Regular Meeting @ 11:30 a.m. - May 26, 2026

It's May 26th, I'd like to go ahead and call the Alachua County Board of County Commission's meeting to order. We've got Commissioner Alford and Commissioner Wheeler on the way, but we're going to go ahead and start. It's 1130. Before we get started, is Dr. Shirley Watts here to give the invocation? Okay, if you'll come forward, everyone will please stand and join me for the invocation. And then that will be followed by the Pledge of Allegiance, and welcome, thank you. Welcome. I'm Minister Tana of the Community Praise Center, here for Pastor Shirley Watts. May we pray. Gracious God, we come before you asking for your peace today. We're thanking you for the opportunity to come together for this community. We thank you for unity and cooperation. We thank you for everyone here in this meeting today. We thank you for our purpose to serve the people. And we pray that everything is done in decency and order. We thank you that you are a part of this meeting. And we know that we're claiming the victory for everything that's going to be done. We pray for Alachua County. We pray for our government. We pray for the heads of our government. We pray for all the decisions and the decision makers here today. We ask that you just be with us and guide us. We thank you for your doominus power. And we just thank you for everyone here. May we have traveling grace and mercy when we leave this meeting. We thank you. Amen. Amen. Thank you. Okay. Excellent. All right. So the first item on the agenda is the approval of the regular and the consent agenda. Madam Mayor. Mr. Chair? Yes. I've had a request to remove from consent for discussion the additional one full-time equivalent executive staff assistant position for the county commission office. 6B. And also 3E. I'm asking to pull both of those. Okay. So 3E would be the updated arts council. So we'll do that one first. Yes. Sorry. I forgot about that one. And then we'll do 6B. And those will follow. I mean, we can also. Yeah. No, it's fine. Those will follow item M2, items pulled from consent, which is N. So 3E and 6B. All right. Is that your motion? Yes. And if you want to wait to. Oh, Commissioner Wheeler's here. I was going to say, if you want to wait until we have more commissioners to have the items pulled from consent. Yeah. That will be the last item on the agenda. Yeah. All right. Do I hear a second? Second. Okay. We've got a motion, a second, to approve the agenda and the consent agenda. Is there any discussion? Back to the board. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? That motion is unanimous. Okay. All right. They wanted to speak to the agenda and they wanted to. I think we both were like, you moved so fast. I know. All right. So do you want to speak at noon? Yeah. I think Leah wanted to speak. They wanted to speak to the adoption agenda. Yeah, come on up. Yeah. I know. We've already approved it, though, but that's okay. Welcome. Good morning. I'm Vivian Feiler with the Cotton Club Museum and Cultural Center. This is Mrs. Evelyn Fox. We are both board members with the Cotton Club Museum and Cultural Center. We were on the consent agenda. And we just want to let you know how thankful we are to be in the position to receive some help for our building. We work very hard to bring programming that we think that a large state county can learn from, enjoy, and be proud of. We entertain people from all over, not only Florida, but the nation. If you look at our entrance vouchers, you will see that we have visitors from all over the world. And we are very intent on being the kind of museum that makes you proud. So now that we have some funding to help us because our building was in great need of some repairs, an old wooden building, and old things like me need a little help every now and then. So we're very grateful, and I just wanted to express that, and thank Mrs. Fox for being so instrumental in how far we've come. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Fowler. Ms. Fox. Thank you, Marnie. I would like to thank First Commissioner Cornell for being in touch with us constantly and the assistant county manager who made things work for us. Thank you really isn't enough, but we're going to conclude with that. We really thank you for doing what you are doing for the museum. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Fox. I will tell you, I know that each of the board members feel grateful to have the Cotton Club Museum as a part of our community. The program you provide is unbelievable, and I know that it will continue. So congratulations on that. And with that, I think we have announcements. Good morning, Mr. Chair. I'm Mark. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Mark. Leah is behind you. I guess you're speaking to the agenda as well. I'm sorry. I went through that very quickly. Yeah. Yeah, I just wanted to say, my understanding is that the increased pass, but the reading outcomes. Yes. Just want to thank you all so much for what you've done. So far, we serve 292 students, and we've given 25,356 individual lessons so far this year. So we're really, really excited to – we're adding two new sites in the next coming weeks for the summer. It's just – it's going great. The cohort is super happy with everything we've been doing, and we're so grateful for the funding that allowed us to start expanding. So thank you. Yeah, and we, too, are – Where are the sites? Mr. – Yeah. Where are the sites? The sites. So Westwood Middle School, Pine Ridge. We have home tutoring students. Aces in Motion, Girls Place, Kids Count, Oak View, Willie Mae Stokes Community Center, AMI Kids, Caring and Sharing. That was in the fall. Elite Arts and Sweetwater. And we're adding IGB Mentoring and GPAL in the summer, their GPAL program. Well, I want to thank you as well, Leah, and really, Commissioner Prizia, who brought this to our attention a couple meetings ago, two or three meetings ago, and really glad that this funding can help continue to improve the literacy efforts in our community. So thank you for your work. Thank you. I do have impact reports that I'll leave. Okay. And we also have a dashboard that will show all the sites and the different increases along four different measures that you can see for verifying outcomes as well. Excellent. If you'll just give that to the clerk. Thank you so much. Mr. Chair, I need to correct something. Yep. Actually, item 3E on the Arts Council was actually removed on Friday. You must, Commissioner, have a draft agenda. I'm looking at the current agenda, and it's not there. 3E is actually the Cotton Club, and we don't want to remove that one. Okay. It's on the published agenda online and in the one that was in my inbox. Yeah, mine too. So I have requests to approve of updated ARC Council of Alaska County Resolution to remove a youth member. Yeah. Did you want to remove that from discussion? Yeah. We had, that was supposed to have been pulled on Friday, and my agenda does not have it. Okay. Well, we have an adopted agenda that's pulling it for, as items for consent. It'll only take two minutes, so. Yeah. Do you mind if we just have a quick discussion about it? If you'd like to. Yeah. That's fine. We pulled it because. Did you do that at the end of the meeting? Yep. All right. So, that's how you don't run a meeting, the way I just did it, which is taking public comments after we vote on the motion on the agenda. But now that we've approved the agenda, we've approved the consent, we've had those two thank yous. Mark, announcements. Glad to see you, Mr. Chair. Yes. Mark Sexton again. Some days are better than others, yeah. Mr. Chair, I have several announcements, and it reminds me that any given week, there are dozens of things that I could highlight for you about what your incredible staff is doing. Today, though, I want to take a moment to honor Jessica Kuroff, Sean McClendon, and our partners in Public Works and Santa Fe College and in the U.S. Army. I'm proud to share that the Tourism and Economic Development Department have brought home the hardware. This is the Innovative Partnership Award from the Florida Economic Council. This is truly a special honor. It recognizes the vision, the coordination, the follow-through required to turn a major federal investment, the Army base, into a lasting opportunity for local residents. At the center of this effort is the $36 million U.S. Army Reserve Equipment Concentration Site and that investment. It is one of the largest economic development investments within the Gainesville Community Reinvestment Area in history. It ties directly into the Heavy Diesel Mechanic Training Program, which uses county facilities to provide hands-on state-approved training in a field that offers well-paying jobs that are much in demand. So it was shepherded by Sean McClendon, and in partnership with our Public Works and Santa Fe College, it is growing into a direct path to high-wage careers. And just congratulations again, you guys. Well done. Let me give it to you. Yeah, that's great. Mr. Chair, I also wanted to point out that we recently released a guest column by Alachua County Clinical Supervisor, Rebecca Hunt, who shared reflections on a recent metamorphosis residential treatment program graduation. This is a program, and in her column, she says, every day at metamorphosis, our team works alongside residents as they rebuild their lives, often after years of instability, addiction, and trauma. It is operated by Alachua County through the Community Support Services Department, and it is a clinically managed, high-intensity residential therapeutic community for adults experiencing moderate to severe substance use disorders and co-occurring mental health conditions. The most recent graduation ceremony, held in late August, was celebrating six individuals who successfully completed the program, and today all six of them are employed and reconnected with their families. So I just wanted to congratulate them. This is a picture of the graduation ceremony, and with the help of Andrew Kaplan, they put together a really beautiful treatment for the guest column that I can't get to right now, but it is lovely. And then finally, although most of us continue to be in a state of denial, we did want to take a moment to announce that our chief, Harold Theus, he has announced his retirement after nearly 32 years of dedicated service to the residents of Alachua County. He began his career in 1994 as an EMT firefighter, and he is the story of someone who rose from the ranks, the first ever in our history, to become fire chief. Wow. He was appointed chief in 2019. Under his leadership, Alachua County Fire Rescue has too many milestones to mention, but I will mention a few. He, of course, has overseen a huge capital increase in fire stations and facilities and equipment. He launched a community health program, led the acquisition of the public radio system, oversaw the transition of fire services in the town of McAnope. He implemented a Kelly Day schedule and compensation step plan that was completely unique, and he has established specialized teams, including urban search and rescue, SWAT medics, and unmanned aircraft systems. He was also oversaw one of the first mobile stroke units, if not the first, in the state of Florida. So his tenure here has been incredible. He also was instrumental in the county's health response during COVID, and he's leaving us a legacy of professionalism, innovation, service, and all of us, his colleagues, are very sad to see him go, but we are celebrating what he's moving on to. And in case one of you want to take one more chance at talking him out of this, I'm going to introduce Chief Harold Theus. Thank you, Mark, and thank you, Chair and Commission. It has been a great 32 years. I have loved every minute of it. It's been a blessing. I'm fortunate in that I have enjoyed coming to work each and every day, and I don't know that everyone really gets that opportunity, and so I feel really truly blessed to be a part of something that's really been bigger than myself. And a lot of people to thank. Certainly thank the commission for their support and their trust over the last seven years that I've been your fire chief. Certainly thank the county manager and her trust that she has given to me, and my staff has been just absolutely fantastic, and it takes all of us working together, moving forward to make public safety really a priority in our community, and you all have led the way, and you all have done that. And so as I transition into being a citizen, I will continue to urge and push that you make public safety a priority in our community. We really face challenging times with our labor environment that we've addressed over the years, but that continues to be a struggle. And as our smaller rural departments continue to struggle in remaining in business, there's a lot of decisions that you're going to have to make over the next few years as to how that service is provided to those rural areas. And so I very humbly thank you all for the opportunity to serve you, and thank you for the time. It's been a blessing. Chief, we're going to come down and take a quick picture with you, but before we do that, any words? Mary Helen? There are no words. Start with you, Mary Helen. Yes. Thank you so much for being a part of this team while I was on it. It's been really a joy working with you and your entire group. What you've done is opened your whole system to us as board members, and so I'm hoping that they will feel, even with you moving on, that we will still have them in our best care as well. So thank you so much for that education, and thank you for putting dogs in those stations. I'm working on the last group that just had a presentation to get one out there, too. So, no, I appreciate everything that you've been willing to do for us, and you've always been open to new ideas and big expectations, and always managed to come right on up with the success that we've all enjoyed through you. So thank you, and good luck. We still have your phone number, though. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Well, Chief Theus, it's kind of hard to see you leave, man. I think I've been the longest commissioner here. I think it was May Norcutt, and I think you, Bailey. I forgot Bailey. Bailey. I forgot one, right. Yes. Okay. Yeah. So I've been through quite a few Chiefs. But I want to thank you for your professionalism and all of you have done for Lodgewood County. I mean, you have done an extremely wonderful job for Lodgewood County as our fire chief, and I just want to thank you and your staff for the great work because, you know, one of the most important parts to citizens is when they call 911, either for police services, medical services, or ambulance, we're there. And that's the most important part, and that's when I think when I first came on board, you guys did an excellent job addressing all those needs in our community. So I just want to thank you and wish you well in your new endeavors. Thank you, sir. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Commissioner. Good job. Yeah, I think, you know, your rise to chief was just before I came into office, and I think I just really appreciate the support and the mentorship and learning about fire rescue. You know, it wasn't an area I knew a whole lot about, but I knew a lot about community, and I think I really appreciated our dialogues and conversations, what you taught me about the importance of public safety and our joint wins over the years and trying to increase the level of investment and the level of infrastructure that we have for that, as well as taking on the challenges of things like the community health worker program, which I know was a major lift, but I think will yield really amazing results in the years to come. So just a big thank you for all of your support and help through these first couple years of learning and then taking on whatever we threw at you with grace. Thank you very much. We'll miss you. Thank you. Thanks, Commissioner. Chief, I don't know how I can end what my colleagues have said. Any one of those things that Mark has covered would be a huge accomplishment over your term as chief. You've led with a servant's heart. You've led your employees. You've led this community. You've led us in telling us what we needed. I had a conversation with chief last week, and he's talking about the future, like the next five or six years. I'm like, chief, you know you're retiring, right? But that's just who you are. You know, you're always thinking about others. You're always putting the community first, and you will be missed. Thank you. You will be missed. All right, let's go take a picture. Mr. Chair, if I could real quick before we take a picture. Yeah, please do. I just wanted to tell Chief Theist thank you. You know, I always appreciate when staff helps make me look good. I'm not experts in anything, right? And Chief Theist did that, but most importantly, he's leaving a legacy, and when I say that, it's because what he is leaving behind is an amazing department that is going to be successful when he walks out the door. And that is because of the position that he's put them in, the mentorship that he's provided to his staff. What he leaves behind is an excellent legacy, and I just want to tell him thank you sincerely from myself personally. Excellent. Well, I don't have to say it, but Manager Lieberman has been a fantastic boss to work for, so thank you so much for your leadership. While we're coming back up, I just quickly, we didn't get to address the others, and I just, I wanted to say, I think this was just like the announcement of like how amazing our entire team is. Like in every department, I feel like we have these people who just, they stay focused on the mission of what their goal is, which is to serve our community and to make Alachua County a better place to live. And we see it in helping people at their worst times to rise above their challenges and become productive members of community and family again. We see award-winning programs for economic development and job creation. We see a chief that's building an amazing public safety system that's going to make us all better. So it's just really cool to continuously be in a place where we get to celebrate all the wins of our county. And I just want to say thank you to our whole team, because I think each department is doing that work. They're all kind of rising above and meeting the challenge and pushing on those goals to make us the best place to live, so thank you. Well said. Thank you, Commissioner. Mr. Chair, I'll just add that we have a proud tradition for the next 12 months. Anything that goes wrong, even if it's not fire rescue related, we'll be blaming on Chief Theodore. And he can take it. He's staying strong. Okay, so that's the announcements. I think we can get to the approval of the recognition. I need a motion to approve the recognition. So move. Second. That motion is second to approve the presentation of a proclamation recognizing May as Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month in Latimer County, Florida. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion's unanimous. Okay, Commissioner Wheeler. Is there anyone here to receive this proclamation? The group come right on, please. While they're coming, I have to say I'm really excited to be able to read this. But it brings to mind, as a special teacher at Westwood Middle School, I got to teach the ESOL kids. And a lot of times when families just moved into the area, they would send their children to our school. And I was teaching art at the time. So it didn't really matter what language everybody brought into the community. Everybody spoke art. And so I was privileged to be able to teach a lot of those young people that are now adults in this community. And maybe some of y'all, if you ever went to Westwood. But anyway, I would like to read this proclamation and then have you accept it for the group. Elantra County, Florida, a proclamation declaring May as Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. And this is going to be referenced throughout this resolution, this proclamation, as AANHPI. And that comes in here quite frequently. So you will bear with me as I try to read this proclamation. Whereas Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month is observed each May to recognize and celebrate the significant contributions, rich cultures, and enduring legacy of AANHPI communities across the United States, and whereas the observance of AANHPI Heritage Month traces its origins to the arrival of the first Japanese immigrants to the United States in May 1843 and the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad in May 1869, which was largely built by Chinese immigrant laborers. And whereas AANHPI communities represent a diverse and vibrant group of cultures, languages, and traditions that enrich our local community and strengthen the social and economic fabric of Elantra County, and whereas it is important to recognize both the achievements of AANHPI individuals and the challenges they faced including discrimination and exclusion and to reaffirm our commitment to equity and mutual respect. And whereas the residents of Alachua County are encouraged to celebrate AANHPI Heritage Month by learning about the history, culture, and contributions of AANHPI communities and by participating in local events and activities that promote understanding and unity, now therefore through the authority vested in me by the Board of County Commissioners of Alachua County, Florida, I do hereby proclaim May as Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander in Alachua County, Florida, duly proclaim this 26th day of May, A.D. 2026, and it's signed by our chair, Ken Cornell, and attested to by Jess Irby. And I would like to present it on behalf of the Board to you and your group and introduce yourselves, please. Thank you so much. I'm Dr. Rachel DeCessa, and I'm here on behalf of the University of Florida Association of Asian Alumni. We are an official affiliate group of the University of Florida Alumni Association. We actually just celebrated our 15th anniversary. We provide scholarships to UF students, and we have a global membership, but we also have local events here. I just wanted to let everybody know that if you're not a Gator, that's not a problem. We have membership that is anyone that supports the broader Asian American community, and our website is the UFAsianAlumni.com. If you're interested in serving on the board or getting involved, we would love to have you be part of our organization. Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you, Dr. working with us, right? Yes. Come tell us who you are, that you're working here. Hi. This is actually kind of a surprise for you. I'm Taman Ayyub, and I work in HR as an HR analyst. I thank you all so much. I appreciate it. And I've been here, I started as an internship, and now I work here as a full-time, so it has been a wonderful, wonderful experience. I actually did lift for a couple of years, but this is where I feel like home, so I came back. Thank you all so much. Thank you so much. All right. Thank you, Commission and the County Management, for this proclamation. I'm Ralston Riodeca, Housing Director with Community Support Services. So throughout the county, I think there's at least 30 or 40 that identify as Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander. So we hope this is an annual proclamation. So thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Ralston. Very quickly, since you're here, tell us who you are. Hi, my name's Gwen Watson. I'm a system analyst, where I work in growth management. And it's such a pleasure to work for the county, and I think I'm here since about 10 years ago. So this 10 years, I have learned so much. And here I want to say thank you to the commissioner, to thank you for my department, thank you for everyone to help me and help me grow. And it's such a pleasure and honor to work here and to serve for the citizens. Thank you. Thank you. Hello, everyone. I'm Prajwal Kamula. I work for the ITS. And this is just my second year in the county, but I'm pretty sure there's going to be a very long and happy journey ahead. Thank you so much. Okay, all right. You have to come speak every week. Hey, everybody. I'm Tyler Sullivan. I'm a senior programmer analyst at ITS. I started about seven years ago now as an intern. So I've been over here working with Joel and Ryan Evans. I've enjoyed my all seven years that I've been here. And I'm continuing to enjoy going forward. Also, there's another person that's also not up here right now. Her name's Takumi Sullivan. That's my mom. She's the only reason I'm here. So please remember her, too. Thank you. That's sweet. Hi, everyone. I'm Ryan Vila from working for community support services for grants and contract specialists. Excellent. Can you take that picture? Takumi, you come up here. Thank you. Yeah. She's like, no, I'm definitely not going to. Hey, stay up, stay up. Come on, Mom. You can hold it. There we go. That's much better. All right. Thank you. Good job, Mary Helen. Way to go. Way to bring it all together. Okay. I think it is approximately noon. So we are going to open up public comment, and if you'll just go ahead and introduce yourself, and we'll start the time. Ms. Connish, welcome. Thank you for being here. Mr. Connish, I tried to bring something positive today. Can you have the overhead, please? Overhead, please. Basically, on the GRU bills within city limits, for many, many years, they had been billing stormwater and garbage, would you put it up, please, to the electric meter. And this results in, at my house, if I don't use anything, I take off from $122 a month. And for low-income people, this is devastating. So in August, when the bills peak out, 3,500 meters will be disconnected for inability to pay 3,500 meters. So finally, the city is in the process of moving it to the tax bill. So this shifts it from the landlords, excuse me, this shifts it from the tenants to the landlords. The stormwater belongs to the landlords, so this is more equitable. The big landlords are complaining because they're used to putting up tall buildings, dumping everything in the right-of-way and not having to pay for it. They're the ones who are whining that's charging $2,000 a month for a bedroom and a four-bedroom, four-bath apartment. And they are not to be listened to. This is the High Springs Public Library. Our wells are going dry. GRU's well field, I'm sure, is way down. And, you know, why don't we do more of this? This is a Texas metal tank. They'll build you a 5,000-gallon stainless steel tank. That's what it's for. At my farm building that you have trespassed and attacked with code enforcement, and you will be sued for that, I do the same thing. I have my gutter come into an array of tanks, and then, because I'm fully off-grid, I use my scuba tanks to shoot the water up to 35 feet. And we are evolving our system. We actually, this year, for the first time, watered our 4,000-hand-planted longleaf that you disrespect and that you harass me in doing. And we ran out of water quickly. We just trailered it in. I got air and water at the dive shot. I trailered it in. So while I'm restoring my land, I have to deal with constant county harassment. And I've written your letter about it, and I've documented it, and you will be held accountable through any legal means at my disposal for your ongoing, I guess, intimidation, but I'm not going anywhere. I'm going to occupy my land, and I'm going to do what I'm entitled to do, and there's nothing you can do about it. Thanks. Thank you, Mr. Kosh. Okay, next speaker, please. Welcome. Good morning. Is that the timer? Rebent. Yes. My name is Tom Morris. I spoke with you at your last meeting, if you'll remember. The thing I spoke with you about was the importance of taking care of growth and housing development without damaging the lifestyles of current residents. I asked you at that time, because of the importance of that issue in my view, and I think of many others in the community, to have a public discussion about that, to agenda the item, and to talk about it. I also ask you to make a public commitment to that as a goal. If you'll remember, I ask you to sign on the dotted line saying, this is what we want to happen in our community. Since I spoke with you, I have had no response. It's been deadly silent, and I'm wondering this morning, I'm asking you, what are your thoughts? What are your plans? I don't think I and the other people who are concerned about this in the community want to be ignored. Is there anything you have to share with me this morning relative to that topic or your plans to deal with that topic? Mr. Chair, I'd like a chance to respond when the public comment is over. Yes, Mr. Morris, at the end of public comment, then we'll have a chance to all respond. So if you just want to wait until after public comment, you can go ahead and finish your comments. Well, I will be happy to do so, Mr. Chairman, if there is going to be a response. There will be. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, next speaker, please. Come on up. Hello. Hello. My name is David Welcome. I've been a county resident since 1984. I'm here to speak about the scenic road proposal. For two reasons, I do not think it's a good idea at this time. The first reason is that scenic road sits in an area that has a high water table. So that means that the surface underneath is very soft and unstable. If you drive on it, you can already see there's cracks on it. There's edges already peeling away. Additional traffic on that will just make it deteriorate quicker. I'm an amateur musician. I play at the Micanopy Cough and Cream Cafe. I used to take County Road 1084 to get there. I can't do that because that got closed a couple years ago because it was too bad a shape. And, in fact, I used to sit on, with Kathleen Pagan, I used to sit on the board of directors, and I told her, I said, we need to shut that part off of our map because somebody would think they're in a third world country visiting Florida driving on that road. So the road is in bad shape. The second thing is, in 1984, I lived off another scenic road, the Crown Road, near Idlewild Elementary School. And I lived there for 17 years. And I can remember one time somebody said, oh, we need to pave that. There's too much dust flying up, blah, blah, blah. And, you know, we're going to have to take down some trees and that. And it's like, no, no, we're not going to do any of that. But I don't remember anything, any laws written in that you have a 100-foot right-of-way where you can do whatever you want. I don't think that existed in 84. And I think the other, my other residents, my other neighbors that live near me, when they thought, they felt that the land that actually goes out in the lake from their lakeshore lots could be impeded by a county directive, that made them back away from that scenic road. So unless you change that verbiage and give them more freedom, they're not going to be amenable to it. And until you have more money to actually fix those roads, because we have more traffic, that will break down at a faster rate. That's it. Thank you. Thank you, David. That is actually staff's recommendation. And we'll be handling that as our first action item. And it was good seeing you yesterday. Next speaker, please. Welcome. Chairman. Yes, sir. Members of the commission, thank you very much for the opportunity. to address you this morning on the scenic road issue. I particularly want to commend your staff who held the public meeting and did an excellent job. There wasn't a soul in the meeting that was for the county road. So you can understand that the staff might have felt a little bit intimidated, but we didn't see that at all. They did an excellent job as professionals. We are opposed to the road designation, but we understand that it was the proposal that came forward to you. And we appreciate the recommendation that's in the agenda for today. So I just want to make sure we do recognize their work. Thank you, sir. Okay. Name. Just introduce yourself for the clerk. I'm sorry. I'm Paul Pritchard and a resident of Lakeshore. Thank you, Paul. Okay. Next speaker, please. Well, good morning. My name is Greg DeLong. I live on 6020 Lakeshore Drive, and I am opposed to the scenic road. It's bad enough that Lakeshore Drive is in such bad repair. And as David mentioned, I've seen Lakeshore Drive underwater. I've been an Alachua County resident since 77. So Lakeshore Drive is a very special place. And for the residents that live on Lakeshore Drive, even more so. We're very, very protective. And we don't want to see anything go down as far as our beloved road and our area. So anything you can do to keep it that way. But we definitely, we have a serious problem with speeders on Lakeshore Drive. And I noticed that some of the other roads that don't get a lot of traffic have those flat tables over in the Copeland area and flashing lights. I'm not saying we need flashing lights, but we definitely need some tables to stop the speeders. Because it's tearing up the roads and making it even more unsafe. And I appreciate what you all are doing. And I was at that meeting with your staff, and they were very professional. And there were 27 of us strong that were opposed to the scenic route. So, okay. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Thank you for being here. Next speaker. Afternoon, everybody. Hi. I'm one of the 27. I live on Lakeshore Drive. My name is Joy Adams. I implore you not to approve this. It will take, the right-of-way will take all of my lakefront property right up to my door. Just, we're that close to the road. And I don't know how that, this will affect, you know, our property. We pay high taxes on this property. Also, that we think the scenic road will add to the traffic. I already pick up a ton of trash on my property before I have to mow. It's just, we implore, it just don't change things. You know, it would help to slow traffic down, yes. But I beg you, don't you? Thank you, Ms. Adams. All right. Anyone else in the chambers before we go to the phones? Let's go once, go twice. Okay, Mark. Let's go to the phones. No one on the phones. All right. Let's go ahead and close public comment. And let's see. Who wants to respond first? We've got Commissioner Wheeler and then Commissioner Prizio. Did you want to speak? No. Okay. Commissioner Prizio? Yes, if Anna is going to take care of that. Anna is. All right. Hello, sir. So I did actually want to respond to you last time, but you had left the chambers before our public comment period was over. What I wanted to say to you in particular and to the community at large is that I think that in my opinion and in my experience, having been on this board for six years, we very much take into consideration affordable housing and how people currently are living in their areas in every deliberation that we have regarding development. In fact, our comprehensive plan, which we spend a lot of time on, both writing it the first time and making sure that it's up to date and reflective of our community's values, is sort of the seminal document that lays out those rights and responsibilities and our role. And I think that we've done a really good job of thinking about the considerations of the neighborhoods and the communities that are here and in existence, while also thinking about responsible growth and being able to deliver efficient services in government. So I would just say that we talk about it literally all the time. So when you came asking us to talk about it, it sort of made me chuckle because it's like literally something that's on almost every agenda. In fact, the agenda you came to, we talked about it later in the agenda on a development proposal where we were talking about the need for better buffers along the sides of neighborhoods that were adjacent to a development. And so I just wanted to say that to you. It isn't that we're ignoring you or that we're not agending it. It's that it's a part of the fabric of what we do. And so I think that rather than it being like something that we do because somebody said, hey, do this, it's something that we do because we know it's our job to do it and that we do it as a matter of course in every decision that we're making around the idea of development and particularly affordable housing as well, seeing how much demand there is for affordable housing as well as how much push there is for development, realizing that that's sort of a balance that we're having to strike more and more every day. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Morris, so we're not going to go back and forth. We're just going to give you our feedback and then we're going to keep the meeting going. Commissioner Wheeler. Quite inadequate. I remember that you said you were an educator, retired educator. Yes, sir. The workforce housing that we're talking about, the workforce housing that we're talking about, is we are also trying to include our educators, our teachers and our nurses and our firefighters who, you know, are underpaid for the work they do. There's no doubt, ma'am. And so those are the folks that when you're hearing us talk about that kind of housing, that's our focus for right now is the professionals, professionals in the community that need help. I'm asking it is to be done without damaging the lifestyle of the people who already live here. That's our goal. That is absolutely our goal. And if it is, ma'am, I have to say. Mr. Morris. I'll have to quote Yoda. There is no try, only do. Thank you, Mr. Morris. We are doing. Thank you. I'll be back, by the way, throughout the next few months until the election to raise this topic again. Thank you, Mr. Morris. Thank you. You're welcome. Appreciate your attention. Yes, sir. Thank you for being here. Okay. Let's go ahead and get back to the agenda. Madam Clerk, I think we have board and committee items. Yes, board and committee items, select ART for fire headquarters and emergency operations center. All right. So, commissioners, where we have just one applicant, I don't think we need to go through that. Oh, I'm sorry. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, go ahead. I'm moving to the healthcare advisor. Okay. Ms. Peoples, you're recognized. Welcome. Gina Peoples, assistant county manager, chief of staff. The evaluation team, which consisted of arts council members and fire rescue employees, evaluated five submittals, and the top three were requested to provide a sketch of their proposed artwork, which is presented for you today. So, we have a bronze sculpture as one option. A second option is a mural. And the third option is a relief. And so, the commission is being asked at this time to select their favorite so that we can engage with the artist and get the artwork underway. Okay, we'll start with our art teacher, Commissioner Wheeler, and then we'll move to Commissioner Frizia. I love sculpture anyway, you know, and the idea of a relief sculpture where we can actually move it a bit, you know, or have some options is great. You know, I think I shared with you all my concern is the uniform that this person is wearing. It looks more like a World War I military, you know, so it could change the helmet perhaps, you know, or whatever the garb is that would make it look more traditionally like our guys and women. So, that would be my... So, that's your favorite? That's my favorite, yes. Okay. Commissioner Frizia. With those changes. With those changes. What I want to say is I'm fine with this relief. I think that was the choice of the committee that voted. And I'm fine with it. But what I wanted to say is that I feel like with this public art program, our goal overall was to get more art in general in our communities. And I understand that fire station is a fire station. And so, like, you know, having like a mural with a fireman or something is cool because it like goes with the theme of the building. But the EOC is so much more than a fire station, first of all. And second of all, I think that in general, I hope that when we're doing these art programs, we could expand the calls a little bit more to not have them have to be so thematic and so representational of what's in the building. Because our buildings change uses all the time. And I know a fire station probably won't because it's built so specifically. And it does inspire a lot of, I think, pride in the firefighters to have those representations. And so, I'm fine with this and I'm fine with that. But I just wanted to say in general, if we could expand our call to be a little bit more open to just art in general, you know, sculpture and murals and whatever in general that don't necessarily have to be representational of what's going to be inside the building, but more representational of our culture, what our county is all about and, you know, brings forward different ideas and different things, I think it could lend to diversity for, you know, art projects and give more of our local artists a chance to compete in some of these realms. Because I think there's people who get into institutional art and they like sort of like this is what they do and they just, you know, they can. So, I would just love to see more of our local artists be able to compete and that's going to make us need to cast a wider net. So, that's just my comments. But I am fine with the Legacy Art Studio relief sculpture for this. Okay. You want to do a motion with your changes? Yes. I move that we accept the third recommendation for the third piece there with the changes for the uniform that are more in line with what we have locally. Second. Got a motion and a second. Thank you. Any further discussion? Anyone from the public which discuss the motion? Can we add to that motion to ask the Arts Council to consider expanding their future proposals for our one- Well, that's what I was going to talk, ask Gina. Gina, you all throw a pretty wide net, don't you, for these things? I think we can update the call to artists moving forward to let them know that it doesn't necessarily need to reflect what function is in the building, that we're open to more creativity. But when you put the call out, it goes nationally? Yes. Yeah. It goes nationally. I'm talking about the actual description. Like, I think that it's been sort of tended to kind of move on what's in the building. That's all. Just like- Okay. Then I add that. Yes. You okay with adding that? Yes, absolutely. Secondary, okay? Thank you. Yes. Okay. To change that. All right. Trying to get more options and increase what Alaska County stands for with our art. All right. Any more discussion? Back to the board. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That motion is unanimous. Okay. Thank you, Ms. Peoples. Thank you so much. All right. Now, Madam Clerk, I think we have the Alaska County Healthcare Advisory Board? Yes. All right. So, Commissioners, the 1st, 4th, and 5th, I think, are just one applicant. Is there anyone who has applied that is here that wants to speak to the board? Why don't you come on up? We have three minutes. Tell us who you are and why you want to serve on the Healthcare Advisory Board. Yep. I'm Dr. Leilani Doty. I am reapplying. Does that make a difference? It doesn't, and you're actually going to get appointed because you're the only one applying. Okay. So, should I sit back down? Or you can just talk to us if you'd like. We're glad you're here. You've waited long enough. Well, hello, everybody. My name is, I'm Dr. Leilani Doty, and I'm retired as the director of the University of Florida Cognitive and Memory Disorder Clinic about 10 years ago, and I was honored to be appointed to the Department of Health Advisory Board, Healthcare Advisory Board, and I'm just so pleased that two of the leaders out of the Department of Health, Community Health Services, Candy and Trellini are here as an example of their support, and guidance, and conscientious work with the different activities that go on in the community health services. Are they just stand up? Absolutely. So we can see who you are, please. They are some of our greatest. Thank you. And also just appreciate the support and leadership of the Alachua County commissioners. So I am reapplying. I serve now as, I guess, started last year. I was appointed or voted in as the chair of the Healthcare Advisory Board, and some of the things that we're doing include having been recommended in the inaugural National Association of Counties Public Health Leadership Academy, and Mary Alford, County Commissioner Mary Alford, is one of the people, and then one of the people from our community health services program is going to go to that academy. That starts in November and finishes in March, and we are very excited that the Alachua County was chosen as part of the inaugural program to attend this academy. One of the other things that we're working on is understanding the networking in the community. For instance, the fire rescue program at the county level, and then the fire rescue at the city level, and how the sheriff's office and law enforcement and 9-11 all work together, and how the community health workers are being subsumed into the COACH program to bring health services, better health services to the community. Do you have any questions at this point? Any questions, Commissioner? No. No. Dr. Lonnie, thank you for what you are doing for our community. We are going to come before you sometime in September to kind of go over everything that we have done so far and that we're looking forward to the future year so you have an idea and you're connected to what we do. And thank you again so much for your leadership and the support staff. It really has been wonderful to work not only with the leadership at the Department of Health level, but you all at the county level. Thank you. Thank you as well. Yeah, appreciate it. Just hang out one minute and you'll get reappointed. Anyone else? Come on up. You can go there. That would be great. Hello, board. Dr. Doty, I believe, and others. I am Melissa Weaver, PA, here in the community. A little bit about myself. I'll be brief. I moved here in 2013 to attend the University of Florida to pursue a career as a physician assistant. And my son was just starting kindergarten. And fast forward to Saturday, he graduates from high school and with his AA degree from Santa Fe College. So we're very proud of him. During that time, I've served in several positions in hospital systems, but also in private practice and visiting homes of homebound patients and the underserved. So I've seen firsthand gaps in health care. So I'm, you know, wanting to be on the board seeking this position to translate skills that I've learned working with administrators, physicians, nurses, social workers, patients and their families to improve, you know, health care outcomes. So I'd like to translate that to our community and our residents. So I appreciate your time and consideration of this. Is there any questions? Any questions, Commissioner? Okay, Ms. Weaver, thank you. Thank you for applying. All right, so, Madam Clerk, why don't we do both of them? We'll do the alternate and then we'll do the dental or oral health. Okay. Sounds great. Yep. Just pick one of each. Okay. As far as the alternate, we have Ms. Melissa Weaver and Jessica Forbes-Hutcherson. Can I start with Commissioner Wheeler? Melissa Weaver. Commissioner Prezio? Weaver. Commissioner Chestnut? Melissa Weaver. And Chair? I'll make it unanimous. Melissa Weaver. All right, let's do the next one. Next one, we have Frank, I'm sorry if I mess up anyone's name, Frank Catalanto and Payal Bacta. We're going to start with Commissioner Chestnut? Frank Catalanto-Natto, I guess. How do you pronounce it? Sorry for butchering your name. Commissioner Prezio? Payal Bacta? Commissioner Wheeler? Catalanato. And Chair? Okay, I'll go with Catalanato as well. I'm Melissa Weaver and Frank Catalanato for the terms ending 2028. And then you want to do the other three? Yes, Dr. Doty, Marsha Shadnari, and Patricia Vargas-Newton for the positions ending 2027 and 2028. Second. Okay, we got a motion and a second. So congratulations. Any discussion? Back to the board. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That's unanimous. All right, thank you, doctor. Thank you for being here and for all you do. Keep our community safe and healthy. All right. So that now moves us to our action items. And Madam Clerk, first action item. First action item is update on public input on Lakeshore Drive and Southeast 74th Street, potential scenic road designation. And the recommended action is based on public opposition and concerns. Staff recommends that the board not move forward with the process for designation of portions of Lakeshore Drive, Southeast 74th Street as a county scenic road. And do we want a presentation or do we want a motion? I move staff's recommendation to remove the consideration of Lakeshore Drive as a scenic road at this time. Second. Got a motion and a second. Any discussion? Just a quick question. When we have our MTPO or the new, what we call it now, maybe we could look at that road, too, as a possibility for traffic slowing? I did also just send a message to the sheriff, and I've already received a response, that he will try to increase some speed enforcement in that area. Okay. Okay. That's a great start. Okay. Any further discussion from anyone that hasn't already spoken to us about this? You don't want to talk us out of it? Okay, great. Let's bring it back to the board. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That's unanimous. All right. Great presentation. Well done. And thank you all for being here today and for actively participating with the 27 of you all. We're going to work on seeing how we can slow down traffic and make that road safer. Okay. Thank you. All right. Okay. Madam Clerk, next item. Next, that'll bring us to presentations. 2026 legislative update for growth management. Okay. And the recommended action is just to hear the presentation. And I see we have our distinguished Mr. Dawson at the podium. Chris, how are we today? Mr. Chair, Chris Dawson, Principal Planner with Development Services. I'm doing pretty well. Thank you. Good to be here. We wanted to just sort of point some bills out to you that came out of the recent legislative session at the state level that have impacts or potential impacts here in Alachua County. Also, just to sort of give you an opportunity on the front end to make some comments about those if you want because many of them you'll be seeing changes either in our conference plan or land development regulations to respond to. So, this is sort of our list. It's a long list this session. Not all of these have been signed into law. There's a couple that haven't gone to the governor yet. We're going to talk about what those are still because we do anticipate them going to the governor and being signed. It just takes a little bit of time for him to work through all those. You can see that the legislature was definitely busy as it relates to growth management this year. The first bill is Senate Bill 182. This one actually came up very last minute in the legislature. This is, for us, effectively a preemption of all local regulations for private schools in commercial or mixed-use zoning districts. I'm not sure that the legislature necessarily intended that, but it is certainly what happened for unincorporated areas. And it's written very broadly, the language is written very broadly, to really exempt them from basically anything that we would try to regulate on there, from our stormwater regulations, from basically everything. So, again, this is for private schools that want to locate in commercial or mixed-use zoning districts. And we're still working through some of that and having those discussions with the attorney's office about what that means and how that would play out. They would still be subject to the Florida Building Code and the Florida Fire Prevention Code, but basically anything else that we do locally, they would be exempt from. Would they still have to operate in an institutional zoning? Mr. Chair, this bill also provides that private schools basically be a permitted use. If the private school is in a commercial or mixed-use zoning district, it's a little bit circular, though. If the private school is in a commercial or mixed-use zoning district, it's exempt from any of our land-use restrictions. So, the answer to that is no. They would be private schools. They could kind of be as big as they want, and they basically can do whatever they want. All right. That's a big one, guys. All right. Any questions on that one? Next one. The only sort of mitigation... Of course, Mr. Chair, that's my speculation that that's not what they intended. That often happens at the legislative level. I can't say whether there would be any fix for that. We have lots of bills that people have been talking about fixes for for years, and those don't seem to be coming. So, I think in the absence of somebody being affected by this in some way, no, we would probably not see any change to that. The other part of that, Mr. Chair, the part of that bill is that another section effectively exempts private schools that go into existing, some types of existing commercial buildings. They would be exempt from the Florida Fire Prevention Code. That one, I would have mentioned that we will see some movement on a fix for, because that apparently happened very quickly, and the fire marshals are not very happy about that. So, they probably hold a little bit more swipe. House Bill 399, and actually, it's also in House Bill 803, but effectively prohibits local governments from treating off-site constructed residential dwellings differently than on-site built homes. So, just as a sort of, this is what we do now, in Alachua County, mobile, modular, manufactured home, modular homes are fine, but manufactured homes, which are built to the Department of Housing and Urban Development standards rather than the Florida Building Code, those are only permitted in certain zoning districts, ag and R1C, basically. This bill would basically cause that manufactured homes would be permitted in every zoning district, every residential, anywhere that a single-family home is permitted. It does allow local governments to adopt architectural standards that would apply, but those same architectural standards must apply to any site-built home as well. So, if we adopt something like a root pitch standard or a particular material that they have to be covered in, those same standards would have to apply to all single-family homes, not just the manufactured home. Commissioner Prudio? I guess, I mean, what you just said is a pretty large distinction. One is, complies with the Florida Building Code. Were they not clear that any off-site constructed residential dwelling would need to comply with the Florida Building Code? Because, to me, that's what that is. If it's a permanent dwelling, it has to comply with the permanent. So, Mr. Chair, they're not permanent, and it specifically defines what these off-site constructed residential buildings are. They are manufactured homes that are built to the HUD standard, and then there are modular homes. Those are off-site constructed factory-built homes that are built to Florida Building Code. So, both of those are included in this. But not like a trailer? Yeah. Anything that's built to the HUD standard, which is after 1974, 72 or 74, I can't remember exactly when that date is. Anything that's built to that HUD standard is included in this. And that's, when we say mobile homes today, most people talk about mobile homes on properties. That's what they're talking about. The mobile homes that were built prior to 1972. Built on a frame and transferred to the- Yes, on a frame, sitting on, you know, you have to remove the wheels, whatever, but it's still on a frame. It comes, yeah. It comes out of the construction with the permits, basically. Nightmare. Okay. Okay. Next one. House Bill 399 included some requirements for housing compatibility evaluation. We're still trying to determine exactly what we would need to do related to this. Likely something in the Comprehensive Plan and Unified Land Development Code. But it requires the county to have specific evaluation criteria for compatibility between residential uses. So this doesn't necessarily deal with compatibility between residential and non-residential uses. It deals specifically with compatibility between varying residential uses. And I'm sure you could all, sitting up there, imagine how, where this comes from. We envision that this is going to try and address the compatibility concerns between maybe single-family detached and multi-family uses or attached single-family uses. We do already have some of that in our Comprehensive Plan and Lend Development Regulations. But I think that we will be needing to make some changes to make it a little bit more explicit. Okay. Any questions on that one? Yeah. All right. Next one. House Bill 399 also included a provision on permit fees. And it prohibits development permit fees based on valuation. So we don't actually do that here in Alachua County. Our development permit fees, so that's a rezoning or Comprehensive Plan amendment development plan, those are all flat fees that are calculated ahead of time. So that part won't affect us generally. It doesn't apply to building permit fees. And we do actually, this is how we calculate building permit fees is based on the valuation. So we don't think that it will have an immediate impact on the county. But it does also sort of indicate that we have to have a reasonable connection between the review costs and the fees, which we do. Okay. House Bill 803, building permits and inspections. So this actually, this bill provides clarification and certainty about private providers and the role that the county has with them. Private providers are third parties that can do plans of review and inspections for building permits. Those have been in the code or in the statute for a while. But this provides more separation between the two. So it's been some sources of conflict, I think, between the private providers and the building officials about what role each of them plays in the process. This provides a little bit more certainty about what the county's role is and what the private provider's role is. And then it also provides more specifics about fee reductions, what the county can charge when somebody's using a private provider for plans review or building inspections. So that will likely result in some changes to our fee schedule for the building department. It also required or included some requirements or limitations on glazing requirements. So currently in our building design code, we have some requirements for glazing, for building frontages that certainly front streets. But even sometimes in other places, this will actually require us to amend our land development code to reduce what those glazing percentages are. So we would see less sort of window coverage on buildings, fronting streets. By a lot? Significant, yeah. We require about 50%, and this has a limitation of 15. Fifteen. Fifteen. Yep. We cannot, we can't require them. These all go into effect on January 1st? Some of these are July 1st, some of them are January 1st, and I can look at exactly which ones are which, if you'd like. We probably, we won't be able to get through all of these. Angeline and I are busy with lots of things. So we do anticipate getting some of these before you before that, July 1st, but other ones that don't go into effect until January 1st, you might see throughout the rest of the year. Okay, I've got Commissioner Alpert and then Commissioner Wheeler. Sorry for being late. Welcome. On the glazing requirement, are you guys considering ways to incentivize that versus requiring it? We haven't even begun to talk about it. You haven't? Okay, well. Internally, we haven't. This is our, really our first sort of crack at what's in here. So if that's something that the board is interested in, we certainly can think about what that would do. Yeah, or other relief, something that gives them a little relief from a, you know, passive. And the glazing requirements have occasionally not been, you know, done in the best way by folks that have used them. But I do think they're, you know, in situations where we know we want the glazing, I think it makes sense to try to figure out how to incentivize it some way. Anyway, thank you. Commissioner Wheeler? What's the glazing? What is the glazing? Glazing is window coverage. Oh, I got you. Thank you. The question I have is about the separating private provider inspections from county oversight. What is that? Where do we fit into all of that then? Because I know for a couple of years now we've had an issue in the local community. So this new bill sort of pushes us further out of the oversight of those private providers. It provides more definition about when the private providers have to notify the county that inspections have been done. And it provides limitations on when and what the county can go back and review. It also provides us with basically an indemnification, if you will, for contractors who use those private providers for inspections. That's interesting. So is that rural and urban? Or is it just for us, the county? It's any, but every building department in the state. Okay. Oh, my goodness gracious. Speed things up so people aren't waiting on the government. I just want to know then who would be responsible if they're not built, if these things are not built to whatever code is required by the county or- I'm sure somebody will go to court and find out for us. Okay. Okay. Yeah. That's pretty much right. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. But the bills actually- Right. So that's what I was getting to with the indemnification part, is that the county would not be responsible. Would not be, right. But your question was more of a who is. Yes. Don't know the answer to that. Oh, okay. Could be the builder. Could be the private inspector. Could be the- Okay. Because you know what? We have hurricanes and we have fires and we have floods and all that sort of thing, too. So at that point, we're just kind of not responsible. We're out of it. Okay. Well, that's one way to address FEMA's- Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. There's a third item in House Bill 803, which is an exemption from building permits for certain kinds of permits. Those are permits that are less than $7,500 and aren't structural or one of the trades. We just did a quick search. We think this applies to last fiscal year, about 487 of the 7,874 permits. And then so far through the first half of 26, about 213. So those are just people who wouldn't have to get a permit. We would expect- still expect that they would notify us. The statute sort of provides for that. We're figuring that out right now. But it would just be a free sort of notification. Okay. Any questions on that one? Yeah. Commissioner Allen, go ahead. So if somebody is doing work that doesn't require a building permit, then they could at any point in time, you know, decide that they need an electrician or decide that they need a tradesman to do that kind of work. Would this allow us, since we would be theoretically aware of the work being done, to go in and inspect it? And you may not know the answer to that question, but that's one I want to know. Because I feel like there's, and having worked in this place before, that, you know, I feel like there's a way, there's a possibility that that could be exploited. So, Mr. Chair, the way that the statute is written is that this wouldn't apply to the individual trades. Right. So I would hope that our contractors would be aware of that. And I mean, that's what we expect from them kind of anyway, that if they know they need a building permit, they go and get one. But as far as us being able to inspect, I think the limitation there is that the building official is only allowed to inspect when there's a permit. Okay, so. We still have code enforcement authority. So to the extent that someone's doing work that requires a permit and they don't have one, you know, we have a mechanism for code enforcement on that. But it's probably not to just know that work is going on and go in and inspect it. Okay, yeah. I mean, you know, my brother's an electrician or my, you know, brother-in-law's a plumber or whatever, you know. It seems like there's opportunity there. But like electrical isn't subject to the limit, correct? That's correct. So all the electrical stuff, whether it's $1,000 or $20,000, you still have to get a permit. Right, but I'm saying people don't get permits. Oh, sure. I spent a whole bunch of my career dealing with after-the-fact permits. Right. I don't think, yeah. So, you know. Commissioner Wheeler? Just one more question about this, the private provider inspections versus county oversight. The big distribution centers that we have coming in and these big, you know, the big operations that we have coming into the county, does that apply to them as well so that we really don't know what the heck is going on with these things that are coming into the area? Well, we know, right? The private inspectors have to submit it. Yeah, I mean, Mr. Chair, we still get a, we still issue a building permit. Right. Okay, okay. But the inspections are done by somebody else. Yes. Summit, okay. And sometimes the plans review as well. And, Missy, I can't remember on 803 if it's only commercial, I mean, only residential or if it's commercial as well. Everything. So, yes, it's all, anybody that's using private providers. So, EPD and some, you know, these things that might impact the environment, too. So, Mr. Chair, there's still any of these developments, any commercial projects that are in the unincorporated area would still have to go through our development review process. So, that all still applies. It's just when we get to the building permit. Okay. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chair. You're welcome. Okay. Next item. So, Mr. Chair, I'm going to let Angeline Jacobs go through the rest of these. Okay. Thank you, Chris. Angeline Jacobs. I'm a planner in growth management. Also, kind of keeping my eye on these legislative items coming through. And so, I'm going to go over the next. There's about six more that we're going to get through here today. So, House Bill 1389, which has not yet been sent to the governor, is basically Live Local Act 3.0. They've had some changes over the last couple of years. This particular one will broaden the state definitions of commercial, industrial, and mixed use. We've already kind of considered that in regards to our plan development within our code. So, that was kind of an expectation it would move that way. Something that's more interesting is it is now adding a religiously owned and also governmentally owned lands to be utilized in the same manner. So, multifamily housing can now be built on those properties. There is a caveat for the religiously owned land that they must have at least 10 years of an active congregation or a house of worship on that parcel in order to develop it. And there is a limitation on it being three acres or greater. Okay. Good. Okay. The next bill is Senate Bill 594, which has to do with our local housing assistance plan. This is preserving affordable housing for mobile home residents in those parks. It allows the expansion and the use of ship funds to those mobile home owners to apply for lot lease payments and other stabilization assistance offered. And what we are doing is going to look at our comprehensive plan to make sure we're consistent and allowing that in our housing element. Does it require that to be in the LHF or is it just allowing that to be in the LHF? It's allowing it to be used, yeah. And that yet has not been sent to the governor yet. The next bill is House Bill 927. This is a local land planning and development review process bill. This is going to be an update to our Unified Land Development Code and the application procedures, checklists, staff authority, deadline tracking, and related to just administrative development review. It is very clear. This is something that we would do behind the scenes anyway through review of the development. There will be – it does compress the timelines. So there is a five business day completeness review, and then they also allow a 30-day cure. And then after that's done, you only have a 45, like, window of time to get it to an action by staff. Just the normal tracking, so you're aware, it's usually a 30-day completeness review, 30-day cure, and then a 120 action window. So it just compresses it a little bit. So that's going to make things a lot tighter from 30 days to five days. Yes, a little bit tighter, yeah. And then there's also a qualified contractor registry for folks that would do this sort of pre-application for that. And that is requiring at least four qualified contractors or two qualified firms to supplement staff resources. So if we get a lot of these and staff can't handle that load, then, you know, applicants can go that route. And that is signed into law. This is signed, okay. The next bill is Senate Bill 686, dealing with agricultural enclaves. This particular framework will sunset, though, January 1st of 2028. This was signed into law. Previously, a comprehensive plan amendment process was required. This bill will allow a certification and development plan pathway instead. So for parcel groups of 700 acres up to 1,280 acres, it keeps the 75% perimeter test. That means it's surrounded by future land use of industrial, commercial, or residential zoning. But it lowers the existing development on those perimeter lands to 50% where it used to be 75, so already developed lands. And it also adds more ways to count the surrounding development. So the interstate now is applying, and they're very clear that waterways don't. So there's some definition restructuring in there. And it also offers a smaller parcel, so that's under 700-acre parcel groups, and that is a 50-50 kind of thing. So 50% of the surrounding has to be, and then 50% of that development around that in order for it to qualify for certification. This also has a 90-day timeline for review and public hearing decisions, or it's deemed automatic certification. And what that means is that in the future, once those areas are phased in and those housing, single-family housing developments starting, they don't have to go through a hearing process, and those properties are already certified to be built. We need to send Mr. Morris up to the state on this one. More housing, for sure. Okay, the next is Senate Bill. Chris, yes? Yeah, you agree with that, right? No. You don't know? Okay, keep going. All right, data centers. So data centers. So this one is preserving local authority on developing comprehensive plan policy and land use compatibility regulations and approval process for these large load data centers. That is a monthly 50 megawatt or more threshold. And so they've basically given us the authority to make those land use compatibility, you know, concerns, put those into our regulations. So that's something that we'll be developing over the course of the next few months and bringing that back for your opinions and thoughts. Yeah, so we've been getting a lot of questions, obviously, about when will we be looking at that. Are we talking July, August? Do we know? I don't see Jeff here. I know that it was something we brought up during our complement amendment. Mr. Chair, I get to be Jeff today. I guess what I would say is we're beginning to look at what that would look like even. Yeah. We just, we don't have a good feel for that right now. There's nothing in our comp plan or code about it today. And so it's writing from scratch. Sure. So, I mean. And I don't think it's a one meeting we decide at all. I think it's probably an interview process. It'll take us a couple months to be back to you with anything to sort of start with. So we'll just say this summer. Yeah, I guess I would just ask that we do expedite that one, given that there's active promotion of the potential for one of these in our county. And given that I, at least myself, I have very strong opposition to the idea of one of these being located in our county, given the intensive nature of their natural resources impacts and given how close most of the sites that would be even somewhat acceptable from a scale perspective are largely in our unconfined area where it would really impact our spring sheds. So I'm anxious to have this done so that we're not at odds with a potential application. Understand. And did you want to comment on that? No, I agree with everything. I do too. Yeah, I mean, I think you have a number of us. Just say no. No, yeah. Okay. Great. And the last bill to be brought in front of you is this House Bill 10, well, 1093. It's the VertiPorts. So this is a bill that is supporting advanced air mobility through the Federal Aviation Administration. They started looking at this in 2019, so now it's come to our state. They've developed an engineering brief to guide, but they have yet to work out all the siting standards. So they have pilot programs. There's just a flight out of Orlando International Airport just this week. So they're working on that. So they're providing us with some basic ideas of infrastructure and where these could be co-located, like heliports and things like that. What you're looking at, these are electrical, vertical takeoff and landing facilities that can be co-located on airports or potentially, like I said, on helicopter landing areas. Because you're looking at the uses of, like, air taxis for commuters, up to four people. They can go about 250 nautical miles. It's for commercial shipping, medical transport for patients, and also supplies. And also search and rescue. Those are some of the things that, from my research, they're trying to utilize this type of transportation for. And that's about it for the legislative action. Okay. Any questions on verports? I just have a comment. I had heard a year ago that they were looking at maybe putting one out at Tech City. At Tech City? Yeah. I think we're probably a ways away on a demand standpoint in Elantra County. But okay. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. All right. Ms. Yadda, anything to wrap this one up? Yes, Mr. Chair. And I was going to ask Angeline, but I'll just say it, and she didn't correct me, I think, if I misheard. I believe you asked about the local housing assistance plan, and would that need to go into it? It would be required to be updated to include the mobile home. It's not just an allowance. So, Ralston's paying attention, and we'll be bringing that back to AHAC and to you if we need to update it. Commissioner Prezio? Yeah. I think. Yeah. Do we have the ability to do a moratorium on data centers until such time as we have regulations in place? Or does 180 kill us? Yeah, we don't have an ability to do a moratorium on that, but I would tell you right now that the growth management director's interpretation is that they're not permitted. Yeah, I mean, I've looked at all of our codes. I don't think there's a way. They're not a permitted use. Yeah. And so, I think what we would. So, effectively have a moratorium until we have a permitted use. I wouldn't call it a moratorium. It's just not a permitted use. It's not a permitted use. Right. We just don't have a way to do it. Okay. Thank you. Okay. I mean, that's good information for those that are wondering. Okay. I think that concludes this item. Anything else on this item, commissioners? All right. Let's go ahead, Madam Clerk. Next item. Next item, we have land conservation projects. We have Lake Forest Creek Freedman Track Option Contract to Purchase Real Property. Okay. And we've got a four-part motion to approve the recommended action. And, Andy, you're here to present this to us. Welcome. Thank you, Mr. Chair, commissioners. Andy Christman, land conservation program manager. And I'm here to present for your consideration the Lake Forest Creek Freedman property. I'm referring to it as the Freedman property. It's a fee simple acquisition. You'll see it's actually owned by a co-trustees of a trust. So it's the Theodore Freedman and Deborah Sanders as successor co-trustees of the Paul Freedman Employee Pension Trust. That's the actual contract entity. It's one parcel consisting of slightly more than 20 acres. It is in a zoning and land use area that's medium-density residential in the East Side Activity Center. And we've come to you in the past year and a half a few different times to talk about the East Side Activity Center and our pursuit of properties within that area and the land use, mixed use, residential medium density. You'll see on this map that the parcel in question is the one that's filled in in red. And immediately south and adjacent to it in kind of a light blue color is a parcel that's already owned by the county and that's an achievement parcel. That's part of what makes connectivity for the Freedman parcel possible. And what's known internally within the county is the Lake Forest Creek project area, but really more locally, the Morningside Nature Center to Paines Prairie Corridor. And south of State Road 20, you'll see that in last year, one of our acquisitions, the K-squared holding property that builds to Paines Prairie Preserve State Park. The creek system to the north that is running east-west is Lake Forest Creek. Zooming in, a parcel map with aerial photo. The parcel is fully wooded, and you can see the little yellow outlines on the south end is that parcel that's owned by the county. And adjacent to the west, just pointing out, is the Forest Meadows Memorial Park and mausoleums. Despite its size, the property has actually a good range of habitat diversity. Upland hardwood forest, former sand hill, retaining some of the native sand hill, ground cover and mid-story, over-story species, dome swamp, as well as some successional hardwood forest. As I mentioned, it's in the Lake Forest Creek project area, the Eastside Greenway Strategic Ecosystem, the Eastside Activity Center, and part of that corridor between Morningside and Paines Prairie. Due to the size and limitations in terms of recreational access, initially this would be by tour only. We would see this potentially having access in the future, given the area that it's located in within the east side of, well, outside of the city limits of Gainesville, but close proximity to that area, providing green space access for the communities there. Some images from the property. And it does have some gopher tortoises on site, which is nice, in that former sand hill area. It also, because it is very close to a developed area, does have some remnant solid waste that's pretty typical, old bottle dumps, and there is a sort of cutoff, but a little kind of well cap there that's part of the city of Gainesville. It's one of the two title exceptions. It relates to the city of Gainesville utility easement on the property. And this would be managed by Alachua County. In that corridor, you may recall we've presented properties before that would be managed by the state parks, by Painesbury State Park, but that only applies to property south of State Road 20. This is north of State Road 20, so this would be managed by us. And the contract includes a 90-day due diligence period, so closing in August. As I mentioned, no permitted exceptions, but you can choose to accept title exception five and six. Five relates to the utility easement on behalf of the city of Gainesville. And number six, the property doesn't abut a public road, but because the county owns the parcel to the south, that provides access for the county. Purchase price, $199,364. Estimated due diligence, $35,754. Total expenditure request with that 10% contingency that we always include, $258,685. And these are the motions for your consideration. Okay, Commissioner Halford. Yeah, the utility easement, you showed what looked like a well cap. Do we know what that was used for? So we don't at this point know what it, and we would, during due diligence, we would gain some insight on that. It falls within the easement that the city of Gainesville has, and that easement was to provide water, and I think also electrical, if I'm recalling correctly. But going through the property to an adjacent neighborhood that was also not developed to the northeast. So it wasn't, and it's not cutting through the middle of the property, it's along the property boundary. So we think it was a water supply well, not a test well? Yeah. Okay. But due diligence will reveal that for us. I was worried it was. Okay. Any other questions? Otherwise, I'll take a motion. Move staff's recommended actions. Second. Motion and a second to approve staff's recommendations. Thank you. Any further discussion from this board? Any public discussion to the motion? Back to the board. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion's unanimous. Okay. Any, thank you. Thanks very much. You're welcome. All right. That gets us to our public hearings. Madam Clerk. Public hearings. This will bring us to item D26-00006, Wahoo Spring Hill Small Scale Comprehensive Plan Amendment. Okay. And the recommended action, the staff recommended the Board of County Commissioners approve Z26 with a bunch of zeros and a six with the bases as listed in the staff report. All right. Andy, welcome. Thank you, Mr. Chair. This is Maddie Bank-Apar, Lodzio County Growth Management Department. And this application Z26-00006 is a small scale comprehensive plan amendment. For the former Wahoo restaurant in the Spring Hills Activity Center. The application will request an amendment from the future land use designation of tourist entertainment to commercial. If this is approved, there would be a variety of commercial uses consistent with that designation that would be allowed. There's also a companion rezoning request following this presentation. We will go over that one as well. Location of this request is just to the west of I-75 and just south of northwest 39th Avenue. Ariel shows the former Wahoo restaurant. And surrounding the site is the GRU Operational Center, Shell Gas Station to the north. And the future land use map on this slide shows that it currently has tourist entertainment land use. But where the GRU Operational Center is is the warehouse distribution land use and other commercial uses to the north and to the west. And further off of the slide with that brown color is mixed use, which represents the Spring Hills Activity Center, which has yet to be developed. The request is for a commercial land use designation. The applicant is looking to have uses that align with their commercial land use and zoning request. Currently, what is allowed now is not consistent with what they want to do. So this is why they're asking for this amendment. For the next presentation, currently this slide shows the existing zoning of BH and in the upcoming presentation, they will request a rezoning from BH to BR. Our recommendation is for this land use amendment to be approved. And these are the bases that we have for approval. The first of which is policy 3.12, future land use element, which has the location of commercial activity specified in the comprehensive plan. Policy 3.3.1 of the future land use element, which speaks to adequate facilities for commercial. This is an urban cluster and it's in the activity center. Policy 3.4.1 of the conservation and open space element, environmental resource assessment, which was submitted and reviewed by our Environmental Protection Department and found consistent with the protection of natural resources. And policy 1.1.9 of the economic element, promoting redevelopment in New Phil. Our recommendation is for approval. Second. So I'm happy to answer that. All right, we have a motion and a second to pass up for later. Any discussion? Any public discussion? Back to the board. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion is unanimous. Many. Great job. Let's move on to the quasi-judicial public hearing. Madam Attorney? Right, Mr. Chair, the next two items are quasi-judicial. I have a quick thing to read into the record. Anyone wishing to testify or present evidence during this hearing will be sworn in prior to speaking. Through the Chair, all speakers may ask questions, seek clarification, and respond to comments. Or presentations. Anyone presenting written materials to the commissioners for consideration must ensure that a copy of such materials is provided to the clerk for inclusion in the board's record of proceeding and official minutes. Florida law requires that the county commission's decision in a quasi-judicial action be supported by competent substantial evidence presented during this hearing. Competent substantial evidence means that the board's decision is based on enough credible evidence that a reasonable person could agree. The persons presenting opinion or factual testimony may rely on any factual information in the record to support their testimony. Opinion testimony may be given by people qualified to give such an opinion. And I don't believe we've had any party requests on either of these. I have not. But, Mr. Chair, if you will call for parties or the clerk will call for parties, there may be some who have not requested yet. Okay. Is there anyone wishing to seek additional party status at this time? Nope. Okay. Can I inquire if any commissioners have received any ex parte communications? And if so, please disclose them now. No. Nope. I spoke with the owner about a month ago when it was first purchased and was offered a tour of the spot. And I didn't have time at the time to do that, but I do know what its purpose is. At this time, anyone wishing to address this item, if you will please stand and raise your right hand and be sworn in. Please will affirm that the testimony you're about to give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Thank you very much. All right. So, I'm sorry. This is the companion rezoning request, Z260007. This application is a request to rezone from the BH, which is Highway Oriented Business, to BR, which is Retail Sales and Services. Approved. Land use amendment that you've just approved requires that there's a zoning that's consistent with that. And so the request is for BR zoning on the same parcel. again the slide shows the location to the west of i-75 and to the south of northwest 39th avenue again the aerial for the record existing is highway oriented businesses and uh i will show an upcoming slide that the request to br and what's allowed by right and other uses that are allowed with board approval so this is the request to rezone to br as the applicant is looking for uses consistent with that zoning the prior tourist entertainment land use designation now has been amended to commercial and this slide just shows that within this area in the vicinity of this i-75 39th avenue interchange there is the spring hills transit oriented development a lot of mixed use and non-residential uses occurring here in the near vicinity and the site is shown in the red outline so this slide shows what is allowed with br zoning and the p stands for permitted the l stands for limited which would be allowed with certain criteria a is accessory which would be allowed with the principal use established and the se stands for a special exception which would be allowed with special exception approval these are commercial uses allowed vr zoning additionally there are community service uses allowed vr zoning the p also shows those which are permitted vr zoning and l and a and sup also stand for limited accessory or with the special use permit we have a recommendation of approval and these are the bases for our stock recommendation first of which is that rezoning will implement the commercial land use designation we'll also implement the spring hills activity center plan policy 3.1.2 of the future land use element which speaks to location of new commercial within the activity center and the criteria for rezoning which is found in the unified land development code section 402.77 again our recommendation is to approve this uh the basis that we have in our staff report regarding that site is notoriously terrible for traffic because of the ingress egress issues right it's like right near the hotel and the yeah um was there any consideration of the future use and sort of how traffic patterns would work with you know being a being a commercial like all of those uses um a lot of those uses would have a lot more traffic um i mean a restaurant had a fair amount of traffic so i guess there's that um but i'm just interested if we looked at the traffic considerations at all on this site uh yes mr chair um i believe they have another access point i don't know if there's anyone from public works here but um that was going to be my question i'm going to speak to the existing traffic uh configuration okay welcome let's live lalmani lachikani public works yeah certainly we looked at the traffic and you know the connection is is from 97th and the gre operation common access and uh that is the only connection there will be um you know no direct connection 39th avenue okay um it will be allowed because it's so close to the ramp and uh so the only connection is that one and uh you know currently the the wahoo or used to be the wow yeah grill used to generate more traffic and so okay thank you this one's better okay and that intersection 97th and 39th is too close to 75 for a light yes so there is a left in uh in uh in both directions that is being proposed i think that is going to be constructed in uh one or two months starting june so it'd be a left and only to 97th and a left in to the hotel kind of north okay that'll help yeah that'll help a lot yeah okay great thank you any other questions commissioner okay move approval of the um staff recommendation staff recommendation for the rezoning yeah motion and a second uh to approve the rezoning any discussion any public discussion back to the board all those in favor say aye aye aye any opposed motions unanimous okay great thank you commissioners let's go ahead and move to the second one preliminary development plan for west side christian school recommended action is to approve with a condition um okay jacob you are recognized because she said the last item i wasn't speaking to that one so i didn't think oh yeah can we swear jacob in yeah oh yes we can do that and i guess we got to do exports anybody have export day on this one we can do all of it all right let's do it all let's do all of it and then we'll all right uh anyone wishing to seek additional party status no okay can you inquire if you've had any communications receive any expert communications if so please disclose them no no i haven't mary mary no no okay thank you at this time anyone wish to address the item if you'll please stand and raise your right hand to be sworn in if you swear affirm the testimony you're about to give is the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth thank you okay mr chair this is for the preliminary development plan for the west side christian school the plan proposes up to 63 500 square feet of institutional uses for a private school at an existing church a request for the extension of water and sewer beyond the urban cluster line it's located at 3200 southwest 122nd street or parker road on approximately 9.7 acres the property has institutional future land use and is in the agricultural zoning district so the uldc gives the board of county commissioners the authority to approve preliminary development plans over threshold of 25 000 square feet for institutional uses and to approve requests for extension of water or waste water services beyond the urban cluster line so that's why it's here before you today this is a location map and i apologize i left out the urban cluster line it runs along the eastern side of parker road here and then down and over to there so basically everything east of parker road except for that ag property to the south of oakmont is in the urban cluster and the site is adjacent to the parker place subdivision outside of the urban cluster this is an aerial view of the existing structures on the site so the proposal would be to have a few additional classroom spaces and then utilize some of the existing um office church office and and uh interior space for classrooms some existing conditions from parker road the entrance into the um property you can see oakmont across the street the oakmont subdivision so this is the preliminary development plan again um the future land use for the property is institutional and there's an existing church on the parcel comprehensive plan allows private educational facilities on parcels with the institutional future land use and then the uldc allows public and private educational facilities based on the future land use designation so private schools are allowed as limited uses on properties with the institutional future land use that are outside of the urban cluster line they have to meet specific criteria in that section they require access to a collector road parker road is a major collector road access to surrounding uh residential it's not feasible but the plan will construct a 10 10 foot multi-use path that's that dashed light blue line along the eastern boundary of the property so that if there's ever um connections to the surrounding subdivisions created it it would have connections to those it must meet the zoning setbacks um so the ag zoning setbacks that are identified on this plan sheet provide vehicle circulation and queuing that's shown by the the light or the green arrow and the dark blue arrows are the queuing and circulation that will be um reviewed with the final development plan requires a 25 foot medium uh 25 foot wide medium density buffer adjacent to residential properties that's that's identified on the plan and then the existing stormwater basin on the northwest portion of the property here will be expanded and an additional stormwater basin will be constructed on the south side of the sports field um the details of landscaping um quantity and species and uh the basins and the buffer will be evaluated with the final development plan um jacob that red square is the it's a sports sport field and then the buildings are up above north yes yeah sorry the uldc requires a minimum of 20 percent tree canopy retention the plan saves approximately 60 percent based upon the highly rated heritage trees around the site there are no landmark live oaks as they as defined in the code so as i said the uldc gives the board the sole authority to approve extension of water and wastewater services beyond the urban cluster line and states that it must consider the criteria or standards that are listed in subsection b on this slide the applicant is requesting water extension to meet fire sprinkler flow requirements in existing and proposed buildings they're requesting sewer extensions so that the connection can be made if and when it's feasible for the school to make the connection at this time the intention is to connect to water and utilize the existing and then proposed on-site septic systems um as needed in as the as the student population grows the elatua county health department indicated that there's no jurisdictional concerns with the school being served by on-site septic and then the future connection to sewer would benefit the the county's nutrient reduction goals through the state mandated basin management action plan so they keep the septic until they decided they could um as they expanded they would then hook into the sewer system correct uh there's three alternatives proposed for routing the water and potential wastewater services to the property identified in the preliminary development plan so the first alternative is through a easement in this oakmont common common common area here underneath parker road and then onto the site the second alternative is from southwest 34th avenue across our parker road under parker road north along an existing utility easement into the site and then from the third alternative is from southwest 24th avenue 28th avenue sorry this is 28th avenue here uh under parker road through that that existing utility easement and down onto the site and we we kind of looked into the properties that are adjacent to these alternatives two and three and have no concerns for sprawl because the development any development that could occur on the parcels is not permissive under comp plan and code that would require a connection to water sewer under this florida statute and then gru has indicated that it would not require the existing occupants of these parcels here to the north and to the south to connect because they are outside of the urban cluster line so it would essentially be um the the lines running through the utility easement to the school and they would not require those existing properties to connect there i guess there are some examples of this where um sewer comes out of the urban cluster near properties that are in ag outside of the urban cluster and gru did not require them to connect that was one concern that staff had during the review and then of course any additional requests for other parcels would be the purview of the board of county commissioners um so based on this analysis staff report supports the request to extend water and sewer um but has the following condition of approval the preliminary development plan is approved for the use of centralized potable water and sanitary sewer services this approval does not require the development to utilize central water or sewer and it may utilize well in septic systems as permitted by the appropriate state agency and with that the preliminary development plan is consistent with the alachua county comprehensive plan and unified land development code and staff recommends approval with condition of the preliminary development plan for west side christian school and resolution resolution dr 2611 and that concludes that presentation okay we've got a couple of lights commissioner prisia and alford and then are we going to hear from the applicant after you yeah okay go ahead commissioner alford um my question was about oh i'm sorry commissioner you can go first okay commissioner alford would the uh the sewer connections be in approximately the same places as the water connections i know they can't be they're not in the exact same places but that probably a better um answered by public works just because i don't have knowledge but i would assume that it would be relatively similar i just uh i mean if we're approving it i just kind of wanted to know how far away it was yeah lilith albani public works yeah they usually have separation requirements you know so that's why i said approximately at this time we have you know they haven't shown that of course but it will be shown that final okay one of those three options is what they're asking for yeah correct and is i assume that'd be a directional board they're not going to take park parker road to do that that is right and then um do we know anything about the number of students i guess this is a back to planning the um the cover letter for the application included i believe a a cap of they would go to 750 students would be the maximum at full build out oh that's that's pretty pretty pretty high it's not a limited use that's a that's a major use elementary school yeah yeah so um given that do we know where they at what point they would be required to connect to sewer versus septic do we know what the limitation is on the septic system they're based on the information supplied in the application that was reviewed by the elachua county health department that the school could exist on well and septic with no that's was the information of no jurisdictional concern was that it could exist with 750 students as as that um i bet they have problems before they get to that but and yeah so that was that was part of the reason for the wording of that condition was that the code and comp plan as it is as it is written today doesn't allow for a mandate um that it's consistent with the code of compound comprehensive plan as submitted given the tr the um the traffic uh pattern that you showed in terms of uh parents waiting and things like that is that adequate for 750 students it doesn't look like it but i it's hard to figure out the scale those things are are um i forget exactly how many a little red that's just one little green line so i forget exactly how many cars the application shows uh circulation for 85 vehicles but we don't really review those um those things are difficult yeah well it is difficult but it's a two-lane road and you know i'm thinking about traffic back 750 kids look at pk young yeah look at pk young and how many cars are backed up on sixth street all the way down blocking traffic for an hour yeah each day in the morning and in the afternoon same situation yeah those were my concerns yeah okay you conclude uh commissioner prissy and then commissioner wheeler yeah i guess i'm i'm really concerned about this 750 to me doesn't feel like a limited use it doesn't feel like it's an it's an automatic approval at all it doesn't feel like a limited use that's a major use and it feels like it's i also feel like we're approving extension of water and sewer for public safety either they're going to do it or they're not like i'm not interested in approving something on the basis of public safety and then them saying that they don't feel like doing it so you know i mean to me it's like if it's a public safety hazard and that's the reason that we're extending sewer beyond the urban cluster then they should be connecting to water and sewer because of the public safety hazard and if it's not a public safety hazard then then we need to limit their thing to a limited use of the number of kids that you know make sense for a limited use on sewer yeah mr chair so i i mean septic i spoke with uh jeff hayes the director of growth management earlier today and we were kind of taken by surprise with the way that the uldc table allows this as a limited use on institutional property outside of the urban cluster and he indicated that when he researched um previous comprehensive plan changes thinking that it was possible this was um codified an error that this was how it was always um listed so it's sort of what does limited use mean uh it's based on the specific criteria for that section chris if you want to mr chair christos and principal planner for development services so in our um land development regulations we really in our use table we have uses that are permitted that means they're just allowed to go there we have what are called limited uses and that means that they are allowed on a piece of property subject to specific standards that we have in our land development regulations so that it's not limited in scale it's limited by meeting those criteria i'm sorry and what are those criteria do you have those jacob i don't have uh so the specific code section is 404 um 34b it's the standards for it all educational facilities the first is accessibility that's where i was talking about the um access to the collector road parker road being a major collector road the accessibility to surrounding um residences or residential subdivisions um no it doesn't it can't physically connect right so it doesn't meet that limited yes to the other of that chris it can't the existing parker place subdivision does not have right so i'm sorry if you could ask the question again i apologize it doesn't if it doesn't it's saying that one of the limited uses is requiring that existing so it does not so of course that's going to depend on the ability to connect so if they if there isn't a way to do that um then it's kind of penalizing them for for that situation our past planning failures um but but i i hear the the question um i think they are making the effort to provide those connections uh provide for whatever connections they can i mean if they went just north couldn't they provide to the entrance of parker place is the parker place right above it yes that's why the the parcel immediately to the north of this is common area for parker place right it just has a roadway into the subdivision there's no long roadway there's no stub out sidewalks or bike lanes on the road um that so the multi-use path does connect to the roadway it doesn't connect to an existing sidewalk because there is no existing sidewalk in the parker place subdivision and then to the south is a large residential parcel include i don't support the extension unless they're mandated okay commissioner wheeler that was my question as well you know what are we're saying what we're doing is approving it if they want it i mean down the road but we're saying that that we will they can they can use it have access to it if they choose to well i think the plan and we're approving the that possibility yeah um mr chair so i think the the plan is to connect to water specifically for okay the fire flow for sprinklers um my understanding is that would be difficult to meet with a well um we felt that it made sense from a procedural standpoint to request both at the same time just for the sake of having another application that would come before the board okay when when the sewer if when and if the sewer uh is connected um just to do it all in in one shot and because the use can stand alone with um well and septic according to the health department it's just a lot of toilet slush for that many people that's a lot of water coming in and going out and and i'm trying to understand we're we're approving that it be extended there but they don't have to take it so it doesn't have to be built exactly and that's the thing i mean the whole thing i mean our urban cluster line and the the extension of water and sewer is based on the predication that there's a health and safety need for that extension we're essentially saying there's a health and safety need for that extension but guess what the health department doesn't care that there's health and safety need for that extension they can have well and septic anyway and so we're approving something on the basis of protecting our water resources and the health and safety of people and then they're choosing not to do it because it's convenient for them and they and they don't have the money or the expense well this is what i'm trying to do for health and safety so from my perspective i don't i'm not interested in well i think commissioner i think it's could i interrupt sure i think it's two steps so what i heard is they're seeking water in for the fire protection and at the same time because it's in our b map they're trying to approve the sewer to take basically a large we are we we and they take a large school and church off septic tanks they aren't connecting but i think the the intention of the application as i understand it without hearing from the applicant was to approve water extension so they could have fire protection exactly they want what they want but they don't want to do what we want and what i'm saying is like we're approving for health and safety because all of that nitrogen in that septic is going to end up in our spring shed in our water box so we want 750 kids a day flushing toilets so we want that we want it off septic i want it off septic okay sewer and i feel like if we're connecting them to water and sewer like we're giving them what they need to open a private school in a rural area that effectively is displacing our public schools which in my opinion is already a problem and then on top of that we're going to give them water and sewer outside of our urban cluster line which is something that we don't typically do but because this could be a health hazard we're approving extending that water and sewer so you want to require them to connect they need to be connected to that water and sewer let me go back to mary yeah i i would agree i but i'm who pays for this when it it does the actual the they would pay for it they pay for it so it seems to me that that should be part of the deal you know if if you all are willing if we will approve it if you are willing to actually pay for it and get it in system but i think this the water and the sewer needs to go into something that big and i do have concerns also about the driving and parking and picking up kids that many kids i mean we saw this happen out on uh you know with the uh the krishna school you know where people are lined up on the road a public road waiting to get in you know to pick up children and it becomes a traffic hazard as well so you know unless there's another way to keep people circulating around that facility to pick up and come out another way you know i think they just have to be very careful about that because it well those are my two concerns thank you mr chair thank you commissioner all right let me ask a couple quick questions um chris how does sb 182 affect this you're asking me something on the fly mr chair it's sb 182 is not explicitly directed at individual developments okay so i'm not it's more directed at us changing our regulations in a way that would make it harder so here we're not proposing to change a regulation so i i guess my initial response would be that that that it doesn't apply here okay okay um or that's 180 you're talking about 182 the one we just talked about when we just talked my apologies mr chair that's uh i my brain was in seven places on that so okay yeah it wouldn't apply here because this is not a commercial or mixed use yeah okay got it um so i guess why don't we are there any more questions before we hear from the applicant because why don't we hear from the applicant and maybe he can answer some of the concerns that we brought up and then we can have some more deliberations anybody opposed to that absolutely all right let's do that um i did want to ask before we hear from the applicant uh on the b map chris this is or not chris uh epd yeah what what is the the benefit like i heard commissioner pretty say we want the septic banks connecting the sewer what kind of credit do we get for b map for our b map yeah so uh mary zoka stormwater quality in the environmental protection department so we currently do not have this would cause future allocations this upgrade would uh cause future allocations for the county so where it stands now it's just the standard septic that they have but uh doing this much more septic based off of the fdep methodologies we estimate this would be about 3 000 pounds of nitrogen loading per year and we're in the post spring shed which is currently not impaired um it's currently meeting its total maximum daily load but it is within the outside of the priority focus area santa fe springshed b map area so it would you know um septic drain field of this size would lead to future allocations for the county around about 3 000 pounds per year okay another reason why we'd want to connect it to sewer okay thank you mary all right let's hear from the applicant jacob good afternoon mr chair commissioners my name is ryan thompson i'm with mv5 agent for the applicant i do have a presentation i don't want to be redundant i want to be effective um so i would like to address you know some of your questions um the school is already at the west side baptist church on newberry road 98th street they had they were approached by faith baptist as to take over their facilities church services would still continue on the site but they would like to relocate some of their students the elementary school students and grow into their dream is to have about 720 to 750 students on the site how many kids are at west side baptist right now that's newberry in 98 i guess is that right yeah i i hesitate to say because oh if i could no i have been sworn in thank you um i i think there's about 100 students there currently um but please don't quote me on that okay and then over a several year period grow from to k through 12 on the site we can look at queuing we have created an internal loop around an athletic field that we intend to make two lanes that would increase the queuing on the site we also have an unpaved parking area along the frontage of the site that's intended to be unpaved but could increase the loop even further so we can look at that at final development plan we'll work with staff on exactly what that queuing looks like um our intent coming in was to uh connect to water uh for public safety for fire suppression on the way in to water and okay got it yes um and you know over a four month period working with staff um we looked at the the septic in great detail we could serve the site with septic the applicant ideally would like to be on sewer it would be advantageous from a spatial side and they would like to do it for the right reasons it's not budgeted this is something that has been brought forth over the last few months as we've been working with staff so that's why the condition is worded the way that it is their intent is 100 to connect to potable water they would like to connect to sewer they don't want to be hand tied to that at this time as the health department has the health department um said that that current site can handle the 100 kids they currently have up to how many uh we can serve full capacity with septic so up to 750 more yes sir i was just gonna say i mean i guess if if they can serve their kids with septic and the and the well then let them serve the kids with the septic and the well if they're not going to connect to sewer i mean that's my feeling because our health and safety provisions are extending that because of the potential impacts on our entire county and the need to protect our water resources and what you're saying is essentially you want the water because you need it for your operations but you're not willing to connect the sewer to protect our water shed right now because it's not in your budget but i'm like i my feeling is if you want the water and sewer then connect to the water and sewer and if you don't then don't and if you want to come back and ask us to do it at a later time when you have the money for the sewer then great i don't think they can under the fire suppression awful well i think that's the issue mr chair i i think we could um i think it'd be very expensive um being frank with you and um so their preferences for the for the potable water um we we didn't initially ask for the this uh sewer connection um that was something that was asked of us when working with staff i understand and i think that's because the reality is that the only time that we ever extend sewer into the rural areas outside of the urban cluster is when there's a health and safety risk and that safety and health risk is the potential additional nitrogen contamination of our water system i know that there you know what i mean like that's the reason right that we would be doing this extending beyond our existing boundary that where we don't otherwise we would be saying build in the urban cluster where we have the services and the things that are there for that urban type of development commissioner alford um i i don't have any problem with them connecting to water without connecting to sewer at this point because i see it as the having dealt with rural areas that need fire suppression it can be extremely expensive and also less safe than having access to the potable water and since it's a school i don't want to i don't want to um jeopardize potential safety of kids i think it's important that we you know do what we need to do i mean the health department and the fire rescue department would make sure they're not jeopardy yeah but i i understand where you're coming from you know that um 3 000 pounds of nitrogen a year is an awful lot of milligrams per liter of nitrogen and groundwater and um that's you know that's that's also has an effect on children and in a big way if you i'm sure you've got that background but um i i i would i'd like to see i guess a commitment to connecting to sewer by a certain point of number of students or something i'd like to see a plan for when that's going to happen that's what i guess i'm saying yeah i was thinking that same thing i was in the two to 250 range that they would commit to that i don't know if financially they could um commissioner wheeler um my question is if if you're laying for water would you also be laying for sewer at the same time in order to make it cheaper i mean i don't know i'm asking mary of the connection without three potential connection sites okay there's no we're going to connect here or there it's just giving them the approval to ultimately connect one of those three sites correct for sewer force okay okay well i just what i'm questioning is though and the water coming it and and the potable water if you're going to be doing this at the same time is it cheaper to do that or more practical than to try to come back later and then go under the road again you know at another time um it gets it just gets real easy to blow it off down the road even at 250 kids because of the cost and uh the inconvenience of having to do it that's why i just didn't know if we did it if you did it all at once would it be more practical if indeed we're going to ask them at 250 kids to come back to us um so brian we didn't let you finish your presentation um that's a no i mr chair thank you uh for that consideration um i i don't know that there's more information in my presentation than staff hasn't already provided and we've already discussed we're well into the conversation so so as i understand it then i'll open it back up the lights you came in because you wanted the portable water for the fire correct over the course of the talking to staff it's actually staff's recommendation that we also connect the sewer staff asked us to look into it um we actually tried to partner on funding uh the sewer uh there were no funds uh from the county uh to assist uh the applicant um we had discussions with our with the applicant about connecting the sewer they do see advantages to doing that but it's not in their budget it's not planned it's expensive um and so that's i mean i guess i hear you and i just feel like it's a private school they're gonna put their tuition commensurate of the cost of constructing their school they want a school in an area that doesn't have the utility services that are necessary to build that school they should be building that school in an area that either has those utility services or they need to budget those utility services if they want us to extend them to them like that's that's just that's my feeling right i mean it's that's part of the business model of building a private school is that you budgeted in all of the things and then put it into the tuition model and i am not trying i actually i love west side baptist church i love the work that they do in our community they've been an amazing partner offering space to the community for various things they do a lot of charity work in our community they're an amazing organization and i have nothing against them in particular this is really about the specificity of a large private school in a rural area that isn't meant to be typically served by these utilities and us really trying to find that common ground to like extend those utilities right and make it work for you and for us and to me that provision is that health and safety provision and the protection of our water resources but to do that means that connection to sewer is really critical and not just the connection okay um i don't see any more lights missy um mr chair missy daniels i'm gonna ask that you defer this item until possibly the next meeting so we can look at a few things that would also give them a chance to talk to their client about the sewer hookup but we'd like to look at a few other things and come back be able to answer your questions better yeah because if we deny it it's all at the table for six months right for traffic for sewer yeah so that is just a request all right so i either need a motion for staff's recommendation a motion to deny or a motion to defer move to defer until next meeting second and motion to defer with a second for mr wheeler brian certain you've heard a lot of discussions up here i have yep yeah we'll continue to work with staff thank you all thank you okay do we have a date certain that we want or no i don't think a date certain we'll let we'll leave that up to staff and the applicant madam manager you okay with that we're we're able to advertise rather quickly so okay all right we have a motion to defer any discussion on the floor back to the board all those in favor say aye aye any opposed that motion is unanimous great solution okay all right well we'll just keep working on it see if we can get to a solution yeah thank you ryan thank you okay now we've got leads us to the items pulled from consent um yes okay yep so let's do c which is i'm sorry the the one item is not on the published agenda because it was amended after five on friday we unfortunately didn't put the corrected ones in your boxes that's why you can still discuss it it just isn't a specific agenda item because it confuses the clerk when we give her an agenda item number that has a pulled from general discussion about the updated yeah i'll just i can just go over this quickly i think um we asked we spent a lot of time having conversations about engaging youth in government and about trying to create youth members on advisory councils and i think that um if we're serious about having youth members on our councils then i think we need to have more of an approach to how we're recruiting youth members on our councils because unlike regular residents you know adults who might want to serve because it fits their career goals or it's something that they're passionate about and they're adults and they've worked in the world and they understand that advisory committees exist and they've impacted they've seen the impacts of their results our youth haven't necessarily and so they don't even know that they exist and if they do um sometimes they don't know what it means or what it's like and so i think there needs to be a bit more of a concerted effort and i know that there has been some on this one but i just i wanted to bring that up and to say um since i found out that we needed um a youth member i've been reaching out to a number of different entities arts camps the unit uf um department of art and art history um and a couple others to try to spread the word that we need somebody and i've had a couple of um young people text me back and ask me what does that mean and how do i apply and um and so i think there is interest i i think it's just there's a much different approach you have to take to getting young people engaged and i think it's a good lesson for us and how do we engage young people in government generally speaking um but i didn't want to just change us back to not having a youth member just because we were having trouble recruiting one i'd rather us figure out how to do the recruitment effectively um and keep it there as long as that's not causing quorum issues absolutely you know but transportation is sometimes an issue and then scheduling you know around in the university folks kids from the high schools you know they're busy people and and actually getting them there um is so i'm i recruit as well but thank you for doing that i think that some of the responses that we got to these were uh past the age or you know somehow didn't follow through but i mean there were applications okay there were applications that came in okay well i would like to just keep giving it a chance if we're willing to hang on to the youth positions on our councils a bit longer and just give it a try absolutely if we can't come up with some new recruitment strategies is our age limit 21 or is it 24 24 okay are we are we asking out at santa fe it would be another space because they have a robust arts program out there i almost feel like there could be a actual partnership with santa fe and uf to like tell about what these councils are and make it almost like it's a club like there's we could list it on their club site on their volunteer opportunity sites which it's i don't think it is right now and that way more people would be exposed to it and we can we can take a look at those avenues those are all very good ideas and yeah that the one issue we run into now and that i'm not advocating changing it is we've just hit summer so a lot fewer to to reach out to but if we hold it open hopefully by fall we'll be able to because i think right now the number of students we can get to but it is up to 24 so the college students are well and that's why i mentioned santa fe because that tends to be a lot more local students that are already living here so i that that isn't as seasonal as uf but i think that's a good option okay so all right so we've had that discussion let's move on to item six the direction on that yeah all right yeah 6b this passing these to you this is uh so madam clerk human resources yep yeah 6b request for one additional lte executive manager already has it thank you so yeah mr chair i um before commissioner presley goes into talking about her thoughts and proposals um just to so the public and everybody understands what this position is um this was an identical position to your current staff assistant who is sitting um in commission services so that there would be two essentially of shannon bruden's position there would be two of them and then also latoya's position so there'd be a total of three but it is a duplicate of shannon broom's position that was that this is and i just wanted to make sure you guys were clear on what this position was before commissioner presley explained her thoughts okay commissioner presley thank you uh so i wanted to bring um this to your attention um you know i've brought up aids before and i'm bringing them up again i think that um we've all experienced over the past year a couple of or two years in particular but really across the board a number of situations where there's been a lot of constituent energy around an issue or something that's going on in our commission from the legacy project the west end part that you name it and it's a it's a really intensive process to spend time and work on these issues and we all do it um but i think that there could be a lot more um support for the commissioners in doing that constituent work as well as staying connected um to like legislative issues at the state and federal level that are interesting um to you and having meeting representation at other meetings around the county um and to support us in the office um doing the work that latoya and shannon um do and in this is a research of all the other counties in the state or a bunch of the other counties in the state and what i found when i did my homework was essentially that all the counties that are kind of our size and bigger almost all have it it's all the ones that are our size and a little or like close to us they're smaller don't and we're right in that so we're right in the middle we're right on the top and um you know but our peer county of leon that we always hold up as sort of our danderman county um have dedicated aids um pasco county st john's county palm beach county hillsborough st lucie is gambia um duval as well as others i didn't even list them all uh manatee orange brevard martin walton many many many many of our other counties have aids and i you know it's going to be a really tough act to ever fill with way of shoes but i think that we could come up with a process where we each have a dedicated aid and those aids also split the secretarial and administrative duties perhaps when they rotated you've rotated the chair your aid is responsible for the meeting agendas or your aid you know like i think there's i i wouldn't want to put forward a full like how that would work proposal because i would of course want michelle and and staff to think about how it makes sense coordinating with her um chief of staff and how that would all work but i do feel like we're at a point now in terms of our growth tpo happened you know getting bigger all the things that we're facing um that it is time for us to have dedicated support um for the commissioners so i want to put that forward rather than having just another third person hired in the office instead consider expanding the staff to five and splitting those duties amongst the individuals um in the office and have those aids dedicated to individual commissioners okay commissioner wheeler we can have a discussion anna in in your research did you find out from um these counties what the commissions are paid what are the commissioners paid you mean the the assistants no the commissioners the commissioners are all paid based on the state population population well that's what i'm what i'm trying to understand you know the amount of money going into each county that is going into the county commissioner's pocket um i i just i just am interested to know what these commissioners are paid uh the ones that are higher paid perhaps have bigger workloads who would require having that kind of i mean our pair counties i'm telling you it's counties that are our size like i have them yeah i i just i understand leon county for example but how it's budgeted you know how how they budget they for the for the personnel you know that is serving the county that's i would i would like to know that uh i believe their base salaries are between 45 and 65 thousand dollars a year commensurate with experience um again they all typically have you know benefits and all of that commissioners the commissioners no the the aids no well so the total program cost usually is somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 to 500 000 for that for five aids you know or you know it depends on how many commissioners they have but most have that many so it's it's a um i just i don't i just don't know the need i know that latoya worked herself uh she really did work and i know that this is something she was working on herself before she died she did and i had i had had conversations with her and she was yeah we're just beginning some of those conversations and you know i think it provides i mean really i think it provides enhanced constituent services i think it provides a greater commissioner effectiveness because we can focus more on the work that we need to do in the policy can help us answer those i mean the email stuff that we've been dealing with with animal resources and coming up with those communications and making sure they're getting responded to in a timely manner i think it provides better accountability so an aid would do that or i mean we would do that and the aid would do that the aid would be there as a dedicated point of contact for your office in addition to you okay well just based on the eight years that i've been here uh i'm not sure i i did have an aid that worked with me this too this last time one was hard to direct and to stay on top of well they were interns right well these are professionals i mean that's another argument for this program is that i really want dedicated staff professionals people who have experience in doing policy work constituent work management and administrative work not an not an undergraduate college student after eight years of doing the work and showing up and showing up it's been easier for me to do because i'm retired you know you all who have other jobs i can see where that might be an issue but i also see that it could be a conflict so you know i'm and i'm coming off the board well because you you're working two jobs and you have somebody who's trying to do this job for you too that's all for the amount of money we're paid at this place you know i just feel like we need to show up i'm here i know you all day every day not here but i know anna i know that but any we've got new people who people who are going to be coming and going through here you know a lot of the stuff we're doing is very sensitive work as well you know it's really hard to find good qualified people to do what it is that we do which is what we're going to be asking them to do our job with us our job with us right so let her speak and we'll do fisher alfred no i i just you know i just you know i i'm coming off this board you all will be the ones carrying this forward right so i feel like i have to you know i'm not going to have a vote in that at all but i do have an opinion and um i just i just feel like that this is our job this is our first job the other jobs are the jobs that you go back to once you come off of this 100 you know i just i don't feel uh like that i would have the confidence i mean you know the person that directed all of us all five of us was brilliant she was great at what she did and it's going to be hard to find somebody who can do that even for each individual of us i think you know so i'm i i would say not give it that much time if we can get one other person in there to divide it up um so be it okay commissioner alfred and then commissioner jessa i have to say when i um talk to my colleagues in other counties and i i get the newsletters that they send out and um i see the preparation that they come to fact with with stuff that their staff puts together for them and things like that i'm jealous because i don't have time to do that anybody's looked at my desk knows that i could use a little help with the organizing side of things but i um this is something i've been wanting from the time that i got here because it's um you know i've had interns and interns are great but i can't trust an intern to answer my emails when i was just out for a week and a half for surgery and i'm a week and a half behind on emails right so things like that it makes it it makes a real difference to to have somebody that you can trust to do those things and i think it's um yeah i i believe that we are on that cusp of you know gainesville and alachua county both we're on that cusp of and and the growing pains of growing from you know a small county into a bigger county and this is part of that growing pains is that change that change in how we do things i see it both ways to be honest with you um the uh the current way we have it now uh is pretty much how the city of gainesville does it in essence and uh but as being a legislator i saw the difference because i had uh a person that was with me in tallahassee all day and then i had a person back home in gainesville all day and we had a secretary also with that person that person did the stuff of constituent services back home where the secretary did all the letters and all of that kind of stuff and um and i think the only thing i didn't like about the legislature as a going from a city commissioner to a state legislator was i lost contact with the community because tallahassee says to your aides and everybody you do everything yeah you don't do anything you and i wasn't used to that so so it became very difficult for me uh but i understood because we had a newsletter after every session to get out i had to approve it i had you know i had to read it make sure it was correct and all of that stuff so so so i get i get what you're saying and um do i need that yeah i'm not gonna lie and say no i don't because sometimes i get behind you know it's just it's just hard trying to keep especially with the emails and trying to read all the emails at that if i can't respond to them at least i'm reading them that's the most important part to me is that i got a gist of what's coming and what's folks are upset about uh but to to me uh it would help me i'll just be honest with you i'm not going to sit here and play games it would help me and it would probably make me better in terms of responding and responding to constituents better yeah i think that that's the key uh but uh but the other thing you know i'm the budget guy i kind of want to know what is that going to cost is it affordable can we afford it that's where i come so those are the issues to me so but anyway i i get it uh because i work i'll just say to you i work real well with the legislature because i had the staff as a commissioner i don't have that staff so i can't do that kind of stuff what i used to do or sending out a monthly report of what we just got through approving or something like that to folks to know what has been going on in county government so but i get it but i'm just not going to argue over it but i just think that you know we see if we can afford it or if we can't afford it how do we get there and how do we plan for something like that yeah so thank you yeah so i'll give you my thoughts and we'll do another round here if we need to um you know i'm in my 12th year and i've just never had that so i'm having to kind of rethink what you're proposing but i also will tell you that like mary at every fact meeting every person at a similar size county and up has has their person right that supports them um i'm having a hard time kind of thinking through it right now because i know yeah right um and i had that one and i also think though that um you know the folks that we currently have are all stepping up and i have enjoyed getting to know both shannon's and becky me too yeah right yeah and adding you know two more people which is really what we're doing uh replacing the toya plus this consent item gives us essentially not our own dedicated person but it gives us more resources and like chuck this budget cycle i'm really focused in on what is tallahassee going to do um with regard to avalora and so uh for me i'm having difficulty with the proposal um for those two reasons trying to figure out my life without la toya um and i'm and i'm i'm really happy with what the manager has put in place where you know becky is supporting me and um i think shannon's supporting yeah she's been great yep and i i i think what you're really talking about is taking each of our positions and then this commission to the next level which i am very much in favor of um i just don't know if i'm in favor of that i'm having a hard time doing that like right this and i don't want to do it right this second i i want to be clear i pulled this because i didn't want us to approve a position and then have to change the position description or change the position type if there's interest from this board in considering this proposal during budget season i don't think we should be doing this right now i think we need staff to bring it back as part of our budget overall budget proposals and think about what it means from a budget perspective once we know what's happening with our taxes and like think about also the implications you know and have some sort of like better understanding of like looking at leon county's actual structure how does it work bringing some of those ideas back and having more of a discussion i did not anticipate that this would be the discussion where we like we're doing this but i just wanted to put it out there and refer it to come back for a you know a more in-depth discussion with you know where we could actually look at this is how it works in other counties this is what the cost would be to us and this is something i would support that direction today of referring it to staff this would give me time i mean i know all the not all i know a lot of the commissioners at each of these counties um that i would like to call and speak to really just in talking to them so that i could consider how my job mentally would change from what i've done for 12 weeks and so um one thing so anyways that's where i am i'm okay with not approving the consent position um if we're going to look at potentially going in this direction but i'm also not opposed to the direction the manager has proposed to us which is essentially we would have um in commission services three three people um and we're currently use utilizing two to three people over the manager's office right now that's you know yeah that that's kind of i need her to kind of think about all that too you know one thing that's really powerful from my perspective is you know under this management form of government latoya is connected to all of our staff or or the current arrangement is all of our staff so i get to interact with all the directors you know mark i don't have to do my own newsletter because andrew and mark do a newsletter after every meeting i i there are things that are really efficient productive because we we speak with one voice when we speak and i i have a concern i need to think it through that if we had each of our own that our our voice gets diluted somehow because this is my person doing my work and we're not single member districts like if we were single member districts i would probably feel a lot more like what you're talking about because in leon county one of my buddies you know he has a lot of district constituent service and his assistant really handles a lot of that district we are at large and we rely heavily on our staff to handle a lot of the constituent services you know i get the thing from roads and ramones response you know and i like that and i and so i deal with county-wide policy as opposed to um district specific district now what you said and what mary said is for those two years it forced us all to really think about our districts and i think a lot more now about the district i live in as far as their needs and and there's a lot of projects going on in that district but i still you know i was at newberry today you know we were celebrating you know harvest singular together as as commissioners because that's really important to the whole county so um i'm not a no but i'm not a yes that's where i am and i and i appreciate the time you put into it because i'm going to now really think about that during this budget process and i would support uh you know kind of referring it to staff and having them give us uh kind of their thoughts and recommendations as we are waiting on what tell us he's playing okay you got lights on commissioner albert or did that just pop up no i just this has been fixed mark i think the lighting thing is working i think it's working yeah it's working yes mr albert and then commissioner president i think um you know i i i get your point about speaking with one voice but i'm not sure our constituents still see it that way right you know when i talk to the folks in archer they don't want to read through a whole county's worth of stuff they want to read about what's happening in their community and and i think that is the part that even though we are at large and we do speak as one voice i think that it's overwhelming for most citizens to read about you know the roads that are under it not only is it hard for them but i think it's sometimes irritating for them to read about the roads being prepared in waldo when theirs aren't being prepared repaired or whatever so would you view the assistant as really focused on that district i would yeah i i that that is that is something i think that um it would happen because that that's how my constituents approach me even though we are all at large they still think of them think of me as their commissioner so and and it is that's why we still have districts it's hard to move forward yeah okay commissioner yeah and i guess i guess i would say i think that i don't i don't see i hear what you're saying sort of but i actually don't see having dedicated staff supporting our work as diluting the voice of the county i see it as enhancing the voice of the county because it gives us the chance through each of our own connections our own relationships like you have a whole relationship with like the development world and the real estate world that i don't have i have a whole relationship with like the social services and social justice network that you don't necessarily you know what i mean like we each have our connections to different art world you know to like permitting and engineering world like we each have these connections to different parts of our communities that have very specific ideas and then they hear the voice of this commission in ways that we can't always be and i mean to me in a way that at large is actually makes more of a case because like you know harvest singularity was today if the cotton clubs event had been been a vote and i wouldn't have been able to be a vote but i could have sent my representative to be there on my behalf and to talk to everyone and to listen to everyone and to see what happened and to bring back information to me about the specifics of what happened on that day and to me it's it's being able to sort of again sort of be in more places at once right in a way to bring back relevant information from my constituents to my office for policy development which is an individual thing and and but doing that in a more robust way without having it just be like you know i spent some time on a computer and like spent a couple hours trying to pull this together you know had i had an aid this probably would have been a much more robust proposal with more information and how this is being actually done and all that stuff but that's not something i have the capacity to do right now so i i hear your concerns and i appreciate them i do and i hope that maybe um i guess i'll just i'll make the motion that we refer the idea of um constituent aids for the commissioner dedicated to the commissioners to staff for our budget considerations for the 26-27 fiscal year and what about the consent item and that we defer the consent item until we've had that conversation is that fair to staff though i mean they need to they they need help right now they're all kind of struggling because the folks in michelle's office are doing their job i don't know let's ask michelle i just we need to hire somebody and get somebody in here you guys can talk about well we haven't even posted the other position that exists that already exists we're creating another one this this isn't latoya's position we're currently still trying to fill the position so mr chair i think the concern about posting latoya's position before we settle on this is knowing what the structure is because that's going to directly determine the number of people that that position will supervise for one so we would hold off on posting that position as well until we settle on what that structure looks like um i mean from a capacity standpoint i mean clearly the way we're doing it now is not sustainable for the long term if we can um so overall i guess the the concern would be if this is the direction that the board wants to move in when we bring it back um waiting till october 1st may not be you know the best option but we if this is something the board wants us to look at we will bring that back with with that in mind as well as what an october 1st start date would look like but from a capacity standpoint i mean it it is not sustainable to stay the way we are um and certainly we would i mean we'll look at whether posting you know given that i will talk to staff about whether posting latoya's position um would make sense without knowing that that information because if we can we will but you know if it's important to know that information we may have to do okay i did not hear a second to i'll second it okay so we have a second um to refer this idea and i don't have it in front of me um the date we can bring it back for the date um when we do commission administrative services um so that should be in june we have several budget dates coming up so i'm assuming it's one of the june dates it's gonna be in the next month yeah yeah if it's in the next month i'm okay with that we um so i just want to be clear what what you want staff to bring back is a consideration that would give each commissioner a dedicated individual just so i know what we're that's the motion yeah yeah yeah and i would like to know what a proposed uh job description would look like for that as well and i guess what i would like to know um in that discussion is how that would change our current structure to you know how would how would staff view our current structure and modify it if we each had our own dedicated staff and what administrative duties would i mean because i anticipate that these people would also do the admin stuff like it wouldn't be like we'd have to have the whole right two i mean you still need somebody at the front desk one like they could rotate right and you still need somebody who is in a higher position to supervise all of that the structure and the office and the individuals right and you know that person we'll take a look at what other you know counties are doing that have a similar structure um to see what those duties are of that individual yeah that that's really what i'm looking for is you having some conversations with some of these accounting managers and see how that affects staff's existing structure by by adding a commissioner support structure all right so we have a motion a second any other discussion i just want to say i think one of the anxieties that i have about um who's in charge is because we have that conference coming up we have naco coming up we have end of the year financial reports due we have um the you know the tests we have to take on what is it what is it we have to do ethics thing you know i mean all of that happens right here and we had one person who coordinated that for us to make sure that we were on point that we met all our deadlines and that everything was taken care of and i i think when we go to back i've always had what i needed because latoya had it ready for us but are you sitting on three committees she's no but see that that may be why you need yeah an intern or an aide but for those of us who are more focused on what's happening in the county you know you you guys are out there and that's wonderful you represent us you probably may need somebody like that but you know generally speaking you know you and ken are the ones who are out there in the bigger scene you know would probably need somebody i wouldn't be there if i had support support from us no if i had an aide i would serve on committees at fact and at naco i see i would absolutely do that work so that our county is better represented in the national voice but i don't have the capacity without support like i there is like there's a limit to how many things you can take on as an individual and i understand that i do have a very very part-time job but it's like it's very small and the university has given me a lot of leeway to be able to do this job full-time um recognizing that this is a priority for me um and this service is my priority because that's what i committed to the constituents and i 100 percent agree with that priority to us because we're elected by the people of alaska county those other things are great too but our responsibilities are home right well and those serve our home and they don't always want to see a representative of us they want to see us it's not that big a county you know it's not that big a population that we serve so they want to see us they don't want to see an affiliate you know okay okay all right so we've got a motion to um defer the consent item and have this discussion in june uh all those any public discussion back to the board all those in favor say aye aye aye any opposed okay the motion is unanimous okay thank you for bringing that up let's move now to the next item which is closing comments um second opportunity for public comment uh miss lee just stepped out i don't know if she was leaving or just going to the restroom but she's been waiting very patiently so i hate yeah let's hold see mark maybe we could do ours first and then come back county attorney comments so mr chair i wanted to announce i know you all know that we have been requested that the freedman friedel whistleblower matter be extended the investigation be extended by 30 days um upon discussion with the chair that it was decided that um would be extended for an extra um 30 days that takes us into early july up to 30 days that's right could be sooner do you need a motion for that no uh under the code it is the chair's decision the chair made that decision in consultation with me and upon my recommendation okay great thank you thanks for doing that yep shows under the advice of the attorney um all right public comment open and close miss lee does not want to speak okay good um county manager comment none okay all right commission comment we'll start with commissioner i just was wondering if there was any movement on our 15 street property over there have we got any any coming back to us in june in june okay i'll wait all right the only thing i wanted to say is i i have to commend our community support services um and our veterans uh elijah county veteran services elijah white and specialist christopher casillas really did an amazing job yesterday the coordination between the city and the county for the memorial day celebration was as good as i've seen i haven't been to all of these you know but as a chair i have been and it was really really well done um the city staff was really really great uh i told the mayor that um commissioner wheeler thank you for being there mr book was there i know you guys had other stuff i just wanted to say out loud because i had five people contact me afterwards um and a handful of them said director white was an amazing hire is an amazing public servant and man are we lucky to have him i told him that yesterday uh he's probably not watching right now because he's probably talking to some veterans and and helping them but he's a he's an amazing um person and i just wanted to tell him that and i wanted you all to hear that thank you yeah it was great um what else did i have i um form sixes guys are due at the end of june y'all know that that was the thing that latoya always reminds me of yeah right she holds my hand every year facts coming up naco's coming up double check your you know your plan and all that if if you're going to those make sure that you uh make sure that becky or shannon one of the shannons have gotten you registered you're all your stuff taken care of and all that yeah let's just keep um giving everybody grace and working with our amazing staff that's helping us and um yes i think that's it that's it if i have something else i forgot and we'll deal with it next week so thank you all we are adjourned online