? Like, are they committing to doing the home connections and all of those components of the project at this time? So, in terms of timeline, I believe Newberry's wastewater plant is not expected to be finished and come online until 2029. So, there's a few years there. So, it would be that at the earliest. I don't have the interlocal agreement in front of me. I have looked at it. But, yeah, I'm not sure if there's a date by which Archer will provide the connections. Mr. Chair, Jeff Hayes, Growth Management Director. I don't think we have any information that the new, if the question is, could the Newberry plant expansion not operate without the Archer flow? And I don't think that's the case. Okay. Okay, thank you. I think they're just reserving that capacity for Archer. Right. I'm just making sure there wasn't some kind of, like, required delivery of, you know, a certain volume to make their system work. I just wanted to make sure that that wasn't the case. No. Okay. Okay. Any other discussion? All right. To the public, we've got a motion on the floor. Staff's recommendation. Anyone from the public would speak to the motion? Back to the board. My only discussion item is the question that you asked, Anna, could become a question that we are talking about after November 5th. We'll just have to see what happens. But the League of Cities has said that there are between 200 and 210, I think, of the 480 cities that will be struggling with anything if this ballot passes in November. So it's an issue that the League of Cities and the Spartan Association of Counties are discussing over the summer as we move into November. All right. All those in favor of the motion, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That motion is unanimous. Ben, thank you. Thank you for the presentation. All right. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Mr. Clerk. Item two, which is the request to advertise for county-initiated amendments to the Unified Land Development Code for traditional neighborhood and transient-oriented developments. And the recommendation is to hear staff recommendation and approve the request to advertise the county-initiated amendments to ULDC for a public hearing. Okay. Good afternoon. Jacob Stout with Planner with Growth Management. So after a couple years of back and forth with the board and stakeholders in the development community, we're back with the refinements to the phasing elements and design elements of the T&D code. So the presentation kind of goes over updates to Chapter 402, which includes the application requirements, phasing, and the DRC authority on minor changes. Updates to Chapter 407, Article 7, which include clarifying and strengthening existing design code and providing flexibility in currently prescriptive elements of the existing code. And then through this presentation on any slides where there's code language, the underline is the addition and the strikethrough is the deletion. So I'll start with the 402, Article 19, which is the application elements for T&Ds and TODs. The section is organized as outlined on the slide, but I'm going to go through the requirements, phasing, and minor changes first, and then talk about applicability at the end of this. So the current code mandates a specific number of phases that's based on the proposed uses that the developer proposes, prescribes a range and balance of uses required within each phase, and then the development triggers that a developer is required to meet for moving from phase to phase. And the proposed changes in this code update would remove some of those mandates and then refocus it on existing infrastructure that can support the uses that the developer is proposing. So the proposed code would require phasing, but would allow a developer to decide the number of phases that a project needs. It allows development to occur if the infrastructure exists to support it, and then if other code requirements are met. And this is kind of aimed at addressing this issue that we heard over and over again from stakeholders a little bit before the board, that the market conditions have changed since this code was originally adopted, and we're trying to provide a little bit of extra flexibility so that these projects can be realized. So here's the proposed code language for these development application requirements, and it's mostly just clarifications. The biggest change is to subsection two, and it's intended to get a bit more information up front about which infrastructure is specifically necessary to support the uses of development at PDP so we know that, and then it can be phased out and built through the final development plan process. Can I ask a quick question on this? Sure. My question is, I know we have this sort of Central Point Village Center Transit Supportive Area space. If you have like a larger TND or TOD that's developing, and they're going to have like multiple commercial spaces within their development, like they might do like a little coffee shop and, I don't know, corner store in one part of the development or they're going to have things like that. Does that, how does that play into the Central Point Village Center Transit Core versus the residential areas as it radiates out? Is that still? Yeah, so one of the changes actually further in the presentation is about reducing the minimum requirement for what uses are required in the Village Center. Okay. So that there can be more dispersion across the development. Okay. So that some of those smaller residential neighborhoods are a bit more like traditional neighborhoods where you might have a shop on the corner of your street that you can walk to. Great. So, this is the proposed code language for Section 402.130D and it's sort of the biggest change within these, with this update. So if it's approved as written, the existing language would be removed entirely and replaced with the language that's on this slide and then the next. So, the phasing, like I said, would be required and a plan then must show what infrastructure is tied to uses that are proposed for each phase. The intent is that it allows planned infrastructure to come online as necessary based on other code requirements like traffic, design standards, and other elements of both the ULDC as a whole and the specific TND code sections. And then wanting those, the infrastructure to accommodate the uses within the phase. And as I've sort of said a couple of times, the goal is that a master plan PDP sort of identifies the areas of development that are required per the TND or TOD design code. And then construction occurs as financing and construction timelines allow. Phases might consist of one of a single block, multiple blocks. They might be entirely residential, they might be entirely non-residential, or have a mix of uses. We're just trying to open up some flexibility. The second part of this section replaces the existing triggers for moving from phase to phase in the multi-phase developments. And the goal here is to maintain the balance of uses by limiting the amount of a single use, either residential or non-residential, in an overall development that can be constructed to a max of 80% So if you had 80% of your residential uses, you would be required then to get final development plan approval for 20% of your non-residential uses, or vice versa. And then that gap tracks along until you've constructed 100% of your residential, and then the rest of it can fill in behind it as the market allows. So to be clear, they could build 80% of their total residential units before having to construct any commercials, what you're saying essentially? Right. And that's sort of similar in some ways to the existing code, because the triggers are tied to final development plan approval. So I realize that it's a larger jump than the constraints that we have now, and I know that it might result in developments with a lower mix of use in the short term. But I think our goal is to get the infrastructure network that allows development to come in incrementally as the market conditions to support, simply because it's difficult for a retail business to operate without customers. That's right. Right. Right. I get it. And then on the one just prior, I'm just trying to be clear, like, this is sort of opening up phasing a lot. Is that right? I mean, you're just saying, like, I could even phase a block at a time if they want to, is what you're essentially saying. I mean, how does that change, like, the process approvals and how many times they're going to have to come before the DRC or the board with regards to those different? They would receive board approval for the PDP. PDP. Right. So that would be the one main approval. And then, depending on how they outline their phases with their PDP, then they could have a bunch of hearings before the DRC. Similar to, like, how Luis, who was up here earlier, has done with the… Phase 22. Phase 22, phase 23. He's taking off small bytes instead of doing big bytes at once. And we're just trying to provide the opportunity for a developer to make that choice. And it really isn't substantially different, I guess, in some ways, too, because a lot of times they'll do, like, phase 1A, phase 1B. Okay. And then a unit within those things. I know that that's, like, common in some of the subdivisions that I've reviewed to see them that way as well. So it's trying to eliminate some of the mandate that, oh, you're a big development, so you've got to have these three phases where these constraints may not make sense on their end, and we don't see the information that they see all the time. Yeah, right. I get it. Commissioner Wheeler? I have a question about our legacy properties. Is this… Have we… At one point, we were talking about the idea of housing and business on that site. Is this the sort of thing that would entice somebody to come in to do that? I mean, people were talking about the possibility of having shops or a coffee shop where a community center with a, you know, meeting place inside. But they were also talking about businesses in that area, too. Have we had anybody come forward with that idea? Or is it all housing, all 15th over there behind Lincoln? You know, that property we own. So, yeah. So, Missy, I think, aren't we… That's coming back before us in two weeks? It is, Mr. Chair, and it's also in the city, so these regulations wouldn't apply. Okay, okay. But there is a land use and probably zoning, I'm looking at Jeff, that's mixed use on that property, right, on the legacy property that allows for it. But you will be seeing what was submitted with some mixed uses coming to you. Oh, okay. So, that is still out there. And, Mr. Chair, that property is within the city's transect zones, which are mixed use by right. Okay. So, use is pretty wide open on those. It allows business, office, and residential. I guess I had forgotten it was city. You know, we've had so much involvement out there. All right. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Okay. So, other goals and direction that we received from the Board was to expand minor changes allowed under the authority of the Development Review Committee or the DRC. This list applies to the preliminary development plans that have already received commissioner approval on the key elements of the development, your resource protection, where your roads are going to be, and connections to other existing infrastructure. So, the current code only allows reductions of entitlements or uses, be it residential or non-residential. So, the proposed language is to change that so it allows a reduction or an increase that applies to those different types of uses. And, the language on the next slide is specifically either 5% or 30 units, whichever is more. Why 30 units? We did a little bit of analysis of the existing PDPs that we have. And, the average of all of the entitlements that are approved is about 30 residential units. There are some larger TNDs or TODs that are approved that fall outside of that 30 units. So, the language is whichever is more so that they're not kind of hamstrung by the higher quantity of smaller developments that we have. And, in those large developments, again, the infrastructure that's necessary is kind of already approved. They would have to go through and resubmit analysis of what the additional unit counts would require in some changes. But, the infrastructure is already planned and they're going to go through that development review committee hearing process. And, in any case, the density and intensity regulations both in the comprehensive plan and the ULDC would be required to be met. So, the large ones that maybe have a range approved that they base it off of what is the comprehensive plan maximum allow, they wouldn't really have any room to go any bigger because they've already received the approval for the maximum. But, we're trying to make it as fair as possible for those larger ones where 30 units doesn't really help get a project realized. Mr. Alford? Yeah, on number five, the replacement of multi-story mixed use in an otherwise complete TND, what does that mean exactly? Okay, so, the current code requires that the multi-story mix, requires that there's, I forget exactly the percentage, I want to say it's 25% of your non-residential has to be in a building that is multiple stories. So, a coffee shop on the first floor and an office building on a second floor. Right. I think that while those things are worthwhile goals from an urban form perspective, it can be kind of difficult if- I know financing is often very difficult for mixed use buildings. Right. But- Oh, yeah. But if we, you know, we don't have some pressure to have them, then this, that situation's never gonna change. So, I feel like we have some pressure for mixed use, but we're not, like, mandating. Is that kind of what you're saying with this change? Yeah, it's simply because a lot of these, the developments that are already approved that have this, they've, the area is just sitting. Where we've had some pre-application conferences where maybe a developer wants to put in a single-story coffee shop or some other use, but because we're having to say no because you have to build the additional story. And- And there's that sentence in an otherwise completed TND, so that would be- I get it. I just, you know- At the end. You know, the Hale Village Center's done this successfully. Teoga's done this successfully, although they have less residential on their second floors and more businesses. I just, I just wanna make sure that we're, we're not just giving them an easy out, so. Well, I guess, I'm with, I mean, I guess this, I guess, can you just be clear that this is only in an instance where they've already completed their town center and other places where mixed use and multi-story is required? They're, they're, further in the presentation, simply, this is, this part is specifically for those that are built out. Built out. We are proposing to remove the requirement for it in the 407, which is where the, this, this part provides the ability to go to DRC to change that PDP spot, to revise their plan so that this could be built in an existing TND. Okay. Okay. But in, in the code update in chapter 407, the TND language, we do propose to remove the requirement for multi-story mixed use. Um, and I think then the other goal we would have is to update maybe the redevelopment code or other elements so that in the future, when the market or, um, land values allow those, those, the construction of those can be, um, redone. And, Jake, if they would still be allowed to do it, it's just removing the requirement to do it. Right. Correct. I just think what we're, I mean, I hear Mary's point though, I mean, what we're finding is, I mean, what we don't want is a bunch of empty buildings like we're finding in certain parts of Gainesville. Gainesville, but those are because they're building a bunch of commercial on top of, or underneath residential, and the, the demand is for residential. In this instance, I think it's talking about, it's still, it could be residential, but oftentimes it's commercial above. It's like two stories, and it's like those CVS that have the weird office space above that nobody uses. Right. You know, because they just sit empty for forever. That's right. Storage. I get that, but I also hear her in terms of like, as we grow in urban density, there are going to, there is going to be more demand for those spaces. And if they have to be redeveloped in order to be created, it's kind of like, then it's a whole, like, you know. Yeah. I, I don't feel like, you know, we should look at the poorly designed options that have gone in and some of the downtown spaces where, you know, they, they built a 1200 square foot office space and tried to rent it at the bottom of an apartment building. Right. Because they didn't do any needs based analysis as to what the, you know, market needed. And I feel like that was just them checking a box because they were meeting their pro forma completely on the apartment side. Right. And so that's like a whole different situation than in a, a well designed T and D or TOD. So I don't know. I, I, I know that this is difficult from a, um. I mean, I feel okay with this one of replacing it in an already completed T and D where they've just got this out, lot out parcel that's supposed to be a two story building. And that's just sitting there undeveloped because they don't have any, they can't afford to build the two story and there's no demand for the two story. Or, or like it, what happened in the village center in Hale was they had just odd parcels and people looked down like, I don't know what to do with that piece of property. Right. But you just needed a good architect. So, cause we did those, you know, so I, I don't know. I just feel, I just, I, I'm, I'm, I have a lot of mixed feelings about this. So I'll probably talk more when we get to the rest. Uh, okay. So then the next one would be then the changes to phase lines and, um, phasing schedules. The current code only allows, um, changes in phase lines that do not result in changes of entitlements of a phase, which is kind of self-defeating. If you can't move your phase line to accommodate new entitlement that gets your first phase off the ground, um, it, it doesn't make a ton of sense to do it. So chain, allowing that to, to be changed where there's a shift of up to 5%, um, of entitlements within a phase increases that flexibility. And then it would be, uh, again, before the, the DRC. Um, the conversion of commercial to affordable housing is separate from the, um, changes listed in one and two. And it uses the existing, um, buy downs that were already adopted. Um, we just didn't have yet a, uh, mechanism for it to go to DRC to, to have that approved. So, um. So, um. So you're saying that if they, if they ask for increases, the increases with affordable housing or just. If they have an, if there's an existing T and D or TOD that has, um, commercial entitlements that they can't. Right. They can buy. They can buy down using the adopted language. That change would go to the, um, the DRC under the proposed, um, code language. And I think that for all of these changes, the review from staff is still required. The DRC is a quasi judicial public hearing. And the main goal for us is that the agenda scheduling is a bit more predictable. Um, the lead time for placing an item on the agenda is less. Um, so the goal again is to increase that flexibility for some of these projects. Um, as they're going through the, the construction process. Good. When they're impacted by these conditions that we don't control. Right. Um, but they're still adhering to that public hearing process at the end of the day. So then this would be the, uh, language in the code, uh, for all of those changes. 25% multi-story buildings continue multiple uses. Can you explain number seven? That's one of the one you just talked about. Oh, that's the replacement of the 25%. Correct. Completed construction of all required infrastructure. Gotcha. Yeah. Okay. And then this is that applicability section. The beginning of four or two. Um, but I wanted to talk about all those other things first before talking about how it all applies. So, um, basically this section means that a valid PDP that's approved before the adoption date would utilize may utilize the, the new phasing triggers, um, that we've discussed and the minor change allowances. Um, but they must follow their phasing plan or schedule, um, of the approved PDP or come back and receive BOCC approval. And the reason for that is that a couple of the bigger ones have conditions of approval that are tied to specific infrastructure improvements. And if we remove those, then, um, we kind of lose a bit of the, the planning that we've already done for them. Okay. So the remaining portion of the updates are related to specific design standards in chapter 407, um, including those mix of uses, the residential and non-residential uses. Um, the liner building design screening of off street parking criteria for extended, uh, block multi-use paths. And then a couple of extra ones. The first one here is that reduction of the minimum non-residential requirement for the village center, which would allow a broader mix of uses throughout the development. It goes from 50% in the code as it is today to 40%. Um, the second is the elimination of minimum requirements. Minimum requirement for, uh, retail specifically retail non-residential. Um, and what we got from the stakeholders was that some locations of T and D's make it very difficult to have, um, any retail at all. And this is, this is an update aimed at requiring a mix of residential and non-residential, not necessarily in terms of the use. I think it's 10% be, uh, a retail store. And, um, also would, what this does too, is makes it a little bit easier in the future when a use changes hands. An office closes and retail wants to come in, or retail closes and an office wants to come in, or retail closes and a childcare wants to come in. And they've got to come back to us and hear no, unfortunately childcare won't work in this T and D because you're not, you don't have 10% of retail anymore. But the market kind of already explained that that wasn't working. Um, the elimination of the requirement for multi-story buildings, we've kind of touched on already. This would apply to future ones so we can, um, discuss more whether or not that's a route that the board wants to go. And then the last one is just, uh, note that private amenity centers that are accessory to residential do not count toward non-residential entitlements. They can be put in the development, they just won't count as. So it's like a community center or like a pool house. Yeah, 2,500 square foot pool house doesn't apply to the, um, non-residential entitlements for the. So I, I just want to make sure I'm understanding this right. So we still have in the village center the requirement for residential. We're just changing the requirement from, um, being in a mixed use building. So we still have like the, we're, we're not like clustering just commercial or non-residential uses. We're still mixing residential and commercial uses. We're just not pushing them to be in the same building. Unless it's one of those limited uses that requires it to be like, there's a couple, um, mainly, uh, drive through uses or automobile. Right, right, right. They would be required to, to meet that standard. Um, but no, the reason why I'm asking is the whole point of the whole mixed use argument. Well, for me, a lot of the point is not just the urban, um, creating the urban environment, but it's, it's, it's, it's for environmental reasons. Right. And for the walkability and all of that. So I think I feel okay with that as long as we still, you know, keep the residential component requirement. I think I feel okay with it. Okay, good. Yeah. And I think from that perspective too, one of the ways that we looked at it was that if you can walk next door or across the street to a non-residential use, or you can walk downstairs to one, they're kind of similar and, and where we're at. Well, it's, it's, it's, it's similar as long as the residential spaces aren't fronting the street where you're wanting a strong commercial presence. So the residential, like in many places in the Hale Village Center, you've got the residential uses behind some of the, um, commercial uses and that works too. Right. Yeah. Okay. I mean, I will tell you as a former owner of a mixed use commercial residential, very difficult to get financing. Yeah. Those days, it was only a two or three year period and they've long since passed. So I like this change because of what you just said, walking downstairs across the street to the non-residential versus walking downstairs to the non-residential are largely the same as long as it's still in the development. Well, right. And it's well designed. And well designed. Because that's, you know, I, when I see some of these places fail to me, a lot of times it's a design, um, they didn't take a lot of thought in the design process as to how this works. Right. Thank you. Uh, the code currently doesn't have a standard for what a liner building has to be. So we've established a liner building standard, um, and requires, so based on a minimum depth and then a utility connection requirement. This is sort of a compromise between allowing development to occur incrementally, um, and then not having that building sit empty. We talked about that in some of the workshops. But then also making sure that it isn't just a, a rectangle that's drawn on a plan. There's some commitment that if it makes a little bit easier for that end user to construct, um, the, the liner building when it's time. And this would only apply where off street parking, um, is proposed because we don't, you know, we don't require off street parking in T and D's or the code doesn't require it. So this, this is something that we kind of felt like we could do, um, and, and get to a point where it, we get a little bit better market conditions supporting it, but also some, some skin in the game from the developer too. Um, and then the one thing that we did add after, uh, some feedback was the line with limited exceptions allowed for the placement of utility infrastructure. Um, cause it can be difficult when they get to the utilities beyond, uh, our review and, and trying to make it a little bit easier for them to, um, work with all the different agencies that are involved. Uh, so we're off street parking is not lined by buildings in the current code. It's pretty prescriptive prescriptive. It's that last, uh, strike through at the end. All of those things are required if you don't have, um, off street parking line by building. So what we did with this was, um, said that it's, it must be screened from the street through one or more of the following allowing them to pick a few different things that fit the character, their development, um, and are a bit more. Uh, fair in, in some regards. So this is an example from Baldwin park in Orlando, which is kind of, uh, it's a form based code development, but it's like a T and D. And I think that that is a pretty nice, uh, example of screening that doesn't meet our current code. Got it. Okay. Um, we're codifying access to off street parking and the measurement for the purposes of calculating, um, block perimeter coverage. And they could, we, we're seeing something. Inconsistencies between was it the outside of the, um, the drive aisle or the inside of it. So we want to make sure that that's clear establishing a standard for the, um, extended block multi use path requirement. Again, it's that this was actually kind of less prescriptive than that screening requirement. Um, other than the trees, but we wanted to make sure that the space was sort of planned for upfront with the PDP. When, you know, you've got this bigger user that has a big parking lot, but we still want to connect those neighborhoods to the commercial. Um, that, that are farther away defined hardscape amenity, um, in replace of civic space. So this could be, if a building wants to front this non street area, um, they can, they can provide some of these elements. And it's again, kind of flexible for the developer to choose what will work for them. And then one thing that we kind of ran into, um, during the review of an out parcel on an existing T and D was the trash collection facilities when. There's no backup house. Right. And, um, the, the size of fire trucks necessitates or not fire trucks, um, of garbage trucks necessitates large turnaround area. So we ended up with a lot of pavement, which this technically meets the current code. Um, but that there wasn't much planned for originally with this. So we're going to ask for a bit more planning, um, with the first final development plan for all these blocked tenants so that we don't end up with unusable space that. increases impervious area and, um, just as kind of unnecessary from a lot of different perspectives. So, uh, yeah, so living in a neighborhood where I saw corners of buildings knocked off by garbage trucks. Um, I, I, I recognize the sort of the need, but I also found that the companies could buy different garbage trucks. And so that's, I mean, that's a lot to ask, but if we have a lot of these types of buildings, then they, you know, all garbage trucks aren't the same. So I don't know. I'm just curious what your thoughts are there. Um, I think that the size of vehicles drives a lot of our urban form and is an issue that's kind of hidden in policy details. It isn't discussed a whole lot. Um, I don't know what authority we have in the code to, like you said, require them to buy different vehicles. Um, but I mean, it really, you know, I, I think that the village center, the Hale village center had a private garbage contract, but they, they, they asked for a different size garbage truck and got one. And so, you know, I, I know it's there, but I guess this, this kind of allows for that to happen, right? Cause it's saying they could create, basically this is allowing for them to create like an alley that would be the trash alley essentially, or something like that. Like, or an area that's like, this is where your dumpsters are, as opposed to having it be adjacent to every building and have to have all this like extra pavement. Correct. And I think that I agree. I think, but I hear what you're saying is it could also be next to the building and just have tighter corners. But I feel like that. Well, there's, you know, there's a lot of ways to address garbage. If we just put all our garbage cans on the same side of the street, we could solve a lot of problems, but you know, it's a, yeah. The, the T and D code has some allowances for allies already. I think that they are just sort of underutilized and having a requirement that think about these end users upfront. And that's kind of been one of the ideas that we held throughout this process was like, how do we get a little bit more thought upfront for some of these things? This is a great one. Yeah. And removing some of the other restrictions so that there's some flexibility for the developers. Perfect. Yeah. As long as they're thinking about it, that's the biggest part of all of this. Because I think there's a lot of options out there as long as they think about it from the beginning. Can we put critical thinking in our comp plan? Yeah. Right. See. It was just that alleyway thing that I've already said. Yeah. Okay. Keep going. I think that's the last slide. Yeah. So unfortunately I forgot to add a recommendation slide. So the recommendation is that the BOCC approve the request to advertise for county-initiated amendments to the ULDC for traditional neighborhood and transit-oriented developments for a public hearing for adoption. Before you make the motion, I have one question. Okay. That's fine. I have a question, too, actually. Okay. Go ahead. Go ahead. My question has to do with while we are changing the rules on mixed use, one of the things that I've been asking for for a while is a recognition of live-work units, which, you know, that allows the flexibility of having a street-facing business in a residential area, which usually, like, for instance, in your your, what do you call it, the separation buildings, you know, that could be a row of residential that had a living room space that could be used, for instance, as a lawyer's office or insurance agent's office. Do we have anything like that right now in our code to encourage that kind of design? Or I know we put it in our recent comp plan amendment recommendation. It may be something that's as simple as live-work units are allowed, but we can look at. Because the reason those work better is you can market and sell them as residential spaces. You just have that ability to have office spaces without all of the requirements that the county would normally put on office spaces in a residential neighborhood. Like handicap, parking, all that? Yeah. Right. We can certainly look at what. Hold on. Christine's coming up. Oh, she's going to say. Good afternoon, Mr. Chair, Christine Barish, Development Review Manager. We do allow live-work units. They do count against your residential, but I believe they're exempt from the non-residential calculation. I'd have to look it up carefully. We have one small incentive for it. But if you want us to expand that perhaps, like maybe not having it count towards the density. I think, well, yeah, I think that that's, I think it's an important thing to, as we look at the rising of costs of being business owners, having that option to have, to buy a home that also can function as an office space is an important addition to certain neighborhoods. And so you're thinking even single family perhaps, like something that's outside the village center? Well, I mean, not out in full residential neighborhoods. I'm talking about having, you know, a designated area. In the mixed areas. Like, it could be like a nice transitional area. Well, I mean, I think she said we do allow that. We do allow it. A discount towards the non-residential. Yeah. I know we allow it. Yeah. I just want to make sure that we're pointing it out to developers that that's a good option. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. Sure. Okay, then. In the transitional area. I mean, maybe there's an option for them to count it towards their residential or non-residential square footage up to a certain point or something. I don't know. Yeah, I have to look at it again. I believe, because I think 23 Rust had that. And I think that the non-residential portion doesn't count against the commercial. Against the Rust. We've also seen a situation where the T&D maxed out their residential and he had a live work kind of tenant. Mm-hmm. They had to add units or they weren't able to do it because of the density cap. Gotcha. So we wanted us to just look at expanding it. We could. Yeah. I think the big point of this is that it has to have a residential component like somebody has to live there. Yes. Okay. Okay. Thanks. Do you have that? Did you have anything? I did. I guess I didn't see, in the backup I was reading, I did see all of the affordable housing trade-off stuff, but we didn't really go through that here. I guess I just wanted to, in that, yeah, it was, there it is. I wanted to suggest that the density bonus, the four units per acre wide where 25% of additional units are at 80% AMI. That would mean that one of every four units they get would be affordable. It sort of feels fair. It feels like, okay, you get four units. One of them's affordable. The other three you get at market rate. Because at 20%, it means that there's some weird like 1.2 house, you know what I mean? Like it's like less than a house if they only did four, for example. Yeah, why do we have four units but 20%? Right. I just, I guess I was just hoping we could increase that to 25% so it'd be like actually one full unit for every four that they're getting. Yeah, and I originally hid these slides simply because I was under the impression that all of this was adopted previously. Did we already adopt this? Okay. With the. I did remember us adopting it, but I thought when it came, I thought this was sort of like, now that I'm seeing it in context, I'm like, why would it be 20% when there's four unit on this? Yeah, anyway. Well, it's rare that you have a one acre development, so. Right. Yeah, so I think that. They'll always be like one point something house. Yeah, they did 20 units. I guess they round up. Okay. Yeah, but I think that we should kind of see how this goes. Yeah, I did too. We need to sort of move it up, but I think this, seeing how this goes. I think people use it. Yeah, I think the idea was 20 units, then one of the quads would be 20%. Four of the 20. Right. Yeah, it wouldn't work if you just tried to do one. Mr. Chair, we'll take a look at that. I believe, and I don't believe that language is, or those, the numbers are specified in the comprehensive plan, so we can take a look at that. But yeah, we haven't had anyone take advantage of it yet. So. Let's keep it. Let's keep it lower. Until we can get people using it. Yeah. All right. Do I hear a motion? Staff recommendation. Second. Motion and a second. Which is staff's recommendation. Jacob, planner three, you were like a planner when this started, right? I mean, this has taken a lot of time, effort, a lot of work with our development community. Really good job. Great job. And thank you for that. I know it's, we're adopting this in, you know, 15 minutes, but it's been years, literally. So, thank you. All right. Yeah, you've done a great job on this. Great work. Any public comment to the motion? I do not see a lot of prediction. Mr. Chair, I'm just going to make the point that this is just request to advertise. Request to advertise. We're coming back with a hearing. Yeah. Yeah. And then when we have the hearing, we'll say we've already talked about it. And then we'll just go ahead and talk. Try to remember that we did. Right. Mr. Clay would be here for this. Yeah. Okay. Back to the board. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion is unanimous. Okay, great. Mr. Clerk, next item. All right. Recommended action is to hear the presentation. Approve the request to advertise county-initiated amendments to the ULDC and administrative code in relation to access management. Jessica, welcome. Hello. Thank you all so much. My name is Jessica Klutz and I'm a senior transportation planner here at Alachio County. And today I'm going to be discussing the Transportation Access Management Unified Land Development Code, Article 13, and Administrative Code Chapter 51, Code Update Request to Advertise. So the primary objectives of this code update are to move code language relating to external site access management into the administrative code from the ULDC, update some technical references throughout to be the latest and greatest, and to clarify language relating to access management, traffic impact analysis methodology, and pedestrian analysis throughout. So to quickly discuss the purpose of this update, public works and growth management staff are concerned about large developments occurring on unpaved and not built to standard county roads, which this then creates safety and maintenance issues as the current Unified Land Development Code cannot be applied in incorporated parts of the county. This can then cause issues to arise when developments outside of the county, so within municipalities and incorporated areas, utilize county-maintained roadways that are not currently built to standard. This update is also going to provide minor updates to technical references to keep county standards up to current best practice and clarify several code sections without changing the intent of the code. So just briefly regarding some public outreach and collaboration, several drafts of the proposed language that you see in your staff report were shared with public works and growth management staff, and we collaborated to get this version that you all have before you. And then draft language was also sent for input to the municipalities, public works, and planning staff for review, and as of the time of this presentation, we have not received any comments from them. So next, I'd like to first go over the ULDC updates regarding transportation access management. So briefly, the proposed ULDC updates include to move sections relating to external access management to the administrative code. This will also update section numbers and references throughout the code to accommodate sections transferred to the administrative code. And you'll see a table of all these required sections and number references included as part of the staff report. And then just briefly, this slide lists all the sections of the ULDC relating to off-site access management, which then would be moved to the administrative code as part of the update. Just for clarification, these code sections would still apply to development in an unincorporated Alachua County. It just also would then apply to those developments occurring on our roads in incorporated areas. And these are all relating to external access management, not internal street networks or anything like that. And then so to discuss the language updates, the current ULDC language lacks reference to all types of development that should access a road built to county standards. We believe that lots and subdivisions is vague and can be interpreted several different ways. So we would like to clarify this language to indicate subdivisions as a whole and be direct. So the proposed language would then read all new subdivisions, lots in subdivisions, multifamily development, and new non-residential developments shall be accessed via paved public street or private paved street constructed to county specifications. That just adds kind of everything we'd like to cover into that. So can I ask a question? I guess, so in a situation where like a family, like we had that drive, I'm just thinking about that driveway issue. Do you guys remember that? It was like a while back. There was a family, they had a long skinny lot. And our driveway can only go to a certain amount. And then they subdivided that for their family. And then we had to do all kinds of crazy special things to like allow them to extend their driveway. So that that would be considered a driveway so that then they could connect to the paper. Like how does, how does things, how do things like that get handled in a situation like this? So if this is, I'm assuming this is in regard to the family homestead subdivision where if it's over a thousand feet. Right, exactly. This update is not touching that at all. That requirement would remain. So if a family homestead subdivision comes in asking for, you know, a driveway over a thousand feet, they would still have to come in and that is more of a public health and safety. I think the fire, fire chief. But otherwise would a homestead subdivision be under the same criteria that it would have to like, they're, are they exempt from this? Is this talking about like development subdivisions? Okay. Yeah, there's exceptions for a family homestead subdivision in rural ag up to nine lot as it currently is in the code. Okay, great. Yeah, absolutely. And then to quickly discuss some of the technical document references that are update, to be updated to more accurate, we're going to include a more accurate reference to the Florida green book. And then we have a traffic calming figure that does not have any title on it. So we put the illustration number on it so that it can be properly referenced and easily known. And then next I'd like to discuss the proposed administrative code updates. So primarily this update will create article five access management within the administrative codes chapter 51 vehicles and traffic. And some amendments were made to the transferred ULDC sections. So we're going to discuss that in the following few slides. So these amendments move to the moved ULDC language include clarifying that connection permits must be filed with the county, not just public works and ensures that all permits are filed with the correct department per current review standards. And then further the approved traffic study methodology. It has to be prior to some middle of applications and it codifies that clarifying the approval process for traffic impact statements. And similar to our ULDC update technical school references are improved as seen on this slide here. We're just updating the indices to the fiscal year 2017-18 FDOT design standards, which are the latest and greatest. Again, updating that green book reference to be the full name of the title. And then we're adding a new reference, which would be a technical reference for turn lanes. Currently, our code does not provide any turn lane technical references. So this gives all developers and us a baseline to go back to and say, hey, this is what the turn lanes need to meet. And then just some clarification here on application permit expiration. It would be from one year of the permit issue date rather than it just stating within, one year of the application. And language in regards to daily trip generation are now stated as gross, not cumulative. What's the difference between that and this application? I'm sorry? What is your difference between gross and cumulative in this application? So this was a request made by Public Works. I believe the intent of it is just that it reads as whole for the development, not cumulative throughout phases. I gotcha. Okay. That just simplifies traffic statements. And on these next few slides, we're gonna discuss the four connection class definitions for driveways that have been updated to improve clarity and make them all read in the same order and kind of operate simply. This class one definition is proposed to now include a trip count of 40 or fewer per day, which is better defining this type of access point. 40 trips is approximately equivalent to four dwelling units. You'll see that as the addition from the original to propose to clarify the trip count that qualifies for class one. For class two, the wording has been changed to better align with other classifications and provide better clarity. The definition is not changed from a driveway that is serving land uses that generate 1,200 total trips per day or fewer. It's just formatted to better match the other definitions. Similarly, our class three is revised for clarity and the proposed language now expands on example uses over 1,200 trips per day. Just as it's a little more expansive, a little more comprehensive. And then lastly, our largest change is to class four, which includes major modifications to roads as determined by the county engineer and specifies that any road or street meets the definition of class four regardless of trip generation. So this is a driveway for a street, not just a driveway into the business. And this will allow us to make sure that we have adequate information for staff review because at class four, you do have to provide your traffic statement. That's for anybody who has a new connection, any private driveway? This is specifically anything that would be classified as a public or private road. A private driveway into, say, a residence would likely be class one. The public's over 1,200 would be class four if it's going to be a public road. And then we do have some new language which is proposed to be included in the administrative code. That kind of reinforces the requirement for developments to connect to roads built to standard. So this language is to address staff's concern for the safety of large developments occurring on unpaid road. So that previous section, which is ULDC 417-140-A2, also has this. Just make sure it's in the administrative code as well. And the new language is that a connection permit may not be issued to any development that is not accessed via a paved public street or a private paved street constructed to county specifications, unless it meets the requirements of ULDC sections 407-75 or 407-76, or a functionally equivalent subdivision within a municipality of nine lots or fewer. So there is your exception for your family homestead subdivisions, which are up to six lots. Thank you. And then the subdivisions with no more than nine lots in rural agricultural areas. Great. Call that the annex section. Commissioner Hopper, did you have something on that? I had something actually on the previous slide on the class four roads. Is that include, that includes like the connection of private streets to public roads, where you would have that, like a distance between that entrance and like an intersection? Yes. So what, do we have a, is that a standard or do we have a specified number that we use? So we have two different standards in the code. One is distance from a major intersection. So that would be an intersection of like a collector road or an arterial road. And then we have one that's just the distance between this kind of driveways, which I believe is 250 feet. 250 feet. I know that causes issues sometimes with, like I'm thinking, I think specifically of a church that had to like go into a collector road and then out to a main road and then they had signage issues. Because they. I remember that Archer Road project. Is there, I just want to make sure that when we have those constraints, that we have a way for, for folks that, that are, their entrance is like separated from where their business is, that we have like signage standards to allow them to put signs at that entrance so that people don't get lost trying to find them. Does that make sense? Absolutely. Okay. I don't believe this particular code update touches on that, but I can certainly go back, see what our signage provisions are. On that Archer Road one that was referenced, that is a state road. So FDOT was ultimately. Right. That's FDOT's weirdness. But I just want to make sure that we don't put anybody else in that same situation. I can certainly go back and look and see what our signage standards are in regards to those, if their entrance might be a little bit off site or something like that. Absolutely. Okay. Thank you. For sure. I think it's a safety issue when people like pass the entrance, see the thing and then they have to do a U-turn, you know. 100%. It just gets, just gets bad. Thank you so much. All right. So this administrative code update. Also, we are also proposing to include bicycle pedestrian facility requirements requiring the provision of these facilities as a condition of access on county maintained roadways in accordance with current code provisions for them. So a table of the current pedestrian facility requirements is to be included in the administrative code as well. And a reference to the adopted counties, the adopted county bicycle and pedestrian master plan is made to require facilities are built in accordance to its recommendations. And growth management staff hopes to have this plans update brought to the board by late summer, but for now we will default to the current one. And further in here, a provision for payment in lieu is provided in this language will help to ensure that county facilities are built to standards for all modes of transportation. Great. That's exciting. Absolutely. So again, as referenced in the previous slide, a pedestrian facilities table is proposed. This is based on the currently approved street design table. No new requirements are proposed. It's just putting these requirements in the administrative code as well. So this is that table. It draws directly from the current street designs table. And then regarding Senate Bill 180, here's a little bit of analysis regarding our compliance with that. The proposed code amendments are clarifying in terms of jurisdictional authority. The county already controls access to county roads. The proposed amendments will clarify the standards that were previously in the ULDC do in fact apply countywide through the administrative code. Staff finds that the amendments are not more burdensome or restrictive than existing codes and is therefore compliant with Senate Bill 180 from 2025. Good. So that's our analysis there. And that is all I had. I am happy to take any questions or comments and thank you all for your time. All right. Questions, comments, or motion? I move staff's recommendations. Second. Second. Yeah. Motion, second. Move staff's recommendations. Thank you for all of those, which is a... Thanks for the work. Yeah. Recommendation to advertise. Get this stuff done, y'all. If you are, any discussion? Any public discussion? Back to the board. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Question is Janice. Mm-hmm. Thank you so much. Thank you. Okay. All right. Growth management gets up and leaves in unison. There we go. And we bring in... God bless. Solid waste. Mr. Holmes. Item four, which is the solid waste resource recovery management option. I have a dejavu movement on this one. ...to advertise the procurement of transportation and disposal services for solid waste management by Alachuk County. All right. Mr. Holmes, good afternoon. You're recognized. Good afternoon, Mr. Chair, commissioners. The purpose of today's presentation is a very short presentation, but it has very large implications for the county. Just want to give you a quick update on the current start of our negotiations with the New River Landfill and some perspective on some future decisions that I think the county needs to start thinking about. As you know, our current agreement with New River expires on December 31st of 2028. It's a 10-year agreement, but we've been working with New River for over 30 years. Actually, it's the only place we used since we closed the landfill in Archer. It's been a long relationship, and I think it's been very positive for both parties. Back in 25, we commissioned a study to look at the different rates of landfills in the area to get a sense of what's available. That study is in your backup. It basically said what we already knew. There are very few choices in the area, and the recommendation of the consultant was to go back and keep working with New River because we had the option of do a 5 plus 5 extension of the current agreement. So on April of 25, the board directed staff to do that. In May, I sent the letter to the New River. So there was associations say we were interested in extending the agreement for 5 more years. They would say they were also interested, but they were in the middle of doing a rate study. So the timing was good. So on February of this year, they got their rate study, and it was discussed at one of their meetings. They had different options and different pricings for the future of the landfill. They picked the one that was best suited for them, and they gave that to us. We looked at the changes that we were proposing, got back to their staff, kind of expressed our concerns. And then on May 14, they voted unanimously to kind of stick with what they offered originally. So it's very simple. The agreement that we have in place, it has two basic provisions. You know, it sets the price, the tipping fee. That's not what we paid the New River Subway Association. And it also states that we would not pay more than any of the members. As you recall, the association is directed by three counties, Bakers, Bradford, and the Union. So for the past 10 years, essentially we've been paying the same amount as they do, and that remains the same for the next two years. What they're proposing is, one, to do away with that provision. So basically there's no connection between what they pay and we pay. So they're proposing to keep their fee steady at $30 per ton for the duration of the next five-year cycle. And ours bumps up to $47 per ton on $29 and keeps climbing for the next five years. $47 per ton is a big increase from our $30. That being said, $30 is an extremely low rate. So, I mean, we have a very, very low rate for this year and for the next two years. $47 is kind of like in the neighborhood of what's out there. I mean, that's just the reality of the industry. And it's going to get worse as time goes by. With that being said, it's a 10-year agreement. I think it's prudent to see what's out there. We kind of know what we're going to get. For some of you, this is kind of like deja vu. I mean, we did exactly this thing 10 years ago. It's very familiar. We may end up in the same situation where we were 10 years ago. If we put an RFP, it's very likely we're going to get the same companies that bid it 10 years ago. It's going to be the same group we're going to get now. And actually, I talked to both of them, and they're interested in doing that. So that's kind of what I'm expecting. There may be a third player that they're trying to get their stuff together. But, yeah, it's essentially what happened 10 years ago all over again. So that is the ask for now, to authorize staff to do the procurement for the transportation and disposal. And let me add this transportation part. Right now, we only have disposal services agreement. Two of the companies that are potentially are going to bid, and I bid it 10 years ago, they are too far away for us to do the hauling. So if the county were to go that route and pick one of those two companies, my recommendation would be for the county to get out of the hauling business. If we get out of the hauling business, that's going to result in the county losing positions because we wouldn't need those drivers. So those are all things that we need to take into consideration as we move forward with this process. Okay, are you done? I'm done for the short-term decisions. Do all of the landfills that are likely to bid have, like, landfill gas capture? I'm not 100% sure on that. I think New River is the only one that's doing that currently. Commissioner Alfred? I think, I guess, yeah, I just want to be clear. Like, I understand that this is a cost issue, but we have a climate action plan and a set of responsibilities associated with our environmental impact. And we're already creating a massive environmental impact by taking our trash and trucking it out of county instead of figuring out how to deal with it in our own backyard and reducing the volume of trash by a lot by thinking about the ways in which we reuse or recycle or reduce that waste. So, for me, if we're going to move in a different direction, I would hope that our expectations of the environmental standards of, like, where our waste is going and the capturing of gas, how far we have to drive, and the sort of climate and environmental impacts will be taken into consideration in that contract negotiation along with price. So, I would ask that we not just do an RFP for the lowest price bid, but we do an ITN or something where we can actually look at the overall impact of that business and the criteria associated with it, rather than just, this is the cheapest and this is what we're going to do. Yeah, Mr. Chair, I just got a hold of the RFP we used 10 years ago, and those kind of questions were asked at the time. They are asked in there. Yeah. So, we were not looking at just an invitation to bid. It was an RFP, so we're looking at environmental impacts, transportation, and all those kind of things. Okay. Commissioner Alford and then Commissioner Wheeler. Yeah. I think it's interesting that they are not raising the rates in Baker Union and Bradford because they have a shorter distance to drive, too. So, overall, they're saving more money, right? If you map it out, they're closer to the facility also. Yeah, but they are the owners of the facility. They are the owners, but still, I mean, their overall cost is so much less. I just, I support this. You and I had a discussion about the possibility of looking at facilities also within Alachua County. Is that something that you're going to do? That's the next slide. That's the next slide. That's the next slide. Okay. I will wait and make my comments about that. We need a lot more people on the ground for that conversation. I was thinking this was the next slide, but I'm good with this staff record. So, this is the ask for today to make a decision on the- Okay. Hold on. Hold on one second. Yep. Commissioner Wheeler. This has been a disappointment for me. You and I have talked regularly about trying to address this in an academic way. You know, an environmentally responsible way with the university here, Santa Fe, experts in a lot of fields here that we haven't somehow been able to capitalize on. And, you know, we talked about the professor at the university who's doing recycling now, who's got a plant going on in Palatka, you know, that we didn't even have come speak to us here about what he's doing. And there are a lot of folks at the university. There's a young man, I think, who's going to be working with Newberry, who's doing some recycling. I mean, there are new things happening, and I know that you and I have tried to make sure that the board knows that these kinds of things are out there, the possibilities, the glass that we have to carry south, if we did carry south. You know, opportunities that we could capitalize here. You know, the ground breaking at the recycle plate, even the eco loop. You know, I was there for that groundbreaking. So, you know, after eight years now, it's kind of frustrating that we do have the same conversation over and over again without actually really moving in a direction that's responsible for the county. And, you know, we've had a hard time even with educating our communities. You know, we've done it. We get in there and do it. And then somehow we back off or people get people just get lax in the response. So it is frustrating. And I'm sure you are frustrating because you've seen it and you all have been here. It's like Groundhog Day, the same discussion every time, but no progress. And for me, that's it's frustrating because we're a big community here. We've got the university. We've got people who come and go regularly that we have. We because of the repurpose project and things like that, that has been ground root, you know, grassroots responses. But there are so responses that should be coming from the academics as well. So I would just say this may be the time for us to actually do something different. So, Mr. Chair, maybe it would be best if I just go to the next slide because I think it's going to address. Well, I thought you were through, dude. I'm so sorry. No. Can I answer that? Can I ask just a couple of questions? Certainly. Yeah. So in looking at the tonnage per day, just to kind of set everyone as to where we are. The backup showed that for New River, there's 305,000 tons per day. Are you looking at? Joan Admin's report. Okay. Alachua County is providing 211,000 of those 305. Yes, yes. Baker, Bradford, and Union are providing 20,000, 24, and 10,000. Those three counties together are providing 54,000. We're providing four times that amount. We are about 69% of their volume revenue. When we renegotiated or negotiated this in 2018, the deal was we're not an owner. We don't want to be an owner, but we are the largest customer and we just want the same deal that you all have. I get the costs are going up. I want us to keep that essence of that deal. If they need to raise costs, then we raise them together, not we capitalize on Alachua County's back. That's my feeling. So I am open to an RFP if this is what their board said. And I'm also open to the next three slides. Mm-hmm. And I'm ready to look at this again because we're looking at it for the next 10 years. And I hear Commissioner Parizia's point. And I've heard our point of maybe we shouldn't be transporting our trash to New River. We've always had a great partnership with New River because they are environmentally conscious. They do, I think, a really good job. But I don't think it's fair that we're providing 70% of the capacity unless they just don't want our capacity anymore, in which case that's a whole different conversation. But I think an RFP is the right route to kind of flush that out. I remember those 10 years ago talking to those county commissioners in those three counties, and they said, listen, we need you all to continue. And so we stepped up and we continued. I mean, we did that. And now here we are kind of getting treated like a stepchild. And I don't really like the way that feels. Maybe that's not their intent, but that's how it feels to me for someone who's been a partner for a decade. Yeah. So those are my comments before we get to the next three options. Commissioner Wheeler, did you want to think? I just wanted to say capacity is an issue, too, now, where it hasn't been. And this is the problem, you know, that we may be pulling that much into their landfill, but we're also filling it up quicker to the point where they're not going to have the capacity to take. So that also has to be considered. Thank you. Did they say that? I thought their capacity was 2050 when we negotiated in 2018. So I went kind of really fast on the fact that we went and talked to their staff, so maybe I should go into a little bit more detail there. So when we talked to them, basically our issues were exactly what you said. I mean, we were assuming there was going to be a tipping fee increase. That was to be expected. Right. We were not expecting to change the other provision, the one that kept everybody at the same price. Right. So those were the two things that we brought to them. They're thinking or what they're trying to deal with is, yes, we're a big piece of their finances, but we also take a big chunk of their space, and they're trying to balance getting the money but have landfill space for 10, 20, 30 years into the future. Well, and I just saw that they did an agreement with the City of Gainesville to direct haul. The City of Gainesville is 20,000 tons per year, so it's a very small amount. A small amount doesn't matter. It's a small amount, right. Yeah. So what is the current capacity at 300,000 tons? It kind of depends because they have the option of building a new cell. Right. So if they build a new cell, then there's a lot more capacity. I mean, I remember in 2018 us talking, and they were talking about capacity is not an issue. We can always build another cell and keep going this. So I hear that argument, Commissioner Wheeler, and if that's true, then they don't want our business. Great. Then that's an easy thing to say, and they're kind of saying that right now. So I think we have to figure that out. Commissioner Prizio? Yeah, I guess I just wanted to say to Commissioner Wheeler's point, you know, 30% of our waste stream is organic. 30%. We're hauling a bunch of food and food-related paper and things like that that could very easily be composted. And I mean, very easily being, you know, relative, right? Very easily as long as we could capture it. And I think the capturing it is the challenging part, right? Requiring commercial, it's mainly commercial operations, you know, generating that waste. It's not residential. I know the city tried and didn't have a very good process with that. I think it takes a major effort. It takes a major set of commitments and integrated processes to be able to make that happen. But it's being done all over the world. It's not like rocket science, right? And we could reduce our overall hauling costs, our overall carbon footprint, and by that 30% alone just in terms of the hauling. And then to add that, we're making compost, we're making organic matter that can be added back to the soil, to Mark Van Sussbergen's point. And that creates water holding capacity, adds carbon back into our soils. So to me, like, if we're going to talk about opportunities around innovation and around waste reduction and around, like, we don't even need to go to the fancy, I mean, that science is clear. Those biodigesters for organic are clear. Like, all of that science has been done. And it's just a matter of will, I think, and what we can do with the regulatory and incentive process. I think that's a city of Gainville County joint discussion. It is. That's your next mission, Anna. Commissioner Chestnut. I wondered if we could look at all options out there in terms of what Commissioner Prizia just said, so that we'll know what that looked like and what the cost is for that and all of that stuff compared to how we save our community those resources and that funds. So I'm really concerned because I see cost in the future is going to go up even more, you know, especially if we stay with new rivers. So I'd just rather have those options out there so we'll know what we'll decide for the next 10 years or 20 years. And that's the purpose of the next two slides. Okay. Well, I'll wait a minute. I'm sorry. So it doesn't matter what we get from New River or any other landfill. We're looking at a five-year window at best, maybe 10, five plus five. So in 10 years, we're not going to have a place to take this garbage out of the county. So we need to start thinking, what are we going to do with that material and manage it here? As of today, I mean, there are very limited options, and this is what I can offer to you today. And to get any of these options up the ground, it will take at least five years between permitting, processing, building. We're talking like at least a five-year window. So we're going to need a landfill for at least in the next five years to get any of this stuff done. So there's no escaping that. So to me, the obvious clear number one choice would be to build a landfill in Ballou Forest. That's the piece of land that was bought specifically for that purpose. If you look at the comprehensive plan specifically dedicated for that purpose, it would take an effort. It would take some sale in the community. We probably will revise all those studies that were done back then. But that is the logical place to build a landfill in Alachia County. You may need to change the name, too. It's hard to think about going into a forest area like that. I know. Another option that's a little bit more complicated is the Southwest Landfill in Archer. That landfill closed 30 years ago. The cell one, the bigger one, this cell over here, there's still capacity there. So there's a technique that's called landfill mining. And the way it works is you reopen that cell one. You get material out of the other cells and kind of recycle. The advantages is as you get into the closed cells, you can get usable material from there like metals. Landfills tends to be a lot of dirt. You know, there's something called daily cover that you have to put on top of the garbage every day. All that is usable material. And then some of that other material could be used as a fuel source. This would take six, five years to do it because it's fairly innovative, fairly new thing. A benefit of this particular project would be that other than this cell, that's the only one that's lined. The other four are on line. So if we were to do this as we mine the cell, we would put a liner on that. So that would be a benefit for this particular project. And then we talk about this, you know, there's some more alternative options to manage the waste. That being said, none of them is going to replace a landfill. We're still going to need a landfill. We got to do, we can't put everything into one basket. We need to have different options. Even if we collect all the organics, we still need a landfill to deal with the rest. So the options that we discussed before, you know, it's biological processes. We made some progress on the composting. You know, Life Souls is building their facility. They're getting there. They're getting operational. Gaston has been working with Old Town, trying to deal with the residential. But we have a long ways to go. I'm kind of, I don't want to jinx it, but I may have something in the future for you guys that could have an impact on the organics, food waste side of things. But we're still going to need a landfill to manage the rest. Chemical recycling, this is what Commissioner Willis was referring to. Palatka, the landfill in Palatka, they're going to be looking at this chemical recycling process. Up front, you just take the waste material. You make this thing called syngas. And then there's different things you can do with syngas. Some of them are in compliance with the county code. Some of them are not. So it's just really the product that could be an issue with our comprehensive plan. Fairly new technology. What they're doing in Palatka is a pilot study. They're looking at one ton per day. We generate 800 tons per day, so it's not something that's going to save our problem. But there's been progress being made in that direction as well. And then there's refuse-derived fuel, which is against the comprehensive plan. But if we're looking at mining the southwest landfill, then that's something we should think about because there's nothing else you're going to do with that material or put it back in a different hole. So, I mean, I guess my pitch is we don't – if we build a landfill, it doesn't mean we stop doing composing or recycling or all the other things. Because the day after we open that landfill, our first priority is going to be make it last as long as we can. What is the capacity of the Archer cell that you would propose mining? It depends on how much materials we're able to recover from each cell. So right now they're full, so we're going to be pulling stuff out. And the more we can recycle, reuse, or don't put back again, that's going to be the capacity. So it's kind of a hard number to estimate. I know UF gave the county a presentation probably six years ago on these two options. I've got to go and get it updated. And the purpose of these last three slides is not for you to make a decision today, but just to get the conversation started. And I'm planning to bring more detailed information on – you know, I said very quickly, build a landfill, a balloon forest. That's a big deal. That's a long process. That's a really long process. We need some studies. That's not going to happen overnight. We're talking years to get to that point. But we've got to start somewhere, and some words today. All right. So the recommended action is to authorize staff to advertise for the procurement of transportation and disposal services of the solid waste management by Ellsworth County. Do I hear them? I have questions. I'll second it for discussion. All right. So we've got a motion and a second. Commissioner Alford. With respect to these last three slides, I feel like there's a – that Archer is actually really an opportunity, although the city and the residents out there are going to be not happy about that. I know. However, I feel like this is also an opportunity to look at ways that we could compensate the city of Archer for their impact. Which, you know, given their financial constraints and the fact that land values out there historically have been depressed by the location of that landfill, I think that if we could figure out a way – I know that the landfill itself is outside the city limits, but that would be a lot of traffic through the city. And so are there – have there been any ways that cities have been compensated by the impacts of that? I'm not aware of any, but I'm sure there's some innovative stuff that we could look at it. Because, like I said, the landfill is outside of city limits, but the traffic will go right through the city. Absolutely, yeah. Absolutely, yeah. And so I think that that's, you know, a discussion that they might be open to. I also think that the mining of those cells and then put – the mining and then the lining of those cells has a real impact. Because, you know, I live out there and I bought the most expensive water filter I could because I feel like they're – if you get a glass of water from the city of Archer and you set it down and you let it sit until the flooring comes off, it does not smell good. It smells bad. And so it's – I feel like their groundwater is being impacted by those cells. So I think that there is an opportunity here to, you know, to combine, like, option two and option three to both mine and line those things and then look at maybe utilizing some of the biological treatment and making compost or whatever that we could do to lower the overall stuff. My biggest concern, actually, though, is traffic because all those trucks going through one of our worst – roads with some of the worst traffic issues is – would be of the logistic order. So I didn't know if that was something that you had thought about. No, this is just a general idea. We haven't – we don't have that level of detail information. Well, I'd be happy to move staff's recommendation with the idea – We already have a motion, but I would like to add to that motion that we also, like, seriously consider some of these options and do some analysis on how these could work. Are you okay with that? I thought that's what we were voting on in that as part of the staff recommendation that the presentation – We need to add that. We need to add that. Yeah, that's fine. Absolutely. Are you okay with that? Yeah, I'm fine with that, yeah. Okay. Commissioner Chesson and then Commissioner Prezio. You know, I kind of remember there was an issue with the trucks on Archer Road in Archer, in the city of Archer. A lot of the people did not want to reopen the landfill for any other reason. I remember that they were looking for other options for a landfill, and everybody in this community spoke out against it. They did not want another landfill in the Lodgewood County. And then there were some people who said, well, I don't think we should be taking our trash to other facilities and stuff like that. So, I remember those whole discussions and people were really, really upset. I mean, really, really upset. So, but I'd rather have an opportunity to look at all of the options, all of the alternatives that we can do, because I think the more we get educated and the more we educate the public, I think we would hear from them saying they will accept the alternatives more so than we just go out there and do something. And then they come and start complaining to us that they don't want this. And if I recall, there was a lot of folks. I wasn't even on the commission at that time. There were a lot of folks in this auditorium speaking against the landfill. None of them is going to be easy to do. A lot of people are going to be opposed to all of them. Well, I get that. But I'm just saying we need to educate, too. As we learn, they learn. If we don't at least teach them what we're talking about, they will be against. And all I'm saying, I'd just rather look at all of the alternatives of how we move forward and for the future or the next 10 or 20 years. And so I'm just concerned. I don't have a feel of how the community is feeling about a landfill or opening up the Archer landfill again. I just don't know that feeling at this point. But something in me tells me they're going to be against it. So that's kind of like my purpose today to get that conversation with the community started now. I'm sure we're going to get some feedback from the public. I conclude. I just want to know if there's new technology, all that stuff out there, all of the alternatives we can look at. So that way we can make a sound decision in the future. Commissioner Prezio? And then back to Commissioner Wheeler? Yeah, I mean, I 100% agree with you, Commissioner Chestnut. You know, trucking our trash to another place, you know, and just dumping it in somebody else's community isn't really any better of a solution. Like someone else is dealing with it, right? Right. And so like us dealing with our own waste is important, in my opinion. But I also think we have to do it in a way that's intelligent. And I think that doing that means that it's going to take a lot more time. Like not only is it exploring like harvesting what's there and potentially turning it into fuels or other resources, but it's also looking at the composting. It's looking at the job potential. It's looking at how we can be innovative with the work that we're doing and have this be the potential of a research facility that collaborates, you know, with the ag and bioengineering department or whatever else it might be. Like the ways in which we can collaborate with Santa Fe College, with the University of Florida, with research, with job opportunities, with innovative waste solutions and take the opportunity of us saying we're going to, if we are going to in-house our waste, that we're not looking at it as in-housing our waste, we're looking at in-housing resources that we have wasted. And how can we turn that from waste into something that is useful, both in terms of economic development and opportunity for our community, as well as being responsible environmental stewards, you know, of the planet. So to me, that's going to take a lot more time and energy. And so I do think that it's like in the short term, I think going out for bid makes a lot of sense. And I support the motion. And I support the motion of continuing to do this research. But I hope as we do that, it's not just what are the costs of opening blue versus what are the costs of mining Archer, but it's really like, what does it look like to have those research collaborations? What kind of innovative technologies are out there that we could potentially bring to the table if, much like Newberry is doing with their ag biotech park, we were actually doing with UF in a meaningful way? Or, you know, what are those opportunities and how can we turn something that traditionally has been something that everyone says, not in my backyard, into something that could be a community benefit, that could be something that generates buzz and makes us a showpiece of what's possible with waste reduction and waste reuse and recycling. Exactly. I agree. You conclude? Thank you. Commissioner Wheeler? Now we're cooking, Gus. Okay. No, I apologize for jumping in. When I saw the staff recommendation up there, I thought that was our cue, you know, to jump right in there because this is the important part in what, you know, we've been talking about. You know, a couple of years ago, three years ago maybe it was, there was a young man here promoting a worm farm. You know, I thought that is just really cool. Take the waste that we have in our community, take it to some farmer out there who can actually process it and sell worms. You know, I mean, it was a thing. And I never heard from him again. Though, no, we didn't come back and I haven't heard anything about that industry. But thank you so much for doing all of this. And thank you guys, too, for understanding. I just feel like we really need a deep dive into the new technologies of what our resources are. And, Anna, I think what you said a minute ago about wasted resources, that little, that's a cute little kidgy thing that you could even put on a T-shirt. But, you know, I really appreciate your presentation that's been able to spark the imagination here. So, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Okay. So, we've got a motion and a second. Gus, real quick, who is part of the, who is the New River Solid Waste Association Board? Who is that? I'm going to have to give you those names. Is it one, is it a commissioner from each of the counties? I think there's a county that has two commissioners. Right. Baker, Bradford, and Union. Yeah. At least one, yeah, there's like one that acts like a mayor that was going to direct the thing. Okay. But I can't give you the names of the current board. I just want to make two comments. So, I've heard trucking our waste to another community is bad because they have to deal with it. And it's also us saying not in our backyard. I will tell you that in 2018, when I was speaking to these three counties, they wanted it. They wanted it, but it wasn't like, don't ship it to us so we have to deal with it. It's like, please negotiate with us because this is, we want this as part of our. And they actually came. Right. And New River is a good landfill. Yeah. They actually were the next auditorium. Let me finish. Yeah. I mean, they came here asking. I will also tell you that Putnam County commissioners have said to me at FAC, when's your contract up? We want it. So, it's really sad because the board on May 14th, all I would have asked for is just keep our rates the same as year three. And this whole conversation kind of ends, you know? And maybe not long-term conversation ends, but our current conversation ends. So, I think if we pass this motion, we're sending a message loud and clear that we're going to take this up for the next year. We're going to educate ourselves, educate our community, and maybe New River isn't the best option for us anymore. And if that's how they feel, when they unanimously rejected our proposal, that's what they told me. So, until they tell me something different, I'm operating under that. Let's look at all our options. Let's look at the RFP. Let's talk to Putnam County and all those same people that put in an RFP before, and let's reduce our waste. Because, guys, we're talking about innovative solutions and reducing waste, but the facts are 211 to 219,000 tons per day. We're not solving that in the next five years. So, I want to get on a path to alternative solutions, but I also want to, like, figure this out before the end of 2028. And who knows? A lot's changed in 10 years with technology, and a lot's changed with community's thoughts about what we should do with our waste. So, let's do it. You know, it's too bad. All they had to do was come back and say, well, I'll pay 35, you know, or something like that. And then the conversation would have been over, but they didn't do that. All right. So, we've got a motion. Is there any more discussion on this item? I would just like to ask, Gus, where do all those tires go to from La Vida Brown? Global Tire. There's only one place in the state of Florida that takes tires. So, that's, if there were to go out of business. We're in trouble. We're in trouble. Where is that? Not just we, but the entire state. Where is that? In Wildwood. Yeah. Because there's a whole lot of them out there. I was there over the weekend. Wow. There's a, no, yesterday I was there. There's a bunch of tires. Take any of them home? No. We offer a free tire after every tour, so. Because those things are heavy, too. Yeah. Oh, my goodness. All right. So, we got a motion. Staff's recommendation, plus exploring all our options. Any public comment to the motion? Steve, you don't want to come and talk about it? Okay. That's good. Back to the board. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right. That motion is unanimous. Gus, thank you so much. Thank you. I'm up here a lot. Can we take a five-minute? Awesome. Sure. We're going to take a five-minute break. We'll return at 2.25. Seven-minute break. Convene, and I believe we are now to item five, Lower Santa Fe and the Chetuckney River. IMPLEMENTATION STRATEGY WATER FIRST NORTH FLORIDA PROJECT RESOLUTION. RECOMMENDED ACTION IS TO HEAR THE STAFF PRESENTATION AND APPROVE THE RESOLUTION. Ms. Greco, welcome. You're recognized. Thank you. Stacy Greco, Water Resources Program Manager at EPD. So, this presentation will kind of give the big-picture walkthrough, the resolution that is in front of you, so give it some framing. Thank you. Okay. Since 2019, the water management districts and DEP have been updating the minimum flows and levels for the Lower Santa Fe River. I provided multiple updates on that. What happened this year is the governor signed the final parts of that. So, the grand finale is the implementation strategy and the regulatory component that implement that MFL. And we are in recovery. So, in this Santa Fe, Itchitucknee Basin, we don't have enough water for our current and our projected use and for healthy springs. So, we basically have to find ways to reduce our groundwater pumping and or increase recharge of water back to the aquifer. And so, really, that happens in that implementation strategy. That's where there are various projects to achieve those goals. So, there are multiple projects, but the Water First North Florida is really the largest project that is outlined in that strategy. Also happening at the same time, but separate, is Senate Bill 64. So, in 2021, in response to nutrient loading, algal out blooms, there was legislation adopted that prohibits non-beneficial surface water discharge of treated wastewater effluent by 2032. So, that is from your wastewater plants. 2025, there was a rule that allowed Jacksonville's utility to have until 2045 to meet that. And basically, this rule is just saying that we need to find better ways to dispose of our treated wastewater. And that's indirect potable reuse. So, that's treating it, putting it back into the environment, and then pumping it back out for drinking water. Reclaimed water for landscape irrigation. Rehydrating wetlands. So, that's what happens from GRU's Main Street facility. That's how that's complying with this is because that is a rehydrating. That's the popular sweet water preserve. And then aquifer recharge. So, a little more on Water First North Florida. So, it's a $1.1 billion project, which doesn't include land acquisition and some of the planning. That's very much in its planning phase. The concept was to take 40 million gallons of treated wastewater from JEA, route it through wetland treatment systems, and then into the aquifer in the Santa Fe Basin to get that needed recharge. The project was anticipated to provide enough recharge to offset impacts of current and that projected water use that's covered in that MFL and in the water supply plan. And it was targeted to be completed by 2040. So, what is happening with this project right now? There is a pilot project that is happening to evaluate ozone pretreatment and treatment wetlands for removal of PFAS, so those forever chemicals, and other contaminants. And that's great that that study is happening. We have wastewater effluent across the state. Let's find better ways to treat it. So, I am looking forward to the outcome of that study. There's also a siting study happening that is looking at potential wetland sites within the St. John's portion of this watershed. And that is them recognizing that, you know, something else is going to have to happen with that treated water. But the fate of this project is unclear, and there has been widespread opposition. You know, if the project does move forward, I think it really needs to include more public involvement and rigorous scientific investigations, especially into the filter and the level of treatment of the wastewater. Because there was, I went to all the public meetings, or most of them, and there was, you know, a lot of concern, people thinking that this was raw wastewater, you know, going into the aquifer. So, the strategy that Alachua County has taken through this whole minimum flows and levels, and that taken with this resolution, is, you know, looking at the bigger picture. So, we need recovery now. You know, the river is very low right now, a lot of algae on the upper Santa Fe right now. And Water First North Florida is a project that would take decades to complete if it moved forward. So, to get that recovery now, reducing current and future demand is really the most cost-effective solution. You know, from the Regional Water Supply Plan, water conservation is 3.4 million for every million gallon a day that you save, compared to five times that for construction projects. And I would argue you could even get that lower with some of the regulatory suggestions that we have. So, we have sent many letters, some from staff, some from the Board, with some of these suggestions, as we've been, you know, working with the state on this issue. But one suggestion to reduce current and future demand is to limit irrigation to one day a week, year-round. It's basically what we're in right now because of the water shortage. We have staff out there actively enforcing really not seeing landscapes dying. You know, some have gone dormant. We're seeing a little bit more yellow and brown. We're not getting complaints from people. So, this is kind of worst-case scenario that this happened all of a sudden and it's been hot. There was a version of the 2024 MFL regulatory strategy which had really promising language. It prohibited landscape irrigation wells. That's something we've been asking for for a long time. And that is when there's potable or reclaimed available. And really, that's important for many reasons. But the main one when we look at water supply is that utility's best tool is water pricing. So, you want water that we all use to be inexpensive. But then as you get into that discretionary use, that irrigation, make it more expensive. But if you make those top tiers too expensive, people right now just put a well in and bypass the whole thing. So, I was very excited to see that in that 2024 version. It did get removed from the final one. It does now require that people register their well, but they can still put them in. That version also had really interesting language to require existing permits to offset a portion of their impact. So, that was going to lead to reduce in pumping. Water reservations, another tool that the state could consider. I'm not as familiar with that tool. There is a water reservation for Payne's Prairie. And it's my understanding, you know, it is more restrictive and protective than just the minimum flows and levels alone. Can you explain what that is? Yeah, so there is a small provision in the state code that you can do a water reservation. So, it would be, my understanding, a study of, you know, how much water is needed. So, there is one for Payne's Prairie that, you know, the water cannot get beneath a certain level. And, you know, whereas the minimum flows and levels are similar to that, to have a certain level for different environmental services, I think it's a little more fluid. Whereas a reservation, I think, you know, if you get one is... It like entitles you to that much. It's almost like a water permit. Yeah, it's almost like a water permit for the water body. I just wanted the public to understand the difference, yeah. So, future growth is currently projected at 135, additional 135 million gallons a day by 2045. You know, another way to offset that is to change our development trends. You know, prohibiting permanent landscape irrigation for new construction if the MFL isn't being met is, you know, one solution there. We used to build without permanent irrigation. And, you know, now that's just not the trend. Utilities, water conservation plans should be strengthened to accelerate conservation. So, just real quick, I just did want to give an update while I was here about the water shortage that we're in. The water management districts are meeting today. They are the ones that are outlining the water shortage. They could change it today. I don't think they will. Even though we've had rain, we were in a pretty significant deficit. So, irrigation is limited to one day a week right now, even though typically we could do two days. Establishment irrigation is also restricted. So, postponing installing new landscapes. Non-essential water uses are prohibited, like pressure washing for aesthetic reasons. And HOAs cannot require this additional water use. So, we've been really getting that word out using lots of different mechanisms. We've been doing press releases, doing paid social media. The communications office has been helping us. We're also doing general water conservation, like our billboards and our ads on WFT, although that one was a water shortage one. And we're doing a lot of direct communication with the irrigation professionals, HOAs, real estate agents, to really get that word out. Are we doing any monitoring, like, of neighborhoods we know have permanent irrigation throughout them on the one-day monitoring? Do we do any spot visits to...? So, we have been getting a decent amount of complaints. We got, I think, 30 last month. So, we're definitely responding to complaints. Our staff is out all the time. And if we see irrigation, because, really, you shouldn't be seeing it on a weekday, unless it's a commercial. It can happen on a Tuesday. So, you know, staff has been, you know, if we see something, we will react there. So, then, finally, the staff recommendation is to approve the resolution. And this is just a screenshot of the end of that. And this was approved by the North Central Florida Regional Planning Council? This is a different resolution. I know, but, I mean, that... Unanimously. So, okay. So, their version of this. Their version of this, which was sent to staff. I think ours is a little more specific to our location. Yeah. So, their version basically said that Jacksonville should do desalination and that the project should not move forward. So, this approach is a little bit more looking at the big picture of what we need in our basin. Of, you know... Yeah. We need, you know, to find ways to reduce water use. So, it's not just focused on the Water First North Florida project and recognizing that treatment wetlands are important. Absolutely. You know, just recommending that if the project moves forward, that it moves forward with really looking at levels of treatment and in an appropriate place. Okay. Commissioner Offer. Yeah. I will say that at the Regional Planning Council, there was a robust discussion about all the things that we believe Jacksonville isn't doing, which is a lot of water conservation work like we are doing here. And, you know, other things that could reduce their overall wastewater flow like INI work. There were questions about the robustness of their industrial wastewater program because there's a lot of industry and some very nasty industry in Jacksonville and how that affects and goes into their water system. So, even PFAS, while that might be addressed through one thing, there's huge amounts of pharmaceuticals, industrial waste, and there's no provision right now or talk to the public about how that would be addressed. I think that this is the example resolution that we really need to put out there and we need to encourage JE and Jacksonville to look at those things before they basically dump, you know, treated wastewater in our backyard. But, to me, it's a slippery slope of getting to minimum flows and levels by using wastewater at all. It's like that's not the way we want to go. Obviously, we should do good things with our treated wastewater, but using them to make up our minimum flows and levels isn't, I don't think, I think that's not a sustainable solution. But I just wanted to share what we talked about at the Regional Planning Council and that was all of those things. It was the most robust meeting we've ever had in terms of citizen turnout. We had, you know, a pretty full room and it was really great to see these smaller counties get so involved in a regional issue. It was a really good thing, so I just wanted to share that. Thank you, Commissioner. Commissioner Wheeler. Yeah, we were all on the same page during those discussions and that was the first for me to see everybody come together with that. I'm wondering if this is going to be strong enough then to have them feel like that we are supporting what they're trying to do, say, in Madison County, you know, to protect their spring system up there too. I don't know. I understand taking this road. I do. But in terms of in solidarity with those counties that are being most impacted, you know, I would question that. And also, you know, at one point we were talking conservation, conservation, you know, conservation, trying to make sure that we were reducing the amount of water we were taking out of our aquifer, particularly in a drought situation like this too. But I just, we could even locally put, and I think I asked about this earlier, putting signs in our motels and hotels, you know, that we are focused on protecting our water resources here and asking people to be mindful of the use of the water in our systems here. And I know in some places you can go to a hotel and they'll say, don't put your towels out. You know, if you can use them another day, do. You know, that sort of thing. So I don't know if we have even gotten to that level where we can, in our community, focus with signs, wherever there are people who are using water or that there is water activity, that we can make them mindful of the fact that we are water folks here. I haven't seen much, you know, like that. Yeah. I mean, most of our, we've got good data showing that outdoor water use is really what drives that water use. So we really focus most of our efforts on that irrigation piece, like getting people to turn off their system. So right now we've got billboards about to go up. We do a lot of social media. We try to do our social media when we're buying it, targeting the zip codes that have the higher water users in it. So you just might not be seeing that based on your zip code. And then, you know, we are going to, I'm looking into now doing some advertisements in the Oaks Mall on those directories. That's something we haven't done before. Good, I saw that. So yeah, trying to get the word out in different ways. Because, you know, we do a lot of social media because it's pretty cost effective, but we recognize we might be missing some people. I think it's, if it's everywhere, if it's everywhere, then it's burned into people's brains that water is what's keeping us alive here and economically as well. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Commissioner. Commissioner Prezio. I just, I guess I just wanted to applaud this resolution. I feel like it's a really, does a really good job of threading the needle, if you will, of like having the conversation that we want to have, which is a conversation that is that the water management districts need to be focused on how we can do conservation today. And that conservation should, should, could and should be a bigger part of credits for minimum flows and levels. And I, and at the same time, helping people understand that this water first project in its current, at least in its current conception, may not be the best solution to the issue while leaving space for a science-based approach to a project like that, that could be a good project. It's, I don't think it has to be a bad project if it's, like you said, if it's filtered well, if science has applied, if there's really good wetlands done, and it's, you know, there's a, there, I guess there's a way that it could be done well. You know, I, I would be really surprised if that's the outcome of that project, if it ever goes forward, but it, there's a chance. And I appreciate that this leaves that door open for good science to come in and be a part of the conversation while at the same time saying we need to be focused on what we can do right now to protect our water resources. So thank you for this. Motion. Move to approve the resolution. Second. Got motion and second to approve staff recommendation of the resolution. Any further discussions from the board? Any public discussion? For the board, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any opposed? Ms. Greco, thank you. Thank you. Well done. Thank you for the overview and, and for your work on this. Okay. Mr. Can I ask one quick question while we're, while you're going, do cities and counties are required to also comply with the watering restrictions, correct? Governments themselves? Yes. We don't have any irrigation on county owned properties. We don't. Well, we do at parks and fields and things like that. And I, I have been noticing at some city parks, there's a lot of irrigation going on throughout the city of Gainesville. So I don't know if we've managed to get that under control or if you guys have noticed that there's been any conversations with the city or if we need to. Yes. And we have been reaching out to our own, you know, entities, because, you know, we do have the ball fields and things like that. We were waiting to see what will happen with the Water Management Districts today. If things don't change, we were going to send another reminder out to all of our staff to make sure we're leading by example with pressure washing and those things. We've had some conversations with the city, did reach out to the city manager last week. And, you know, hopefully those issues have been fixed, but we will definitely follow up to make sure that they have. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. What about IFAS? Are we working? Does IFAS pay attention? Okay. So the University of Florida, I mean, the reclaimed water I need to look at. I think that they do not have to follow the restrictions. So some of campus is reclaimed. I believe that the university, if they're using potables, should be following it. We have limited enforcement capability there on campus. And out into the county, though, when they've got farms and, I mean, cattle and farm lands out there. Yeah. So agriculture is regulated a little bit differently. Okay. I don't think that the current shortage has, you know, those restrictions for agriculture. I got you. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Ms. Cricker. Okay. Mr. Clerk, next item. Mr. Chair, next up is the property tax reform impact presentation. Okay. And the recommended action is just to hear the presentation. I'm reminded that we've all received a memo from the county attorney about what we can and can't say. And so we'll follow that. So, Mr. Crosby, you're recognized. Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Tommy Crosby, assistant county manager. And, yeah, my ability to comment is probably less than yours. It's just I'm not elected or anything. So I'll strictly go over exactly what the budgetary potential impact is. These numbers have transitioned over time. Obviously, we started out. Everyone's trying to gather what the bill looked like before it was finalized. So after the final bill was adopted and working with the Lodger County property appraiser's office, they actually provided us numbers. So in the spreadsheet that's on the overhead and should be in your backup, a reminder that on the property tax rolls, people get in the mail, they're trimmed. Adjusted values is what we would equate to market value. That's kind of where things start. And then the caps that are in place, whether it be the 10% commercial cap currently, which is going to 5%, or your 3% on Saver Homes caps, or other caveats that would make you not have an assessed value, governments, et cetera, that are off the roll. That becomes the assessed value. So that's your top line, our tax assessed value. In the fiscal year 26, and we used 26 adopted budget, $37.4 billion in property is assessed, has an assessed value for county government purposes. And before we go across, I'll just talk about the different areas. Then you have your homestead exemptions, which are currently $25,000, and it skips 25, then there's another $25,000. We also have other exemptions for military, some senior discounts that are exempt for those. And then you have all your other exemptions. And actually, I said the government one is between just and assessed. It's not all other exemptions. There's your government exemptions and your nonprofits and those agriculture exemptions, and those are all in that $9 billion number there. So taxable value in fiscal year 26 adopted budget was $25 billion. So that is the amount of property value we could have assessed millage on. In the general fund, we assessed 7.6 mils. So we levied in taxes $190,684,000. So if you apply the bill for the constitutional amendment, if it is passed in its current state for the fiscal year 28, not 27 budget, but for the fiscal year 28 budget, you will still have this applying apples to apples, a tax assessed value. We did not show growth of 37.4 billion. The new homestead exemption would be $6,940,000,000 worth of taxable value. So it will almost triple in homestead exemption. So that brings you down to a taxable value of $20 billion, $20.8 billion, $20.9 billion. At 7.6 mils, that's $158 million in revenue of taxes levied. So your net loss between current levy just on the $150,000 homestead exemption in fiscal year 28 will be $31.9 million in lost tax revenue. So after the fact, after we first looked at it, the property appraiser, when it also compared the reduction in caps from a non-homestead property that is currently capped at 10%, reducing that to 5%, will produce another $1.9 million in lost revenue and tax revenue there for a total general fund impact of roughly $34 million. So if you go over to the MSTU column before we talk about 29, it also applies to the Municipal Service Taxing Unit for Law Enforcement. Under that column, it is $12.7 billion in assessed value. Homestead exemptions will go from $1.375 billion in exemptions to $3.6 billion in exemptions. Again, almost a tripling of the impact. And then the millage apply of $3.5678. So taxes levied would go from $36 million to $28 million. Difference of seven, almost $8 million net loss on the homestead exemption. Another $235,000 on the cap from going from 10% to 5%. So an estimated impact of $8 million in the MSTU with a $150,000 homestead exemption. So added together in your ad valorem tax base, you are looking at about $42 million in revenue lost in fiscal year 28. When you go to fiscal year 29, going through the same exercise with a $250,000 homestead exemption, we will potentially lose $49 million in homestead in the general fund. Another 3.8 in the cap loss for an impact of $52.7 million on the MSTU for law enforcement with a $250,000 homestead. We now have a $13 million loss for a total of $65.9 million or $66 million. So that's a long way to say fiscal year 28, the potential impact is $42 million of lost revenue. And then in fiscal year 29, it will be $65, $66 million in lost revenue. But plus the 12 with the MSTU, right? That's the total. The 12 is with that. So it's 52 plus the 13 is 66. So that's the potential lost revenue. And as you're aware, we are preparing the fiscal year 27 budget currently. And that is in this final phase that we talked about in the last work session. So there should be no surprises there. But we are preparing from an expenditure sideline. We're not going to be adding things to this budget that then we have to worry about going back and analyzing to then take away again. So basically we did go back to zero-based budgeting. The board had requested that in light of what was going on. So we did that. We built it kind of pretty much from scratch. And we're not adding FTEs on the county side. There are a couple of constitutionals, but those were known to the board. That is reflective of the discussions with the sheriff's office. The board directed to go back and do a two-year plan with the sheriff. We did. So those requests are funded as well. So we're in pretty good shape. We're pretty happy with the SIT 27 budget. And we will stand to see what happens in November. Okay. So 42 million impact in the first year, 66 million in the second year. Yes, sir. All right. Questions or comments from the board? Nothing? Commissioner Alford? I've gotten a lot of, and this isn't really for Tommy, but it's just a comment. I've gotten a lot of folks concerned and with having a lot of misinformation about the, what's available to senior citizens. So I'm wondering if maybe we could, I know that the property appraiser does do a lot of education, but maybe we can put out some information about the programs that are out there for senior citizens and military veterans and things like that. I don't think that would be, that's just a factual sharing of information that I think I would like to have available in a sort of a county format to sort of share, you know, what's out there. Because I think there's a misconception that we are putting senior citizens out of their houses every other week. At the county? At the county, yeah. From what? For not paying their taxes. Oh, oh, oh, oh. And so I just want to make sure that people know that these programs out there exist and that we do work with folks to make sure that, you know, they do have, we do have programs out there to help folks. The board has passed current resolutions for extra exemptions as well as for hardships for the assessments. Right. I think that the requested more communications on the currently existing programs, absolutely. Yeah, I think that would be a great, I just think that would be really useful because I've gotten into a lot of conversations about that. And, you know, I think it also might be interesting to know how many people have lost housing due to not being able to pay property tax versus the number of people who have lost housing due to rent increases. Probably, yeah. Yeah, so that would be a jump. Would that be a John Power question? That would be a John Power question, I think. Yeah. Yeah. I just, you know, I don't, I think the, you know, we, I just want information, like, just information. Yeah. That's all I'm asking for, not an opinion about whether this is good or bad. I just think it's good for us to know what the statistics are as we go into this. Okay. Thanks. Do you conclude? I conclude. Thank you. Yeah, okay. So I, my only comments are really to our employees. I want to speak directly to them. I know sometimes they watch these, these videos. And my, my grandmother had a term that she used to tell me. She said, Ken, don't worry. I was like, what do you mean, grandma? She goes, if you're going to worry, it might as well have already happened. That was what she said. She said, just don't worry. Yeah. And so, I want our employees to hear loud and clear this budget cycle. We are moving forward with the values that this community has asked us to fund. And we're going to, you know, stand up and take care of that during our budget cycle. And from my perspective, and I think I speak for my colleagues, the most important expenditure that we make is the expenditure for our employees. They are the ones that are doing the work of providing the services to our citizens that they are paying for. And they are some of the best around, around the state. And so, I want them all to hear that because I think about them all the time. And so, they are really important to this board. And their work is really important because the citizens asked for it. And we will continue forward. And then we will deal with what we will deal with come after this election. And so, I just wanted to say that for those. I don't know if we're probably going to have another discussion about this until sometime in middle of November. So, I think it's important that they hear that. And I just wanted to make sure that I said it. All right. Anything else? We're talking about our, I certainly, and we're talking about our 2027 budget. And I think to the extent that we're talking about that, I am interested to understand that this is a massive percent reduction in our general fund. So, I want to be sure that as we're having those conversations, that we're very clear about all the programs that we're funding that are currently funded from that bucket. So, that we're very clear as we move into 2028 and 2029 in future years if we have to make cuts that we understand which programs currently are going to be facing those kinds of cuts so that we can make informed decisions. Yeah. So, I will ask the attorney to just verify what I'm about to say, but I think I understand that the list of all allowable expenditures under the ballot initiative, there's six. There is public safety, infrastructure, debt and bonds, schools, employee retirement, and then operations of county officers. And I believe that's the list on the ballot, and the attorney can correct me if I'm wrong or clarify that list. Okay. Yeah. So, Mr. Chair, I have seven. I have A through G. Which one? With G being the catch-all, the government operations. Okay. I have retirements, bonds, natural resources projects. Natural resources projects, sorry. Infrastructure, education, schools, public safety. Okay. So, natural resources. Then they have county operations. Yeah. And then operations of county officers. That's the catch-all. That's G, correct? Right. Okay. So, G is operations and administration of commissioners, county commissioners, as well as expenditures approved by county commissioners. Okay. All right. So, that is that item. Nothing else on that item. Mr. Clerk, we'll go now to what? I guess 02? No, we're not going to do public comment. We'll do that at 530. County attorney comment? County attorney comments. Mr. Chair. County manager comments. I do not have any, Mr. Chair. Okay. Commission comments. Commissioner Wheeler, do you have anything? I do. I've got a conflict and I just need to share it with the board and get your input. I am scheduled to serve on the canvassing board and I had, I've been engaged by a lot of folks in my district since I'm coming out of the district to be involved more in what's happening during that election and it's been awkward for me not to be able to be engaged because I'm on the canvassing board. I love working on the canvassing board. I love working with Kim Barton and doctors, I mean, Judge Susan Miller Jones is going to be on that, but we've had good time working together. Kim has been counting on me to do it. And Judge Michonne Ross is the backup for her, for that judge. I can't do it. Anybody else want to? I'm the second, so I'm happy to step up. And you can do it? I can do it. Okay. Well, you and I can figure it out. Well, what I was going to do is to give you until the 23rd to look at the schedule to see if it works. Some of you are going to NACO, it might interfere with some of that. I don't know. I do need to look at that because I'm on the NACO. Okay. Okay. So just, no, that's at NACOFAC is what you and I, we're going to go to that. Yeah. The training starts July the 1st. And so, I just. Do you want to do it and truck you be the alternate? Yes. Okay. Do I need a motion? Do you want to see the schedule first before you? I'll figure it out. Because I've got it. I'll figure it out with Kim. Okay. All right. Motion from Commissioner Prizia, second from Commissioner Chestnut, for Commissioner Alford to be the Canvassing Board member and Commissioner Chestnut to be the alternative. Alternate. Any further discussion from the Board? Any public discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right. The motion is unanimous. I told her I'd still go hang out. Okay. You can hang out. You just can't participate. Anyone can hang out. Okay. That was the thing that has me torn for a few days. That was right up there with the $20 million deal that I put the kibosh on. That kind of stress level was pretty incredible. Thank you. No more stress. All right. Thank you. You got anything? Mary? Oh, do I have anything? Yes. I want to tell everybody about where I was last week. No worries. I was in Washington, D.C. at a training class that was all my expenses were paid by the DeBeaumont Foundation. Wow. And which was very cool. We, this was the NACO project that y'all voted on to allow me to participate in a few months ago. And so we, I partnered with, with someone from our health department and we made a proposal and it was accepted. And so we were part of a cohort of about eight different groups from around the country. And we all spent the week in D.C. And it started out with a rooftop reception on top of NACO, which was very cool. Yeah. And then we had several days of pretty intense class work, which was great. But I just, we, we sort of finalized our plan during this training. And so I wanted to share a little bit about what that was. We are looking, so the county health department has been collecting data about flu vaccinations for many, many years. And it changed a lot during COVID and it, there was a particular year where they didn't have the flu missed and they had to do injections. And that was a really interesting year because a lot of people that said okay to miss that no to the injection. Yeah. But there's also been a lot of a change in what I call vaccine hesitancy from folks based on distrust of government. Well, we feel like that, that there's a whole lot more to that story. It's not just government distrust. It's the fact that we look at, we ask for permission to do those vaccines at the beginning of the school year when a lot of parents are overwhelmed with a lot of different information. We also have one in 10 of our school kids that is significantly under housed and parents working multiple jobs. We're looking at all the different factors that might go into whether or not a parent takes the time to sign those. We also have significant data about hospitalizations for flu-like illnesses for all ages. So our first step is going to be to map a vaccine utilization against on using GIS and also look at hospitalizations. So when we find areas of the county where the, where we see the correlation, then we're going to take a community specific approach to how we address narrowing that, that vaccine gap. This is going to be a project that probably going to take a couple of years to be finished. But our first part is just this mapping. And when we have that mapping, we're hoping to be able to get some funding, maybe even from someplace like UF help where we can, you know, correlate those vaccine rates with vaccinations. I know that's pretty pie in the sky thinking, but there's also other grant funding out there that's available. So, but I definitely want to go to UF help to make them aware of it and make them tell me now. So anyway, I think it's a really cool project and I'm very, very honored to, to have been one of the groups selected to work on it. And you'll probably hear about it a little bit at NACO. Good work. Come on. That's great. Are you going to NACO? Yes, I am. Is anyone else going to? I am. You're going to NACO. Are you going to NACO? Okay. You got anything else? Nope. That was a big thing I wanted to talk about. All right. That's a good one. Thank you. Okay. I just got a couple things. Tommy, I meant to ask you. So, if this were to pass, would that mean that the rollback rate would be an increase in millage? Because the rollback rate is collecting the same amount of taxes as you collected in the prior year. Well, that's a good question. That's correct. It could very well, much like what happened in 07 and 08, the rollback rate would actually be a roll-up rate or could be. The bill also has in it, though, the new benchmark of every year is the rollback rate. So, my understanding is. But that is still defined as the amount of taxes collected without new development. That is correct. Yes, sir. Okay. Okay. Thank you. That's just a question. I had some fact people ask me that. I came up with the Children's Trust yesterday. We got a joint meeting with the Children's Trust on Thursday. Gotcha. Four o'clock. Grace Knight. The Trust did move forward with funding two case managers for Family Promise. And they are asking the city and the county to match that. And that will be presented on Thursday. So, they have six case managers or so? Yeah. Right now, they have two. The Trust is going to fund two more. They're actually looking for eight. There was a whole presentation. I'll leave that for Thursday, but I did want to let you all know that. Are they going to make that presentation to us? Yeah. That will be presented. And you should have your backup. The backup should be going out. If it didn't go out last night, it should be going out today. And then, Misty, I had a question for you. Have we been able to reschedule the city of Alachua and the county joint meeting? Do you know? Mr. Chair, I believe it's in August, but I don't know the exact date. I don't know the exact date. I'll get it and tell you tonight. Oh, do you know? Okay. So, that has been scheduled, though. Okay. As long as it's scheduled. I mean, I can just look in my... I can find that. Shannon's good at it. Okay. That's all I had. We are going to go ahead and be in recess until 5-01. Okay. We're adjourned.