Regular Meeting @ 11:30 a.m. - Sep 09, 2025

I'd like to call to order the Alachua County Board of County Commissioners. I'd like to call the Alachua County Board of County Commissioners for September the 9th, 2025 at 11.32 a.m. Mr. Chair, the first item of business is the invocation. We have Debra Newell here to provide the invocation. Is Debra Newell here? I guess I'll fill in if that's smart. Yeah, we'd get smart. Would you like to give the invocation? You've been volunteering. You're going to get to do that part. Yes, but you have a direct line. Thank you, Mr. Chair. May we bow and may we pray. Almighty, everlasting God, we bless and we thank you, O God, for this another day your hands have made. We thank you for this opportunity to assemble here as the Board of County Commissioners, O God. We thank you for these commissioners who give of themselves, who give of their families, to be about the work of this county, O God. And we thank you for the staff and we thank you for citizens, O God, who think it's not robbery to come out and participate in this process. Now, O God, we ask that you bless this agenda, each and every item on this agenda. May you share with our commissioners your wisdom, the strength, the courage to do that which needs to be done. And we'll be so careful just to give you the glory, the honor, and the praise. In the mighty name of the universal creator of this world. Amen. Amen. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Mr. Chair, that takes us to approval of the agenda. And I'm not sure if there are any amendments to the agenda to announce. Mr. Chair, I have two requests for the agenda. My request is to defer item 3A, which is the advisory board new rules. I just would like a little bit more time to review that, and I've had several citizens call me about it and haven't had a chance to get back with them to hear their input. So asking to defer that one to our next agenda and then to pull consent item 7O for discussion, which is the zero waste grant applications. Second. Jay, zero waste or circular waste? Circular economy, but it says zero waste in the... Second. Yeah. Okay. Got a motion and a second. Are there any free discussion to the motion? Are there any citizen comments to the motion? There are. Thank you, Mr. Chair, commissioners, staff. My name is Tamara Robbins. Item 5 on the consent agenda. It's under fire rescue. It's the Alachua County Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan. I would like to see that pulled off for discussion. I think emergency information is always valuable to the public, and putting it on the consent agenda is essentially a plan on the consent agenda where the public should have as much opportunity to know what's in that plan in order to be prepared. I also have some questions about it. It's a very detailed report. I like that it's better than the last one that was done 10 years ago, but my biggest question is execution of it. As I always say, like ink on paper is a lot of thoughts that are put down, but actually executing that plan in the event of a true emergency from bus routes to bus drivers to school workers to the facilities to the food that they're supposed to be served at these facilities, that is a big execution in my mind in the event of an emergency. I would like to know more about it, and I'd like you to think it through a little more. Like if there was an emergency in two weeks, could you execute this plan? And I think the public needs to know more about it, and we need to take it very seriously. Thank you. Before we come back to the board, there's a citizen who would like to speak in reference to the poet laureate position, and I think now is the time for her since we're doing the approval of the agenda so that we don't keep her here. She has another appointment to make. She couldn't wait for that. Thank you very much for generously letting me say this. I just want to give you a fast list of some things that weren't necessarily in my application that occurred to me later because when I filled it out, Trump hadn't been president very long. Take your name for us, please. I'm so sorry. Lola Haskins. Okay. Sorry. That's all right. Okay, so first of all, I think there should be an annual reading of happy poetry, and you don't have to have written it. You bring something that you like. If you wrote it, you can read it. That's fine. Secondly, I think during National Poetry Month, there should be a reading of the public coming in and sharing their favorite poems because I think this whole thing belongs to the public, and I feel so strongly I just want to be useful. Okay, then, yes, I have on my application a lot of stuff about getting people into the woods. I think it's critical. No phones, silence, and a little writing after. I didn't have in my application that I think I would like to use this workshop I've done a lot called Plein Air Poetry. Nobody else does this, but I've done it all over the country, and it's really, really great because it's for, well, I won't explain it, but I want to work with ACT on that, and I'm pretty sure they'll let me do that. Let's see. I think there was one more thing. One, two, three, four. Oh, yes, right. Okay, so as long as there was writers in the schools, I did it, and I asked to be taken to classes that don't get attention. I didn't want any gifted classes, and there were so many fabulous writers in those classes that had no idea they could do that because you just have to show them they can. Some of those kids changed their lives. Now, I know that it's probably the county's never going to come off of the money to do that again, probably, so what I want to do is I want to spend a day with teachers. I've done this up in the panhandle, and I did it down in South Florida. I want to spend a day with teachers showing them the kinds of exercises that really are really, really fun, and they'll like them as much as the kids, and then they'll go teach them to the kids, and the kids will have a good time and realize that there aren't any rights and wrongs in this. Thank you. Thank you. Any other citizens' comments to the motion that's on the floor? The motion that's on the floor, which is approval of the agenda. Mr. Chair, Jim Connish, on my tax bill, it said there will be a hearing today after 5.30 on the non-ed valorem assessments for stormwater, garbage, and fire. Is that on this agenda, or am I missing something? My knowledge is no item after 5.01. It's Thursday? Thursday. Thursday. I'm sorry. Thursday night after 5 o'clock. I'm sorry. School board tonight, probably. Right. Okay, back to the board. Those in favor of the motion, vote by the side of the aisle. Unless you have comments. Okay. Yes. Commissioner Wheeler, and then Commissioner Alfred. Oh, okay. Yes, I would like, I think Ms. Robbins has made an important point about emergency management plan being something that we could have expressed to the community or discussed, you know, so I don't know if we need to move this now or put this on another agenda for another day where we can actually have a discussion, because I do think it's important that we understand the emergency management plan for this county. Can I respond to that before you go? Well, I was going to talk about the same thing. Okay, great. You talk about it. I actually agree. I believe that while, you know, our entire emergency management plan might not have items that are appropriate for the entire county to hear, there is a lot on there that I think the county should be aware of. I'm in favor of passing the motion today, but scheduling a future meeting where we do get a public presentation on the emergency management plan. I think that that is timely right now and appropriate, and I, quite frankly, would like some public input on certain items on the emergency management plan, because we do have a lot of industry and other things in the county that we may need to coordinate with, and I think letting the public know about that is a good thing. Okay. I can add that to my motion for the agenda approval that we have, we ask staff to prepare an emergency management plan presentation for an upcoming agenda. I agree. I think, I guess I was going to say, could we pass it today and then have a presentation? I do think that, and maybe we ask that every year, the beginning of hurricane season, we just have a quick emergency management presentation. It helps the community know all the resources we have that are available to them, what our plans are, and any updates that we're making to the plan in order to be sure, especially as things are changing with FEMA, things are changing with our debris management contracts, like being able to stay abreast of those things, I think, is critical also. And there are many other emergencies addressed in there besides hurricanes, and I think the public should be aware of that as well, that we're not just prepared for one kind of emergency, but we consider and think about all the different kinds of ways an emergency could affect a community. So, yeah. Yeah. I'm okay with that. Okay. I'm passing it, but I ask staff to bring a presentation back. All right. Those in favor of the agenda motion, please vote by the sign of aye. Aye. Those opposed, same sign. Motion carries. Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair. Yes. Where would you like to, when would you like to take up 7-0? 7-0 time. We usually have a lot for items removed from. After all the hearings and everything? Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Under M. Okay. Mr. Chair, that takes us to the announcements and Communications Director Mark Sexton's here to present those. Thank you, Steve. Good morning, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, my staff has been very busy the last couple of weeks because the county has been very busy with some incredible new programs. So, we want to show you a couple of videos. It'll be about eight minutes. And we're going to start with the Diesel Mechanic Training Program Ribbon Cutting Ceremony. To be able to launch a program that has a need of 25,000 new jobs projected for the state of Florida, that has a salary entry level of $60,000 a year, to be able to launch a program that has that type of economic impact and that type of need, we're going to recruit hard for this program because the opportunities are great. The opportunities are great. And that new program, Santa Fe College, in partnership with Alachua County and CareerSource North Central Florida, is launching a new Heavy Diesel Mechanic Training and Certification Program that will provide a pathway to high-paying, high-demand jobs for county residents. This initiative is a powerful symbol of our commitment to strategic growth and our belief that when we collaborate, we can build a stronger and more prosperous Alachua County, Florida. Alachua County is very proud to be part of this partnership with Santa Fe College and CareerSource North Central Florida, and it comes from that initial investment that the United States Army Reserve made in the former Fairgrounds location. So this is a synergy and building upon itself for our community. It's an opportunity to really start training a highly needed workforce where we have big gaps, and it's an opportunity to create sustainable, well-paid careers for folks in our community. Being able to provide that opportunity to our community is a huge benefit all the way around for a lot of different, for both public and private entities in the community. Previously, students had to go, who were interested, had to go outside the county for that education. I've been working at a shop and interested in getting my ASEs. Originally, my original choice of career path was going to be going through Santa Fe, through the automotive program, and then going back to school to get diesel certified, and whenever I called, they told me that they had an open diesel spot. There is an alarming rate going on for the shortage of mechanics right now, and, you know, I've always had a passion for cars and just kind of always wanted to succeed after it, you know. A ribbon-cutting and ceremonial signing recently kicked off the inaugural class. This new program will teach students the skills needed for careers in diesel engine repair, agricultural equipment maintenance, mobile heavy machinery service, and related high-demand fields. Today's, it's not just about the new facility. It's the opportunity, the opportunity for local talent and the Army Reserve and for our nation. The Alachua County support combined with Santa Fe College new heavy diesel mechanic program shows a powerful commitment to both military readiness and workforce development. This program is aligned with the Army Reserve's training, will produce skilled technicians ready to serve and succeed. So, let me talk just briefly about how this dream kind of became a reality. So, the first thing, heard from the Army Reserve, we need a program. Heard from Ramon and his predecessors, we need a program. Florida State College of Jacksonville shut down their program. They said, we've got all this equipment, and we said, yes, we want it. We have a classroom facility that the county has freed up for our use. It has been amazing, the investment that the county public works department has made, and we're so grateful for it. I am absolutely stunned at the level of equipment that we will be sharing with our students, and also the level of instruction. We're more than just a host. We're actually part of the foundation of this program today. This is a hands-on training program for all mechanics students. The chair actually said that they're going to be working side-by-side with Polyworks, and maybe eventually, maybe having some of our students also working for the county. And, Mr. Chair, quick apology. We've already fixed it online. We mixed up Dr. Brody and Mr. Sutherland. So, next, we recently held the Agri-Tourism Conference down at Cuscoilla, and we have a feature to show you on that. Blattro County recently conducted an agri-tourism workshop at Cuscoilla Nature and Retreat Center. Today we're talking about agri-tourism because I think it's a really unique way that farms can be at that intersection between agriculture and people and really helping people not just have fun and enjoy themselves and for the farmers to make money, but really help people begin to understand agriculture in a new way. Agri-tourism is basically explained as the marriage of agriculture and tourism, top industries in the state of Florida. Agri-tourism is the ability for a farming operation, a bona fide farming operation, to be able to use its land to encourage visitation. Whether that's you pick experiences, farm-to-table dinners, wedding venues, harvest festivals, just getting people out on the farm and blending those two industries. The event was attended by nearly 50 farmers, ranchers, landowners, entrepreneurs, and others seeking to explore or expand agri-tourism opportunities on their farms and properties. It's a way for agricultural operators to diversify their revenue stream. So when you're growing strawberries, being able to invite people onto your property for a strawberry you pick provides you more outlets to generate income from your land. They may want to just make extra income without having to sell their land, keep their land in their family. So they start to explore agri-tourism as a way to do that. I think the interest in agri-tourism has increased. We have a lot of questions, though, about what qualifies and what does not qualify. And so I think this conference gives people a good understanding of, number one, the rules and regulations of agri-tourism and gives them opportunity also to mingle with other people that have the same ideas. The workshop provided guidance on zoning issues permitting fire safety, marketing, and collaborative agri-tourism promotion. Sessions were conducted by Alaska County Growth Management, Fire Rescue, and Tourism and Economic Development. We want to share your events. We want to share your business listings and everything that we can so that we can, you can take advantage of that and we can amplify your efforts and support your business. What growth management staff is here to do is just to give people an idea of what the county's interpretation is, of how the state rules apply to any particular farm property that's interested in starting an agri-tourism business. So we want to support and promote agri-tourism, but we also want to make sure people are good neighbors and that they don't cause unnecessary negative impacts to their neighbors and people around them. We help guide people through the confusion that agri-tourism sometimes gets to be in regards to regulations, permitting, and the rest of the fire safety requirements. Attendees also heard directly from local agricultural operators during a panel discussion, highlighting real-world experiences, lessons learned, and strategies for launching or sustaining agri-tourism ventures. We were losing a lot of money on cows. We were losing money on everything we did, trying to maintain it, and I thought, oh my goodness, what have I got myself into here? We transitioned into the, at that time, and I was so surprised. It just took off, and at that time, there weren't hardly any wedding march around. We used to get people coming from Orlando and everywhere around. It's a no-brainer for us to be focusing in this area, and agri-tourism is just one more way that we can make sure that our farms can remain viable, and that we can begin to educate the community about what it really means to grow our food. This just gives those landowners another opportunity for that economic stability. If it's an agri-tourism operation, I think we can make it happen here in Alachua County. Good job. Alan and Josh on my staff are great storytellers, and the staff that put these programs together were just amazing. And, Mr. Chair, those are the announcements. Thank you. Mr. Clare? Mr. Chair, that takes us to the approval of the proclamations. If we can have a motion. Move the approval of language for the proclamations. Any further discussion? The motion is on the floor. Those in favor of the motion will abide a sign of aye. Aye. Those opposed, same sign. Motion carries. Mr. Chair, the proclamation for today is the presentation of a proclamation recognizing September as Suicide Prevention Month in Alachua County, Florida. Okay. Sorry. Hi. What are you today? Hi. Are you here? Today, we have a proclamation declaring September as Suicide Prevention Month in Alachua County, Florida, whereas suicide is a significant public mental health issue, and we can all work together to support and protect our community. And whereas according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were 49,316 deaths by suicide during 2023, and whereas in our country, suicide is the second leading cause of death for those aged 10 to 44, and the 11th leading cause of death for people of all ages. And whereas 3,620 people in Florida died by suicide in 2023, it is the eighth leading cause of death in our state. And whereas each death by suicide directly impacts numerous family members, friends, loved ones, and by extension, the entire community, and whereas culturally specific and responsible mental health services are a critical component of supporting communities, and whereas 988 Lifeline provides 24-7 free and confidential support for people in distress, and whereas the Alachua County crisis center offers 24-hour crisis intervention support through phone, face-to-face, mobile, and telehealth options, and whereas all individuals should be aware of the warning signs and feel empowered to seek help for themselves, for loved ones, for co-workers, for friends, and whereas we must reduce the stigma surrounding suicide, encourage the pursuit of mental health resources, and truly listen to those affected by suicide, and whereas no single suicide prevention effort would be sufficient, everyone is asked to join and take a stand to prevent suicide. Now, therefore, through the authority invested in me by the county commissioners of Alachua County, Florida, I do hereby proclaim September 2025 as suicide prevention month in Alachua County, Florida, Duly proclaimed this 9th day of September, AD 2025, and signed by our chair, Commissioner Chuck Chestnut, and attested to by Chester, thank you, and I just have to say just briefly, I'm so proud of the work our county has done in suicide prevention and mental health, and I hope you're going to have a few words to say about that. Thank you so much. Welcome. I want to begin by thanking you, Mr. Chair, and the entire commission, thank you. I'm Dr. Amanda DeLorenzo-Garcia. I'm the clinical supervisor with the Alachua County Crisis Center. I want to start with an immense thank you for your continued support of the work we do and this proclamation of Suicide Prevention Month. This is the work we do day in and day out. Every month at the crisis center is Suicide Prevention Month. We have a staff of nine clinical folks, one peer, and 14 folks that are committed to our 988 in Crisis Line. In that work, in the quarter that just passed, between April and June of 2025, we received over 6,000 calls on the 988 in Crisis Line. More than that, we provided face-to-face services for over 752 people in our county. The work we do is immensely important. We are honored and humbled and also proud to do it. It's the most meaningful work to be there with someone in their times of loneliness, heartbreak, distress, and suicide ideation. We're empowered to do this work because we see the difference in people's lives from the time and points of crisis when we meet them in the community, at a school, at Publix, at their home, wherever they may be in that time of crisis. Through some of our ongoing services, such as free counseling that the crisis center provides to places that are healthy for them. That is the most rewarding work that we could possibly do, and we are just so thankful that in this county, we're able to provide those services to our citizens. Thank you again for having us for supporting Suicide Prevention Month. And on that note, we do a lot of outreach to this community as well and to the state. We like to represent Alachua County very well, and we have a free mental health symposium next week, September 15th through 17th, in the evenings via Zoom, that anyone in the county, anyone in the public can sign up for. We have just under 40 presentations being offered next week, which is incredible. And they're being offered from people around the country, counselor educators, local services in our county are coming and presenting on what those services are. Our theme is Crisis to Connection, and so we'll be focusing on Alachua County and on greater mental health issues, as well as self-care practices for folks to better take care of themselves. We believe suicide prevention starts with access, and that's something, again, that we are proud to be able to do in our county and want to provide access to the educational elements of mental health to those around the state and nationally as well. And so, again, I am so appreciative on behalf of our staff at the crisis center. We just couldn't be more grateful for this acknowledgment of Suicide Prevention Month and for the ongoing support of the work that we're able to do in this county. Thank you. Mr. Chair, we'd like to go to public comment now, as it's pretty much noon on the computer, I think. We offer three minutes for anybody who wishes to speak for an item on the agenda and three minutes for any item not on the agenda. Mr. Chair, good morning. Jim Connish. I'd like to overhead, please. I'm really reluctant to do this, but there was a post in the Lactual Chronicle by Jennifer Caprera and her husband that is, I don't think it's accurate, first of all. I don't think all Democrats use intimidation. But there is a core group of Democrats that do, sir. And since I first came to this podium in 1996 because of an RV park proposed by Bobby Summer in Poe Springs next door to me, and I woke up, I have been accused of County Commissioner Dave Newport of felony assault. Rod Smith laughed a lot of his office. I have been picketed for years by a man at my house, a man suggesting I'm a liar and a thief. I have been slimed by a former mayor in a conversation that took place in public, and I'd like to read you a letter from my deceased former wife about this. Dear Ms. Hanahan, first and foremost, I would like to correct you for the false statement you made to people you were with the day you were audio taped. You were told by someone that Jim Connish physically abused his first wife. Let me correct you by saying that Jim Connish has had two wives. I was his second wife. Jim Connish did not physically abuse me. We have our differences that will remain private. I have been divorced from Jim for over 10 years, and we have a wonderful son together. You would have to check with Jim's first wife to see what she says about the statement you made. I live a quiet and private life in Gainesville. I am respectful to the people who are in my life. Ms. Hanahan, you have chosen to be a public figure. I hope in the future you will be more careful about what you say in a public venue. We are both mothers who want our children to enjoy the wonderful community we live in without having to endure negative statements. After building an innovative, fully off-grid agricultural building, I was trespassed and assaulted by county staff who do not understand the right to farm law. And then when I work with the wonderful supervisors that you hire, out comes this farm, which insulates 10 farms from any county regulation whatsoever, which makes a mockery of your attempt to regulate certain agritourism activities. For the first time ever, you were slamming your hand on the table, telling me not to speak in a workshop about affordable housing. Well, I've come up with something innovative. I've never seen that from you, sir, or your mother or your father. We have to do better. We have to do better on an interpersonal level with people who do not share our party affiliation. Thank you so much. Well, first of all, I want to say we gave you three extra minutes, so we gave you a total of six minutes, and you still abused those six minutes. And that's why I slammed my hand on the desk, because I did not have a gavel to gavel you out. In a workshop? That's not fair. Yes, sir, because there are other citizens who wanted to make comments, too. There was one. There was one. It was two more after you, sir. Thank you for the opportunity to speak here today. My big concern is the city's management of historic buildings, their management of buildings in general, and I'm here at the county hoping that you all can help figure out some way to help on this process. So my basically concern is that we have demolition by bureaucracy. You all might have seen my recent letter that the Lattro Chronicle published. If you or I as a homeowner discovered we're out of town, we came back, and there's a roof leak, we would call a roofing contractor and maybe get bids to repair or replace the roof. Instead, the city hires out-of-town very expensive consultants and spends hundreds of thousands of dollars figuring out ways to possibly demolish parts of the building and make it into some other different building that has different architecture while not even covering the roof for several years. And it's kind of a pattern that we're seeing, and that's what's kind of led them to want to demolish the Thelma Bolton Center. Even still to this day, there's not that much wrong with it. They've discovered some, thanks to their roof leak, some two trusses rotted. There's some slight movement of the walls. When you walk around the outside of the building, you can't even really see it. And we've had contractors, people in the industry, who tell us that's not that hard to fix, even now. And instead, they keep coming off these bids for millions of dollars. They have, right now, they're talking about spending $450,000 to $600,000 to demolish the building. Now, keep in mind, the building's 8,000 square feet. It's about three to four times the size of a typical house. I mean, you could build a house for that price. So what I'm hoping is that, for whatever reason, they just have endless architectural consultants, engineering consultants, construction management consultants, who then hire the contractors and then hire somebody else who actually does the work. And so we have all these layers of overhead that makes their projects horrendously expensive. And I think the solution for our historic buildings is to try to, perhaps, is to have independent nonprofits owning the buildings. And perhaps our local governments, instead of owning the buildings, could, for public access, could have some type of lease or something where they would provide the funding for the nonprofit to maintain it. And hopefully they can hire directly the contractors, like a homeowner would, to, when they need a new roof, to get a new roof and not go through these hundreds of thousands of dollars of design consultants from out of town. So what I'm suggesting is I'm going to ask that this, since it's a city building, I understand it's not a county, but I'm going to ask you all to please send a letter to the city asking them if they can give more time to find some type of independent nonprofit. Some people have wondered and have been hoping that you all might be interested in actually taking the building for temporarily, just temporarily, and they'll find a nonprofit. But again, I understand if you all aren't willing to do that, but if you could at least just ask the city. The city basically gave the public two days' notice that they were going to change their mind. We got an email from the city's Wild Spaces Public Places Department about that they have these options and they're recommending demolition of the building. And the second thing is you all allocated $1.5 million of county Wild Spaces Public Places money to the city to renovate, and if they're not renovating, they shouldn't get that. So thank you. Mr. Chair, Commissioners, Carl Smart, the Executive Liaison for Public Safety and Community Relations, here today just to introduce to you the consultants that will be doing the strategic plan for gun violence prevention and working with the Alliance. As you know, the Children's Trust provided funds for the strategic plan, and the city of Gainesville took the lead in doing a request for proposal. We worked with the city, and DPI was clearly the top organization to do the strategic plan. So here today we have with us Ms. Renee Scott and also her twin sister, Rosalind Rice, who are here today to kind of explain what that process, quickly explain the process to you. Thank you for meeting with us this morning individually too. It certainly was very, very helpful. Ms. Scott. Hi. I am Renee Scott, Mr. Chair. Thank you for this opportunity. Representing DPI, we were contracted to provide a structural, a strategic plan, excuse me, for the gun prevention here as a collaboration between the city and the county. That will take place in three different phases. We're right in the middle of phase one, which will take place August through September. Phase one is just basically reviewing all of the data that we have been afforded, all of the great activities that are taking place. Synthesizing that data in October will be phase two, and then making our recommendations and completing the strategic plan, which will be phase three, which will finalize in November. We will provide this strategic plan, which will encompass five years, and just really bringing alignment to the great efforts that are taking place, so that there is a shared mission, vision, and value statement. We will deliver it December 1st and in person to the public on December 8th during the alliance meeting that takes place at 530. That place is to be determined. Any questions? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm Melanie Barr, and I'm here today to talk about the Thelma Bolton. So the city was extremely proud when they built this in 1942-43, and many newspaper articles written, Claude Pepper came and had the grand opening. They were just so excited that soldiers hitchhiked here from all over the state to come visit. I'll just do this on top of it. Come visit the building. This is the East Wing, which was always photographed. The East Wing was always considered the more significant of the two parts. A few years ago, well, actually, I want to say 2009, we had a state marker put up acknowledging its significance. You can see it in front of Thelma Bolton. It talks about the Servicemen Center. Here, people do not realize that's why it was built back in the 40s. Some people remember Thelma Bolton. This is the second side of the marker. Here's the Great Day. We were just talking about Peggy, and she was representing the city as the mayor. Paula was representing the county. Gina Mastrick-Casa is in the back unveiling the marker. The reason it was originally put up was because we wanted people to remember that it was the Gainesville Servicemen's Center. Here's the soldier that had hitchhiked here. Here's the auditorium with all the people dancing. The soldiers were dancing with local girls, and some of them did marry local girls. This is another dance at the Thelma Bolton, another one. Here's the soldiers in the east wing. And when we restore it, or someone restores it, we now know how to decorate it appropriately from the 40s. Here's the soldiers writing home. This fireplace is still intact from the 40s in the backyard. The shuffleboard is still intact. Here's one of the people who died in his obituary. It mentioned he died at 103, Philip Barton. It mentioned that he met his wife at a soldier's dance. Now, Thelma Bolton was the recreation director, and she said one of the first bands she hired was the Teen Kings from Ocala. Gainesville Sun reported this is a Negro band. Here's cousin Thelma. We remember her as founding the White Springs Folk Festival. And she also hired people besides the Teen Kings, Mud Crutch, now Tom Petty, now in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The Eagles, Bernie Ledin, Don Felder, now in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Stephen Stills, now in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Okay, so we have a lot of reasons to save this building. It's significant for the soldiers. It's significant for Thelma Bolton, who never married or had children. This is her legacy. Obviously, the rock stars, they did go in this building at the presentation from Wild Spaces. They were trying to say, oh, it's not the same. It's not the same stage. It is the same stage. I want to tell you that the building can be restored. Look at this building. That's what it looks like now. Look at this building. That's what it looks like now. This is what it looks like now. So what I'm asking is for, since the city no longer wants it, it needs to be rescued. Just like when you see a pet being abused or neglected, the city has neglected this building. They don't want it. They want to spend $600,000 demolishing it. So I'm asking you to take the building immediately before they pull the permit. Knowing Wild Spaces Public Places, they probably pulled the permit already. But please ask them to hold off on that and look for a nonprofit and you rescue it. Please write a letter saying, hold off while we look for someone to take it. Thank you. Thank you very much. I hope you can save it. Good morning, County Commissioners. My name is Paula Stamer. I'm here to speak on behalf of urging you to assist your brothers and sisters across the street in remembering a public duty to preserve and restore the Thelma Bolton Center. The county has already demonstrated its interest and support in preserving the building, and we're grateful for that. Now you have to shore up the commitment of your colleagues across the street. For years, a large part of the community have petitioned the city to preserve and restore the building, and repeatedly the city has said, oh, yes, until last week when they suddenly did a 180-degree turn with barely any notice, releasing notice about the pending demolition on the eve of a three-day weekend with absolutely no notice to the legion of people whose names and contact information they had to see if perhaps there was some median ground where the demolition could be avoided. Repeatedly, the city talks about how much more it's going to cost. These claims are always exaggerated, and they never acknowledge that their willful neglect is the primary reason costs have risen for the preservation of the building, if in fact they have increased that much. Otherwise, they seem to have taken a keen interest in building vacant lots. For some reason, they absolutely want to destroy the building. And the last time they addressed it, last Thursday, they said two competitive things. They said, one, they want to clear it and have it as some kind of headquarters for the Rails to Trails program and meeting the urban part of the city with the natural part of the city. The design they previously had for a new building they were going to put up there supposedly had the same motivation, only all the walls that faced the creek and the woods had no windows in them. So I don't know what kind of communing was going to go on in that building with nature. This is a matter of broad public interest, well beyond Gainesville and beyond the county. Remember that the soldiers who came here came from literally across the country, although they may have been stationed in different training camps in the state, they themselves came from many, many different states. And the citizens who came here to help support them and shore them up before they went to war came from all over Alachua County and elsewhere. It is really urgent that the county express its concerns to your colleagues across the street because they truly are poised to demolish the building very soon. Thank you. Hello, my name is Betsy Maloney Hurst, and I'm hoping I've made you a shortened slideshow. It reversed the order, so it will be 2019, up to how it looked last Thursday after the city commissioners voted for demolition. I want to thank you for your part and concern and willingness to listen to us in the past and to donate part of the county's $1.5 million Wild Spaces money towards the renovation. There's been some question. They were wondering if they could still get the $1.5 million from you even with the demolition. So let's see. It starts with 2019. This was a community concert on ensemble with the Star Theater, the Early Learning Center. And you can see how beautiful the facility was after the 2000 renovation with the gorgeous wooden floor and the light coming in. And we were supposed to perform there two days before it got closed down. I mean, two days after it got closed down in 2020. The building was still in good shape when they closed it up. Part of the concern mainly is for this popular, as I said, well-utilized 2008 Heritage-designated building. It's centrally located, as you know, in the Duck Pond Historic District. And it was sad to see it closed up. And then when they started to look at the trust, they discovered one trust. But if you see all the scaffolding they put in there, our city preservation officer said that they were paying about $5,000 a month. And only one trust at that point was failing. But nobody came in. Even then when they discovered they didn't bring in a roofer just to repair. We later were able to get them to put a tarp up, which kept blowing up and down. But none of the $3 million was ever spent on the building. They went back to the same exact consultants they had used in 2019 to redesign and find out the different things that were wrong. I'm concerned because I grew up here, and I'm sad. I just got back from England where it was beautiful, and I seek out the beauty. But I live here, and I hate seeing the death of Gainesville. I hate speaking to friends who are scared to come downtown. They won't come downtown anymore. They've told me it's too dangerous. We've been accosted day and night. We know when we park in the free areas right down the street. It's a sad city when $4.5 million to dig up historic brick road. We've seen the other cities up in Fernandina Beach and others where they have free parking people come downtown. I'm sad, and I'm hoping that you will consider trying to help us get a moratorium like we did for the historic preservation for the buildings on Main Street and hold out maybe 90 days, maybe longer, to see if we can find a local group that wants to come in, that $1.5 million, and the demolition, $450,000 to $600,000, that they said could save it December 7, 2023. That was enough to reopen it, and now it's going to be spent for demolition. Please conclude, please. Thank you for listening, and we appreciate it greatly. And those were the pictures of how it looks now, a building that refuses to fall down. Thank you. I'm learning a lot today. My name is Mark Pansuuspergen. I did not know all this stuff. It's crazy. So I got a chance to see the climate action plan thing on TV, and I didn't know it was going to be that day, actually, but it was very interesting, and I watched it several times, and I sent links to my friends, the ones that were curious about what all was going on in the United States. And I also learned that you can take a URL, like a YouTube URL, and at the very end, you can add, I think it's a question mark, and then enter the number of seconds followed by an S, and you can actually, you know, send that link, and it actually pops up exactly that moment in the – because it was like an hour and a half or something like that. And you can show certain things specifically, which I thought was very, very useful in my case. I'm like, did you see that? And anyway, but the point that stood out to me was when you talked about churches and how communities are, you know, parts of the community are, you know, churches are a very important place where people meet and, you know, share their feelings and emotions. And so it got me thinking that, you know, if perhaps they could be, you know, classified as a proactive participant in sort of the adaptation process. So say, for example, we've gotten until January of 34, so say by the end of, you know, this decade, you know, the next five years or so, you know, churches become part of this whole sort of process where we tell the people, hey, this is the grand plan, and these are the things that you can do at home. And so, for example, the church down the streets from where I live, it's on 23rd Avenue. You know, there's these guys that are mowing, mowing, mowing, and then the grass is really short. But how about there's a little corner where there's like, you know, there's wildflowers and there's, you know, pollinators. And maybe on Saturdays in the springtime, there's a chance for the people that go to church there to sort of learn about, you know, how to grow a tomato plant or basically get them involved in the solutions. And it's like, how would you propagate community gardening using the churches as a platform? So I don't know if there is a plan to get the church sort of together in the same room or individually and sort of explain to them the grand plan and also to sort of pick up the 50 more, like, important words of this whole thing. So we start using the words in the same way. And so the context is clear that when you use the word adaptation, this is what you mean. Or when you say that, you know, climate change, this is generally what you mean. Or food security. And all the things that we are anticipating will happen when, you know, the ice disappears and it turns into, you know, a big giant inland sea. Because when that happens, that's for the first time in 6.2 million years that that won't be ice. And from that moment on, every time that the planet turns towards the sun, it's going to get a whole bunch of energy that it can't shake off. And it's going to get hotter and hotter and hotter every single year really fast. And it's going to change the way the atmosphere circulates. And we're going to need those churches to help propagate adaptation strategies for their community, the little mini communities. You know what I mean? Anyway, I love the presentation. It was really good. Thank you. Maybe Thelma Bolton could play a role. I don't know. Three minutes and 30 seconds for a comment today. Yeah. Good day again. My name is Tamara Robbins. I'd like to speak to three minutes of an item on the agenda. And I am going to circle back to the fire rescue issue because I have a couple of other suggestions. First of all, thank you for your movement towards having a presentation that gives the public information. In fact, the video that Mr. Sexton and his staff created that we saw during announcements, to me, that's what you should be doing with the emergency plan. Like, let's see visuals. Let's see what the action plan is, right? Just a couple of other issues I think should be included in there. Is there going to be any sheriffs assigned to the centers? Who's eligible to be in the centers? There will be things like bus routes because it says the school buses will be picking up people and taking them to the centers. I mean, what are the bus routes? I mean, you need a visual of that. What is the plan so people know where to get on a bus if they're going to get to an emergency shelter? I mean, it's maybe a little bit hard to imagine us being in a real serious emergency, but it is going to happen. I mean, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not next year, maybe not in 10 years. But I think if you're going to have a plan, you better know how to execute it. Otherwise, what's the point? So now I'd like to speak to a couple of issues off the agenda. So if you can reset my time, please. Thank you. To the Thelma Bolton issue, I was here when the county commission committed the $1.2 or $1.5 million of the Wild Spaces money. It was also listed as a joint project with the city. So I'm here to ask you to, I mean, unfortunately, you left it up to the city to manage that project. And they dropped the ball over and over again, and now they have completely dropped it. So I'm here to ask that you send a chair letter asking the city to put a pause on their demo. Like was stated, they probably have already pulled a permit on that. But I'm asking you to put a pause on that, ask for a pause, and then get an appraisal on the property. Maybe they need to declare it surplus property and then put it up for auction. Maybe it's something the county might want to buy and then donate it to some nonprofits or something. I don't know. Please think outside the box and follow through on your commitment. The other thing is the city of Alachua I brought forward at the last meeting, the current status of the Mill Creek development, the terror developments, and that because of state law, it looks like any future approval of any development out there is going to be administratively. There will be no more public hearings, which is what the county seems to be kind of counting on, and we were too, to be able to be there as an affected party, which you all have declared status on. So I'm here to ask that you figure out where your next move is, because the rules have changed to the game, and it is game time. Okay? They are moving quickly. Mill Creek developer, Mr. Muktara, has lawyered up. He doesn't have his local lawyer anymore. He has a big law firm out of Tampa now. They are not kidding around, and I think city staff, the new interim city manager, is probably all on board as the LDR administrator to sign off on whatever he needs to do, because that's been the plan all along. So I'm asking for you to have a discussion about that today. Your previous 14-point motion had lots of good points on it, but they're kind of moot at this point because there's not going to be any public hearings. So I think you need to hire your professional consultants. If you guys need to lawyer up and get a specific land use attorney on board, that you need to do it and start engaging, getting all the public records, making sure you have access to everything. And trust me, do not rest assured in any way that the city of Alachua is going to reach out to you, offer any information, or ask for your opinion on anything. This is an exercise in diligence. Thank you. I'm a neighbor. I live here in Gainesville, in the duck pond, just a few blocks from Thelma Bolton. Can you state your name for the record? I'm sorry. My name is Diane Bellamy, and I live a few blocks from the Thelma Bolton Center, and I have been actively involved with the movement to try to maintain this important historic building as a remembrance of the efforts that went into building it and the people that were in attendance there in its early years as a route to who we are as a community and a society. And those moments and those efforts are important. And a building is something that can bring that into reality. We look at it and we feel its importance. And that's something that I think that a lot of our society is lacking. We're constantly trying to move forward, and if we don't remember the importance of the efforts of those that preceded us, sometimes it gets hard to know which way forward is. So you've heard the story, what happened with the... We were very active in the efforts to preserve the building, and we had a success that actually was celebrated in many ways, and we're looking forward to using the beautiful space again. And then, unfortunately, as you're aware, that the people that were in charge of the hiring people to do the work didn't do it. We feel that there's something really wrong there, and that you're in a position that you can right that wrong. And we really, really are putting this idea before you in a very sincere moment, that we think that you have the power to change things and preserve something very important to this community. It's an effort that deserves your attention. Thank you very much. Good afternoon, Commission. Brian Bisher, High Springs. I just want to reiterate what Tamara Robbins had to say regarding Mill Creek Sink and also perhaps add just a little bit of information to that. Last night was the city attorney's last meeting for the city of Alachua, and so they brought on an interim city attorney, Scott Walker. And as you may know, Scott Walker's been representing Newberry and also High Springs during some approvals of some developments. In addition to that, the National Speleological Society has sent a letter to the city basically stating that their approval for the special exception permit for the stormwater detention system for Terra Forest West, which is Mill Creek Sink development, that that's void because of improper notice. The state requires that a publication such as Alachua County today, when they post it in their daily paper, that exactly that day they post the exact same on their own website as well as with the state's website, and they failed to do either of those. So that's one area that's going to be proceeding. The Terra Forest Phase 1 construction plans have been submitted to the city, and it's under there. They actually have a committee under review that was submitted to them, and the construction plan approval or acceptance, rather, was July 29th. So with the way the city is keeping things close to the vest, it's hard to say if they've even approved it already administratively or if it's just imminent. So I encourage the county to take a stand and help support us. Thank you. Yeah, sure. Sir, can I ask you a question? Do you know if the Speleological Society actually filed for an injunction in order to stop any movement while they have a judge actually review rather or not public notice was followed? They have not filed for an injunction at this point. They have submitted a letter, and in that letter stated the case, essentially, and requested a response. They received an acknowledgment of that letter, but to date they have not received a response other than to say we're in transition on our attorney, so we're going to push it off. Subsequent to that, an attorney representing the National Speleological Society sent an email and said, hey, we realize you're under transition, give you a little grace. However, you know, we will need to move forward with this, and any subsequent approvals would be considered void because they would rely upon this special exception permit. It just doesn't help if everything gets built. You know, things are going to continue moving. I'm just recommending that if they actually want things to stop while they figure out if public notice was done, they do need something that's going to stop the process, and it's while they make that consideration. No, I understand the process, and I understand that at this point it is a legal case related to that issue. And so I think the NSS is trying to be respectful in their request, and now it's time for them to also step up and writ surgery or file for an injunction, something like that. Hello. My name is Robbie Davis, and my mother's family has been in Lachua County and in the city of Gainesville actually since 1832, so I have a vested interest in what goes on here in the county and in the city. I've watched most of my life things fall apart and get torn down. My mom passed away this past September. Sunday will be a year. And on Sundays I would often take her downtown to drive around and look and see who lived where and what we did when, and my grandparents owned Jay's Dress Shop, which was on the square for decades. The saddest thing to me was when I said to mom one of the last Sundays, mom, you ready to go for a drive? We'll go downtown. She said, no, honey, I don't think I want to go downtown anymore. I said, what do you mean? She said, downtown is gone. My town is not even here anymore. And that broke my heart for my 93-year-old mother to say that. As such, with regard to the Thelma-Balton Center, and this has nothing to do with trusses or dollar signs or walls or any of that. It has to do with emotion and sense of place and the sense of land. For those of us like Betsy, and I've known Betsy all my life as well, who grew up here, we're robbed of most everything that we had. We've got Citizens Field, which is in a state of disrepair. We've got Ward's Grocery Store, thankfully. Krispy Kreme is still here. The edifice of the Primrose Inn still stands, but that's it. I mean, so when you're talking about tangibles, I get it. I get the balance and the disparity and the reports of debits and credits. What I don't understand is what has happened to memories, what has happened to empathy, what has happened to the people who built this for us, who paved the way. When Betsy and my sister were in junior high school, they would go to teen time at the rec center. My mom would drop all these girls off, and I was like five years old dying to go, and I never did get to go, and now it's going to be too late. But these are things that are heartfelt. It's more about the memories and the sense of place and the sense of belonging. And when you see that your town is being stripped of everything, it wouldn't be that big of a deal to save the Thelba Bolton Center. I mean, it really wouldn't. When you're talking about world problems, that's not that big of a deal. But you ride down 13th Street, you ride down University Avenue, you ride down any of these other corridors, and guess what? Nothing is left. And yet this is one small building that could be saved, needs to be saved, for no other reason than the past and people's feelings and people's photos. I posted a picture on Betsy's Facebook today of another one of their girlfriends, and I standing on the front steps of the rec center because it was 1990. It was her 40th birthday, and we put posters around town of places that she had gone, and she had been the snow queen at the rec center that particular year when she was like in eighth grade. So we'd make a big poster and took pictures on the steps. That's not a big deal to you guys. It was a big deal to us, and this is a big deal to us. And I implore you, please, whatever you can do, mercifully, throw your body across the – whatever. But please save the Thelba Bolton Center. I don't ask for a whole lot, you guys, really. I mean, do it for my mom. Thank you. Hello. Soria Lindbergh. A lot of flip-flop between topics here. I consider myself a kind of a fun, easygoing person, but I've got to put on my serious face this time. And, you know, in a movie and the lights go off, they're ringing the bell. This is about an urgent sensitive matter about Mill Creek Sink. So the dais and the staff, you've committed yourself to Mill Creek Sink, so thank you for that. We don't have to convince you to care about Mill Creek Sink, so we really appreciate that. So when the Latchewal County Water Quality Code was approved or voted on to protect groundwater, and then in 2005 the hydrology study said that if dye goes in Mill Creek Sink, it literally can go to my kitchen sink where it is. As you manage the community well, it goes to the springs, it can go to the river. So what's happening now that the other citizens shared is things are moving, and they're moving legally, secretly. So a citizen had to request hundreds of pages of records, multiple requests, and what's concerning is as people we can only do so much. I have not taken one law class in my whole life. I don't know what I'm doing. I feel like I just have, like, a little match of a flame of a spark in a dark room trying to solve a puzzle. You guys have the keys to the light bulbs. You have the resources. You have the smarts. And we're asking you to please find that special person or team to do this investigation. Find out. Go to Theriac. Go to Rush. Go to the new representative and say, what do you have on Mill Creek? Can you share it with us? They're going to give you a dollar amount for that. It's more than I can pay. Investigate what's going on. And the reason this is so concerning because, I don't know if you read the article that came out a month or two ago, some citizens asked for a copy of a Christmas video from the city of Alachua. They finally got one, five minutes redacted. They had to get a lawyer to send a letter in. They got a 20-minute video. So are our requests the five-minute version? We want the 20-minute version. We want these records because when the smart people who are smarter than me can look at it, you can find the holes. You can find the parts that are concerning. The last time I talked about Michael Kucink, I cried. I'm not going to do it again. So we shouldn't have to chase these or threaten lawsuits to get the truth. It's an emergency. Like, it can't just be business as usual. If someone's out, y'all are the boss here. You can make it work for us. So I don't know if you have to get people under oath to ask them the right questions. If there's, like, a forensic investigator, what's going on? Because if we don't do something right away, Tara's writing the story on this. And once that concrete's poured and it's gone, and I worry about the public health with the water and where it goes. So I had a whole thing prepared, but I just spewed a bunch of stuff. So, and also about the injunction someone mentioned, is there any way that someone that's specialized in this can say that you could do one on behalf of the public? Because there wasn't a public notice. NSS does it for their property, but there's other stuff, too. So thank you. Thank you. Mr. Chair, we have three folks on the phone line for public comment. The first one is the caller ending in phone number 3013. You are in the room. Please hit star six to unmute. You have three minutes, and please state your name. Hi. Thank you. This is Gail Hall from New York, Florida, and I'm also speaking on behalf of Snow Creek Sink and our lateral water. I appreciate everything that Tamara, that Brian, and that Soria has said, and certainly want to reiterate their concerns and appreciate the county's concerns. I would also like to ask again, if the county could please file the injunction on behalf of the county residents who were not notified as a result of this. And I guess we were to properly notice, as Brian's sister stated earlier. So thank you very much for all your help on this. And, again, I'll say the time is now. We really need to act as soon as possible for Tara will be writing the story. Thank you. Okay. Caller ending in phone number 4502. You're in the room. Please hit star six. State your name. You have three minutes. It looks like you need to hit star six to unmute, please, on your phone. Go ahead. Hi. My name is Pamela Blasetti. My name is Pamela Blasetti, and I am also speaking in regarding to the Tara project. As you probably know, the final plot for Tara April and Tara West, which have a combination of over 500 home sites and all of the stormwater infrastructure for the project, are now going to be decided administratively with no public hearing and no public input. I am requesting that the county step in and protect this property and our water quality. I believe that the county's affected party status allows due presentation of evidence and testimony at this juncture, and please, we are asking you to use that. Please request notification of any activity on this case. There are serious, as you know, risks with irreversible damage to our water quality, and that is definitely county jurisdiction. I feel it's deeply disappointing that this project has been ignored, and all FDEP recommendations for water quality protection have also been ignored, and that no government agency seems to be stepping up to help us. It's a very vulnerable property, and we need you guys. Please change this course. We need for this project to be tailored to the highest protection standards, not the lowest protection standards as it is now. Thank you very much. Okay. Caller ending in 4565. You are in the room. Please state your name, and you have three minutes. Good day. This is Sarah Younger with the Sierra Club, Lonnie St. John's Group. I'm calling today to also ask that you consider the concerns that residents of Alachua have stated. We have been at many of these meetings where their appeals have fallen on deaf ears, and it's really time for this county to show up. I also just came out of a meeting with Representative Hinson's office, as we were there to represent the interests of residents in Southeast Gainesville over the Florence landfill. Her office had actually found a recent findings sent from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, stating that the summary of a recent permit renewal shows that it was issued on June 20th of 23 that expires on February 9th of 2026. We would like to know if there is a closure plan, and if so, what that closure plan entails. We want to know if, in fact, the Florenses have agreed that the closure date is the 26th of February, and we'd like to know if the county is coordinating with them efforts for the closure date. So, if you could please update us also on the monitoring that had been undergone about the air quality concerns. Rep. Hinson has made the request that the state that maybe they cover the cost of such monitoring. I don't know if there was an effort that would pick up that bill, but we do appreciate the counties picking up that monitoring, but we would like to hear what those reports are. Direct staff to let us know, make us aware of what the plan is for a closure. I know that you had, at earlier meetings, had various points that you had wanted to have staff carry out, asking for an update on those measures. I appreciate your time. We really look forward to hearing from you. I know the residents of Southeast Gainesville are, most importantly, looking forward to hearing from you, and I appreciate you taking the time to take our comments today. Thank you very much. Mr. Chair, that was the last caller. Okay, that concludes public comments. Back to the board. Are there any comments? I think. I do. I have a comment to the folks who've come in about the Mill Creek Sink. I think each one of you have my phone number, and if you all could help me stay on top of this. Of course, our environmental folks are watching, but if you would call me and at least alert me to what is happening at the most immediate time. We saw this happen up in High Springs with the confusion that came about working with our chief, and we were able to get that worked out because I was able to work with the chair of that board, but I had to reach out to him in order to do that. So I'm asking you all to please make sure that you're, if you're not contacting me or contacting somebody on this board to keep us abreast of what's happening up there, because often you have your ears closer to the ground than we do up here. So we're counting on you all to make sure we know when the alarm bells are going off. I've tried to interact with that board in Alachua, and sometimes I get responses, and sometimes I don't. You know, so the reason that you all have us up here elected is to make sure that we know what's going on in your area. So please email us all. We've been working on this. I've been working on this since before I came on this board. I was standing out there in Mill Creek with signs years ago when we were trying to make this happen. So we care very much about this area. So anything that you can do to make sure that we're getting the scoop, make sure we are getting that scoop. All right. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Commissioner Alfred. Yes. I'm not sure what the county can do at this juncture. I do appreciate the fact that, you know, we were partners in this project, and I did expect and kept watching for action to take place. As someone that's worked on historic buildings in my other roles in the past, I am frankly, you know, really concerned and dismayed that things didn't progress as we expected them to. So I am willing to ask staff if there is anything we can do at this point. I'm not sure what it would be, but I would like to find out if there is something that we can do if they haven't filed for a demolition permit, if they're, you know, if we could at least have the discussion and write the letter and say, you know, is there some way that we can still continue forward on this project? I really am disappointed that they would move to the point of demolition since we were partners of the project without talking to us about it. And I think that is really the biggest thing that I have a concern with is that they didn't have the conversation with us again about something that affects us greatly. So, um, if, um, you know, you would like that to be a motion, I'll make it one. Can I speak? Let's go first. Okay, okay, okay. And then Commissioner Prisley. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So I want to talk about Mill Creek and Florence, but let's talk about Thelma Bolton first. So, you know, originally, first of all, I hate getting involved in municipality issues. Um, and this reminded me a lot of the priests, um, center up in High Springs, and we didn't get involved in that really. The difference here is this was a joint project that we collectively worked together since 2023. And, um, you know, I, I, I would like to explore and would support a motion to explore, uh, seeing how we could do anything in our power to save the building, um, and, and perhaps use those monies to restore it. And, and then give it to a private entity that could program and run it in perpetuity. I think that, you know, from the county's perspective, we're not set up to do that. The city is set up to do that, and we relied on them to actually do that. And, uh, I too, when I saw this on the agenda, I was surprised. I was like, thought we were going to secure the roof, stop the leaking, and then figure out a plan. And, um, I know that there are, they, the city commissioners, at least I talked to one of them this morning, were presented with no good, no good plans. And so, um, I view this one differently, though, because this was a joint project. It was a joint project by the city and the county, and we committed money. And I feel like on joint projects, we should be brought into the loop, at the very least, at the staff level. And my staff didn't notify us of anything that was changed since the December 23 motion. And from this commissioner and our staff, you know, when we have outstanding motions, we just presume they are happening unless we are told otherwise. And our staff does a real good job of keeping us in the loop. And maybe something changed over there, I don't know. But I, I would support a letter asking for a pause. You know, we, we did this a couple of weeks ago, asking for a pause. It fell on deaf ears. But again, there's enough community support, at least from my perspective, on this item that we should, at the very least, do that. Um, as far as taking it on and then making it a county project, it would have to compete with all of our other projects. I don't really have an interest in that. Um, but I, but the money that we allocated two fiscal years ago was for this project. And if, if it's not going to be spent on that, that money, in my opinion, comes back. Um, but I'm still willing to spend it on that, if it makes sense. So that's how I feel about Thelma Bolton. I'll, I guess, wait for my, hear from my colleagues on Thelma Bolton. And then I would like to talk about Mill Creek and Florence. Yeah, I guess, you know, I, I'm, I feel like this is a city of Gainesville issue. Like, I, I hear what folks are saying about this is a bigger picture issue, but I do feel like this is a city issue. And it's really frustrating that every time somebody's not happy with what their city's doing, they come to the county and they ask us to put pressure on their city commissioners. Like, they are your elected officials. If you don't like what they're doing, then get into that ballot box and change the situation. But, like, it's frustrating to me that we're constantly being asked to, like, tell cities what to do. It's a separate jurisdiction. It's their, it's their role. It's their job. Like, and I understand this is a, people look at it as a bigger history issue. But, you know, we don't have the data. We don't have the information about the building, how much is repair it's in. The building was built at a time when there wasn't even money for materials because it was all going to the war effort. Like, I have no idea what kind of condition that building's in other than bad from what the community says. And I, you know, am I, am I willing to take it on? Absolutely not. Am I willing to support a nonprofit owning it? Honestly, I don't know because that nonprofit is going to come to us and to the city wanting money to maintain that building and program that building. And right now the city of Gainesville doesn't even have enough money to program the buildings they already have, that they are programming. Like, they are cutting their parks and rec budget every year and struggling, I think, to maintain the buildings that they have. So asking them or us to then fund a nonprofit to continue to operate a building, I just, I just see that as a long-term stress and a long-term, like, problem that's going to just keep rearing its head. Do I think the building should be protected? Yes. Do I think it would be protected to the tune of $7.5 million? Absolutely not. I think that there's lots of other ways we can honor Thelma Bolton, and I think there's lots of other ways we can use that property for the good of our community. And while I know it's an important historic building, I also think that there are other ways that we can celebrate that history that don't come with a $7.5 million price tag. So, you know, we weren't involved. We didn't get the presentation from the city. We should have gotten, at the very minimum, you know, something from staff to let us know that they were heading down this path, that they no longer needed our $1.5 million. I think that's part of their partnership money, though, like part of the overall partnership money we've committed to the city. So they likely will, I would imagine, will just send us a letter letting us know what they're allocating it to in lieu of that. But I still think we should have gotten that update ahead of this conversation. So am I disappointed we didn't get notified? Yes. Am I in favor of us getting involved and potentially telling them that they should give this to a nonprofit or that we should take it over? No, I'm not. I would just add the priest theater has had some of the same issues that they're dealing with. They've formed a citizens group up with their friends of the priest. They've raised $80,000 to try to get in there to do an evaluation. And because they are working or trying to work in partnership with the city, it allows them to get grant money coming in to restore it. But it has a different – it's a theater, and that's a little bit different in classification. But the way that the Bolton Center has been used, it has been used as a theater as well. But it took the citizens group coming together in order to make that happen. You know, I don't know if the city would be willing to, you know, lease the land to them for, you know, someone – you know, lease the land to them, hold the land, and then let the building go to somebody. I don't know, but – They're asking for our money. No, I understand. But the thing is that the people up in High Springs are trying to find a way to do it, but they have time. I mean, it's not been destroyed. It's not been sold. It's not been in any way – they're not hampering the movement towards saving it like the Thelma Bolton Center is being faced with this. And, again, you know, we're talking about – excuse me – we're talking about the demolition of this place and all that debris, and we're concerned, again, about, you know, what do we do with demolition debris. So, you know, we're – it's a double-edged thing that we're trying to take care of at one time. Mary, I would have thought, you know, you'd jump in on that one, the demolition part, because you're our restoration person. Well, I'd rather it not be torn down, but, you know, I just turned my light on to – you made me think of something else that is rather timely. Since we've just, you know, formed this partnership with the military about the military – the diesel mechanic program and all of that, because we have a military installation in our county, we are eligible for military grant funding. And I'm very curious if there might be military grant funding for historic military installations. And I wonder if anybody's looked into that because that's something we haven't been – and I'm not saying that we necessarily would be the ones to apply for that, but I'm wondering if that might be an avenue of funding that the city might not have looked at yet because that just – that might be, you know, a reason to take a pause and look at another option. Mr. Chair, did this come up at about the same time the Cotton Club did? Did we have, you know, serving two different populations of people? Was that contemporary with each other, the Cotton Club and the Thoma Bolton? Do you all know? I was just curious because I know one was an entertainment center for one part of the community and the other was an entertainment center for another part. Is it older, you think? Any thoughts, sure. There's a bunch of – No, I don't want to open it back up to public comment because we've actually spent an hour on this – on public comments. We texted it to me. And we still have a lot more on the agenda to accomplish today, so – Well, yeah, sure. I guess I also just want to clarify that the county itself actually owns a ton of historic buildings downtown. You know, and we're going to have – we're going to be faced very soon with the monumental task of protecting those buildings, of thinking about the way in which we redevelop those buildings. And, you know, I hope that we can make good decisions about the ways that we protect – at the minimum facades and look and feel of downtown to protect the historic areas of downtown. So, you know, for me, that's another reason why I'm not super interested in getting involved monetarily with this project because we have our own big heavy lifts coming. I don't like it on that. And, you know, and I just – I – and this one and a half million in county WSPP funds, those were pledged as the joint projects funds to the county – to the city. The city. Yeah, and we pledged those to all of the cities. We can't just reallocate that to a nonprofit to take over this project. Like, I – so I think – I just think that the requests – I understand where people are coming from. I understand, and I understand the heartfelt plea. It's not that I don't think that this building is worth saving. It's just that we don't have the resources, the money, or the – or the – frankly, the jurisdiction to really be pushing this agenda. And I think that it really is something that we need the city of Gainesville to make the decision on. And they – yeah, and they have. I mean, I – if a nonprofit wants to step up and create a Friends of and try to raise the money and things like that, like, I could see that. But I just – I don't – I don't see how this – the county can really step in in this regard. I mean, we could ask for a pause and demolition to give the Friends. But, again, they were all there. They already talked to the commissioners. The commissioners heard all the same pleas we've heard. And if they cared about this project and they thought that it was doable to save it, they would have done it. Mr. Tierman, I just add, one of the problems that I think is – that's hard for me to see it go down, too, is because it's right there next to the school board, the old building, the historic, the Madison right across. You know, in that little hub of the community, you know, it would be a shame to not be able to have that part of the stool in there because there is a lot of history right there that's recognizable. And it's a shame that somehow that quadrant can't be maintained. Thank you, Mr. Daniels. Yeah. Okay. Commissioner Cornell and then Commissioner Alfred. Yeah. So, Mr. Chair, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. But I would support a chair letter that asked for 90 days while we refer this item to our historical advisory board and to our staff to evaluate what the joint project would have looked like, get the information, and see if they're willing to do that. We could then pursue potential military grant, historical military grant opportunities. We could tap into the expertise of our historic advisory board and the community and see if there is another effort, which I think had started, you know, in deference to the community, Commissioner Prizia. I think up until last week, certainly I thought this was going forward. And so I didn't know that the $3 million had turned into $7 million until I saw that agenda item. And given that we didn't have enough time to kind of look at this as a joint project with the community involvement, if we could ask for 90 days, refer this to some experts at the county that do have an interest. And then if after that there are no grant opportunities, again, I don't think the county is equipped to take it on and program it. I agree, actually, with the comment that you made, Commissioner Prizia, that if we donated to a nonprofit, they also would have to show that they are equipped to take it on and program it, which is unlikely in 90 days. And so I think it would give us at least some time. I don't know if they'll take that time. It just seems like that's the right thing to do from our perspective. So I would support that motion. I'll make that motion then. Okay, second. That we do a chair letter referring it to the city asking them to pause for 90 days and refer this item to the historical advisory board as well as to our staff. To see if there are any potential funding opportunities or other solutions that could be presented. Our historical advisory board? We have a historic advisory board. Melanie's the chair. I think she's the chair of it. Right. But they have the Thelma Bolton Center. I mean, yeah. No, not the city's project. We can't really refer to the city's historical advisory board. That's what I'm saying. When I said refer to the historical advisory board, what I'm talking about is potential grant opportunities and history related to that, not that they would then take it on as a city project. Just that they could provide information. When Commissioner Alford was talking about historical military grants, I saw Melanie in the back. Well, she's doing it again. She's shaking her head. So there's knowledge out there that I don't have that perhaps our advisory board has. Yeah. And, you know, having lived in this community my whole life and being familiar with a lot of other communities in Florida, the more transient a town is, the more people that move in and out of it. And Gainesville has a lot of transients because of the University of Florida. The typically the less historic buildings that you save. When you go into towns that have a lot of people that have been there for a long time, you know, to the points of some of the folks in the audience, buildings do tend to be saved more. And so, you know, I hear that and I respect that, you know, that connection, that connection with place and that, you know, the older parts of our town are really a big part of our history and have helped make this town what it is and who we are. And so a good and bad. And I think that, you know, there's, you know, I think we should at least acknowledge that. But I appreciate you helping me formulate the motion. I mean, on that point, I remember the citizens of the duck pond saying that it's not called the duck pond. It's called the historic duck pond. And so the historic duck pond, to your point, has a handful of historic features. Obviously, the Thomaston is one of them. This was the other one that continues to be mentioned. And so that's why I thought we had an agreement to try to preserve it. But, you know, maybe things have changed as far as cost goes. It's just we haven't – this just came up. And I hate leaning in on city stuff when, you know, when they have their own staff and their own elected body. This was just one that was a county-city joint project that we took a position on. They're coming to us too. Yeah. Well, before I recognize anyone else, I just want to make my comments. I support historical structures. I've always done it as a city commissioner, as a county commissioner. I support the letter for a 90-day pause. But I guess the most disappointing part to me is that I thought we were kind of like a partner in this to some degree, but apparently we weren't. And that disturbs me when we start talking about partnerships with the city and other cities in our county. But we always wind up looking like the big bad guy for some reason, and I don't understand that. And all we're trying to do is help. You know, I think Commissioner Caprizia is correct about the funding, that we allowed that and agreed to that. And it's sad that it's gotten to this point where we're not recognized or at least have some response from the city about their decisions. It makes it seem as though we're not really partners to some degree, and that's kind of disappointing to me. But when you talked about the Cotton Club and you talked about the Thelma Bolton, those are still historical structures in our community. And it talks about the times that I think the Thelma Bolton was much older than the Cotton Club in terms of history. But I think that they do mean the same in our community, period. And I think that that's important. But if we lose all of our historical features in this community, then what do we have left in this community for folks who have been here a long time? How do we tell our story to visitors that come to our community? That is lost. I mean, that would be lost. So to make a long story short, I just think that I'm really, really disappointed in terms of what is going on with the Thelma Bolton Center. But we know that the county can't really support purchasing another building and turning it over to someone. We just don't have the revenue. And, folks, if you don't believe me, the economic future is a recession, folks, and we've got to prepare for that. I'm not an economist, but common sense tells me that's going to happen with the tariffs and all of that other stuff. And funding is going to be real tight for government in the future. So, you know, we have to look for the future in terms of our budget. And, you know, wow, $7 million versus $3 or $4 million back then. What happened? Why wasn't a contract locked in to do this? I mean, I'm just perplexed at this point. So, you know, there's a motion on the floor. There's a second. So are there any public comments to the motion that's on the floor? I didn't get another opportunity to talk. So there, as everyone knows, the President of the United States likes the military. I do think there's going to be more grants for renovation. You can see this was built for soldiers. And you have a Veterans Advisory Board, which you're going to be selecting members for in a few minutes. So I think this is a perfect fit for the county because you could move Veterans Advisory Services into the East Wing. It could still be, it could bring in income by renting out the auditorium, which was used for governmental purposes. Gainesville Old Time Dance Society used it regularly. People had weddings, anniversaries. Who hasn't been to an event there? So you could make an income from it while you have your Veterans Advisory Board in it, in the East Wing. Or, and we can find other military grants. I don't know of any grants that were looked for from the Wild Spaces Public Places organization. And I didn't see anything done in the last nearly two years to stabilize the building. Nothing. They did testing and analyzing and hired architects and engineers and consultants. Not one hammer was swung in that building. And they voted to save it almost two years ago. So let's get the party started. Let's start restoring it. Offer them a dollar and save them the $600,000 they would pay to tear it down. And put the Veterans Advisory Board in there, rent it out to other veterans organizations. This does relate to the county. The county does appreciate its military and has military installations. So it is relevant to you. If you don't think you can use it, then just hold on to it and find nonprofits that can use it. So I do think there's more grant opportunities. I don't think they were explored at all. There was nothing done to stabilize it. Jerry Painter of Painter Masonry, a well-respected local firm, observed the building. And I can't tell you all the swear words he used. But he did say the building should have been stabilized by the city long ago. As soon as they knew the roof had a problem, they should have got on it. He said it's deliberate, intentional negligence. So I do think the building can be saved. You saw my other photos of buildings that were far worse off. Jerry Painter said he doesn't even see the cracks. Now, the cracks are one inch in a few places, and it hasn't gotten worse despite the lack of stabilization. It's not worse. It's settling. And he said it's typical of a 1940s building. Think of the 1940s houses you see with the little stair-step cracks. That's common, nothing unusual. And they're saying it's a dangerous building. They can't save it. They can't sell it. Well, I think they can. They, for some reason, Wild Spaces, Public Places, has headed out for the Thelma Bolton from the get-go. They took down the state marker years ago. Why? It declares it. It says at the bottom, it's a state heritage site. Thank you for the time you spent discussing this today. I know you have a full agenda. I think the big things, first of all, the idea, hopefully, if a nonprofit takes it over, is you'd have people who have a background in fixing buildings and in renting them out. And the idea is it would be self-sustaining, hopefully. Because I understand you can't have buildings everywhere that are all depending on public subsidies. We witnessed recently some historic buildings on North Main Street were purchased by somebody who does that with buildings downtown. And hopefully, they'll actually be able to make some type of profit from it. So they won't be coming here from the 1880s buildings on North Main Street. They won't be coming to you or to the city or other people seeking funding. The other thing is we visit a lot of small towns, and they have a tiny tax base compared to here. And somehow, their historic buildings are still there. And the two reasons why, it may sound odd, but one of the reasons is because they appreciate the history. The other reason is financial. They don't have the money to tear them down and build new buildings. And apparently, they have people who know how to repair things. I think the problem that a lot of the, here, a lot of the governmental entities are getting into is they go to these firms, again, with a lot of overhead. So we have multiple layers of overhead. So very little of the money being spent is actually going to pay for the repair, the physical repair itself. Whereas in these other communities, maybe they're able to do that. I know looking back at the last, the year 2000, the renovation of the Thelma Bolton Center back then, it was interesting looking for the city of Gainesville budgets. They didn't hire these out-of-town consulting firms. If they needed a new roof, they put out bins for a new roof. If they needed, if they had a plumbing problem, they got it fixed or put out bins for new plumbing. And so there was just so much less overhead. Whereas now, it's about three or four different layers of consultants before we get to the actual hiring of the tradespeople who do the work. And that was part of the difference. Why their current cost structure is so expensive. They're talking about tearing down the MLK Center. That was built 25 years ago. It was not a historic building. But still, to tear down a building every 25 years and rebuild it is just tremendously expensive for the community to support. And there have got to be ways to eliminate that overhead and just keep repairing what they have, as these other communities do. One of the communities, an example, is America's Georgia. We went from there and come to an impromptu, my mom and I, on an impromptu vacation last fall. And the first thing we noticed when we drove in there was their historic district. And it literally looked like a time warp. We went to their tourist information. We stayed in a hotel for the 1800s. They have a whopping 25,000 people in their community. There's no way on earth they are able or willing or could afford to spend these astronomical $8 million restoring a building if they keep the buildings. Another community years ago asked why. And the local official just said, his first impression says, well, the building's already here. We're going to keep it. We're going to keep repairing it. We don't have the money. We don't have the interest in replacing the building. And one of the officials, I remember, said a lot of the people here like the history. And he obviously didn't particularly care of the history himself, but he was eager to keep the buildings for financial reasons. So it can be done a lot less costly. Good morning, Patricia Lee. I, too, was disappointed to hear that the city had now decided to demolish the Thelma Bolton Center. My observation in general has been that in trying to come up with solutions for these various non-public service kind of community needs has been pretty myopic. And we can use more creative thinking. The grant departments that you have, the people that run those, should probably be functioning more like a development office for any other entity. And with that said, they would look beyond tax dollars to solve some of these issues because they are great and they are needed. For instance, the National Historic Commission has lots of money. And I don't think I've heard anybody from the city or county even mention that anybody looked into the funds that they have. Not only do they have it for all entities, they even have a special branch where they are looking to preserve historic churches and black cemeteries and all that kind of thing. So they have a minority part as well as their main focus. So there are always a number of ways to solve problems. But we've just got to start being a little bit more creative, a little bit more broad-minded, and not quite so myopic, which for those who don't know what myopic means, it means nearsighted. Thank you. Mr. Chair, Commissioner, staff, my name is Tamara Robbins. Appreciate your comments. I do not see this as, Mr. Chair, as like any other municipality, with all due respect to Commissioner Prizia. This is the county seat, and I think the county, it's the county seat, let's just face it, right? And I agree with the fact that you were in a partnership with the Wild Spaces money. And I'm going to roll this back, kind of the Mill Creek thing and your relationship with municipalities is that just because you vote to enter into an agreement with anybody, right, you have to keep track of that and make sure things are on track because if just because you voted to direct something and you think it's happening, I think you just learned that you can't rely on that, right? So county staff as well, I believe, needs to be following up, checking in. Same thing like what I'm saying with Mill Creek. We can't get the information. We are asking you, right, to get more information and stay diligent on your motion. You put a motion on the floor to support all of the stuff about Mill Creek and the water and the testing you've done. We're asking you to follow up on something you already stepped into. So you can't just, like, step in and then act like you're not in it. You're in it. So you need to manage that. So I see the Thelma Bolton and actually the historic district in the county seat as a tourist destination. What about TDT money using to renovate the Thelma Bolton Center? You should be able to use tourist tax money to restore it. If you can use tourist money to maintain the sports center for after-school programs, which are not putting heads in beds, you should be able to use tourist money to restore a historic building in the historic district for people to visit and spend time in Gainesville and the county seat and in the county. So I'd ask that you expand your motion to include looking into whether TDT money can be used in any way to support the renovation of this. And it is just, it's negligence by design on the city's part. I mean, they should have tarped. It took them like a year and a half to put a tarp on it, and then they don't even know how to put a tarp on. So it blows off. I mean, seriously. So thank you again. I just ask that you look into the use of tourist money for any restoration. Thank you. Okay. This is going to be our last public comment, but please step forward. This is going to be it because we've spent an hour and 20 minutes on public comments, and that's a historical thing for this board at this point. And we have an agenda, a full agenda, and so I want to move forward after this. And we've got a motion that's on the floor. We're going to dissolve that, and we're going to move forward. I'm sorry. And I think Commissioner Cornell had some more issues to bring up, but I would ask to save that for the end of the meeting this afternoon, if that's possible, and so that we can move on with our agenda. That's fine. I'll hold it. Okay. Sounds good. Okay. Yes, please. Thank you. And thank you for the opportunity. This is very important to us, and I understand the amount of time that has gone into this. But once Gainesville is destroyed and doesn't exist anymore, there's nothing for the historic markers to even find your way around. It's gone, and it can't come back. And I do know what the commissioner said, but I wanted to share what a former planner for the city wrote me back yesterday. He was talking about the streetscapes, and then he mentioned, as for Thelma Bolton, it was very clear, even back when I worked there, that the Parks Department had no interest in keeping the TBC. Citizens need to hold the city accountable for failure to maintain the structure in a safe manner and violating its own demolition by neglect ordinance. And it has been total neglect from the beginning, and I know the plan, because two days before the meeting, on September 2nd, while Spaces Public Places belatedly sent us an email. And number six is, after it's demolished, is to put a housing development there with a few affordable units. And I already know from the meetings that they have a minimum of seven stories, seven to 14 stories. I know the ordinance was passed. So this is what is happening in current housing developments. The Thomas Center, you saw the picture at the end. I included that because my mother was part of the group that saved it. It had already been voted on demolition for it. We almost lost it. The federal building, where we just got our new elevator thankfully fixed and the roof fixed on the hippodrome, that was also slated for demolition. All of these buildings were saved because citizens worked very hard to save them. They were not successful in saving the courthouse where this building is. And I suggest if you really want to rebuild it, rebuild it like it was in one of the previous designs. America's Georgia did that. Tifton, Georgia, they kept theirs. They had their historic district. We have gone around. It's in this country, in Park County, where they have no money, really. They're covered bridges. They have a beautiful, even after the pandemic, downtown square. So I urge you, the city commissioners deem that this building was not important enough, even though it was well-used, popular, because a lot of people could afford to rent it more than they could afford the Thomas Center. It was used for square dancing, community projects, you name it. It was family reunions, weddings. It was well-used up until it was closed in 2020. The roof could have been done cheaply. It just needed to be done to stabilize the building back in 2019, 2020. So thank you. I appreciate all the time you have given us. Thank you very kindly. Okay, back to the board. Commissioner Brizzi. You'll wait. Okay. All right. Those in favor of the motion will provide a sign of aye. Aye. Those opposed, same sign. Motion. Motion carries four to one. Commissioner Brizzi and Descent. Okay. Mr. Clerk. I'll say no quick and forward. Okay. All right. Thank you. Mr. Chair, that takes us to item G, board and committee items. The first one is the Veterans Services Advisory Board appointments. There was an updated tally sheet. I believe we placed that on, which fortunately leaves a spot for everybody on the board. So you basically have to pick an alternate, essentially. So we could either vote for the top three on the one category. So I guess I did have a question for staff, too, about one of them, because one of them is not, it appears, is not a veteran, Charles Crawford, and I believe you have to be a veteran to serve on this committee. I don't know if they're eligible to serve as an alternate, but I guess I. We have no alternate. Good afternoon, Mr. Chair, Commissioners, Elijah and White, Director of Veteran Services. Mr. Crawford, we have a copy of the DD-214 that shows his active duty service. It was. Okay. Thank you. It was in the bank. I saw North, so I didn't see Crawford. Thank you. Yes. Okay. Commissioner Alford, can we have your three nominees? Cook, Crawford, and Herring. Commissioner Cornell, your three nominees, please. Cook, Crawford, North. Commissioner Parizia, your three nominees, please. Commissioner Wheeler, your three nominees. Cook, Crawford, and Herring. Cook, Crawford, and Herring for the Bulls. Oh, sorry. We were already in a majority. Sorry, go ahead, sir. Still, I still get a vote. Who are you? I thought everybody was. Who are you? I thought I was a chair. Okay. All right. Cook, North, and Herring. Yeah. Okay, so I would move Crystal Small-Riviera for the post-9-11 veteran position, and then Cook, Crawford, and Herring for the citizens at large, and Joseph North as the alternative member for the terms ending September 30th, 2029. Second. Got a motion in the second. Any further discussion to the motion that's on the floor? Those in favor of the motion, vote by the sign of aye. Aye. As opposed, same sign. Motion carries. Thank you. Mr. Clerk. Chair, that takes us to the Healthcare Advisory Board Annual Work Plan and Accomplishments. Good afternoon, Chair and Commissioners. Trelawney Pennington with Community Support Services, and I am introducing Dr. Leilani Doty, our chair. Thank you, Trelawney. So we're here to give you the report, and thank you for your patience with my technology training. And I want to say first to the Commission Chair and Commission colleagues and support staff, thank you for your leadership. Now, I'm going to talk to you about the Healthcare, the Department of Health, Healthcare Advisory Board, and go over our annual work plan and accomplishments for 2025 to 26. And you have been given the materials. So just as an overview, excuse me, our overview, our meetings are held quarterly. And in January 26, we decided to go quarterly, so we changed from bi-monthly to quarterly. And administrative support is given by community support services. On the advisory board, we have representatives. We have a couple of available seats that are in the process of being filled, but the seats consist of a mental health professional, a doctor or nurse, a dentist or a oral health service provider, a Department of Health representative, a nonprofit healthcare provider, a pharmacist, and a representative of the healthcare agency, serving primarily low-income people. Our major accomplishments for 24-25 are regarding the community health worker program, reviewing programmatic updates, and providing feedback regarding goals, strategies, challenges, and successes. Looking at the community health assessment, the advisory board continues to discuss the challenges in our greater Alachua County area that have been identified through the community health assessment and to prioritize initiatives to combat the health and social issue challenges in Alachua County. We continue the syringe exchange program and continue monitoring progress on the Eastside Urgent Care Clinic. We have a push for promoting dental therapy. It is so critical. It's a critical need in our area. We are promoting a House bill and a Senate bill. Actually, those numbers are probably going to be changed. So right now, it's identified as House Bill 21. That will be probably changed as our legislators go into committee and also Senate Bill 82. We expect that the identification of that will also change. But the purpose of those two bills are for our Florida legislators to help us expand dental access and improve overall dental and general health. So dental therapy allows the state to license qualified dental therapists. So this would be a therapist, a dental therapist has more training and more dental skills than a dental hygienist. And many dental therapists train first as a dental hygienist and then go on for a couple of more years to train to become dental therapists. So they can do fillings, they can do simple extractions, they can do simple things in addition to preventive dental care. The Florida statute will require all dental therapists to graduate from an approved educational program. It would require the dental therapist to work under the supervision of a licensed Florida dentist and to perform services limited to their accreditation standards that are set forth by the American Dental Association Commission on dental accreditation. And actually, dental therapists take the same exam for a licensing that the dentists take. So they're rarely high-functioning, but an intermediary dental service to expand dental health throughout the state of Florida. There are actually 14 states in the United States that have licensed dental therapy programs, and we want Florida to be number 15. The statute will also authorize Medicaid to reimburse for dental services provided by certain mobile dental units. So our goals and objectives for 25-26 are to continue to support dental health care and related initiatives. And we ask you to provide a letter of support to our Florida legislators who are sponsors of this dental therapy legislation. And in the Senate, it would be Senator Jay Collins. In the House of Representatives, it would be Representative Jamie Perez. And your letter of support would be really helpful to emphasize to them the need for this in the state of Florida. The Health Care Advisory Board will also explore initiatives to increase access to health services and resources where residents live. So these would be services in place. We would also participate in a quarterly review of the Community Health Improvement Plan. We would receive periodic updates from the staff on Community Health Offering, Initiative Care, and Educational Services, the Choices Program. And those applications for grants are in the process of being reviewed and ultimately approved by you all. We review impacts of health care reform at the national, state, and local level. We review activities of health, county health programs based on reports that we receive, including various community health assessments and initiatives. And we continue to serve as a liaison between the Board of County Commissioners and community-based health-related coalitions and initiatives. Do you all have any questions? Commissioner Prezio? I guess my question is, typically if an advisory board is taking up a position on a House bill, you would refer that to us and then we could add it to our legislative agenda. Are you requesting for us to add those Senate and House bills to our legislative agenda for this coming legislative session? For this coming session, yes. And the dental therapy services can be academically placed. They can be health center placed, hospital-based, and private practice-based special community health service programs. Okay, well, I don't know if there's other comments, but I guess I would move we accept the report and refer the legislative bills to our lobbyists to add to our legislative agenda. I just have a quick question. Just one quick question. The community health care workers, you say you are monitoring the community health care workers program? Yes, yes. Is it gone? Is it done? You sunset it? We're not doing it? Okay, so did we sunset it because it was not effective? Or I can't remember, Anna. I'm old. Just can you tell me why we are sunsetting it? I believe a different agency will now oversee that. It wasn't because it was not effective. It's just moving to a different agency. Okay. All right. Thank you for the reminder. Would you like us to send you an update on that? No, I was just curious to know how effective it was because I know this board was really interested in it, and I didn't realize, I didn't remember that it had been sunsetted. Thank you. Okay. That's okay. Well, that's different. That's what I needed to remember. Okay. Thank you. I remember now. Any other questions? I just wanted to say that. So I sit on the Florida Association of Counties Health, Safety, and Justice Board. We deal with broad health issues. We've already, the deadline is passed to put things into that legislative agenda, but I might be able to walk it on if I can get the information by next week. Okay. Enough information to create the sort of the legislative ask, I guess. So if I could get that information, I can try to put together the, fill out the form for FAC and walk it on as a potential for the Florida Association of Counties to take on as an issue for this year. I think that, you know, given the fact that Florida has one of the worst records for dental access in the country that, you know, that we make a strong case for that. Okay. We will have Trelawney work with Dr. Frank Catalanato to get the information. That would be helpful to you. All right. Thank you. The comment that I was just making here that I'm sure people didn't hear, because I know when we talk up here, people like to know what it is we're talking about. When you have it at the top of your list as monitoring it, will you no longer then be monitoring the effectiveness of the program? We will still continue to request updates on that program. Okay. All right. Thank you. Okay. I have a question. I remember when serving in the legislature from 2006 to 2012 that the Dental Association did not support this. So things have changed since the last time I was a legislator because they were fighting against it. I respect your memory, Commissioner Chestnut. But sometimes in a health provider disciplines and professions, there are concerns regarding possible overlap of services and billing and funding. And sometimes it takes a while for those concerns to be worked out. And, for instance, in the area of dentistry, there was activity such as that with the bringing on of people we call dental hygienists. So this is kind of going back into history. And now dental hygienists are accepted in probably all dental practices. And so this is sometimes it just takes a while for things to be worked out and understood and for people to understand where support and where boundaries are. And I think that's the process that's going on. And fortunately there are 14 states in the United States that have gone through that and have legislated and thrive with dental therapists. And we see the need in Florida. And so that's very, very important. So I respect your memory of your history. And that's just part of the activity of putting in something very, very important and new to serve the population. I guess my question was the Dental Association is supporting that now? That was just my question because I remember back then they were fighting against this. Dr. Catalano is the best one to kind of go over that, a brief summary of that. And we can get him to get some information to you. Mr. Chair, Mark Sexton, Communications Director and former Legislative Director. Dental therapy has been on every session, I think, for the last 20 years with broad support. I think the Florida Association of County even had it on their legislative agenda one year. There has been major pushback from the dentist associations, and that's been responsible for what's killed it year after year. As a matter of fact, most recently it was this last legislative session. There were two bills that ultimately died concerning dental therapy. Thank you. I just wanted to know that. That's all. That's just curious. All right. Okay. Thank you, Mark. Any other questions or concerns? Thank you. And thank you again for your leadership. Thank you. We had a motion. What was the motion, please? For these bills to our lawyers. Legislative delegation. Okay. Sure. Okay. Any further discussion to the motion that's on the floor? Those in favor of the motion, vote by the sound of aye. Aye. Those opposed, same time. Motion carries. Thank you. Mr. Clerk. Mr. Chair, that takes us to item one under the action items, which is the selection of the county poet laureate. Good afternoon. Gina Peebles, Assistant County Manager, Chief of Staff. In 2019, the county established our poet laureate program. Since then, we have had E. Stanley Richardson as our poet laureate. He has again applied, as well as three other potential candidates. The Arts Council did shortlist the applicants to the top three. And so you did hear from Lola Haskins at the beginning of your meeting today. We do have Mr. Richardson here in the audience. And then we also had a third top-ranked candidate, Mr. Williams, who was not in attendance. So, of course, if the commission has questions, I'm very happy to answer them at this time. Mr. Cornell. A new light. I was going to move Stanley Richardson. And I'd love to hear from him if he's got a moment. I know he had some surgery. I did have one question, though. I did wonder, does the poet laureate program have a number of years that a person can serve in the role? So, it's indefinite at this point. Okay. Thank you. We only have one. Yeah, and he's amazing. Come up. Give us a poem about why you're amazing. Mr. Chair, commissioners, good afternoon. As the Lachua County Arts Council did a call for artists for poet laureate a few months ago. There were several applicants. The council scored them. I was by far the, I think there was a 20-point gap between me and the next three applicants. So, I think that speaks for itself if you take the advice of your arts council. So, I want to say thank you again for this program. Thank you for supporting the literary arts in Lachua County. Give you a little update about some things that I'm doing as your poet laureate. We had a, recently, August 20th, there was a community, I did a reading at Heartwood Soundstage, a free community reading at Heartwood Soundstage, basically chronicling many of the poems that I've composed as your poet laureate over the years. On Sunday, we had our 13th annual Art Speaks, bringing poetry and people together. Some of you attended our 10th year anniversary. So, again, it was a very good event. So, Sunday, I did that. Monday, yesterday, I had rotator cuff surgery and I had post-op this morning. So, I had to be here today. A couple more things I want to mention. Thank you, Mr. Sexton. I'm thanking him because he introduced me to Mr. Evans Hale, the maestro, the conductor of the Gainesville Chamber Orchestra. So, a few years ago, I composed a poem for your annual meeting. The name of that poem is called Eden. I guess you like it very much. So, with the assistance of Ms. Stella Sung, who is an internationally award-winning composer, and with the Gainesville Chamber Orchestra, we're going to put that poem to music. They're currently composing the music right now. They're going to present it in February for the, I think it's the 250, celebrating the 250. It's going to be an event at Santa Fe College. But, I just, hopefully, I've done a good job and served you well, and it is my wish to continue to serve you as your poet laureate. Thank you. Commissioner Alfred? Yeah, can I ask a quick question, Mr. Richardson? I've always enjoyed your, you know, I'm a bad poet. Well, I don't know. You should never call yourself a bad poet. But, I'm, yeah, I'm not, and I appreciate your advocacy for people and language and the ability to, you know, express deeper feelings and all of that through language. I think it's so important. I spent several hours at the jail yesterday, and one of the things that I found out about is a recent program with the library district, helping inmates to learn to write and read poetry. And, I was curious if you had been involved with that, because it was such a cool thing. I read your comment about it. Oh, did you? I did it first. Okay. Yeah. So, yeah, I'm involved with that. Ms. Linda Q, who's a librarian, we've worked together several times, and she asked me to come out, and I did a workshop out there. Some, maybe at the beginning of the year, with both men and women. Yeah. There were two sessions. We did one with men, did one with women. So, yes, I'm familiar with that, and I did do a workshop out there. It was very rewarding. They didn't mention your name when the person that I got the information from, I'm not sure they would have known to tell me. But, what I wanted to do is, I assumed that you had been involved, because it sounded like something you were doing. I wanted to specifically thank you for your time and effort with that really challenged part of our community that really, you know, needs to work on their voice and, you know. It was an amazing event opportunity. I hope to do it again soon. I'm sure Ms. Q, who is the person who was over there, she's a librarian at the Alachua County Ditch and Titching Center, and so she invited me out several months ago, and we did a workshop with some of the folks over there. Well, they're doing an autobiography writing now, but I bet they're going to do poetry again, and I just really want to tell you thank you for doing that. Linda, Ms. Q, she's a poet herself, and she just did a chapbook, so I know her very well. And one of our partners is the Alachua County Library District, and I'm going to be back before you sometime shortly, asking you for some money to help fund the Poetry Festival. So, I'll let you know. Thank you for supporting the arts. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioner Prizia. I guess I just wanted to ask that our arts council consider a tenure. I love E. Stanley Richardson, and I'm so excited that he's our Poet Laureate, and I want to think about a tenure time, like maybe 10 years, or what would be an appropriate tenure time so we could also support him and the hard work he's done to bring up other young poets in our community and being able to recognize their efforts and hopefully get them engaged in becoming the next Poet Laureate. But maybe he can be a mentor to somebody from Art Speaks who wants to step into that role next. So, thank you. And thank you, Stanley, for all of your hard work. I'm sorry to miss the Art Speaks this year, but I've been so impressed with what you've been able to do in your role to create more awareness and education and really kind of, I think, a much more prominent place for the idea of not just poetry, but arts and literature in general in our community. So, thank you. Commissioner Wheeler, you had anything? Just one second, Stan. Just one second. Yeah, I wanted to ask you, too. I missed it this year as well, but I enjoy very much what you're doing with the youth and the community. And I know that Miss Haskins, who was here earlier, has also worked with you in the past. You all have done some things together. Yes, as one of our, at the Poetry Festival, which I do with Art Speaks, we invite, we have a free community creative writing and poetry workshop. The festival is three years old, I think, yeah, three years old. The first year we had, we brought in a guest poet. Every year we bring in a guest poet. The first year we brought in Mark Murillo from Connecticut. Second year we brought in Miss Natalie Graham, who is the, she's actually from Gainesville, but she was living in California. She was at University of Cal State Fullerton. She's a creative writer there. She got an MFA here at UF. I'm not sure where she got a PhD from, but she was associate dean at Cal State Fullerton, and she was also teaching creative writing there. And she was also the inaugural poet laureate of Orange County, California. We brought her in. And last year I invited Miss Haskins to be our guest poet. One of the things about the application process, I'm totally against a 10-year cap on it. I think it should be open. And one of the things why I always apply is to make sure we have applicants and good applicants. And they're not just giving it to me because they like me. They're giving it to me because I had the best application. So anyone's open to apply, I will continue to apply as long as you don't cap me or say I can't apply anymore. And for that reason, I think this is a great program, poet laureate, and I will continue to apply just to make sure that we have a great pool of applicants. I would just encourage you to use all of these people that are in the community to help support what it is you're doing here, too. Oh, absolutely. That's one of the things about what I do personally because poetry, there are a lot of so-called gatekeepers. Poetry can be perceived as elitist sometimes. So I try to, being a rural country boy who grew up in a large way who just happens to like writing, I try to encourage everybody to come out, especially young people. No one told me that I could be a poet or artist when I was a little kid. They always told me I could be a football player, hence my rotator cuff. But no one told me that I could be an artist. So one of the things that I'm really passionate about is encouraging young people, especially young men, who think they may have to choose between sports, athletics, and this artsy type thing that they do with nobody knows they do. So I want to encourage them. You don't have to choose. You can do both. Well, thank you. That's what I, because you spoke to it, you know, that it's not exclusive. No. It's not an exclusive society that we have here so that anybody. Everybody's voice matters. That's right. And all of these people that applied, you know, I don't know who they were all on the board and that sort of thing, but they obviously have a love for it as well. So you've got an army right there already built in. And this is a thing that's a bad poet, Commissioner. Yeah, I appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just want to say, Stan, you have done a great job representing Alachua County as the poet laureate. So thank you. All right. We've got a motion and a second, I believe. And those in hopes. I didn't know. Do you have a motion and a second? Uh, yes. May I speak? Your motion is to? Point Stanley. Okay. May I speak to the motion, Mr. Chair? Well, I didn't hear. I was sitting here and didn't hear the motion. I think Mr. Richardson has done an excellent job. I've known him for a long time and his wife as well, and he's done an excellent job. Um, the thing is, I would like to see that perhaps the county either expand its, um, the money that it allocates towards us. So you could point, like, two people. Like, I would like to see, like, I heard the other, um, applicant, Lola Haskin, speak when she was here. And I thought she had a lot of really interesting things to offer. And I think it's important that we diversify in this community and that we encourage people to participate. And honestly, I know Mr. Richardson said that he applies because he thinks it encourages people to apply. I don't see that. I think that it will discourage people to apply if they see that the same person just gets appointed every time. And I don't understand why there's points assigned to the applicants. Um, the, the poet laureate, it was recommended, um, that, uh, three people. The motion was made to recommend E. Stanley Richardson, Lola Haskins, and Superior Moves Records, LLC, which I don't think, I think that should be out. Um, as the three topped ranked. Well, then there's scores attached. I, I just don't think you should be scoring something like this. It's not, shouldn't be a competition. It should be something that encourages people to participate in. And if you see you have more people interested, then perhaps you want to consider expanding your program so that it's not just exclusive to one person who kind of people are like, well, why should I apply? Because it seems a little stacked. And it's not that he's not deserving of the position. He's good at it. But, like, don't you think you want to see what somebody else has to offer? Just saying. Thank you. Thank you. Any further citizen comments to the motion? Back to the board. Those in favor of the motion, vote by the sign of aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed? Any sign? Motion carries. Aye. I'm an aye. Mr. Blurt. Mr. Chair, that takes us to the new Alachua County Strategic Guide, Board Focus Areas, and Board Objectives. Good afternoon, Commissioners. Donna Bradbrook, Budget and Fiscal Services. You have received the updated language as part of the agenda item. I do not have a formal presentation for you today. But if you do have any comments or questions, and then I also have information if you'd like me to share that. I know you have a busy agenda. Okay. Commissioner Prisiot? I just had two quick comments. One is under economic development, we have a list, particularly in key areas. And I just wanted to be sure that food systems is on that list because we've put a lot of money and energy into it. And we have a person whose whole job description is that. So that was one. And then under our waste management, under economic development, the food system, we have a list of, there's a list. Okay, I'll read it to you guys. I was trying to go through it quick. It says, strengthen local public private members, advocate for state and federal investments to advance targeted economic developments across the county, particularly in key areas such as EcoLoop, Airport, Gateway, and the Forward Focus Initiative in eastern Alachua County. I wanted to add to that food systems because we've already made major investments. So that was the one. And then the other is in waste management. Just for Ken's happiness, we have advanced the county zero waste goals. And I think we've changed that to circular economy goals. So just a language thing on that one. And to say thank you. This looks great. I'm excited about the structure of this. And I guess I just wanted to hear just, if you could, just a brief kind of what's next in terms of how the departments are aligning their individual strategic goals with these and the kind of next steps around reporting and dashboarding and those sorts of things that we've been talking about. Sure. I have a couple quick comments on that prepared. So I'll just go ahead and read through my bullet points. And then I can address any questions. So the next phase would be starting, obviously, after adoption of the new strategic guide language and after October 1st. But we are looking to do department implementation and change management. So we want to improve regular communications between the departments and the board on priority areas. Again, we use the terms non-siloed implementation, continuous feedback loops. And specifically, we want the departments to be identifying deliverables and resulting outcomes and have those reviewed by the board in kind of an open dialogue or maybe a policy discussion session for each of the focus areas. And we are definitely going to be assigning accountability within each of the operating departments. So as those continuous feedback loops evolve and we kind of narrow down exactly what we're looking for as we go forward between what the department's capacity is and what they're recommending and what the board is also looking for, then those will be, you know, memorialized in a built-out strategic guide. And then additionally, in the areas of information transparency and communication, we are working very strongly. And Mr. Crosby and the rest of the budget and fiscal staff have already started meeting to talk about aligning this within the annual budget process and the budget document reporting in the new OpenGov budgeting system into 27. And again, that specific OpenGov will be 427, but we'll be wrapping it into the current budget process. We also are going to be improving transparency with our reporting through AchieveIt and the county's website. We're going to be actively using Zen City for macro pages, as well as micro pages that are going to align the different focus areas into, again, the department outcomes. Increasing community surveys to evaluate progress in the communications. Again, we're looking at using Zen City platform to be doing some of that outreach and press releases in communications department. Our goal is ultimately to have monthly or bimonthly operational updates to the commissioners and interactive sessions with the commissioners so that it's not just a once a year deep dive into one department, but it'll be a revolving annual review of what's going on through our strategic guide process. And then, as we had talked about late last year, a potential partnership with Community Foundation for county-wide initiatives that are beyond the scope of just county operations. Commissioner Cornell. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So, I agree with Anna's two additions or changes. You know what else I would add to the economic one, though, commissioners, is I would add circular economy. Yeah, because I think of it as EcoLoop is a property we own, but I think it's actually a bigger issue with some of our private partners, you know, the reuse project. Yeah. All right. So, did you have anything to add? I did. Okay. So, I'll wait or I'll second your motion then, Mary. My only other comment, Donna, is I don't know how you got all of this on five pages. I think it's great. I think much like the climate action plan discussion that we had with the intern is going to visualize and bring to life the plan, I think it's critically important that these just aren't words that sit on a table, that we utilize the same efforts and resources and multiple interns to actually bring to life this strategic plan after we get the department's feedback, because, you know, I think of them critically important to that process. And the reason I think it's important is, you know, we have our comp plan, that's our plan. But this board, and specifically this board in 2020, kind of said, we haven't done this in a while. And we went to Tuscarilla and, you know, Anna and Mary really leaned in and we kind of came up with the strategic plan. This is the update. And the big change with this update is we're really incorporating staff. And with AI and with, you know, people's attention spans, perhaps not more than 20 to 30 seconds, I think it's important that we tell our story. And so I would love or I look forward to seeing, you know, maybe the first quarterly update, some of the visuals that staff is preparing and how you're bringing this to life so we can share it with the community. Thank you. And it's a living document. You know, it just continues to evolve. Okay, Commissioner Alfred, and then Tommy. Thank you. Also, this is like a web more than it is linear, you know, or siloed different categories. And so one of the things that jumped out with me under housing security was you talk about the different vulnerable populations that we need to support housing interventions for. And I would have added folks that are suffering from mental health challenges to that particular list because that ties in with, like, three other things where we talk about justice and public safety and we talk about health. But I think that that population is considering that that's over half of our jail population are folks with mental health issues. I think we definitely need to make sure that that's included in that list. Yeah. So, anyway, thank you. And, again, I appreciate this. And, you know, like our emergency management plan, I do think that the public is going to be real interested in hearing about this. So I do look forward to getting a presentation at some point when we get it sort of all ironed out. So, thank you. Thank you very much. Yeah. My only other thing. Oh, Tommy. Go ahead. My only other thing is that that point there is, like, in this, it references them a lot. It represents our bike pedestrian master plan, our comprehensive plan, our climate action plan. You know, she just mentioned our emergency management plan. But I think being able to cross-reference them back and forth, like the links to those plans and then the links to this so that, to Ken's point, if they become living documents and people who are interested in one issue see how it's linked to the county's overall goals and vice versa is going to be really important, too. But I'm sure that's in the works. I just wanted to point it out for the community so they could understand how all the planning that we're doing and the Parks Master Plan is another one linked together within this document. Absolutely. That was something we were already kind of brainstorming about with use of Zen City. Now that we have the pavement or the transportation page, we have the forward focus page. So, those will all be aligned under this as well as, and, you know, we really kind of drilled into the importance of looking at what we've already done, what we've already adopted, what, you know, the motions we've already made to make sure that we're continuing to support those as part of the strategic planning process. How is the Zen City page going to interact with our web page? I mean, I find it already hard for us to navigate. I find it really hard to navigate our pages and how, like, we've got so much density of materials and different departments and units that cross each other. But then it's really hard to navigate. So, I'm just wondering how all of the stuff we're going to put on Zen City is going to interact with our website. You know, I think, again, I'm not a Zen City expert, but having kind of navigated through Zen City over the past nine months. When you kind of envision the page, so if I'm thinking of the strategic guide page, we've got ten areas. So, those would be kind of like the big areas. If somebody's interested in housing security, they would click on that. And then beneath that would be information, but there could be the metrics. There could be the department input. There could be the housing trust. And it would be, you know, some information. Zen City is really more of an abbreviated, kind of like an elevator conversation. Yeah, I understand what Zen City is. My concern is that nobody finds it because it's not on our website or people go to our website for information. Are they going to be pushed to the Zen City? Are we going to promote, like, how is the Zen City being sort of spun up, I guess? Mr. Chair, Mark Sexton, Communications Director. Zen City is evolving into what is ultimately going to be the dashboard that we've been talking about. There will be a main Zen City landing page where you can get to forward focus, road projects, your strategic information. And, yes, it will be integrated into the website. On the home page, there will be a quick and easy link to go to it. We're kind of getting it populated now. Departments are really starting to understand it. We have forward focus. We have the comp plan process that's happening. We have the road projects. We are involved in the community survey that is a very broad kind of community survey that they've done in almost every city and county they've worked with. So that kind of information will be available. But, yes, the plan is to have this integrated in a clear and accessible way on the website. And we look forward to working with our new ITS director on making that happen. Mr. Chair, so first let me say on behalf of the manager and myself that we do appreciate all the effort that Donna and her team has put in to doing this work and kind of being the liaison and working on the strategic guide to the detail. So in terms of what this means on the budget side, I think it's important that you understand we did a little deeper dive this year. But in terms of a continuation budget of just enhancements, that's probably not what you're going to see next year. So as we implement this, we're trying to go back to square zero, ground zero, and look at, meet with the departments individually to talk about what are you doing, how is it aligning, what doesn't align, why not, you know, is it something that we missed and this is something you should be doing, you have to do it as part of your job, and we need to make sure that rolls up. But we have a very aggressive and deep discussions upcoming for the preparation of the 27 budget. And I can tell you a lot of my staff are having a lot of heartburn right now and is having this conversation. So, because it is a lot of effort to put in. But what you'll see coming out as we prepare in early spring may look a little different. It may come to you in a little different format as far as information. I, too, personally share in Commissioner Chestnut's concerns about the economy and especially the continued push of property tax relief and what that's going to mean to our budget and if it's going to be supplemented or if it's going to be you all need to learn to live within what you have, what that looks like. We don't know yet. So we are preparing for that. Our budget will be prepared for that. But one of the things that was mentioned by Commissioner Alford is the, we talk about the departments and this plan not being a siloed plan and how that's going to work together. And that is a challenge that Don and I have discussed quite frequently about how we roll this out because we build budgets in silos. But yet we're trying to build them in alignment with a strategic guide that is not in silos. So that is something that's going to take some time for us to resolve how that looks. So when we look at some things, we may be bringing Ramon and Gus and Steve and all together at the same time to talk about some of these issues. All those are yet to come. But I just wanted you to know that we are aware of how it's going to roll out. We just don't know what that mess looks like yet. So we're there and we appreciate the support. And, again, this wasn't just a task that the board said, hey, we just want to update our strategic plan. This was an effort by everyone, the community's involvement as well as staff's involvement, as well as the board's participation and involvement. So we hope to get there sooner than later. But it is quite a task that we are challenged, and we will get there. Thanks. Commissioner Cornell? Can I have a motion? Yes. Yes. So I would go ahead and move staff's recommendation with the four changes that you heard today, one, Anna's to food systems and circular economy added to the economic circular economy, replacing that term zero waste in the waste, and then adding the mental health component into the housing security. Was there anything else? I'm full of my head. Okay. Got a motion and a second. Are there any closer discussion? My only comment I'll make is, Tommy, that's right in line with what we talked about, and to see a government really pushing zero-based budgeting, taking technology, taking the board's direction and the input from the departments, and really looking at it a whole new way is right in line with what I think the public is asking for their government to look at every single dollar we're spending, which is theirs, and are we using it the best and serving the public the best with the limited resources that we have? So thank you for that. Mr. Chair, one other thing I'd be remiss as we talk about the economic strains, just the plan was built as a comprehensive of where we want to get to as a county. When we get into budgets, your priorities become what you're willing to spend money on, obviously. So while we didn't prioritize, there's going to come a time where it's going to come back to the board with limited resources to say, okay, this is everything you want done. I'm not sure we can do all of this for the resources we have, so we're going to have to start looking at, you know, not necessarily what's more important, but just what can we afford to do right now. So just keep that in mind as we move forward. You're not out of the catch yet. So thanks. Okay, any further discussions to the motion? Are there any citizen comments? Okay, back to the board. Those in favor of the motion, vote by the sign of aye. Aye. Aye. It is opposed. Same sign. Motion carries. Thank you, commissioners. Okay, thank you. Aye, sir. Chair, that takes us to item J, land conservation projects. First up is approval of the Loch Luce Slough Preserve 10-year management plan. Good afternoon, Mr. Chair, commissioners. My name is Ryan Kennelli. I'm a senior planner with the Environmental Protection Department Land Conservation and Management Program. With us here today, we have Andy Christman, our program manager. Holly Nichols, who is a public hunt area biologist with the Fish and Wildlife Commission, and Lieutenant Jared Hayes in the back of the room with the Law Enforcement Division of FWC. And we are here to present the Loch Luce Slough Preserve 10-year management plan for your approval. Here's just a nice photo from out on the preserve. To remind everyone listening, the Alachua County Forever program mission is to acquire, improve, and manage environmentally significant lands that protect water resources, wildlife habitats, and natural areas suitable for resource-based recreation. To orient folks to the preserve that we are discussing today, the Loch Luce Slough Preserve is tucked down in the southeast corner of Alachua County between the communities of Hawthorne and Island Grove, and it is between U.S. Highway 301 and much of the preserve borders, the Putnam County line. This map just shows all of the conservation lands in Alachua County with the Alachua County-owned properties in the darker green shade and then partner conservation lands in the lighter green, and then the yellow hint is county-owned conservation easements. So, for Loch Luce Slough Preserve specifically, it is just a little over 6,200 acres. It is our largest preserve in the Alachua County Forever program. It was acquired between the years of 2019 and 2024 over four separate acquisitions for just over $17.5 million using Wild Spaces Public Places surtax funds. There are 12 intact natural communities on the preserve. The absolute highlight of that is a two-and-a-half-mile portion of the Loch Luce Slough itself. So, with the acquisitions on this preserve, that entire slough is now under protected conservation lands as it drains out of the lake, out to Putnam County, and then into Orange Creek. So, that was a really exciting, critical part of this acquisition. In addition to that, there are over approximately 200 individual wetlands totaling over 1,500 acres. I will talk a little bit about some of the site history of this preserve, but over 3,200 acres, or just over half of the property, is in Pine Plantation, has been converted to that. And the preserve is well-suited, given its size and diverse habitats on the property, to suit both wildlife habitat and also public recreation opportunities. So, these key management objectives are relatively standard for most of our preserves. Just how they are implemented on each site is the big difference. So, our main objectives here are to maintain, enhance, or restore existing natural communities. We want to inventory natural features on the site, including plant, animal, and natural communities, and then protect significant listed plant and animal species, as well as develop and implement a prescribed fire management plan. Additionally, we want to develop and implement a forest resource management plan. This one is a little bit more intensive for this preserve, given that over half of it had been converted to industrial timber in the past. So, this is going to be a little bit bigger focus than normal for us, compared to some of our other preserves. Certainly, we would want to be continuing to protect water resources from adverse impacts, effectively and responsibly manage cultural resources, and promote public outdoor recreation and environmental education, consistent with those natural and historic resources. Some of the strategies for accomplishing those objectives. Fire management, as I'm sure you've heard us say many times, is our most effective tool in the restoration toolbox. So, we will be working to reintroduce prescribed fire on a regular interval out on the preserve. Forest resource management, implementing a strategy to convert all these thousands of acres of planted timber, back into longleaf pine habitats where it is appropriate. Prescribed fire will be a major component of that, as well. Restoration is kind of using all of the things on this slide, but we'll be targeting those 3,200 acres of pine plantation. That is going to take many, many years and decades to achieve that, but we will be, we've already begun that process, and we'll continue to work towards that. And, of course, also monitor the condition of other natural communities, not just the pine plantations. Invasive plants, control or eradicate as many of those as we are able to do so. Similar to that, feral animals, there are certainly wild hogs out on this preserve, so managing those will be a key part of our strategy. Cultural resources, there are documented sites within the preserve, so we would want to be protecting those from any kind of disturbance and then coordinating with the state if we come across additional sites that should be documented and protected. And then monitoring, this could be staff doing photo point monitoring of restoration efforts, but certainly site security and working with partners to ensure that the preserve is safely being used. So previous uses, starting from most recent to most historic, much of the 1900s, it was used as civic cultural land planted in pines, many timber harvests happening over those decades. The local community had a kind of community hunting group that had an agreement with Weyerhaeuser, who was the primary previous landowner by far. So they had experiences on the property doing hunting and other recreation. And then cattle grazing was also used out there even into the 2010s, but certainly a little bit more popular in the 1900s. The part of the preserve's present footprint was actually included in an original version of the La Calusa Wildlife Management Area back in the 1960s and 70s. That WMA has, you know, kind of morphed since then, and currently the La Calusa Wildlife Management Area, which is St. John's-owned, is all west of U.S. 301. Based on finding some herdy pots and even still active live cat-faced trees, there certainly was turpentine and navel stores presence here in the early 1900s. And then really, really rewinding pretty far back, there are archaeological sites on the preserve and in the adjacent area of La Calusa Lake that date as far back as 8500 BCE. So a very long, rich history of human use in this area. So natural communities, I mentioned there are 12 distinct natural communities still on the property and five altered communities. Again, the major highlight being two and a half miles of the slough itself, draining on this map out of La Calusa Lake from the west, flowing east through the preserve and into Putnam County. There are over 1,500 acres of wetlands, including the slough. Most of the natural communities are in fair to good condition, and the most dominant is you can see on the north end of the map where there's that large blue blob that is a large basin marsh. That is the largest single natural community we have on the preserve. The primary altered land cover is pine plantation, and that is shown on the map in the sort of light green color, and then some of the greenish-yellow colors with the hashing here. These are also pine plantations. They have just been thinned, and then anything in this sort of tan color, which you can see in the far northwest corner and several other places, those were stands that were clear-cut before county acquisition. That pine plantation, again, is over 3,200 acres. Some photos from the site. You saw this Flatwoods Lake in the first slide. We also have, moving clockwise, a photo of a dome swamp, a basin marsh, and the slough itself here, wildlife that can be found on site and plants. We have one state-threatened plant documented on the preserve, as well as three state-endangered plants and five commercially exploited species. There are also three state-threatened animals and one federally endangered species. That's the wood stork. But we do have southern fox squirrel and gopher tortoise on the preserve, which is really exciting given sort of its intensive use in the past, so the fact that those species are hanging on is great, and then, of course, game species like turkey and deer as well. There are over 6,000 acres. Anywhere in any county in Florida, you're going to have a lot of invasive plants, and we certainly have our fair share here, over 30 non-native invasive plant species. Probably our most problematic, at least at the moment, is Caesar weed, but also photographed here, Cogangrass and Japanese climbing fern, tuberous sword fern, and many others. As far as forest resources, there are, again, that number, over 3,200 acres of planted pine plantation. The main strategy for managing that will be timber harvests. Everything on this map that is shown in purple is loblolly pine, which is generally a significantly wetter pine tree than needs to be out here, so we will certainly be trying to restore that to longleaf. All the yellow areas that were clear-cut before county acquisition, that totals about 375 acres. As of this coming winter, all of that shown in yellow will be replanted in longleaf already. This preserve will be a little different than our sort of typical strategy for forest resource management in that this is a lot of acres of pine plantation. So we will be prioritizing the areas that have some good remnants, historical components, good wiregrass, or some kind of component of the native understory. There's a lot of areas that sort of look like this photo where it's just pines packed into lines and not a lot going on in the understory. Those will probably be a little bit lower on the priority list, and we'll get to them when we can. Some of those stands will be clear-cut and replanted with either longleaf or slash as appropriate. If we already have some rather mature slash pines, maybe we can thin those and underplant with longleaf. But there'll be a variety of strategies given the stands out on the property for many, many years to come. Prescribed fire, as I mentioned, that is the most valuable tool we have in our restoration toolkit. There are approximately 4,200 acres of fire-dependent land cover, most of those being a two- to four-year fire return interval. So we are looking at needing to burn 1,000 to 2,000 acres on this preserve alone every year. We have a lot ahead of us, but we have already begun that this year. We've already burned, or this past burn season, we did several hundred acres already. So we have a lot to go. We have a lot of fire lines being currently installed, and we'll have to be constantly catching up to that so we can get more accomplished. But we're looking forward to the challenge. So from a recreational perspective, what we are proposing is coordinating with the Fish and Wildlife Commission to establish a wildlife management area. Part of that plan would, of course, include recreation. And along the center part of the preserve, you can see some red line kind of going through the middle of the preserve. That is Southeast 225th Drive, or the La Calusa Grade. That kind of runs down the middle of most of the property. We're proposing five different trailheads along that road and one of the side roads to allow public access out to what may be as much as 21 miles of recreational trails, and that includes the green and yellow areas you see in your map. Some of those trails need to still be established, so the actual mileage may change, but that is what we're aiming for. The green area, or sorry, let me start with the yellow area in the south end. That's over 2,200 acres. We are proposing this be included in the wildlife management area with FWC, but that it is closed to hunting every day of the year. So this would mean the southern portion, all the trail systems, would be available for hikers, bikers, and equestrian users every day of the year. The green area is what we are proposing to allow for hunting through FWC's WMA quota permit system. That would be FWC administering and managing, selecting the hunters that happen, that are allowed to use that portion over select weekends, which I'll talk about on the next slide. When there is not a hunt going on in this portion of the preserve, it would be open for those other recreational users and then just close for those weekends. One of the reasons we selected the area in green that we did is that it is across public roads. So when we close those trailheads, it would be very obvious that somebody is leaving the hunted area, crossing a public road, and then not entering into an open trailhead should they do that. So we feel like this is physically isolated and would be obvious to folks. The areas in blue, we are reserving from the proposed wildlife management area, and that is to allow us to offer a couple of multi-year hunting license agreements. So that would be groups of two to four folks, ideally local, that would be able to apply for hunting access on those blue portions of the map in exchange for caretaker services like mowing our roads, disking our fire lines, helping us with cleaning up solid waste and dumping and some security issues. So we feel that the details that I will talk about with the hunting quota permit system in the green area and then these blue opportunities are really a good way to offer as many opportunities as we can within the allowed ACF hunting business plan. So this area in green is a little over 3,000 acres, and what we are proposing is to close this area down for 51 days of hunting, and those are on long weekends, typically a Friday through Monday or maybe just three of those days, and that is over an eight-month period between September and April. So over that eight-month period, only 51 weekend days, and we have at the moment structured it so that all of December and much of January there are still no hunting. So there would be some cooler weather opportunities for other recreators in addition to the year-round access in the yellow portion of the map. The seasons that we have been coordinating with FWC to discuss include archery, muzzle loading, a family hunt, general gun, small game, youth turkey, and spring turkey, and what each of those seasons allows for is deer and wild hog could be taken during archery, muzzle loading, family hunt, and general gun. So that's the deer season, and that is in the fall and early winter. And then small game would just include gray squirrel, rabbit, and also wild hog, and then in the spring for the two turkey seasons, it would just be turkey. Many of those, the fall deer seasons are 10 quota permit holders with a guest. They would be selected for a given weekend, and those are their three days to hunt, and then it's somebody else's turn the next weekend. Turkey would only be five no-cost quota permits, and then general gun actually is no quota, so it would be open to anyone. All of those seasons, except for small game, we would allow vehicle access out so that hunters can disperse farther across that 3,000 acres and then help facilitate getting their harvested game off the property. Small game would be just foot access, so it would be closed to just hunters, but they would not be able to drive onto the property. And again, FWC would be managing that part of the hunt for us, but they would not be doing any of the land management. That would all still defer to us. And in coordination with them, we would be in full control over what species can be taken from the preserve, what dates, what seasons we would allow. That decision-making process lies with us, as well as all of the other land management activities. They are just facilitating the hunts that we allow. So to give you sort of a rundown of the process of establishing this wildlife management area, including a slight backtrack to start off. So we presented to the board back in December of 2023, and we're authorized to pursue establishment of this wildlife management area with FWC. Since then, we have been working with FWC biologists and have identified this roughly 5,300-acre WMA and have been discussing the proposed rules for that property. A public survey is currently live to receive feedback on what those proposals would look like. Once that public comment period stays open for quite a while, but pending board action here and further discussions with FWC, we would be sort of polishing up our finalized draft rules for the wildlife management area, which includes proposed hunting dates, species allowed to take, those sorts of details, along with a board chair letter for the FWC commissioners of support of establishing this wildlife management area. FWC commissioners would then take an initial vote on those draft WMA rules at their November meeting, and then pending our board approval and the initial FWC commissioner approval. We would then, our staff would then work with FWC staff to finalize those proposed rules and start negotiations on a contractual agreement formalizing our commitment to this wildlife management area, which, of course, will be brought back to you upon its completion. FWC commissioners would vote on those final rules in their winter meeting, which I believe is scheduled February 4th and 5th, and then they would draft an establishment order to designate the new wildlife management area. After that, FWC leadership would execute that establishment order in the spring. Throughout all of this, county staff and FWC would be working to draft the wildlife management area brochure. This is sort of the layout of the rules, the map, what is or isn't allowed. That would be, if you were selected for a quota permit, that would be your reference of what you are or are not allowed to do on the property. We would be working on that with FWC staff in the spring. Public applications for the next year's hunt season would begin May 15th. The WMA rules would be added to Florida Administrative Code, and the WMA would become live and effective July 1 of 2026, with hunting beginning in the fall of 2026. And just, again, to reiterate, county would retain full management authority for the preserve. If at any point we wanted to back out of the WMA years down the road, that is our authority to do so. We have the, we still own the land. We still make the decisions on what species can or cannot be taken, and that does include prohibiting black bear, and we are not proposing any furbearer hunts. And the black bear is per the 2016 BOCC resolution. I did forget to mention that we would be allowing fishing and frogging year-round on the WMA as well. And one other note about the number of permits that would be issued. Over those 51 days of hunting, the various weekends for all of those different hunting seasons, that would be a total of 100 permits issued. They each get to bring a guest, so we would be offering what we find, what we think would be a significant amount of hunters to come out to the preserve, which, again, is a very, very popular form of recreation in this part of the county. We had three different outreach meetings over the last several years, and also one field trip this past summer, earlier in the summer, to see the property. A lot of public comments were very much hunting-focused. There was a tradition of hunting this property. These seem to be the ways that we feel we can cast the widest net to allow the most hunting on the property, while also having significant miles of trails for other hikers and bikers and equestrian users. The plan has also been presented to our Land Conservation Board for input. And then I'm open to questions, but as a reminder, our recommendations for motions would be to approve the Loch Luce Slough 10-year management plan and also approve and authorize a chair letter indicating willingness to establish the WMA with FWC. Okay, we have Commissioner Alfred, Cornell, and Wheeler. All right, thank you. This is really one of the most beautiful parts of our county. I just love this whole area. It's amazing. I had a few questions. First, with respect to listed species, when you say it's a wood stork, it's because we've seen a wood stork. And this is habitat for possibly many other protected species. Indigo snake crosses my mind. Other things like that that may possibly be there or become established there as we protect the property. I just wanted to acknowledge that, right? Yes. And then with respect to snakes in general, do we have any restrictions against people shooting snakes while they're out hunting? Yeah, Mr. Chair, every species that is allowed is listed explicitly in the brochure. There would be no allowance of hunting or shooting snakes. And one of the benefits of having FWC here would be that their law enforcement would be enforcing those rules and regulations. I got into an argument with a hunter, and he's like, oh, I can always shoot a snake. I'm like, no, you can't always shoot a snake. Correct. That would not be allowed on the preserve, no. Okay. Let's see. My second question is, would trapping of feral hogs be allowed year-round? In the publicly hunted part of the WMA, we would not be having trapping of any kind. The take of a wild hog would be if you are out hunting a deer and a hog walks in front, you're welcome to take it. The area that I had in blue on the map where that is a hunting group, those areas we would be encouraging trapping of hogs. I just feel like we should be trying to manage hogs whenever we get the chance to manage hogs. Yes. And I should say, we would not allow public trapping of hogs, but we could work with contractors to trap hogs. Okay, good. That's what I just said. Because in that particular environment, there's a lot of possibility of real damage by a large furrow. And there already is. Yeah, I know. Okay. And then my last question, so we've got a long area that borders Putnam County, maybe part of Marion. Is it all Putnam? Our border is only with Putnam County. Only Putnam. What's on the other side of that? And who's managing that? A portion of the southeast part where the slough actually pops into Putnam County is publicly conservation land with St. John's Water Management District, the Orange Creek Restoration Area. However, this portion that the long boundary we share with Putnam County, this is private land, privately owned. It is private land. Okay. Across the county line. And do you know of any groups that are looking to obtain and protect those lands? What we are aware of is that that property actually recently was sold from private landowner to another private landowner. So I'm sure there are groups looking at it. But yeah. Okay. That is not warehouseer. It is a private individual. Is it? Okay. I know there's some other hunting groups of that way too. So yeah. Yes. Yes. And we actually have a license agreement with the hunting group that utilizes that property to come through one of our roads. It's one of the only ways they can get to it. So. Okay. All right. Okay. Well, y'all have questions. I was going to make staff recommendation. All right. I move staff recommendation. I do have some questions though, but yes. Okay. I'm second. Commissioner Cornell and then Commissioner Wheeler. So first of all, thank you. A tremendous amount of work. Thank you to FWC for being here, but also for working with our staff. As far as fur bearers go, I know you said the black bears under our ordinance of 2016. Commissioners, this was like a huge thing back in 2016. And so if there's no objection on page four, we list the fur bearers. We say raccoons, beavers, bobcats, otters, possum, coyote, skunk, and nutria. Can we add bears? Is that the summary page that we sent you? Page four under additional clarifications where we actually. Yes. So I will say that in the management plan, it explicitly says no bears. In the document that FWC signs. The doc, we, we have been told that we can work the prohibition of bears into both the brochure and the agreement we would enter into with FWC. From this commissioners, that's important. You agree? Do you mind adding that? Not at all. Yeah. So if we can just make that direction, that's, that's really, I mean, I'm not a hunter, but I know there are a lot of hunters. I have no problem with them, but in Elachua County, no bears. And I, I just want us to kind of make a stance about that. So thank you. Thank you, FWC. Okay. Commissioner Wheeler. In the past, we've worked with the Putnam Land Conservancy. I don't know how active they are, you know, anymore, but I know on that side with Lake Santa Fe and that we had worked with, with that group. So I didn't know if that might be a possibility too, that we could hold hands with them, you know, as we take over this property. I don't want to speak for them or for ACT, but I'm comfortable in assuming they are working to do what they can over there. Who is going to be clearing all of that land and replanting all of that? That's a lot. On the preserve? Yes. Well, the idea we are bouncing around now, you know, traditionally our program has just relied on individual contracts for individual timber sales on individual preserves. We are considering a more large-scale formal contract to manage the whole aspect of timber management, including timber cruising, marking timber, managing the sales, replanting the clear-cut stands. It is going to be a massive undertaking. You're not asking Lacey to do all that. Oh, no. Okay. Okay. She would need a lot of volunteers for that. Okay. Okay. Well, and I did want to say, too, that the Tourist Development Committee is really looking at this area to promote because of the water around Hawthorne, Waldo, you know, all this area, the Hawthorne Trail that leads into all of this. We're really trying to promote them as a destination for water people. I know at one time Orange Lake used to be the big destination for bass fishing, and, you know, if we could promote this area, too, for, you know, whatever it is that we are going to make sure. Hunting, okay. Well, we've got hunting for sure, fishing, frogging, whatever is going on with all of that, but I do know that we are really trying to promote this area, so anything that we can do, or you can give us information so that we can put that with our mailings or our, you know, our advertisements, you know, about this area as we grow this place. I mean, it may not be quite ready yet, but eventually it will be in a destination for people for sure because we have the blue ways, too, the trail, and I don't know how, you know, that we can interconnect any of that, too, from Waldo down, but there might be some ways to do that, too. Right, yeah. I think we would definitely be, there are definitely opportunities for incorporating that type of tourism infrastructure. And I know that I've worked for almost 30 years with Florida Wildlife Care, too, in terms of doing rehab work, so I don't know at some point if we can, you know, integrate some of that, too, with the wildlife that we have down there to help promote what we're trying to do in terms of rehab work. Sure. Yeah, okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Okay, we have a motion and a second on the floor. Any further discussion? If not, are there any public comments to the motion? Thank you, Mr. Chair, Commissioner, staff. My name is Tamara Robbins. So I have a couple of questions. Some of them were answered during your question. So I'm wondering about the harvesting of pine straw because there's a lot of pine straw out there. It's good for mulching. People use that, so there's ways to harvest that. Snakes, I really appreciate, Mr. Chair, Commissioner Alford bringing that up because I think that should be listed as something that you just can't hunt. Like, do not kill snakes. Okay. So it was mentioned that frogging was allowed year-round. I'd like to know about that because I don't like the idea of killing frogs. I don't like the idea of how you access to kill frogs. It's wetlands. It's usually water. How are they getting to the areas to kill frogs? Are people allowed to pull a boat on and put it out there in those low? I want to know more about that because I don't think frogging should be allowed. I think amphibians are getting seriously destroyed in this world because of the clearing of wetlands, filling them in, the whole thing. I mean, this is a huge track. I get it. But I think, you know, don't underestimate the importance of the amphibian world. What vehicles are allowed? Said some places are allowed vehicles. What does that mean? Right. I like, it says how to manage hogs. It said trapping. First, it was addressed during the invasive species, and it said they're working towards managing. So I think you should, I'd like to know a little more about that. I'm happy, Mr. Chair, that Commissioner Cornell asked about the bear hunting because I've listened to when you guys said you didn't want any bear hunting on lands that you get to decide what gets to be killed. I'd like to see, I don't know if this currently is a plan or happens, but if you're going to post any signage, which I assume you will, that is directly to communicate rules to the public that if it's in statute or county code, that you list the code. Like, don't just tell people it's prohibited from doing this. Cite the code and the law of which they would be broken. Because, I'll just say, I was just up in Colorado, got back last night, and in their parks, they list, like, if you can't use your monofilament line in the land and there's a rule against it, they cite it right there exactly. So you can look it up and you know that this is serious business. They're not just saying that somebody decided monofilament's dangerous to the animals around the water. They're saying there's actually a law against it and we're citing it. And it's really important so that people can go, oh, well, let's look this up. Oh, it's a $500 fine? Well, I get it, right? Make it serious. Have some teeth to it. I think that's it. I think one of the most important ones. Oh, I'd like to know where the comments can be made still. It was referenced that they're still taking comments. I'd like to know where that is. But the frogging, I think, is kind of my number one thing. Thank you. Thank you. You address any of that? Okay, sure. I may not get all of those. So frogging, as we have been discussing with FWC, is a seldom utilized form of take on these WMAs. It is almost just offered just for the few instances that people may take advantage of that. The harvesting of pine straw, that is not something that our program is interested in doing. It's very labor intensive. It's not, you have to clear the understory of all other vegetation to be able to access the straw to get with equipment. It also removes the fuel we use to do prescribed burns. So that's not exactly something that our program would focus on, although we are aware that some private landowners do utilize that for revenue generating. Vehicle access, it would be only certain roads if you have a permit to do so with a street legal vehicle. This is not like your golf cart or souped up dirt bike. It is a street legal vehicle only. We have also been discussing with FWC the possibility they have within their WMA systems, they have special use vehicle permits. So folks that maybe have a handicap or mobility impairment that want to go on the preserve, even for non-hunting purposes, they can apply. They have to verify that they have a legitimate handicap to be able to get those permits. Trying to remember the other snakes. Snakes. We obviously don't have any regulation, but there would be no taking of any snakes of any kind on any of our preserves ever. We are intentionally restoring these areas for snakes and all of the other wildlife. The posting of rules, we do already have that standard. I think the example that comes to mind, every one of our preserves has a sign that says you must have a leashed dog, and it cites the county code referring to that. Any of the rules and regulations related to hunting on this property will be posted, especially the hunting dates will be posted on the site. It will be in the brochure. It will be on our website. It will be on FWC's website. So there will be multiple locations for people to get that information. What about frogging? I think that came up. Frogging, yeah, that was that, that is a relatively standard offering on WMAs, and I can see if Holly has anything to say about it. It is very seldom taken advantage of or used. Good afternoon, commissioners. My name is Holly Nichols. I'm the public hunting areas biologist for FWC in the north central region. I actually don't have a whole lot of information about frogging because it's just not a very popular activity. I mean, you certainly, I'm sure you have some giggers here in Alachua County. It is just historically, you know, something that we typically offer to our, you know, the public, our constituents. So we usually include that in the fishing regulations, and usually you can do that year round. Obviously during the summer, you're not allowed to discharge a firearm on our WMA, so they would have to gig or, you know, something of that nature if they were to be frogging. But if that is something that the commissioners, Alachua County does not want to move forward with, we can certainly remove that from our regulations. So... I don't know. Well, I mean, it's got a lot of... I don't know. It's got a lot of, what I want to say, cultural context in this area. There are, you know, groups of people that, you know, that's been part of their culture to gig frogs, and it isn't like a... He's right. It's not something that happens very often, but I don't know. I hear about those folks. I've been invited to go. Those folks. Some of my family. I guess the question is, are there breeding seasons for amphibians that we should avoid when it comes to... Is that something that maybe we could just look into, like seasonality, in order to, like, avoid their breeding season so that we're not... Where are frogs indiscriminate breeders? I think the issue was also the destruction of wetlands. Yeah, I mean, like walking out there, would they be allowed to take airboats? I don't even know how they do that. No, so we wouldn't be allowing the use of airboats. They could wade in if they took a vessel out there, like kayak or something of that nature. It kind of depends on where they're trying to gig and what allowable methods are allowed to use. So in this case, it's pretty restrictive. No motor vehicles, no... That's correct. During the summertime, they would have to walk in. So you imagine if someone wanted to bring a kayak, they would have to drag it to whatever... Yes, area they were going. It's a lot of work to gig frogs. But, you know, I don't know. If you guys feel strongly about it, I'm okay with that. Did you get that from public comment at all? We got no... Of the comments we have seen as of last week from FWC's survey and from our several meetings, no comments of any kind pro or anti-frogging. If they get some more line up... Maybe. I will also just note that as the landowner, as the cooperating agency entering into this agreement, I've already stated that we obviously can dictate which species will or will not be taken. We also... Once these rules are established, it is not an unchangeable thing. There is a process to go through FWC. As Holly indicated in our conversations, they actually tend to start with a relatively conservative beginning set of rules for these WMAs and they can always add more to it once something is offered. It's obviously a little bit harder to remove it. So there is a process for that. It is a formal process that does not happen overnight, but we can do that. There are changes after this has been around for a couple of years. Do frogs eat mosquitoes? Probably larvae. Yes, they eat the larvae. Do frogs eat mosquitoes? Yeah, mosquito larvae. Okay, so we need those. We need them. There's still more public health. Hello, Soria Lindbergh. A quick question as someone who also doesn't hunt. I don't even think I would know how to hold a gun. When it comes to the bears, I know you have to go through the state to get the tag. When you go through that process, is there a part that says you can't do that in Alachua County? So I don't know if that's a question for FWC, Chair. And also, is there a signage that says what the fine would be if they break any of those rules? Yeah, because I know the tags come from the state. So that's where I was. Yeah, so unfortunately, thank you for your question, ma'am. I am not authorized to answer any questions related to bear hunting, bear regulations, bear management at this time. But what I can do is take that question down, and I can get an answer for you on that, if that's okay. Okay, that's good. And of course, even if you were to have acquired a state tag to harvest a bear, it would not be allowed on this WMA or any other county-owned properties. Okay. All right. We've had a motion and a second. We've had public comments, so it's back to the board. Those in favor of the motion, vote by the sign of aye. Aye. Those opposed, same sign. Motion carries. Thank you. Nice job, Ryan. Thank you. Chair, that's the second item. It's the Watermelon Pond Land Trust Assignment Option Contract to Purchase Real Property. Mr. Chair, Commissioners, Andy Christman, Land Conservation Program Manager, and today I'm presenting for your consideration the Watermelon Pond Yo Property Acquisition, which is, as the clerk said, an assignment of an option contract. Very similar to what we do normally, but with a slight modification. So this property is a single parcel, approximately 66 acres, currently under contract for acquisition by Alachua Conservation Trust, who has entered into a contract with the Zhao Wangyo trustee of the Zhao Wangyo revocable trust. Property is currently zoned agriculture with the future land use of rural agriculture. On this map, you can see the property is colored in in red, and you may recall that in the past year we've presented four different properties in this immediate area. Those are the green properties immediately north of the red property for your consideration, all of which have now been acquired, and the Yoh property provides the physical connection between those four recent acquisitions and Gauthier State Forest to the south. Here is an aerial image showing, again, three of the four recent acquisitions, the Yoh property outlined in red, and then Gauthier State Forest, which is across county road 337 to the east or to the right, and is immediately adjacent to the Yoh property to the south. You can note on this aerial photo that it's not densely treed. The property did have what would have been the traditional pine overstory and mixed oak hardwoods that you would normally find in a Sand Hill habitat site, mostly removed. However, a notable amount of ground cover remains on site, and that really is the most important biological feature on any Sand Hill habitat site. Can I ask a question about that really quickly while you're on it? Yeah. I did notice that in your land management costs we didn't have reforestation or replanting as a cost associated, and seeing how sparsely planted that was, I assumed we might be doing some of that, or are we just going to rely on burning and natural regeneration? That likely was an oversight on our part. We would be almost certainly doing some longleaf pine planting on the site. There would probably be limited site preparation needed because based on our observations, the amount of competing vegetation on site may not necessitate some of the normal pre-planting treatments, but we would, yeah, we should have included that cost. Okay, thanks. Again, as you see there, county staff to replant and longleaf pine, just didn't include the costs. The property is located within the watermelon pond project area. That's the 15th ranked strategic ecosystem project within Alachua County, and that area, as you're all well familiar, is where the majority of the remnant sandhill habitat, which is a state and globally imperiled upland habitat, that's where the bulk of it in Alachua County is located. Together with those other four acquisitions that have been recently made, that will form a 205-acre preserved footprint, and as I mentioned earlier, connected to Gauthier State Forest. Now, a little bit south of the actual trailhead that the Florida Forest Service manages for Gauthier State Forest, so it's not connected to the parcel where they have their trailhead. Here's an aerial image, and again, you can see, you know, the site does look largely cleared, but in walking around on the property, again, there's a surprising amount of the most critical resource, which is that ground cover diversity remaining on site, and here are two images. The one on the upper right is a driveway easement that is one of the title exceptions that was listed for the property that goes across the southern boundary of this parcel to a property that's further in off of the county road, and then the lower image is a view of county road 337 with Gauthier State Forest on the other side, and here are some images on site, again, just showing, you know, some of the species that are still there, including multiple gopher tortoises occupying the sites, seemingly of different age ranges based on burrow size. The lower right image, you can see in the tree line, there is a mobile home on the site, and the landowner has already removed that as a part of the contract requirements, so there would be no infrastructure remaining on site, and it was a, in somewhat disrepair mobile home. So again, this is a assignment of Alachua Conservation Trust's option contract to the county, so the document that you would be authorizing the chair to execute is the assignment document with the option contract attached to it as an exhibit. The option contract was developed based on our our normal option contract, actually with some review and improvement from our newest senior assistant county attorney, Shari Wallen. This would be a fee simple acquisition, and Alachua County would be the lead manager. This landowner did negotiate a shorter inspection period and due diligence period, so this would be targeted to a closing 75 days from August 12th, which was the day that Alachua Conservation Trust entered into the contract. Due diligence has already started through Alachua Conservation Trust. There were three exceptions that are considered non-standard exceptions. I mentioned the driveway easement. Additionally, there's a blanket easement on the property with Central Florida Electric Co-op, which we found on each of the properties we've acquired recently in this area, and we've worked with Central Florida Electric to translate that from a blanket easement to a defined easement for any utility footprint that's on site. And there's also an easement that we find occasionally on properties that's held by the state of Florida, which basically says in the 1940s, if there was a state road adjacent to the property, that the state retains the right to have a 100-foot-wide easement on the property. There was no state road in this area at that time, so that easement doesn't actually apply to the property. Does the state want our road? Pardon? Does the state want our road? We haven't asked. I don't know. Yeah. The purchase price for this property, $902,789. Estimated due diligence, $37,362 for a total expenditure request of $1,061,348. And that includes our normal 10% contingency for unexpected issues that need to be cleared on the property. And staff recommendations. Mr. Cornell. Great acquisition. Move staff recommendation. Second. Motion and a second. Are there any further discussions in the motion that's on the floor? Are there any citizen comments to the motion that's on the floor? Seeing none, beg to the board. Those in favor of the motion, vote by the sign of an aye. Aye. If those opposed, same sign, motion carries. Mr. Clerk. Andy. Thanks very much. Thank you. Chair, that takes us to the public hearings. The first one is the update to the establishment on the planning commission. So we have to convene as a land. Land. Move that we convene as a land development regulation commission. Second. Okay, got a motion and a second. Those in favor of the motion, vote by the sign of an aye. Aye. Those opposed, same sign, motion carries. Okay. Chair, Chris Dawson, principal planner for growth management. This is a pretty short item. Today, we're asking for some amendments to our unified land development code to make the planning commission more consistent with the board's direction on other advisory boards. The planning commission is a little bit different than some of your other advisory boards. It is established by ordinance and it fills a statutory requirement as your local planning agency, which means that it provides recommendations on comprehensive land amendments as well as recommendations to you on other zoning items, special exceptions, special use permits and rezonings. You're also able to direct them to review potential land development code amendments or other comp plan amendments that might be appropriate. There are seven members appointed by the board on the planning commission to four-year terms and there is one voting member from the school board. You are also permitted to have one alternate member but we do not currently have one. And the planning commission meets once a month. The proposed changes that you have there in the staff report as well as the ordinance, they provide establishment as a standing advisory board, which is something that we've not had in there prior but is recommended in the board's advisory board regulations. We include some legislative findings about the need for the establishment of the board. We have removed or revised the removal section of the code to mirror what would be in the advisory board guidelines for all of your other advisory boards. So making it sort of standardized across that. And we've added the requirement to provide you with a work plan and accomplishments each year, which we've done anyway but isn't in the code itself. So that's really the four items that are in there as proposed for a change. And our recommendation is on the board. I can answer any questions that the commission might have. Any questions? I have a quick question. If you could go back to the slide, I'm not understanding. Revised removal for other cause. Right. So today in the establishment of the planning commission, there are very specific regulations for when the board can remove a member from the planning commission. Those are very different from those that are for your other advisory boards. and they generally have to do with sort of financial sort of misaction, if you will. So they're very, very tightly controlled, which is very different from your other advisory boards. And so the proposal here is to just sort of make it more consistent with your other advisory boards, which includes the other cause statement. And I'm sure the attorney can talk about that if need be, but that's sort of the language that applies to all of your other advisory boards as well. Okay, thank you. I don't know if you... I just... It's pretty broad. Yeah. So that we have the ability of someone if there's a reason to... So, Mr. Chair, your standard advisory board removal provisions talk about that the members serve at the board's pleasure and that if the board finds a cause, they can remove them at a public meeting. Okay, so if the cause would come from the board itself, would they then interact with us to let us know what the issues were if there was someone who needed to be removed from the board? So, how would that... I don't think we're asking the board to vote on removal of their own members. Okay. I don't think that's fair to any of your advisory boards to put them in that position. This would be, for instance, if staff brings you an issue or if the public brings you an issue that you could decide, and a lot of these are recorded. But you can go back and look at it and you can decide whether you think that is a just cause to remove a member. You'd make the case that it's a just cause and then you'd vote on it. All right. Thank you. So, things like disruptions or I don't know what would cause something like that. So, Mr. Chair, I think when it was written that way, there was an intent that it be open-ended so that you could determine that rather than an enumerated list. Under an enumerated list, certainly, you know, I would hate to come up with scenarios for you, but it would close and your ability to move a member to just the ones that are on that enumerated list. This is meant to make it your decision. It's your decision to put them on. It's your decision to take them off. Okay. Is seven members required? That seems like a big board. Mr. Chair, the number of members is established locally. There's no statute about that. It's been seven for as long as I can remember. It seems to work pretty well, I think, in my experience. You're comfortable with that then? I'm pretty comfortable with it. Yes, Mr. Chair. All right. Thank you. That's all I have. Thank you. Commissioner Cornell and then Commissioner Presley. This staff recommendation to find the amendments are consistent with the comprehensive plan and the Unified Land Development Code. Second. Okay. We didn't reconvene, though, as the... Well, we're convening as a ULD right now. Okay. Okay. All right. Go ahead. Mr. Chair, I don't have anything additional, so if you have any questions, I'm happy to answer them. Okay. Got a motion and a second. Did I hear the second? Got a motion and a second. Okay. Any further discussion to that? Are there any citizen comments to the motion? Back to the board. Those in favor of the motion will buy the sound of aye. Aye. All right. Those opposed, at any time, motion carries. Mr. Chair, I move that we reconvene as the Board of County Commissioners and adopt the amendments to the Unified Land Development Code. Second. Okay. Got a motion and a second. Those in favor of the motion will buy the sound of aye. Aye. Those opposed, at any time, motion carries. Mr. Chair. Chair, that takes us a supple. The second public hearing, approval of the Agency for Healthcare Administration letter of agreement for directed payment program intergovernmental transfer. Good afternoon, Mr. Chair. Moe Rigitelli, your budget manager. Last year, we were approached that the county was going to be the intermediary, so to speak, for the directed payment program for the intergovernmental transfer for hospital assessments. So we are bringing this back this year. You will note that due to some uncertainty with Medicaid and Medicare that they are asking us to right now do a zero levy and we have notified the hospitals that that is the intent for this meeting and if for some reason during the year that we are notified of something different, we would again do a public hearing and bring that back before you. So I'd look for a recommendation to open the public hearing and move this forward. Okay. Commissioner Prezio, and then Wheeler. Authorize, yeah, I move staff recommendation and authorize the chair to execute the letter of agreement. Second. Got a motion and a second. All right. Are there any further discussion through the motion on the floor? Are there any citizen comments to the motion and so on? Back to the board. Those in favor of the motion will buy a sign of aye. Aye. Those opposed, same sign. Motion carries. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Mr. Chair, that brings us to the quasi-judicial zoning items. I believe the county attorney has an announcement regarding the procedures. Okay. So, Mr. Chair, anyone wishing to testify or present evidence during this hearing will be sworn in prior to speaking. Through the chair, all speakers may ask questions, seek clarification, and respond to comments or presentations of staff or other speakers. 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 official record of the proceedings. Florida law requires that the county commission's decision in a quasi-judicial action be supported by competent, substantial evidence presented during the hearing. Competent, substantial evidence means that the board's decision is based on enough credible evidence that a reasonable person could agree. Persons presenting opinion 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. In a moment, the clerk will ask for persons other than staff and the applicant who wish to participate as parties to identify themselves and explain to the board why they believe they are parties. Parties are people who would be more directly or more substantially impacted by the board's decision today than the public at large. I don't believe we have any party requests, but Mr. Chair, if someone wants to seek party status and they have not made a party request, they can do so at this time as long as they explain why they are a party in this instance and why they missed the deadline. Okay, we'll see any. Mr. Chair, if we can inquire over the commissioners if you've received any ex parte communications involving a request for a special exception for a community residential home and if so, please disclose this. No. Other than that. If there's anybody wishing to address this item, if you'll please stand and be sworn at this time. Do you swear or affirm any testimony you're about to give will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? I do. Mr. Chair, good afternoon. Jerry Brewington, Senior Planner, Alachua County Department of Growth Management. I have been sworn and a copy of my resume is on file. For the record, we've also received no public comment regarding this particular item. Again, this is a special exception request for a community residential home large as defined by our code. The site is located on the western side of State Road 121. On the western side, again, as you can see from the site location just south of 156th Avenue. The aerial view shows the property. There is already a structure on the property. It looks like a residence. It is already a community residential home small, which is six or fewer residents as defined by our code. The applicant is seeking to expand this in the existing structure to provide for additional clients within this existing structure, which would take it into the category of community residential home large. The property has a rural agriculture land use with an ag zoning district. And again, this is a similar situation to the surrounding uses in that it is a part or what appears to be a large residential home similar to residences in the area. Again, the site already contains a community residential home small, which is six or fewer clients. The request by the applicant is for a community residential home large with them intending to renovate the existing structure to accommodate additional clients. There are specific criteria for this special exception, community residential home large, as found in 404.29 of our unified land development code. The analysis for the request is that this proposed special exception will not cause level of service standards located in the future land use element of the plan to fall below adopted levels. The proposal is also consistent with policy 7.1.2 for the future land use element, which states the proposed changes in the zoning map shall consider consistency with the plan, impacts to public facilities, and relationships to surrounding development. Staff find that the proposed special exception will not negatively impact public facilities, that it is consistent with the development patterns in the immediate area, as well as consistent with the policies, goals, and objectives of our comprehensive plan. As far as our unified land development code goes, the special exception is consistent with the criteria for approval found in 402.113 of our unified land development code. These do include such factors as consistency with the plan, compatibility with surrounding uses, and as well as the health, safety, and welfare of the public in general. This part of the code also considers factors such as ingress-egress, off-street parking, noise and odors, availability of utilities, screening and buffering, signs, impacts to public roads, as well as environmental justice issues. And again, staff find that it is consistent with all of these and will not impact the public health, safety, and welfare. There are also specific requirements in section 404.29 of our unified land development code for community residential homes. A photo of the structure shows, again, it appears to be like a residence and similar to other residences found in the area. This presently is a community residential home, small, with existing client base already in the structure. The applicant is proposing to expand this to allow for additional clients within this existing structure and therefore tripping it into the community residential home, large, and the need for a special exception. The proposed conditions are very simple, Mr. Chair. It is that this special exception is for a community residential home located at this site and parcel number with the maximum number of residents on the site not exceeding 14. Staff recommendation is that the board find the proposed special exception request consistent with the plan and the code and that they adopt the resolution, Z2505, approving this request. That concludes staff presentation unless there's any questions. Any questions? Commissioner? Yeah, I have a quick question. So typically when the, this looks like this house is on a septic tank. Correct. And so typically when the health department is approving a septic tank, they do it on the basis of the number of bedrooms. Correct. And so this is 12 residents in a home that probably has, what, four or five bedrooms? Is that, is there any question about the septic tank capacity and the number of residents? Is that part of the analysis that the department of health does or that is part of the approval of this by the state? This is part, these are the community residential homes are approved or by DCF division, children and families. They would have to go through recertification for that. I am unaware, Mr. Chair, if there is actually a re-upping of the certification by DCF for the septic tank through the department of environmental health, I imagine they would have to go through, although you are correct, it is usually by number of bedrooms or rooms as opposed to number of clients within the facility. Do we have any concerns as staff considered this? Not, Mr. Chair, we have not, do not have any concerns, no, because it's ultimately going to be a call of DCF to recertify the facility, but we did not consult with the Department of Environmental Health to see if additional, if they would have to recertify the septic system. It's just a concern of mine, you know, as we try to maintain water quality. So I'm happy to move staff recommendation, but I was, you know, I'll ask the developers representative later about that. Yeah, Mr. Swager is here and can we provide additional comment? Second. Commissioner Prizia? Oh, that's a little light? Okay, that's all right. That's all right. Commissioner Cornell? Yeah, so normally special exceptions, you know, high bar for me. In this case, it's really just adding a couple of the same use, so I don't see any problem with it. I'll support the motion unless Clay wants to talk me out of it. Okay. He's the applicant, I guess. Chair, I do not want to talk you out of this. Okay. But I, there was a question yes, I'm working with Ms. Adrienne Feiler who operates and is permitted with the state for a small community home on this property. It's a very large home. It's almost 5,000 square feet and county staff has indicated that the board approves a special exception. They will then submit a building permit to the building department and they would do a review with the health department for septic system compliance. If you have any questions for me, I'd be glad to answer. I know she's very excited about serving some additional citizens in this facility and there's no changes to the site. It will continue to look just like a single family home and be very quiet and good neighbor. Mr. Chair, I have a quick question. Okay, Commissioner Wheeler. I'm a big fan of residential care. I've had a lot of experience in it. What is the age group? I don't want to be, I don't want to blow her cover but I am interested in the age group that she's... It's adult. Okay. Awesome. All right. Really good. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Okay. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Okay. There are no parties. Are there any citizen comments to the motion that's on the floor? Okay, seeing that, and back to the board. Those in favor of the motion, vote by a sign of aye. Aye. All right. Those opposed, same sign. Motion carries. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Mr. Chair. That takes the second quasi-judicial zoning item, the revised preliminary development plan for Park Avenue traditional neighborhood development. And I guess we need to inquire if any communications with the commissioners. No. Ex-part. No. No. All right. Anybody wishing to seek party status for this item? Anybody wishing to address the item that could be sworn at this time? You swear or affirm any testimony you're about to give will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? Good afternoon. Leslie McClendon, Senior Planner with Alachua County Growth Management. I have been sworn in and my resume is on file. And this item has been properly advertised. This is the Park Avenue traditional neighborhood development originally approved by the board in 2012 for a maximum of 300 units. It then added 11 units of entitlements in 2021 by the board. Now they are asking for five additional units to bring it to 316 total. This is at the 8200 block of Northwest 39th Avenue, approximately 27.7 acres, medium density residential future land use and the R2 zoning district. Inlocation map here showing the outline of the entire TND, just east of 83rd and this is 39th Avenue. And the overall aerial of the site, you can see the apartments have been built out. That's at 900, excuse me, 298 units. There is just over a lot over 14,000 square feet of commercial uses here. Some cottage units, residential units that have developed. So there's a couple of additional building areas. So the developer is now requesting five additional units. His intent at this point is to move forward with two, but just to have a little bit of leeway. But additional two attached units, kind of work-live type units in this location here. And then the remaining areas would be for vertical mixed use in the future. So there are no changes to any of the approved buffers or any of the open space or storm waters. All just, at this point, it's just an increase to the entitlements. But even with any additional development plants, there would be no changes to any of the already preserved trees or open space areas. Can I ask a quick question? And is that within the, like within the total potential unit numbers that they had in their original TND, TOD application? Correct. So the original one, they have a range that's allowed by the code, but the original one, 2012, they asked for a maximum of 300 units so that they increased that to 311 and now it's just an additional five. So that's total. So that would be the complete build-out for everything. But for the underlying zoning, it doesn't, like, or for the TND? That'd be 312 maximum for the TND overall, including the existing units and then any additional ones. And so with those, go ahead, pardon me. But they've decreased though their commercial space. Is that correct? Matt, Mr. Chair? No, they're still within that range for commercial as well. Okay. So, okay. I was, I thought I remembered hearing that they were having difficulty with getting commercial investors so they were just focusing on residential but maybe I misheard that. Well, and Mr. Chair, there's a range, the commercial's tied to the residential unit so each residential unit there's, you calculate a minimum and maximum based on that and so there's still a range so they're still within that. They're still within the range. There's still some allowed non-residential as well. All right. Thank you. Okay, Mr. Cornell? I was just going to move staff's recommendation. Got a motion and a second. Does the applicant want to make any comments? Are there any public comments to the motion? Yes. No, not for public comment though. We asked for effective parties. She's a little effective party. Everybody has to be sworn in. She's got to be sworn in? Okay. Do you swear if I'm any test that you're about to give the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? Okay, okay. Okay, go ahead. Thank you, Mr. Chair, Commissioner, staff, Mr. Clerk. My name is Tamara Robbins. I understand fully it appears that based on the questions that this is something they're allowed. It just really seems like that would be a really nice park or a place to put like community gardens or plant trees. I mean, I look at that whole development and I see no green space hardly at all except that. And I think, wow, that would do a lot to grow some food or create a place for people to recreate or do something besides make more money off of it. So I just wish that you would vote no on that since they already, they just want to make more money. We all know it, right? So it's just like it would be nice to grow food there. Thanks. Okay, we're back to the board. Any further citizen comments? Okay, back to the board. Those in favor of the motion, vote by the sign of aye. Aye. Those opposed, same time. Motion carries. Mr. Clerk. Mr. Chair, I wanted to make sure I addressed Mr. Prezzias. The question was the maximum that they could addition, 332 would be the maximum by the underlining zoning. Thank you. Yes. Mr. Chair, that takes the items pulled for consent. Item number 7-0, which was the ranking request for the zero waste grant for solid waste and resource recovery. Okay. Mr. Prezzias? Good afternoon, Mr. Chair. With this item, staff is requesting the approval of the ranking of the 2025 zero waste grants, also known as the 2025 circular economy grants. If approved staff will initiate negotiations with the two top rock companies, Lost and Found Gainesville and Old Town Compost. We got representatives from both companies here in the chambers if you want to get information from them. And other than that, I'm here to answer any questions. So, yeah, I pulled this because I really, I tried really hard to read through the applications and follow the line of reasoning behind the scoring. And I just have to say, I really, I really couldn't follow the line of reasoning because I feel like under waste reduction, well, I will just say this. I think that the Lost and Found G&V, well, a really great idea and an interesting concept. It's been, I can tell you that by looking at this, there's no proof, there's no operational, like they've never been in operation, so there's no operational experience in this. There's no letters of support or specifics. There's no MOUs for any of their ability to actually reach their waste reduction scoring. And so, they got rankings of 30 for their ability to do that. But I feel like that's an unfair ranking given the fact that there's no proof that they'd ever be able to even meet those. And it also, the next is the reliance on grant funds. This is a brand new business that isn't like operating yet, as far as I can tell by their application. And yet, they're only asking for $40,000 and saying that once they have that $40,000, they'll be able to be up and running and all good. And again, that seems a little bit odd to me. And given that my experience, I mean, I worked in this arena. I worked for the University of Florida doing, as the Office of Sustainability, directing work with this apartment move-out situation and the volume of it. And every two years, somebody comes with this business idea to the university and tries to get the university to fund it as well. And I can just say that the volume of waste and the logistical coordination and the efforts and the amount of investment is much higher than what I see in this grant application. So, I guess I would rank those, I would rank each of those 10 points lower than I see them currently ranked. And then, again, I went through, O-Town's Compos had plenty of, theirs had all the, they have the equipment, they have the logistics, they have the experience, they had all the things. So theirs seemed to be scored efficiently. But then when I went to Repurpose Project for the last scoring criteria under reliance for grant funds, they got really low scores even, and one said it's building renovation, maintenance, maintenance is not eligible for funding, but they, it is renovation and expansion of an existing space. It's not maintenance, so it should be eligible. And it also said that they needed 60K, but in their narrative, it actually says that with the 40K of the grant it's giving that they would be able to do the build out. So they both, in both cases, they got like docked scoring for those purposes, but their applications look like they were fine with it. So I guess I would add, I would add 10 points to that application, bringing the total scoring to actually change the final scoring. So my request is that we actually score O-Town Compost 61.67, Repurpose Project 63.33, and Lost and Found GNV 60, and award O-Town Compost and Repurpose Project, the grants. Repurpose would be second, O-Town Compost and then Repurpose Project. They would put those, what were your scores again? I'm sorry. It's 10, I would add 10, I was, I gave 10 points for each of the things that people were reduced or added on, so it was 10 points off of Lost and Found for Reliance and 10 points for their volume of waste and then 10 points to Repurpose Project for their Reliance. And so it brings the overall scoring 61.7 and 63.33. 63.33 is Repurpose. Yep, and O-Town. I would say it would be first. Yeah, and O-Town, yes. O-Town would be second. Yes. I just wanted to say I appreciate your expertise and the time that you took to look into that. I'm curious about staff's comments on that. Yes. I'll second the Marshall first. Thank you. So for this RFP, just like the one from previous year, we follow the standard county protocol. I understand scoring is somehow subjective, but, you know, we got professional, knowledgeable staff scoring these proposals and they scored based on the information they got in front of them. The ability to... No, no. That's why we're aboard. We can make the policies. I'm just saying, I mean, I'm telling you from my experience, there's no way that that business can execute what they're... They say they're going to execute for $40,000 and move 1,100 tons of waste out of this community. In addition, I will say that it's not part of the criteria and so it isn't part of the ranking and I didn't include it in my scoring when I did the scoring, but I will say that they also talk about moving the product to other businesses and all of our businesses are here locally, at least, are all already completely flooded with that material and all are trying to also move it out of our community and move it into other marketing so they'd be competing with every other existing like community, non-profit, and organization that's already flooded with all of that material. It's part of why there's not a solution to this problem already is because it's one of those intractable problems and until we get a MRF and a bulky material storage and materials recovery facility, I'm not sure that we're really going to effectively be able to solve it. I, you know, given your expertise and experience in this, I will support your mission. Mr. Chair, the only thing that I would like to add is none of these zero waste, circular economic grants, we don't view them as a final solution for anything, they're viewed as pilot projects. All five of them, the first three and these two, they're pilot projects to prove concepts and see if they work or not. So, Mr. Chair? Yes. So, the question is if they're pilots, then none of them are really established well enough to support themselves as they go forward? No, they all are. No, that, Mr. Chair, that depends on the applicant. I mean, in the first round, we did have two established businesses. On the second round, we have one established business and one that is a new business. That is correct. Well, and one of our requirements, one of our scoring criteria is reliance on this grant for long term and I guess my point is that if you're not an established business that has all the infrastructure necessary to operate a business and is like ready to go to implement this pilot and then take it to the next level to continue this work then you are going to be reliant on this grant in the long term and so having a business that's just been incorporated and has none of its infrastructure like organized or ready to go, you know, it seems to me that the reliance on the grant would be much heavier and reliance on funding in the like, like longer term. Like the idea that $40,000 is going to be all that they need to get their business started and move forward seems far back. Just transportation alone, I mean, as a former business owner, I hear you. That's not much, that's not, that's a lot to rely on. Yeah. I just hate to disregard what the staff has put out there to. I'm not disregarding it, I'm just giving additional points to the businesses that have the infrastructure to be able to do what the criteria said they were supposed to do but it's not disregarding staffs. I mean, it's still the top three that they brought forward. I didn't mean that you were that you were being ugly about it. I just, you know, I just hate to go over this. And the other option is we could split the difference and we could award all three of them something. But I, you know, I think that two of them said that they couldn't take partial funding. Yeah, Mr. Chair, one of the questions we asked if the applicant will take partial funding and two of the applicants you talked to said they know they need the full funding to the project. Which two? The Lost and Found and Old Town Compost. Repurposed Project said they would take partial funding. They're on a roll. Commissioner Cornell, I'm sorry. That's okay. No, thank you. So, Commissioner Prizia, you dug in a lot more on this one than I did and I appreciate that. I'm reminded of your cooler when you were a startup and it did change, change kind of the whole trajectory of food. But I'm also reminded of Sarah at about the same time really working with our staff to create a circular economy. I don't know the other two companies but I do see your logic and I am comfortable with that logic because I do know that the Repurposed Project has an operating business but a much larger vision for our community with regards to the circular economy. And so, I really appreciate staff and staff's work on this. We had 874 vendors that we notified and we had three that solicited submissions. And I know Sarah and her company and the folks that are around her business are and have been working on this for over a decade and they are a great partner for the county to do a small grant to see if we can then scale it. So, I will support your motion. I guess my only concern right now is why the applicants aren't here to speak on behalf. We do have two of the applicants here. Okay. That and I don't want to start anything but like we have a lot of applicants that bid on stuff and come before us and have issues and it seems like with staff scoring there's always issues and I'm just trying to get a good understanding of that. Why? Why is that? And because there are a lot of things that come before us and those are kind of like issues and I wonder understand why this particular last commissioner in a prison estate a lot of the applicants that are qualified got lower scores and the person that wasn't quite qualified I'm assuming that's what I'm hearing and they got a higher score so I'm just trying to figure out why is that a problem? Mr. Sir I can't speak for other incidents because I'm not familiar with them on this one. But I'm just saying that everything that comes before us always comes up winding up being an issue with the scoring. Am I wrong or right? No I think you're right I do think in this instance it was really odd to me that we were even going through a procurement process for a grant application like our other grant applications aren't done that way I don't think so this one seemed to be a particularly odd like approach for our grant applications I know we don't approach CAP we don't approach CAP this way Procurement Manager TJ White CAP comes to our office Choices comes to our office a lot of the RFAs have always used to come through it's no it's an RFA it's a request for applications they've normally come through our office in the past the ones that have been pulled out are some of the tourism grants some of the small farms grants that this board has purposely pulled out of the procurement process so they normally go through this as for the scoring the criteria and the teams that we have the members whether it becomes from the solid waste department or anybody from who's experts from public works or evaluation committee members it's subjective on how they review and see the information and how they're scoring it that's the whole point of having them on the team to be able to review and give the scores just like right now this board has the ability to approve or not approve the award recommendation that that team makes and if there's more information and they're reading and understanding it and that's the direction this board wants to move then that's their flexibility and prerogative yeah but I haven't heard a real good answer from staff though and I would say about the scoring is what I'm saying yeah and typically we don't have the team members come up here and give yeah I know I understand that but I'm just saying staff should be able to articulate why they chose that as number one I'm just saying both those meetings are recorded so they do discuss those in our meetings when they do count those scores they actually do make comments on the back of here to kind of express why some of the scores are received lower and other things but if they need to be they could articulate that okay well I'm support the motion that's on the floor could we not hear from these people no I'm going to support Prizia's motion that's on the floor really digging in you know Commissioner Prizia and this board perhaps has a different opinion on the race reduction and the reliance on grant funds and you know the scores may not have had the same knowledge of the companies that maybe we have and I agree with Commissioner Prizia on this one but I appreciate the scoring by the staff I don't have any problem with the staff scoring could we hear from the people they've been here all day yeah sure could we hear from the people who are that we're talking about sure yes please I'd like to hear what the possibilities are my name is Richard Devereaux Mr. Chair I please you I've got comments from written remarks I've been a resident of unincorporated of Lockswood County since the late 1970s although I know I don't look it currently I serve as the Gainesville general manager of O-Town Compost a company specializing in the collection and composting of food scraps and organic materials now I will add live a little bit I came to this meeting today with two versions of my public comment depending on the outcome of your or your posture on this I'm here today to acknowledge the dedication and commitment of all those who have worked over the years to raise awareness in our community about the importance of a diverting organic waste from the landfills this effect this effort is essential to mitigating the harmful effects of greenhouse gases and methane emissions on climate change and the health of our environment I would also like to take a moment to recognize and applaud the proactive and forward thinking approaches our city and county governments have adopted regarding this vital issue O-Town Compost is grateful for the chance to collaborate with Alachua County through the Zero Waste Grant 2025 we are committed and truly hopeful that by working together we can achieve meaningful progress thank you hello I'm Patrick Moran I'm the CEO and founder of Lost and Found GNV I wonder just a couple things one Commissioner Prizia we worked a long time ago at the university and we tried to implement the collection of trash all over campus and set up that program to help clean that up better so I've been in that environment for a long time I've actually dumpster dived on the side for 20 years and what I saw was that wow and how I would sell it was right back to the college students moving back in every single time so there's a demand for getting it and there's a demand to buy it so it's an easy sell for me on top of that so then I got data from the landfill from Gus 15 years month to month 2.2 million pounds of resellable goods goes to the landfill every year just from turn so that's why I started the company I think Commissioner Alfred talked about being a business owner and the logistics well do you know my advisory board contains the current vice president of logistics for Hershey's and the former vice president of shipping for Starbucks is on my advisory board for my company I work with James Coates at Santa Fe College to develop a program to where everything is nothing's owned so I have short term based warehouse rentals only rented for three months incentive based returns and then I turn around and I can sell all that stuff back to all the students moving back in like I do every year on a smaller scale I'm just doing it at a bigger scale so it goes back into the economy it's a circular economy and it meets those goals questions goodness I don't have a question what I'm looking at is two very different programs two very different businesses one is dealing in with food and the other one is dealing with all the stuff that I see on the side of the road that I had the same thought about those aren't the ones that are against each other no repurpose is the same repurpose is the other one that would be no well we know about repurpose repurpose kind of fills in the gap between those two well or at least is more in line with what you're doing but the other one is totally composting I mean so we've got two different programs yeah but we only have $80,000 budgeted right now the motion on the floor is to award the organics compost and repurpose project I understand so because the lost and found is not it's just I just felt that the scoring was inaccurate with regards to their what they presented in their applications and during the scoring criteria with regards to their capacity and their ability to actually implement this on the with regards to the reliance on the grant funds and their waste reduction potential yeah I just it's a shame that this is all we've got is $80,000 to put for this it's such an amazing thing you know I would say you know fund them all because they're all doing the work we need done you know I've it seems to me that this $80,000 budgeted for something that is desperately needed we've been working on this eco loop now for years and nothing has come up so it seems to me that $80,000 you know invested into something that is so monumental is probably pretty small and not a very big commitment you know because I could see all three of these people working in our community doing what it is exactly what we need to have done and also to add I'm partnered with Trimark I recovered about $20,000 in almost brand new commercial cabinets that were going to the landfill and just recently I installed some of those a woman bought a soap business out of a nail salon in Tioga operated out of her garage well guess what cabinets she got those ones and they were solid wood they were all going to the landfill and my company intercepted it and put it back into the local economy which is kind of what we want to do here and support local economy I just feel like the guys you know maybe we just need to look at the budget that we put aside for these you know and where's Tommy there you are can I say something oh sure yeah so I will first okay yeah go Tommy can answer her question yeah so we had to move money around if you'll remember recall in the budget you're going to work on Thursday we have no increases in assessment or solid waste fees which is the funding mechanism and we had to actually already move quite some things around to come up with the 80,000 we have so and meet the policy goals of fund balance and things that we have in that fund that historically if you know what we've done with the floor and the things that we've had to do over time that fund can struggle at times financially so I would not support I would not recommend providing more funding to this area right now out of that fund if we had something we want to do in the future we need to talk about better funding that fund to afford these other things so that's kind of where we're at with funding not getting a big insurance payment on that fire we've had out there no ma'am we're fortunate that it didn't do any more damage than it did actually fortunately it did not I mean sir sir the only thing I would add is the initial investment by the county was $200,000 so we awarded five of these grants including the ones the two from today so we've already we did three three awards last year three awards for 120 and we had 80 left of the 200 that was one way to a company that was stealing working organics just like and the other two went to repurpose project so it would be their third award of the five so you you had said that two of the three said they could not use the 40,000 less than the 40,000 less than 40,000 they needed the full maximum amount correct and so the original 200 was we've awarded three at 40,000 yes so far so we have 80,000 left you know I like Commissioner Wheeler's point you know Tommy's gonna kill me here I don't know how much is in the solid waste reserves fund I thought it was pretty healthy though and I thought perhaps I really like the idea of awarding all three of them Gus is having a fit too how much is in our solid waste reserve fund so we have 2.5 million dollars which is the minimum required and that goes back to some financial difficulty probably all the way back Commissioner Chet that's probably the one still on the board from when those times hit originally actually it was before me when it was established to rebuild that fund they had to borrow money from the general fund to make it viable also if you're aware as you are aware the cities and over the last couple of years have really pushed back hard on our increases that we've had and have been those have come to you as well and you have considered not doing those increases although you ended up doing them so again that fund is one that is very difficult we have a significant assessment for the trash pickup areas and the 148 fund the rural collection centers as well that all pay the tipping fee that come across the scale that fund is completely supported by tipping fees that come across the scale and yes I mean it doesn't seem like a lock at $40,000 but again we've already committed $120,000 that was to the repurpose project already so this will be $120,000 to the repurpose project in total over the time period and it will start hitting the fund okay where is the one that and then I want to hear Commissioner Prizzi's point so where's the third one that we've already awarded that's the organic company organic originally so the first from the first cycle we had three awards two for repurpose one went to Pete and Pat they're the organic recycling facility and then two went for repurpose project and where are we with the organic recycling facility for that first round those were all completed last year oh so they've already spent that money yeah yeah those are being awarded and closed okay I guess if the if the maker of the motion would add that if we can't negotiate a successful with repurpose and no town that we move to lost and found as a third then I'll go ahead and support the question what I want to say a couple of things one is Patrick I hear you and I I appreciate your work and I mean your application didn't reflect some of the things that you're telling me you had in terms of infrastructure and set up and things so like that wasn't clear I'll say that and but I also want to say to my colleagues like and to Tommy like I you know our strategic plan has zero waste has a circular economy in it in multiple places both in our in waste management and in our economic development and I think that it would behoove us to take a very thoughtful look at our current approach to waste reduction initiatives because I feel like even though we have a quote zero waste plan that plan is kind of like it's over here and then we do waste management like we do waste management and we have to move waste and we have to move waste and the community as a whole not us as staff or us as a county but like just the community like we're moving waste we throw waste in a garbage can and it goes away and we have our recycling bins and they go and they go away and then we talk about waste reduction and and reuse as like a separate thing as if it's over here right and we want to get stuff out of there if we can but like we're not really taking that holistic view of it in a way that's like forcing us to start reducing those the amount of volume that's really going to our waste stream in ways that it's going to reduce the cost for us to do transportation to the to the sorry the place where you bury it in the ground the landfill and you know 30% of our waste stream is organics I mean and we finally have commercial organics operators in the near vicinity of us like we could bid that out and we could get somebody getting some of that organic materials at least the commercial organic materials out of our waste streams there's a lot of other pieces like the MRF we've been talking about the MRF forever and the need for a bulky waste MRF and the need for a CND MRF and you know all these things they just kind of become these conversations that we have again and again and again but we don't actually move the needle by making the investments in them and like those are big strategic investments I'm not going to throw those out there right now but I do think that if we're serious about the circular economy and we're serious about reducing waste over time like the costs for us will reduce if we have less stuff coming to us right that we have to move to our landfill and we would be potentially increasing revenue opportunities if we have a MRF that could be selling materials to people but I know that Gus knows a lot more about all of that than I do and we have a team that is really knowledgeable about that but I feel like right now our zero waste plan kind of sits on its own and it's not integrated into our overall strategy in a really big picture way as is evidenced by this because here's three people in our community that are doing really important stuff four if we count the other grant grant recipient and one's doing residential one does more commercial compost type work and you know we have we would have the opportunity to work with them to scale those to reduce major amounts of our waste but instead we're giving them $40,000 to do like a pilot project or you know rather than a bid to say like get all the bulky waste out of our compost or get out of our trash or get all the organics out of our trash and so to me like that's kind of our next journey I hope as we get the strategic plan initiated and we begin to like think about the way in which those two pieces are connected and Gus is probably ready to kill me but I do feel like that's the ultimate goal is that we're not just giving funding to do these little pilots although I think the pilots are important too because they show that things are possible and it supports our locally owned businesses growing because the other thing that often happens particularly in the waste industry is that the large scale multinational corporations that have all the big trucks and all the big equipment are the ones that come in and get all the bids because they're used to doing this and the smaller locally owned businesses like beaten path and lost and found and repurposed project can't compete so I do appreciate that we've created a program that gives them space but I do think we also need to be thinking more robustly and in a bigger way about how we're reducing our waste streams so Mr. Chair just to follow on Commissioner and since I got the microphone I might as well use it so I understand that the circular economy moves beyond waste management but the way we fund all this zero waste circular economy whatever we're doing is through tipping fees that is not sustainable so if we want to expand this this topic we cannot look at just tipping fees we have to find some other funding what that funding is I don't have an answer but it has to be moved beyond tipping fees Mr. Chair so when we talk of circular economy we talk of the reason we create pilot programs is to eventually become a larger operation that is self-sustaining that it's not always a subsidized operation so we do these pilots now etc when he talks about increasing it shouldn't ever be subsidized by tipping fees over the long term the idea is a circular economy where it's actually paying for itself for making money while pulling waste out of the waste stream so obviously we're not there yet maybe we get there but again as you mentioned we've been on this path quite some time and whether it's a pilot program or a large company coming in that does this for a living we're not obviously not there yet and that's part of what your strategic guide that we talked about early on today included those very specific goals as a circular economy and including in the waste department so the goal is not to continue to increase tipping fees to subsidize the program it may be initially to get pilots going but eventually these operations have to get up to scale so they're not relying on people doing that right and so that's kind of where we need to head to go back to that conversation working with just not only solid waste but also the other departments on climate action etc to come up with a plan and a budget that starts putting those operational economic impacts into the community yeah Chuck I'm sorry Wheeler was next if you don't yeah if you don't mind I just feel like that repurpose I've watched grow to three different locations now and I shop them all I go to all of those places we gave two of those grants last year to them I really feel like that we need these new people involved in here right along I mean we supported Sarah and her growth and her vision and she built on it and went wild with it we got three different locations now that they're moving with repurpose I just feel like that we need to invite anybody who is willing to build into this program and work with Sarah and her bunch I just feel like that we need to encourage them by I would take both of these two you know and I think if Sarah and her bunch was only willing to take partial that tells me that they're doing pretty well out there they can always use the extra money sure but in terms of but they're doing it they've got three different locations out there they got two of our grants already right each time they're expanding to a different waste stream I still think it's a good idea to have a bigger a bigger group also working in there instead of just one and if Sarah's is the only one that's thriving you know that I just feel like that we put all our eggs in one basket that's all I believe that we need to encourage that everybody to join in this it needs to be cute community-wide it needs to be county-wide and I I feel like that Sarah knows we love her and if there's money we would send it her way if needed in order to keep them afloat we've done it before thank you Mr. Chair okay Commissioner Cornell thank you Mr. Chair so Anna convinced me Tommy convinced me further the strategic plan we talked about the circular economy I remember when we did that 200,000 and I also remember when it was all going to go to Sarah because Sarah was kind of leading the charge we had 874 people we notified we had three applicants that submitted something and they're all good applications and I really appreciate you being here and talking kind of through what your vision was Anna's resource rescoring puts 63 61 and 60 I think it's a priority that we need to ask that to find the money so I'm going to move a substitute motion that we award all three 40,000 and we asked Tommy to find the 40 grand somewhere either from the reserves or move it around but I want to I want to award them all in a second are there any further more discussion to the motion yes quickly I guess I just I will say this I said I think I agree with you in terms of like we need more people at the table but we did this based on scoring and so and that's and so I really just looked at the applications and looked at the scoring criteria and the way in which it was set up and it's not just about like you know I mean honestly if I could have given the whole $200,000 back in the day to repurpose project to do what they were trying to do with materials recovery facility and bulky waste storage I we would have done I would have done that I would have voted for that but that's not the way we went we went with a grant a grant program that was going to award smaller pieces but what what repurpose project is proposing in here is an expansion again it's to expand to doing the waste that know that people don't want things like linens and textiles and things that end up they're all different so I mean yes yes we've awarded two to her but both of those have been for different operations and these will decompose linens will decompose in the ground some of this other stuff they're talking about won't and like well I'm not gonna I'm not gonna argue the merits of the applications I'm just doing it based on the specifics of the application scoring and and what I felt was the right scoring based on what was submitted by the applicants but I love the idea of scoring of supporting all three of them because I think all three of them have really amazing business plans and we need all of these business plans and many more if we're gonna get to the solutions that we need and so my hope is that in addition to the 80,000 we're awarding today hopefully we can find a lot more resources to support this kind of work in the future well if repurpose said they would take less than that maybe if we can't find it then we can find something just saying I believe they're the number one score I think it's in response to that they're I agree with Anna's rescoring so I think they're the number one they're the number one score but I also love this idea when when Patrick was talking about we've been talking about this business plan with the students for exactly it comes every two years every two years yeah we've been talking about this for a long long time and what we're doing with repurpose is working she's expanding and we're getting more garbage out of the waste stream and I'm just reminded of literally Anna asking us for a cooler $50,000 cooler and look what that investment has done and if you can get something up and running with the students that is a huge thing and the repurpose project has an in on that a little bit but that's what they're yeah it's not the same and if this is like totally focused on on when they're out and so so I want to I want to take it as a flyer it's in our strategic plan literally Tommy is mad at me but he convinced me of Anna's speech of how important it is in our strategic plan we'll find a 40 grand we can find a 40 grand we can find it so that's my salesman well I'm the kind of guy I want to hear from the budget managers I mean I'm sorry Tommy it's manager now I think we already did obviously it's the board's budget and all I do is give advice if we will obviously find the $40,000 that's that's the motion spent today all we can do is provide recommendations and parameters and the reason why we are in the very good financial condition we are in and the budgets that we have produced as opposed to everything else you're seeing all over the state and across the street the challenges we but if that parts up to the policymakers we will drive the budget to wherever you take it I just I guess I I'll just say something directly to Patrick and to repurpose project if they're listening I hope that you and repurpose project and the other folks who deal in this bulky waste world will get together and think about like what is possible for materials recovery facility bulky storage so that as a group as a group of entities that are all working on this whether it's goodwill or hospice attic or repurpose project or you like that we can come up with a community-wide solution to this major challenge we have and hopefully the University of Florida will come to the table as well as we have the conversation about this like revolving door of bulky waste we have as a result of our transient population well mr. chair just one quick sure thing we I've tried to talk to the repurpose project to about setting up a shop downtown closer to where the students are living you know with the stuff that they're but you're gathering up you know if you all could find a storefront somewhere close to where people are gathering for the ballgames won't work no no no that's okay no we'll talk later but but the thing is that no the thing is that there's so much good stuff that's left on the side of the road you know that those if we could get a way to market it downtown there's no business downtown be great to have a business downtown especially if the students are living there and the mamas that are coming into the ballgames who don't want to go to the ballgames would go to that store not for sure but I'm I'm thank you all for picking up that up because we need to fund them all we need to take care of them all if we're really committed to this and we need to encourage everybody to play thank you mr. chair I'm done okay I guess my question is can we find the forty thousand is it there or we have to take it from reserves because we would take we will bring this reoccurring cost now this is a one-time okay fine so it will come out of reserves out of the 2.25 million I believe that we set aside as ending fund balance is required that's a policy it's not a ordinance so we will take it out of that we'll bring it back just remind the board that we just had a last budget meeting discussion was about reducing the millage further and about the pressures of the public on fees and how much the fees were in the assessments so it's all a balancing act so we're just saying no raises this year so this will not cost us raises this year no ma'am we will still be able to pay our employees we recommend that our citizens save money by buying used furniture from I think the idea of the grant is that over time that those are the kind of things that will happen they will be revenue generators there will be a market for these types things and I hope that comes to fruition one day before I retire so but we will find the money yes sir okay you find that far off we're pushed in further every day closer every day I'm joking so we'll vote on commissioners yeah I know but I just want to make sure we're going to vote on your substitute first and then if the substitute pass we don't have to worry about the initial okay all right now we'll take public comment thank you mr. chair tamra robbins so to listening to you all seem to come back to the fact of we have been working on this for a very long time I just like to encourage you to really give this whole waste reduction the circular society idea like like do some serious community outreach on this and really dedicate some sit-down time and multiple meetings of what it's going to take for this community and I mean all communities to really get the idea and buy in I mean yes the repurpose project does a great service and I wish they had a location in high springs and one down in Archer so that it would be closer and it is difficult a downtown location I don't personally see that at all it's it just doesn't seem to be conducive to that type of tight tight setup right parking and the whole thing like they need some space but like I still love the idea that your public works department gives away circular wire rick fencing for compost like I have come to you before with this I wish I would like to promote this on your website at the meetings I have been using those circular bin system for 30 years here and I have it down to a science and it is amazing the compost I get out of throwing my crap into one bin and turning it over and sifting it out it's it's a great system it's cheap and you guys offer these free rings of compost like that's simple that everybody could do if you know it's allowed and homeowners associations I think shouldn't even be allowed to not allow it it should be allowed so there's those simple things that every individual can do that I don't think you're pushing enough and I know you're looking and pulling and looking at the big picture and I appreciate that but so it's like just both ends it's these ends it's pilot programs it's empowering the local individual homeowner to be able to take care of their waste more responsibly and not put stuff in the bins right so it's that and then it's just if you were looking at a bigger program for the like the construction debris and the home the couches and that kind of stuff but I just say like really like get your heads together and let's have some community meetings about what does it look like and how do you get the policy in place so that it really does make a big change instead of taking little bites at the apple and that kind of stuff I just say like really like get your heads together and let's have some community meetings about what does it look like and how do you get the policy in place so that it really does make a big change instead of taking little bites at the apple let's sit down and come up with a big way to to make a big impact on this community and everybody buy into it so thanks any further citizen comments and comments okay back to the board we're going to vote on the substitute motion those in favor of the motion the substitute motion vote by the sign of aye aye aye those opposed same sign motion carries good discussion thanks guys thank you chair that takes us to closing public comment are there any i just want to let the public know we will not reconvene at 501 so i just want to make sure that are there any uh public comments at this point okay are there any citizens i mean uh commissioner comments i mean it's like county attorney i'm sorry county attorney manager and all of that mr chair i do not have any today i do not have any commissioner comments i do um two things first um there was a washington post article on uh september the 6th and yes i still get the washington post i canceled my subscription but i paid for a year so i'm still getting it but um anyway uh in that article it was about the our aging housing supply the fact that our aging housing supply are having issues and the premise of the article was should government be paying for housing repairs so that we can keep people in houses basically and um i'm gonna forward that article to all of you um as a free uh free gift article but i um uh just telling you that because uh i don't want you to reply but um i i it took me back to the um discussion that we had about um housing and our comp plan and the idea of uh doing a four point inspection as a way to um identify issues with with housing and what my original thought had been to do with just a wind mitigation but i after reading this article i think the four point inspection might be um something to think about but just with respect to wind mitigation um in the uh naco call this week for um for the um uh safety and justice board the the discussion we had a presentation on the uh bipartisan legislation that's being introduced that is being fully bipartisan supported on changes to fema one of the big parts of that is going to be changes to the resiliency grant it looks like this will go forward and the resiliency grant is going to be a uh 60 percent 40 percent um grant for resiliency projects to maintain a resilient community which is good the even better one is if you have an innovate innovative um approach to resiliency projects which i think this would be it's a 90-10 match and that's awesome so 10 local 90 match so i i think this is something we should look at doing because i don't know if anybody else is doing this particular way of looking at resiliency of evaluating the housing stock and and looking at ways to address deficiencies in order to maintain housing stock in the face of disaster so um i just wanted to throw that out there for um you know if that's something you guys would feel okay about uh staff looking at and if i should make that motion i think it's something we would want to get ahead of and you know because i think that this grant will probably be i mean two things first of all the may go ahead the the climate action plan was conceived under the idea of previous administration that we needed to have a plan for state and local state and federal grants that would um build a more resilient community your pilot program which we started which you shared at the state and the national level is kind of ahead of that plan being issued and the fact that we have a local funding source that this community has said is important um i think we should chase every federal dollar that we can grab if it's in line with the local values that we've expressed so if the new administration is going to get rid of fema and replace that funding source with those communities that are are deciding to fund themselves more resiliently then let's go grab nine dollars for every one we invest yeah absolutely so i think we have standing direction to ask to bring back to us opportunities based on the big beautiful bill or whatever the heck it's called we have standing direction about what's going to be the impact of the elimination of snap the elimination of fema so i mean that washington post article sounds like you could have written it and so i think it's it's it's a continuation of existing um direction that we've given and so i would support it okay well i'll i'll make the motion then if the if we could ask staff to take a look at the um the uh idea of uh utilizing wind mitigation inspections and four point inspections as a way to evaluate our housing stock and look at um uh ways to get ahead of of problems with housing so that we can keep people in the housing that they're in at a lower cost than rehousing them later and utilize the potential funding from this um uh potentially uh well right now it seems to be very well supported bill going before um congress to uh provide that um 90 percent match to communities doing um good resiliency work so essentially you're it's a target look at where we can leverage what we're doing with housing and other ideas and other ideas absolutely but i do think that that that one is an innovative approach yeah i'll i'll second that i i will tell you that from a realtor's perspective and from an insurance person perspective in this industry um you know the four points are they happen at every every uh real estate sale right and the big issue actually before you ever put a house on the market is is your hot water heater more than 15 years old because it so won't be it won't be insured do you have at least five years of life or is it not more than 15 years old on your roof or it won't be insured uh what's your electric box look like and what's your plumbing look like that's the four point the wind mitigation is more for additional credits on insurance so before houses even go on the market if those things aren't done then the price comes down based on what it'll cost to put that into a closing contract right so i don't think you're going to have individuals um to say hey come to a four point unless there's grant opportunities tied to your earlier right which is why i was focusing more on the wind mitigation side yeah and on the wind mitigation it's it's just a matter of most folks will qualify if their house was built in the last 20 years they just have to spend the 250 to get their wind mitigation report and then they make that back in the first year on the credit on their insurance so right and so and and it also gives us information about about what our housing stock is like right now and how prepared we are to address a hurricane should it come through here i wanted to add one more thing there is the you're probably familiar with the um there's uh uh our there's a national insurance institute i believe it's called and they um have overseen various resiliency programs in the past including what was it called uh wind wind smart winds i don't i can't remember right now but they've had various um certifications you could get on a home that really reduced your insurance over time um and i i would be uh i've been um thinking that we should probably reach out to them as well because they might be a partner in a project like this if we're doing something super innovative in terms of increasing resiliency because that's something that's going to need to happen across florida if we're going to um sort of survive uh on going increased you know hurricanes and possible reduction of fema support as well as um you know aging housing population i think it's just a kind of kind of a perfect storm so the insurance companies are going to have to survive all of that so there's going to have to be some different ways that we're going to be looking at the health of our housing if if going forward we're going to be able to maintain affordable insurance anyway that's a lot commissioner then you commissioner i i i love the idea of like sort of coming like within i guess i really would be within our climate action plan looking at like resilient housing strategies and ways to we that we sort of evaluate our our homes for their um ability to withstand wind and all these other things the age and those same things my my question or like sort of my concern i guess maybe it's a concern it's not that's probably the wrong word but it's two things one um are you are you thinking that this is like like our like what we're doing with trees where we're like going to be like you want to be like evaluating housing in general in this way or you're thinking more like for the programs in which like ship and and our all of our housing programs we would do that um so that that's where we would start okay yeah because i yeah my one concern i guess if i had one it's sort of to ken's point is like you know i i think a lot of people are probably in on the edge and different aspects of different approaches to those things and i would hate to start tipping a bunch of people into like now you need a whole new insurance policy because your insurance isn't going to get covered in that if we did like this massive you know sort of and also i i'm cognizant of when we said like oh we want to do this new um housing rights code and then we had this whole thing and we spun it all up and then we got preempted and then we had to unspin it all up and anyway so that those are sort of my little like alarm bells that go off i don't think this would like trigger that same kind of reaction because i think that this is this is a way so a lot of people get new roofs put on their house you know and as part of that getting a wind mitigation inspection is like a way to say that hey my new roof meets these standards and therefore i can save this much more money on my insurance right right and most people do and some people don't know that that even exists but if you you know if you bought a house it's got a new roof on it you don't even know if that wind mitigation you know inspection exists then you know you might have an opportunity to really make a difference on your insurance and or you might have an older roof that that wind mitigation inspection might say hey you just need to add you know 300 with a hurricane clips and you could save this much more money that's that's the the thing that i think will make the biggest difference is that that those kinds of changes but anyway i know it's kind of really out of the box but i i feel like it's um something that's worth looking at well i i'm just here thinking what about those who can't afford to get the wind mitigation well that's that's the whole idea is that we're going to do it we're going to pay for it yeah for certain populations for not everybody you know but for if we're if we have ship housing out there that doesn't have a wind mitigation but qualifies for it and we can save those people in our ship housing a thousand dollars on their insurance then we should be doing that worrying about how are we going to get them well this is this would come from our housing this would be housing funds this is the way i'm looking at it is housing funds what like with the million that would post that in housing it's we explore for staff to explore it's it's what i want staff to look at it and come back and say hey does this make sense or does this not make sense and they may come back and say this doesn't make any sense at all but i'd like to get their take on it especially since if if there is money to we exploring this yeah exploring it i'm not saying let's go out and do it i think i want to under i want to understand staff's thoughts on this and i want to um you know talk to the insurance companies and see if or the insurance foundation or whatever it's called and see if they think this is um you know what their thoughts are about it i think there's just a real opportunity here especially if there's federal dollars that would pay for a whole lot of really good upgrades in our community for very little money you're going to send us an article i will send you the article the cinema all of us yeah i'll send all of you there okay mr chair i had the same concern you did because i know i've just canceled one of my homeowner's insurance because the deductions were so high the deductibles i was having to and we have four properties that we're paying i i knocked one of them out the house that was built in 50. um i've heard floridian self-insurances are moving from 15 to 20 percent yeah i'm i just finally and i we're insurance companies are going to be leaving us they kept saying if you want to get a lower policy you have to get a four-point inspection that old house would not have covered that uh what and and would have had it it just wasn't worth it right and and for people who can't afford homeowners insurance fema's going to be gone fema's i just spoke with a woman who is you all will know when the community is back in the community she worked for fema nationwide took the early buyout because she saw what was coming and because between fema and the insurance companies you know we're in trouble we're going to be in trouble in florida particularly with storms so it doesn't matter we do wind it doesn't you know if the insurance are going to companies not going to pay unless you've already paid out twenty thousand dollars which is the deductible or fema is not going to be around to have any government money i i just you know i feel like you know asking staff to do that is just one more job that well no that's the whole idea is the whole idea is that we're going to get ahead of that we're not asking for i don't know how to explain it to you um we're we want it's going to help us when that i mean once you've done all of that where do you expect the money to become grant money coming from to help people songs well there's a new bill right now in front of congress to provide a resiliency grant to do uh innovative resiliency projects my idea is that we use our housing funds to evaluate our housing stock if those funds are available and we qualify for them we would have money to do those those hopefully before they get too expensive upgrades to houses to keep them from blowing away in a hurricane they're going to blow away in hurricanes they're going to go away well i i disagree with you as an engineer as an engineer i disagree with you the way i viewed it mary is that we're spending money um under our existing housing programs to provide 15 up to 15 000 and if that could be a local match and we could leverage that to get another 90 from the federal government under a resiliency program then we can basically 10 times that program size well that's for energy efficiency though than i do right now but that's energy efficiency what i'm talking about is that's what i'm saying yeah we expand that to include resiliency and that's that's that makes sense yeah okay but that maybe it makes sense we'll see i don't know i want staffs i want staffs take on it okay so i and it's it's another complicated mary thing but oh but if we can leverage but if we could leverage that kind of dollars i think it's worth looking at so anyway um that was that was thing one thing two oh wait we got a motion is there public comments yeah we got to get there uh but but there's no more comments from us okay are there any citizens comments to the motion that's on the floor okay back to the board those in favor of the motion vote by the sign of aye aye aye it's just for exploratory reasons yeah it's just exploratory so it's not like we're not no okay so so the motion passes four to one commissioner wheeler in dissent all right the second thing was is i spent a couple hours at the jail yesterday this time i did not go eat lunch with inmates i actually sat down with staff went through a couple of their new programs that they are exploring um got an update on on a lot of different things the tablet program which they're looking at you i'm some of y'all i know are following that as well but um at the end of the day i asked them what the county could do for them and we had discussions about everything from housing for folks mental health issues to housing in general to a new jail to one real specific request which is could this board please come spend more time at the jail um they were really appreciative of the fact that i've conned and they asked me to please extend the invitation to all of you to spend time with staff and with the inmates what i escorted huh non-escorted well escorted or not just go on the police they escort you believe me well i've been through they're not escorted okay yeah yeah well that's because i snuck in um but anyway um good message but i um i committed to going during lunch their their staff lunch time is between 11 and 1 and going into their canteen and just sitting there for a couple hours and chatting with staff as they came through um that's that's one suggestion um you know i i've had lunch with with uh some of the residents of the jail that's it's it's very entertaining and interesting and really the folks are so happy to talk to you to talk to a county commissioner and and tell you about what's going on in their world so um if you have time i just told them i would extend the invitation and um they they um were really hoping that some more folks would come spend time over there so that's how do we set that up just call and say you just you can just show up show up you can just show up they're also giving away uh narcan in the lobby now so if you are want to up your narcan supply anyone you can not just pick it up at meridian you can also pick it up in the jail lobby good information yep and i and i do want to issue thanks to um to uh major keith for being an excellent host and uh bring i had eight staff sitting around the table answering my questions everybody from medical to programs to to contracts so it was it was a good meeting yeah so i had the two things yeah that's fine um so the first one was i got a call from brent riley who's the president of gacar and they're having a get together our pack get together monday at 5 30 at the draft brewery in tech city if you guys want to go talk about housing insurance where is it um at the brewery in tech city it's called that cow yeah okay all right he yeah he just asked that i share that with y'all in case um y'all have an interest all right let's talk about the public comment on florence and the public comment on mill creek let me start with florence so um i got an email from john l and some others uh and sarah's comment sarah younger's comment uh about the permit expiring on february 9 2026 i was just going to ask the attorney if that's accurate i i thought they had exercised their rights to extend that past that date but um do we have an answer to that or does um corbin have an answer to that no so mr chair there are a number of ways to interpret the statute we've received a number of different dates from the applicant i think um staff is considering how to respond in that um i think you remember that they have the right to claim two storms they did claim two storms one of those storms is still tolling which theoretically means that their time is still moving forward i think staff has acknowledged that they have extension through the end of this fiscal this year calendar year and um we haven't decided if we're going to stick with any a date yet ultimately i think it's on growth management to respond to that um mr chair jeffi's growth management director yes we um we were solid we are solid in their request to extend um for the two-year period after uh the tolling period and the extension for uh hurricane nicole expired which i believe gives them into april of 26. um it's the other storms and as sylvia alluded to some of them are still tolling are still uh the the um emergency orders are still valid so that that's where we're not clear and giving a a date past that so a very specific question which hopefully you can answer is what is the amount of time that they are required to give alatra county or the state with regards to their closure plan i don't know i'll steve will come up if you knows the answer to that um mr chair steve foster environmental protection environment i don't know the exact answer but but what i can say is that they have a closure plan already in place our understanding is when they're aware of when that closure date occurs they should be notifying us of when they were perceived with the closure i don't know um i can't answer right now top of my head whether there is a three month or six month time frame or anything like that that requires us to know before the closure but there is a closure plan in place with the application okay so um a lot of what we don't say publicly is because we want to reserve our legal rights we want to reserve our um firm opinions as a board uh and i get all that what i will just say that this board and i hope this board agrees is um the citizens are looking for a date and some direction and this board uh has said that uh you know we've passed a comp plan amendment um with regards to making sure that we always think about equity with regards to the social justice with regards to these decisions um i heard two weeks ago for the first time gus stand up there saying i may have potential solutions some patient waiting for that but as we move closer to the end of this year this commissioner is going to want to take some hard positions and get the public involved and i i i don't i don't i don't want this to keep going in 2026 the way it's gone in 2025 and so that's all all i'll say today if a majority of this board agrees with me then it's time that we start to communicate to the public what the plan is for relocating our cnd to a place that's not in the neighborhood so that's all i'm going to say about unless you always comment and say more so mr mr chair i think we've heard from you that you would like it to close as soon as possible and i at some point we may well have to either take an action to tell them to close down within a certain time and expect to draw a lawsuit or preemptively ask the court if you know this is what we think we're not clear on what the date says because of the language in the statute and you know take our stand as the the earliest state that we can support under the statute yeah that isn't now that's potentially next calendar year yeah um because the court won't take it this early because it would be considered to be not an issue that is it's more of a request for advice rather than some an issue that is that is um ripe what they call right okay fair enough um so that's all i have on florence unless anyone else has anything no okay um okay mill creek i want to talk about mill creek so i asked the attorney we had a very brief conversation this morning about um an email that we got from brian with regards to uh what came up at public comment and the statutory changes uh in the law i understand that we're getting a written response to the 14 point motion from the attorney so i'll wait on that until that comes out will that be coming out in the next 48 hours so mr chair we have been working on a response what i would say is that we'd well we'd like a motion from the um the board to come back with a an update on that if that's possible okay i'll make that in just a second um the other thing is well i'll make a three-part motion i guess then i i think we should first ask the attorney to give us a written update on the 14 point motion so that the citizens know kind of where the county is with regards to the previous direction we've given that's part one part two i think we should forward the correspondence that we have forwarded to theriac and the city of alachua previously to their new attorney scott walker who we all know and help get him up to speed as fast as possible so that we are not waiting for another month or two and i think we can help get scott walker up to speed um and and the position that theory act took so that would be the second part of the motion and then the third is a the third is a question and that's regarding the special use permit and what can we do as a board to intervene as an effective party or or um get involved in that so mr chair i i want to be clear which one we're talking about if we're talking about terra forest west then that happened back in 2024 and right the allegations that there was something wrong with the notice is the court won't take it at this point you know you have these come before you and app parties have 30 days to get in front of the court and claim that there's a notice issue that there's a that they had a due process violation and this is well over that time i'm open to whatever arguments their attorneys might make that you know there might be some way to challenge that but this is way beyond the period of time that we would accept we've been one day beyond the 30 days and being able to get those dismissed the upcoming ones we have tariff force west that's coming up on um final final plat approval which the statute changed recently and they can do that administratively the others are coming up for something called a infrastructure plan and another special exception i think and those have to go before the board their board and they have not been scheduled as far as i know okay so i guess and i'm talking about the ones that have not yet been scheduled um are we are we staffed up and ready to um be effective parties and and speak to those as the county commission based on our previous correspondence um mr chair yes we've been weekly contacting them to see where things are when things are scheduled at this point nothing's been scheduled to our knowledge um so we are staffed up and ready to be an effective party status and um engage in whatever activity comes up so if anything happens during that public hearing that we don't agree with then we'll be in a position to have an intergovernmental dispute and talk about that if we don't agree with the way that that's handled um mr chair that is correct the same way we've been doing it with the prior applications we've we've been um testifying and giving um testimony to our concerns at each of those meetings we'll do the same okay then just a two-part marsh motion written response on the 14th unless you have something to add yeah i guess i have a lot more questions on them they'll pick up too so okay so i'll just hold off on a motion and i guess i'm interested to understand i know we have a standing public records request in for information with regards to these applications i guess my question is is it for all applications is it for any and all correspondence information application materials like do we have a comprehensive public records request standing or is our public records request specific to like our our environmental interest around storm water how how has that been structured so mr chair these are related to the parcels and the the applications as they have been named what i would tell you is that we have a bit of a lag on receiving those records so we aren't relying just on that we are watching public notices and as as i think you know the staff out at the city of alachua has changed recently so we are continuing to reach out we had a good communication line with the last set of staff the last set of attorneys i think we've been asked to open up a new communication line with the the new interim attorney and staff intends to reach out to the the new planning staff as well i guess my concern is that there's been a lot of shifting fans in alachua with regards to the staff that have been handling these projects and it seems to me that perhaps communications that were had may have gotten lost in the shuffle so i would just ask that our our any of our public records request also expand to include if they don't already communications with regards to these applications between staff and commissioners or just so that we can have all the information at our disposal um should we need it similar to what i said with scott walker do that with the laster staff yes on the public record on the we have all the information so there's not any like yeah like lost communications that were had um with regards to those um and i guess the further question is right now my understanding and if i'm not if i'm not correct is that there's a there's one housing project there's one stormwater project and there's one commercial project is that correct in mr chair in a simple description yes that's probably a fair description okay and currently which one is administratively being finally plat in housing the housing one housing one yes the housing one cannot go forward without the stormwater one correct they are interconnected mr chair the the stormwater one gives credit to the amount of imperviousness that's proposed and i believe both of the terra forest west and terra phoenicia which is the commercial side so that um stormwater project is tied to them in that way also the the terra phoenicia project which is the commercial project is one of the access points for terra forest west which is the the residential part as well so they're intertwined but they're my understanding is they could probably if they had administrative approvals they could start building homes on the terra forest west which is the residential well how can they do that without stormwater the it's just the additional stormwater there's stormwater already proposed that if you remember and it's been a while um they have a line of stormwater systems along the southern uh slope of the um or the the bottom slope of their residential so they could put those in and reach most of their capacity i think the the terra for tara april project which is on the other side of the creek is adding some capacity to the overall project okay okay well yeah i'm looking forward to the memo i guess you're including the memo in your three-point motion what memo the memo from legal with regards to our oh yeah that's the first one okay um i just have three things so four point fourteen point motion scott walker and then public record great yeah so i would i would move that we um ask the attorney's office to give us a written update on the 14-point motion that the we ask that the attorney's office forward the correspondence that they previously have forwarded with dariac and alachua staff to scott walker the new firm and that three that we re-engage and make sure we have a good process set up for public records um between alachua county and the city of alachua second city of alachua staff and elected city of alachua staff and elected officials yeah anything else anybody really can i will tell you too that scott scott is covering a lot of our munis out municipalities he represents high springs archer newberry that's right but he's also sending and make an op he's sending his staff now he's not going part i don't know his office he said yes so you know each each community has probably got their own separate attorney attorney mr chair we understand that we deal with a number of attorneys out of his office i just wanted you to know is there any other direction you need that we can be doing i mean you know what's this is important um that you need from us mr chair i think from that direction what we will be reaching out to the new um staff at the city and in meeting with them we'll also make sure that we gather the information in our public records request that goes to you know the current attorneys that their contracted attorneys as well as their new attorney and try to get all that information just in case we've not been receiving that yeah i mean prior to the change of the city manager the change in the attorney the change in the outside council i felt like a lot of the city of alachua was utilizing the alachua county as a resource using utilizing our staff as a resource to evaluate these impacts and their comp plan and and so i just want to kind of reinitiate that help and to the earlier individuals that spoke you know we we have resources and we want to protect our water and these are our citizens that we represent just as much as they're theirs and so we just want to re-engage and and and tell the city that we're here to help them thank you thank you wheeler you have no i just steve i just you know if we could get information about when you know when they're having their meetings and when this is going to be on the agenda to make sure that we are totally notified um mr chair yes that that's that's a good point we will notify the board when we know there are items coming forward okay great thank you and we will also attend them obviously yes thank you that's it mr chair okay we've got a motion did i hear a second second hand okay that's okay you got a motion and a second are there any further discussions are there any citizen comments to the motion hello soria lindberg um i do appreciate the motion you made uh commissioner cornell i do want to add a couple more suggestions to catch um attorney walker up and also county staff um you need to talk to four sets of people uh theriac rush and also the planners who resigned because the one who spoke up said they left over mill creek sink um they're the ones who are in it there they know the knowledge um it's going to cost a few bucks but you set aside a million dollars for this so i think if you get that information quickly um from the attorney's theriac rush um it'll help in the former planners it'll help update mr walker and your staff um when it comes to the public records i mentioned before the christmas video example um it's got to be a little more pointed than hoping they're going to be good neighbors because we all those that do request public records from them there are instances where you ask for something and maybe my comma is in the wrong place and i change it and then i get it so that's my you know learning curve as someone that's not a professional government person um so yeah we just need facts and the facts can help us figure out the rest um the lost communications also um you have acquired whistleblowers we talk about mill sink every day we we hear about we're just in it so we're happy to share that information which is how you got this information from the citizen in your email and also in the email the attachment from the city planning director told them that a project uh assistance team is reviewing the application based on the terror lawyers i request you also get that documentation because what is every attachment they're looking at um so you know what they're looking for too because if you see something that raises concern you'll know about that as well um also ask for emails ask for any email correspondence okay yeah um but having an opening public records request didn't provide you the information that the citizen emailed you so there's a lot out there there's thousands of pages so thank you for taking this seriously and thank you for helping us um i know you're commissioner prissy i think you you were talking to the group that wanted to save the historic building before about voting to help i can only vote for you guys so thank you for letting me count on you um and i'll try not to panic about water in the meantime so thank you yeah i'll just respond okay thank you chair commissioners staff my name is tamara robbins thank you for uh this conversation or your comments i do would like clarification uh mr chair the attorney uh mentioned the infrastructure plan and another special exception i don't know anything about that i'd very much like to know what she was looking at because a special exception would then require a public hearing and if she's just suggesting that the infrastructure plan is the special exception i don't know if i could get clarification on that because that's one of the things that we have not known about is where is the hearing point going to happen because okay um has the staff yet received the application that was determined complete by that review committee that was referenced in the letter that i think you all received um in an email um that's a question um um carson crockett is one staff member of the planning department that has consistently been there so yes we there were three that resigned to have been hired carson crockett is now is the consistent new city manager new attorney um as miss soria mentioned um and i'm going to emphasize again and thank you and mr chair thank you commissioner prisia for circling back on clarifying your public records request i have been requesting records from the city of alachua for 30 years and i can tell you they are not the best at providing them they like to charge for them they like to obstruct on them and they're not going to offer up information voluntarily so you have to be super diligent about about it and be comprehensive about what you request i am the person that requested the video of the holiday party and received an initial tent five minute redacted version and oh gee whiz after an attorney got involved it was a 20 minute video huh amazing that right they left out 15 whole minutes um so thank you again um i just really want uh to know about the infrastructure plan and the special exception that is being uh being referenced thank you good evening brian bisher high springs uh thank you for uh moving forward on this and uh taking some action i appreciate that uh one thing is that uh just being in discussion with uh uh terrell arline who is in the process of retiring out of tallahassee with land use um he suggested that it's a a novel uh legal argument uh related to uh this um special exception permit that was approved without the proper notification and that the statute runs longer than 30 days related to this so if i um perhaps could get uh county council connected uh with the attorney representing uh national speedological society and perhaps even terrell then we can kind of sort that part out um i think that the challenge of waiting on the public hearing process with this project is that um it can be approved administratively as you're now well aware um and so when you think about terra phoenicia and these things being intertwined their access point is through terra phoenicia and so they have the ability in this process to approve this preliminary plat as a final plat because their approval for the preliminary plat included access through terra phoenicia tara april is uh say wolf in sheep's clothing uh because they've identified this as a storm a minor utility of a stormwater detention area to serve i-75 but what they don't want us to look at is that it actually includes some community commercial within their future land use map so it's more than just what it is on the face of it uh the uh i know uh ms robbins had mentioned carson crockett um a couple of meetings ago at the city i had asked hey now that the law has changed effective july 1st perhaps the city commission would like to know what the preliminary plats are that might be approved administratively so they brought carson crockett to the to the podium and he could not remember that uh terra was on this list he could only remember two projects um and that is on the public record uh for them speaking of public records i've done exhaustive research i requested the communications since uh back in september i received uh 1298 pages of emails to which i sorted through uh there they did not include the attachments uh so then i had to make a request for the attachments and this goes on and on and i could add 10 more minutes appreciate you moving forward with this the stronger debate thank you mr chair would you like me to clarify a few things okay um so there's terra force west you received a i don't know if you remember this you received this table it's down to the clerk some time ago and as far as i know we're still in that same position as far as those applications we're expecting a special exception for um terra april which is the the uh stormwater stop me if i'm wrong stormwater facility that's out by i75 they need a special exception exception for that the city of alachua has a process that they call an infrastructure plan and they also have a site plan so i'm not entirely sure what that is but those under their chart require city commission approval so that's those are for terra april needs an infrastructure plan terra phoenicia needs an infrastructure plan and none of those have been scheduled and in fact that's what um the terra developers attorneys are complaining about the fact that those have not been scheduled those are the ones we're waiting for and expecting is that because they didn't have staff that the city didn't have staff to to do this i'm it's unclear to me why they haven't scheduled okay the hearings i you know i don't think i know i mean speculating but i'm just we i don't think we would speculate at this point i think that they have asked the city has asked for more courtesy time because they don't have an attorney on staff and they don't have i guess maybe because they don't have planning staff i don't know city has not responded as far as i know go ahead so just to clarify sylvia the infrastructure plan special exception you were talking about was for tara april and terra phoenicia which will come which will require special exceptions and come back before the board special exception for tara april um infrastructure plan for tara april and infrastructure plan for tara phoenicia okay all of those will go before the board okay thank you um two other questions based on the public comment would um i would like to add direction uh the fourth part that we ask our attorney to connect with the national theological society's attorney see if there's any benefit to that so a second or okay with that okay so that's part four and then part five is there any benefit um to requesting any information from theriac rush uh or any of the planners project assistance team do you need any direction mr chair i will not speak to to the planners because i that's already in the count city and we already have that direction yep what i would tell you is that if i were to leave your employee i would not speak with for instance the florence um team and and tell them what you would plan and what you had thought about so there's no benefit in that i don't believe i don't believe listen i won't speak to their ethics but i couldn't uh for my professionalism okay fair enough all right so just four part motion and i i believe that any communications that any of those former employees had with regards to any of these applications and those as i mean email i'm talking about also asking for text messages any community forms of communication and attachments not just um emails so i mean then we would have most of that information to capture so that it would be wouldn't be lost we've been here all day go ahead go ahead please make it short all right thank you so much uh mr chair the attorney said that they would come according to the city's chart that the special exceptions would become before the commission and according to the city of alachua's chart special exceptions go before the planning and zoning board for one hearing only so correct me if i'm wrong but that's where their special exceptions go is for the plan board one hearing it isn't a recommendation it is a final decision which is kind of a big deal oh yeah that's the city of alachua so right so the the appeal appeal from the planning and zoning board goes to the city commission she's correct the one special exception goes before the planning board for a decision and an appeal would go before the city commission the two infrastructure plans go directly before the commission so they so the city allows their company allows for special exceptions to be approved by the planning board not the commission in certain case in certain cases they're in the they separate them into something with building that's greater than 80 000 square feet and then into a category of all other special exceptions all other special exceptions go before the planning board for final decision with an appeal before their board that's a lot of authority who has authority who has authority to appeal does a party have authority to appeal yes and are we partied we have asked for party status we don't find out whether we are a party or not until we're before the hearing but the planning board determines that the planning board would determine that of course we can appeal to to the court and that their determination doesn't have anything to do with our ability to appeal to okay so hopefully our direction though has our staff going to that planning commission meeting as this as if it's a city commission meeting where the special exception is being determined right so our staff i think we were adding up how many hearings they've been to since you asked they've been to water management district hearings they have been to city board hearings on both in front of the planning commission and go ahead yeah i was just going to help clarify that we've been to two zoning board hearings as well as two additional commission meetings as well so we would attend the planning and zoning board meeting if that's the as a party as a party correct and and as the attorney said we have to we apply for party staffers party status every time they have another hearing so it's it's not a and so the direction that you have though is that if that special exception is granted by that planning commission and we object to that you would then bring that back to us so that we could file an appeal to the city commission so mr chair we could we could do that and we probably would do that if we had time if we didn't have time and we thought we had a basis we i would go ahead and do it on my authority and then bring it to you to ask for permission later great great thank you just want to be clear on that thank you okay we've got a motion in a second we've had uh public comments to the motion back to the board those in favor of the motion vote by the sign of aye aye aye those opposed same motion carries commissioner um i just have one thing um i'm gonna cross the others off my list and we'll talk about them later um is mv as the paratransit mv transport i reached out to several of the city commissioners and the mayor with regards to that um to have a conversation about the impact it would have on our county um and those who are most vulnerable in our county and that that we really um at least as of now um between a rock and a hard place because there's not really an ability like we don't have buses we don't have bus drivers we don't have infrastructure we don't have an app we don't have any of the things that would be necessary to provide that legally required transportation as of october 1 or as of january 1 and ask them to please reconsider they're um not considering our pause and they were all amenable um to working with us and want don't want to leave us in the lurch and um we're definitely wanting to um get our staff together to discuss options and put together a plan so um with that i just want to direct staff to get that meeting set up as soon as possible we probably won't get it done obviously before we all pass our village on i heard they were meeting about it tomorrow or thursday about it tomorrow actually on their agenda okay great well i don't that's what i heard is that correct jeff mr chair i believe they they have their budget meeting is tomorrow yeah so i think they're they're anticipating discussing it there oh at their trim at their i believe they're anticipating there i think they're probably anticipating you know public to attend and it to be a subject of conversation i will say that we have met with city staff we've met within the transportation we've met with the regional planning council transportation disadvantage staff to get the fullest picture we can and try to come up with options and we're still doing that for our 23rd meeting yes yeah great but and we will continue to try to come up with with options that are available obviously with where the city is in their budget where you guys are in your budget process you know there's those likely have to be a budget amendment of some sort it's what i'm letting you know but i just yeah with a lot of them and they said the same thing yeah they're going to try i'm going to leave us an alert and we'll try to figure it out together great well i just want to make sure stuff we're moving forward with having those conversations coming up with options and a plan that they could bring back to us and one thing that i did mention to both commissioners and our team separately was that i wanted to find out if the if the medically necessary transit transports were billable um and that's a question that may have been outside of the scope of what you guys are discussing but i am interested to understand um because i think about 90 of those transportation supports are medically necessary to get to appointments and i don't know if we could bill insurance or medicare medicaid for those transports but if we can that may provide another source of revenue for um this program so that was just one other point to explore okay thank you that's all i have commissioner wheeler no i'm good thank you you all taken care of at all i have nothing man i have nothing let's get out of here i am starving if there is no further business before the board of county commissioners we adjourn