Regular Meeting @ 11:30 a.m. - Sep 23, 2025

I'd like to call to order the Lactua County Board of County Commission meeting for September 23rd, 2025 at 11.32 a.m. First, we'll have the invocation followed by the Pledge of Allegiance given by Pastor Kenard T. Feathers of Northwest Baptist Church. Pastor Feathers in. Yes, it's time. All right, I'll give the invocation today. Okay. All by our heads. Heavenly Father, as we come together today, we thank you for the opportunity to meet and work collectively. Fill our hearts with gratitude for the gifts and the talents each person brings. God, our efforts with purpose and grace may be productive and aligned with your purpose. Let every moment be used wisely and every topic covered through it. May we find solutions, clarity, and direction in all that we do today. Help us accomplish what we've come to do so nothing is left undone or overlooked. Amen. 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. Approval. Yeah, Mr. Chair, Madam Manager, is there anything to pull? Yes, but we also have one commissioner who is on Zoom who would like to request to participate. Move to accept the circumstances for illness, right? She's been ill. Yeah. To move to accept extraordinary circumstances for Commissioner Alford to participate online. Second. And then second. Refer to the discussions to the motion. Those in favor of the motion, vote by the sign of aye. Aye. Those opposed, same sign. Motion carries. And she's there, right, Mark? She's there? Okay. I heard her. I heard her. Mary. Okay. Yes, one item requested to be pulled, and that is item on Consent Q2C, Senate Bill 180, which is item 25-00808. If we could put that under item. Well, Mr. Chair, I would actually recommend that we pull that item and put it just prior to the presentations, because I'm going to move that we not join the lawsuit, and I want to discuss what was discussed in fact, and I think we're going to be discussing Senate Bill 180 during the presentation. So could we make it aye-5? J. Or J-1-half? Yes. Okay. Okay. J-1-half? Point five. Yes, I would move approval of the agenda and the consent agenda with that one change. Okay. Got a motion and a second. Thank you. Any further discussion to the motion? Are there any citizen comments to the motion? If not, back to the board. Those in favor of the motion, vote by the sign of aye. Aye. Those opposed, same sign. We have a lot of people here today, and we also have a heavy agenda today. So if the public comments portion, if there's a lot of people, we're going to limit it to one o'clock for public comments. Once one o'clock comes, we're done with public comments, and we're going to continue with our agenda. So I just want to make that clear before we get started. So from 12 to 1? 12 to 1. Okay. That's it. I think that makes sense. Okay. All right. Now we have the announcement. Mark 6. Hey, Josh and Ellen, if you could give me the computer on screen, please. Knowing how busy you are today, Mr. Chair, I'm just going to give you a little snapshot of something that I found interesting. In looking at the research, of those who get their news from traditional sources, about 55% of people identify that TV is their number one source for news. But among all resources, including social media, 54% of the people polled say that social media is their number one source for news now in the United States. Wow. This is a snapshot of county news over the last seven days, and there's a lot of different kind of subjects. And many of the stories that are covered in this are county stories, but there are also school stories, sheriff's stories, and other stories. I normally talk about other departments in my announcements, but I'm going to take a second just to praise the folks on my staff that are responsible for our social media, and that includes Brett Bostock and Andrew Kaplan and Takumi Sullivan, Josh Massery, and Alan Yetter. And just to give you an idea of the job they're doing, this is a list, it makes up 100%. This is the people that got their news from the Alachua County social media in the last seven days. Of the 100%, 16% of those people got their information from Alachua County's social media. The feedback was 16% positive, 1% negative, and the rest neutral. They received the information. Number two was the Alachua Chronicle. Number three was TV20, the Alachua County Sheriff's Office, WUFT, Main Street Daily News, and on and on and on. But, you know, in most weeks, Alachua County is the number one news source for people getting local news on social media, and 55% of the people in the United States identify social media as their number one news source, for better or worse. Anyway, I just wanted to share that with you and give my staff a pat on the back. That's the announcement, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Next, we'll have approval of recognitions. We'll have approval of recognitions. Second. Got a motion and a second. Okay, those in favor of the motion, vote by the sign of aye. Aye. Those opposed, same sign. Motion carries. I think I'm on first. All right. First, we'll have presentation of proclamation recognized October 5th through October 11th, 2025 as National 4-H Week in Alachua County. All right. Hello, everyone. I think this is on. Can you hear me okay? Welcome. All right. Well, as most of you probably know, agriculture is very close to my heart. It's something that I've spent my lifetime working on and around the idea of local food and supporting our local farms. So, exciting to see young people as into local food and farming as I am. Declaring October 5th through October 11th, 2025 as National 4-H Week in Alachua County. The 4-H program has been positively impacting children's lives since 1909 and has celebrated 115 years of service. Its mission is to create a supportive environment where diverse youth and adults may reach their fullest potential. 4-H is an organization open to all children ages 5 to 18 and reaches over 6 million youth nationwide, with Florida having over 200,000 youth members and adult volunteers. And with the Alachua County program boasting 450 community club members and volunteers along with thousands of youth that participate in schools. The Alachua County 4-H program is a part of the Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences at the University of Florida and is a program where young people learn by doing through programs such as the Alachua County Youth Fair and 4-H community clubs. 4-H community members participate in projects such as science and technology, photography and creative arts, horticulture, entomology, public speaking and animal sciences that help develop leadership, citizenship and other life skills. Whereas the Alachua County 4-H members have shown extraordinary leadership abilities by having a consistent county membership on the state executive board where they work with youth and adults from across the state to plan and implement statewide programs and maintain a position on the state council for eight terms. And whereas Alachua County youth have excelled on a club, county, district, state and national level with members participating in the state legislature, 4-H legislature, 4-H university, the Southern Region Teen Leadership Conference, as well as the state contests of Avian Bowl, Envirathon, horse judging, shooting sports, public speaking, creative arts and livestock projects and more. Whereas Alachua County encourages the people of this community to take the opportunity to become more aware of this special program and join us in recognizing the unique partnership between our city, our county and the university system. Now therefore, through the authority vested in me by the Board of County Commissioners, Alachua County, Florida, I do hereby proclaim October 5th through October 11th as National 4-H Week in Alachua County, Florida. And it is signed and sealed by all the appropriate people. And with that, I'm going to hand this to you and give you an opportunity to say a few words. Thank you for recognizing National 4-H Week and the power of 4-H with this proclamation. My name is Asayi Shika Nakunia and I'm a proud Alachua County 4-H alumna and now student at the University of Florida studying animal science. 4-H has prepared me for success in college and my future career. And because of 4-H, I am beyond ready. As a member of 4-H, I gain skills that don't come from a textbook. How to speak with confidence, how to set and achieve goals, and how to lead and work with others. I wasn't just learning about a project. I was learning skills I use every day as I step into college and adulthood. What I've experienced isn't unique to me. Across our county, 4-H has helped thousands of young people becoming beyond ready for their ways. Members are learning responsibility by raising animals, problem solving through STEM projects, building leadership through public speaking, and giving back through community service. These experiences prepare them not only for college or careers, but also for being engaged citizens and leaders in our community. As I look to my future, I know I am beyond ready because of 4-H. And thanks to your support, thousands of young people in Alachua County are gaining the same opportunities to grow, lead, and thrive. On behalf of 4-H youth, thank you for celebrating National 4-H Week and ensuring young people aren't just prepared. They're truly beyond ready. Next, we'll have the presentation of proclamation recognizing October 16, 2025 as Community Action Agency Day in Alachua County, Florida. I must say, too, 4-H taught us Robert's Rules of Orders, right, ladies? Yeah. I was a big 4-H-er growing up, too. All right. My name is Mary Helen Wheeler, and I am going to read the proclamation for Central Florida Community Action Agency. There was some confusion about the date that this was to be read. And so the CEO of the Community Action Agency is down in Marion County, horrified that she's missing this. But I am chair of that board, and so on behalf of that agency, I will read this proclamation and accept it as well. I don't know if you all know much about what the Community Action Agency does here, but I'm going to share just a little bit with you after I've read the proclamation. Declaring October 16, 2025 as Central Florida Community Action Agency Day in Alachua County, Florida. You notice the date, October. That's what caused some of the confusion. Whereas Central Florida Community Action Agency, Incorporated, is celebrating 44 years of dedicated service to the citizens of Alachua, Levy, and Marion counties working to empower families. And whereas Central Florida Community Action Agency, Incorporated, provides a diverse array of assistance programs that support the citizens of these counties. And whereas through essential programs such as the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, LIHEAP, Weatherization Assistance Program, Raising and Improving Self-Sufficiency Expectations Through Rise Program, Hurricane Emergency Leadership and Preparedness, the Health Program, and other comprehensive wraparound services, Central Florida Community Action Agency delivers vital support that fosters hope, strengthens resilience, and improves the well-being of our communities. And whereas Central Florida Community Action Agency remains a strong voice for change and an advocate for individuals and families with low income and those facing economic hardship, championing dignity and self-sufficiency. And whereas Central Florida Community Action Agency will host its annual meeting, the Board of Directors and Partner of the Year event on October 16, 2025, at the Best Western Gateway Grand Hotel and Conference Center in Gainesville, will be celebrating its continued impact and community partnerships. Now, therefore, through the authority vested in me by the Board of County Commissioners of Alachua County, Florida, I do hereby proclaim October 16, 2025, a Central Florida Community Action Agency Agency Day in Alachua County, Florida, duly proclaimed this 23rd day of September, A.D. 2025, and it's signed by our Chair, Charles Chestnut IV, and attested to by Jess Irby. And I will take this and read it during that meeting on October the 16th. And what I would like to remind everybody in this community that there are several of such agencies operating in our North Central Florida area, and some of us really don't even know what each other does. And so what we need to do is to work more closely with each other so that we are working together as a team to actually make these monies that we're getting from state and federal dollars go as far as we can. Now, this little report that I have will tell you that we have served, in the most recent report I have, 9,815 individuals that were served, households over 3,791. We have weatherized 74 homes. The counties serve, like I said, Alachua, Levy, and Marion, so we cover all of those families. Educational services, we work with Santa Fe. We work with other programs where we actually pay to have young people go and get certified in whatever it is that they are going to be making their living doing those educational support services. And then 565 homes that we reported had received rent assistance. Now, there are agencies that will help with rent, and we're one of those. And then 8,769 families received energy assistance. If you've ever been by GRU and see that line standing outside, that's probably Community Action Agency that's paying those bills. And then over $5.9 million invested in programs that reduce poverty and empower families in Alachua, Levy, and Marion counties. So check us out. And if there are people in need in the community, send them our way. Central Florida Community Action Agency. And on behalf of our CEO, Caroline Ruff-Looney, I will send this back to the group, and I hope you have a chance to meet her because she's a dynamo, and she's making things happen in this community. So thank you. Next, we'll have the presentation of a proclamation recognizing September as National Kinship Month in Alachua County. Okay, is Amanda, is Amanda, okay, come on up. Okay. It is my pleasure to declare September as National Kinship Month in Alachua County, Florida. Whereas, as of August 1st, 2025, there are 182 children and youth in the out-of-home care in Alachua County, with 89 placed in kinship care. And whereas, kinship care is one of the most vital structures for providing children with love, dignity, and belonging, and to ensure a sense of physical and emotional safety. And whereas, kinship families open their homes and hearts to children whose families are in crisis and play a vital role helping children and families heal and reunify while launching children into successful adulthood. Whereas, Partnership for Strong Families Kinship Navigator Program is designed to ensure that kinship caregivers are provided with necessary resources for the preservation of family. And whereas, Partnership for Strong Families is working to increase public awareness of the unique needs of children in foster care placed with kinship families. And of the enduring and valuable contributions made by kinship families. And whereas, Kinship Care Month is an opportunity to recognize the kinship families who open their hearts to provide children with a sense of connection, security, and ties to their culture, family, and community. As well as child welfare professionals and advocates working to ensure children's safety, permanence, and well-being. And to spread awareness on behalf of the children in kinship care. And whereas, the Alaska County Board of County Commissioners encourages people to volunteer their time and energy and talents on behalf of children in foster care and their biological families, kinship caregivers, and foster parents during this month and throughout the year. Now, through the authority vested in me by the Board of County Commissioners of Alaska County, Florida, I do hereby proclaim September as National Kinship Month in Alaska County, duly proclaimed this 23rd day of September, 2025. It's signed by our illustrious Chair, Charles Chestnut IV, and attested to by our Clerk, Jess Irby. And with us, we have Brianna and Jasmine, who are going to speak to us about kinship care. Thank you so much for having us today. I'm Brianna. We're from Partnership for Strong Families, a child welfare agency operating in north-central Florida, including Alachio County. Our goal is to create safe and nurturing homes for children and assist families in creating those homes as well. So with me today, I have Ms. Jasmine Neal. She's a level one licensing supervisor, and she has been in the child welfare field since 1999. She's been with Partnership for Strong Families since January of 2022, and she's going to give some more information on kinship care. Good afternoon, everyone. Again, my name is Jasmine Neal. It's truly an honor to stand before you today as we recognize and celebrate our kinship caregivers. Kinship care is the heart of our community. It represents the selflessness, the love, and resilience of relatives and close family friends who step into care for the children when their parents are in need of extra support. These caregivers provide not only a safe home, but also stability, a sense of belonging, and the continuation of family traditions and connections. They embody the very best of family and community that they often make great sacrifices to ensure that children are nurtured and supported. Today's proclamation is more than just words on paper. It's a reminder that we see them. It's a reminder that we honor our caregivers. It's a reminder that we are committed to standing beside our caregivers. To every kinship caregiver, we need to let them know, and we continue to let them know, that their love changes lives and that their dedication strengthens the very fabric of this community. On behalf of Alachua County, thank you for the invaluable role you play in helping keeping our families together and our children thriving. Thank you. Next, we'll have a presentation of a proclamation declaring October 5th through October 11th as Fire Prevention Week in Alachua County. How are you, sir? Good, sir. How are you? Proclamation declaring the week of October 5th through October 11th as Fire Prevention Week in Alachua County, Florida. Whereas, Alachua County is committed to ensuring the safety and security of all those living in Alachua County and visiting Alachua. And whereas, fire remains a serious public safety concern both locally and nationally, and the presence of lithium-ion batteries in many household devices introduce unique fire risk. And whereas, most of the electronics used in homes daily includes smartphones, tablets, laptops, power tools, e-bikes, e-scooters, and toys are powered by lithium-ion batteries, which, if mist used, damaged, or improperly charged, can overheat and start a fire or explode. And whereas, residents should follow three key calls to action. By only listing products, charge batteries safely and recycle them responsibly and prevent battery-related fires. And whereas, the proper disposal and recycling of lithium-ion batteries help prevent environmental hazards and reduce the risk in the home and community. And whereas, the 2025 Fire Prevention Week theme, charge into fire safety, lithium-ion batteries in your home serve to remind us of the importance of using charging and recycling lithium-ion batteries safely to reduce the risk of fires in homes and in the community. Now, therefore, through the authority vested in me by the Board of County Commissioners of Alachua County, Florida, I do hereby proclaim October 5th through October 11, 2025, as Fire Prevention Week in Alachua County, Florida, duly proclaim this 23rd day of September A.D., attested to by Jess Irby and signed by yours truly. Chief Theis, would I please make some comments? Yes, sir. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Board. Harold Theis, Fire Chief of Alachua County Fire Rescue. You know, oftentimes we're seen in the public in those situations where there are emergencies, but so much of what we do is try to do the fire prevention side, and we do a lot of public education to try to warn residents and citizens about the potential hazards that are out there. Lithium-ion batteries are really a new hazard for all of us as we use them so much in our electronics and on our devices that we use for lawn mowing and lawn care and power tools and things like that. So we really recommend that as you use these batteries, we use them smart. We don't use them in a way that can damage them. We certainly want to unplug those things in our garage while we're not there, while we're not present. We also want to make sure that we're using lithium-ion batteries that are Underrider Laboratory certified. So many of the ones that we see now coming from overseas lead to problems, and we have those situations where they overheat, and we have been to quite a few structure fires, home fires, where lithium-ion batteries are the root cause of the fire. And so we thank you for this proclamation. We thank you, Board, for your continued support, the fire rescue services, and the 300 men and women who are out there right now, 24 hours a day, ensuring that our public is safe. So thank you very much. It's 1158. You want to go to public comment, Chair? Yes. All right. This will bring us to public comment. So, Mr. Chair, Mark is going to clarify really quickly. I know you had said one hour. Yes. But we also want to remind people that they have three minutes to comment on anything not on the agenda, as well as they can comment on things that are on the agenda, but they will not be permitted to speak to those items, you know, if they can't stay. But they will not be able to speak to those items when those items come up before the board. So if it has to do with any item that is on the agenda and the commission intends to take comment on those items, whether or not there's a motion, that might be something you wish to relay if they wanted to wait to provide comment. Mr. Chair, and I was going to suggest by the show of hands we find out how many in the chambers right now intend to speak during public comment between 12 and 1. That way we can get a sense of how many, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13. And over here, too, you've got people. Okay. So about 15 people, 15 times 3 minutes, 45 minutes, plus on the phone. And, Mr. Chair, just to reiterate what the manager was saying, we want to make sure there's no confusion in the audience. And it would help, Mr. Chair, if you would clarify, if you plan on taking public comment during the item about permitting and the special area study, do you plan on allow those? There may not be motions on those items. So if you plan on letting people speak then, then they might want to wait. If they want to, they can speak to it now and not have to wait for the item to come up, but they will not be able to speak again. So I guess another way to do it would be show of hands if you plan on speaking during public comment about those two items, or if you would plan on wait for the items when they're being discussed. There's three. Yeah. Okay. Show of hands if you'd rather speak now and not be able to speak again. Just, Mark, we'll just let them go through, and if they speak, they won't be speaking when the item comes up, and we'll just ask them to kindly sit. All right. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair. Yes. Ms. Hamilton is here and has to be picked up by one. Okay, yes. So if we could grab her in there. She could be first. Okay, thank you. Yeah. Yeah, Ms. Hamilton. Ms. Connish, could we let Ms. Hamilton come first? Yeah, yes, please. Yeah. Thank you, Mr. Chair and Commissioners. My name is Judith Hamilton, and I am speaking on something that is on the agenda later, but I cannot stay. So thank you for the permission to be able to speak. I, as you know, because I've been here before, I just wanted to follow up on my last speaking on the Transportation Disadvantaged Program, and I am glad that this is still on your radar. I really want to reiterate how important that transportation is to our people that are disabled, and especially to the blind and visually impaired who can't drive a car or any other convenience. We can walk, but we really need the Transportation Disadvantaged Program out in the county and the unincorporated area right now with all the changes in the transportation. And I hope that we can all come to a consensus of agreement. You, and I mean the collective you, those in this room and the commissioners, you are us. We are you. And I really, you don't know what's going to happen to you in the future, and the validity of this program is very important. We just need to get from point A to point B and do the things we need to do, the opportunities that present themselves, the connections that present ourselves. It's not all about the medical stuff. It's everything else, too, and connection. Thank you very much. Mr. Chair, Jim Connish, may I please have the overhead? I'd like to educate you on the rights I enjoy as a farmer managing a timber farm in Alachia County for the last 31 years. We have Dude Rancher Embertus Goldstein here as well. He's similarly situated. Sir, this is a pole barn. It would be defined as an agricultural support facility. If I were to add walls to it, it would become a shed. If it was under 100 square feet, it would not be a building. If it was over 100 square feet, it would become a building. No matter how many of these I pile on top of each other or cluster, it does not become a dwelling unless there's a commode and a kitchen, period. So when you raid a building like this illegally, your problem is your own form that very few people know about discuss the affidavit of qualification for non-residential building permit exemption. And I don't think anyone could appreciate the key question more than an Alachia County commissioner. Is the building intended to be used as a residential dwelling? Now for a body that has flaunted their own residency affidavit, all a farmer has to say is, I don't intend to live in a building with no toilet and no kitchen. And your enforcement actions will fall flat in any court of law. We have a right to build on our farm, and we have a right to use our building without a curfew from the Alachia County Commission, period. What we don't have a right to do is pollute the land, and I don't do that. You cut me off, slam your hand on the table. This is an opportunity. I'm not going to call it housing. I'm going to call it a shelter. Last time I checked, this is a subtropical climate. You can survive very nicely in a building like this without high voltage, without a septic tank, and without a well. And an example of this concept would be right here at the High Springs Public Library, where they're gathering the water out of their gutter instead of pumping dirty water out of the ground or getting it from the city potable water system. Anybody can do this. I have 1,600 gallons stored in 20 tanks. I have pumps that are air-powered that I can shoot water 35 feet with scuba tanks for hours. So when you come in to regulate our farm, you need to know about the right to farm law, and you need to respect the 10 kinds of farms absolutely immune from your regulations. Thank you. Thank you. Hello, County Commissioners, Honorable County Commissioners, and audience. My name is Charles Jordan Pereer, and I've spent a lot of time here in Alachua County over the last year. However, I live in Trumansburg, New York, where it was the founding place of the Finger Lakes Grassroots Festival. In 1991, musicians and friends and neighbors all got together to create a benefit for the fight against AIDS. And that festival was grown over 30 years into really a world-famous roots music event. I also live on a small farm, about 26 acres, just outside of Trumansburg. Trumansburg is a town of 1,500 people. It is a very vibrant, beautiful little community where people all know each other. One of the striking things that led me to be down here is that after about 10 years of the festivals in Trumansburg, New York, I saw the great benefits of the festival. Trumansburg is a lot like Alachua County. There's a farming community. We have very good soil up there. We can grow great amounts of corn and soybeans. There's also a bedroom community outside of Ithaca, New York, where Cornell University is located. Those two communities did not really speak to each other. I would say the people from those two communities until the festival came around. After that, people came together and started appreciating each other's lives. I would not be here as a volunteer to try to do something that I didn't feel was a very great thing. And I really do like Melrose. I think it's a beautiful little town. It is an amazing amount of, you know, art galleries and musicians and all that stuff. I think it's a beautiful home. I would hope that we can all come together and make sure that we do this in the right way. And it will not in any way have a detrimental effect on Melrose. Thank you very much. Can you please not clap? You can do this. That's fine. But clapping, sometimes imitate, well, make other folks nervous to speak. So please hold that in mind. Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Ann Rudig. I live in Melrose, Florida. Thank you, commissioners, for allowing us to speak. The population of Melrose is 5,634. The expected number of attendees for the first Wildflowers Music Festival is 2,000. That's a 35% increase in our population. The number eventually will climb to 7,000 to 9,000, according to the promoter. That's a 125% increase in our population. I keep hearing that the festival will be in the greater Gainesville area. Melrose is not Gainesville. Gainesville's population is 150,000. What would you do if 52,000 extra people showed up in Gainesville for four days? That's the 35% increase we will see in Melrose. Or how about the 125% increase? That would bring 185,000 extra people to Gainesville. That's the proportional relation. Without environmental traffic, emergency response, noise, and water usage impact studies, how would you plan for this? That's the position we're in because allowing a temporary use permit without doing these studies first and figuring out how to resource the needs that we'll bring to our community makes this a massive, dangerous experiment on our little town. That's what we'll be facing, with far less infrastructure and fewer resources than Gainesville. Route 26, for example, already lacks adequate law enforcement. What will happen when 1,500 to 4,500 extra cars show up? The promoter has no idea and no plan. And what has worked in the past for this promoter may not work here. I'm sad to say that we're in a very different time and place. We have two guys working evenings for emergency services. God forbid there's a mass shooting or other chaos at the festival. No one ever imagined that this piece of agricultural land would be used for this purpose. This land is behind the Amaris Bank, down Quail Road a bit, not far from Mossman Hall, Melrose Center, and the small galleries and other small music venues that already form our vibrant art and music scene near the heart of our town. Although the property may be in Alachua County, the problems that the festival will bring, garbage, crime, drugs, noise, environmental damage, won't stay within the perimeter of the festival or even in one county. This festival will not be on a piece of land in the middle of nowhere. It will be in Melrose and will affect all of Melrose, which sits within four counties. I respectfully ask the commissioners, please deny this temporary use permit. The promoter is not prepared to deal with what he will bring to our small town. Please conclude. He's hoping Alachua County will fill in the many missing pieces of his uninformed plan. They're expensive in many ways more than money. Are you prepared to do that? I am originally from New York. I've been in Florida 22 years. And I was so sad when I left New York because of the Grassroots Festival was my favorite thing in the summer. It brought so many people together, kids playing art, music, music from around the world. It brought me, it turned me on to African music, Cajun music from New Orleans. I'm getting emotional because it was such a powerful, positive thing in my life. And it came to us, a small town in upstate New York, Trumansburg, and it only brought abundance. The economy, culture, the kids started learning how to play music. Now all the kids perform at these festivals. And I'm getting really emotional because I'm not good at public speaking. But I just want to say, yes, it's going to, of course, require resources from the county and maybe the local community to address issues of traffic and things like that. But it is based on folk music type music from around the world and in the United States. It's mostly that kind of music and drumming and things that kids can do and learn, culture, and diversity. And I guess I'm getting too nervous to speak anymore. Thank you. Your name? Richard. Your name? Shreff. Richard Shreff. S-C-H-R-E-S-A. Thank you. Hello, commissioners. My name is David Ballard. Some of you may recognize me from my years working with the city of Gainesville, putting on the Free Fridays concert series, and various other festivals around the area. You know, I have just recently become associated with the Wildflowers Music Park folks. And the first thing I noticed was how professional they are, how they put everything together and considered everything before they even bought the property. They were ready to serve the community rather than take away from the community. You know, I did 25 years of the large national renaissance festivals around the country as an entertainer and also sometimes on the staff. And every time somebody went to build a renaissance festival near a small town, there were people who thought it would not be appropriate. They wouldn't like it. But as the festival went on and moved on and forward, they began to realize how amazing the festival was for their location and how much it increased their economy and yet did not interfere with their way of life. Renaissance festivals, for example, some of them get 30,000 people a day. And the Wildflower is not talking anything close to that. And yet, these small towns honor it and love it. So I just want to say one other thing is that I consider myself a bit of an expert at site planning. And when I looked at the Wildflowers site plan, I usually can find some holes or some places to make some comments. And yet, I could not find anything wrong with our site plan. It considered everything with the flowing of audiences and also very, very much consideration of how to position the stages and the sound equipment so as not to bother the neighbors. And I think that given a little bit of time, people of Nell Rose will love it. It will be an asset and also, of course, an asset for the rest of the county. Thank you. Thank you. Greetings, commissioners. Thank you for the opportunity to share with you information about the children of our world through UNICEF. It's been my privilege. By the way, I'm Dr. Dorobi. It's been a privilege to work on this issue with the support of our community during the past nine years that we initiated the fundraiser. And this year's fundraiser will be held at Ocamek on September 27th at 2 p.m., which is reflected in that flyer there. And I'll leave some extra ones in here if you like. It's at 2 o'clock in a few days from now, this coming Saturday. And please support and join us and enjoy presentation of dances. One of our dancers are sitting right there, June. And these dances are around the world, locally, nationally, internationally. It's wonderful. Why? It's for the children, their future. And your tax-deductible contributions will allow UNICEF to make investments that will improve children's lives, health for generations to come, beyond myself, my age group. And so we're building the future for them. And as you can see, the beautiful face of that young lady there on the flyer there is so smiling beautifully. 50 cents can feed their child. If you think you can do that, please don't come. Otherwise, do come, enjoy, and be happy to be part of the world, locally, nationally, internationally. It's been my privilege to do this after I heard the status of the children throughout the world, which we hear it daily, anyway. Thank you for the opportunity. Thank you all. Come. Enjoy dancing. Good afternoon, Commissioners. Thanks for having me. My name is Emily Westerholm. I'm the founder and executive director of Released Reentry, Alachua County's reentry program. I wanted to take a moment to thank you for addressing all of the many items on today's agenda. However, I can't stay, so I wanted to speak to a couple of them. In particular, I'm feeling optimistic about the recommendations for improving court services. Court services is a vital aspect to many on the reentry journey. As someone who works inside of Alachua County Jail weekly, one aspect that stood out to me was the potential to reassess probation violations. Here is a quote from the recommendation. Minimize the use of jail time and restrictive sanctions for behaviors that do not threaten public safety. This shift could be an intentional part of interrupting the seemingly revolving door of recidivism in our county. I was also pleased to see the recommendation for the county to fund an intensive outpatient program. This, too, could surely be a part of the solution to the lack of treatment beds in our region. Lastly, we are excited about the county motel conversions. I'm grateful that the county is taking essential steps to bring sustainable solutions to those in our community who are unhoused. More than 50% of our participants at released reentry are without housing when they return from prison or jail. I encourage you to consider the intersection of homelessness and incarceration and set aside specific beds for those in our community in this predicament. We will be providing an overview of our proposal at the Alachua Housing Advisory Committee meeting on October 15th. I hope to see you there. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, please. Yes. And we also have another podium here for those who would like to speak. Thank you, commissioners. Thank you for taking time. My name is David Melosh. Some of you guys may know me from my work at Hartwood Soundstage. I'll keep it brief. I just wanted to say that I'm here in support of the Wildflowers exemption. As someone who's firsthand seen the power of music and bringing diverse groups and opinions together, it's one of the things that's been the most magical part of my life. Seeing diverse groups and cultures come together in a shared experience through music has been something that's really greatly needed in this world where there's so much separation and so much polarization. And to please keep that in mind, I think I've been very impressed by the organizers of this event and the festivals they've done to really take into account the impacts on the community. And I think that's very important, obviously, but I think we should also, I would ask you to consider the importance of really that shared experiences in our community as something that should be weighed as part of your decision. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Corey Williams. I am a poet. I'm also a person that grew up in a flower home. I'm very familiar with Melrose, that area, Keystone. I love it. I'm also an artist. I would love to bring attention to this area. I want to bring more people to this area. And I understand the small-town lure of Melrose. I love it. I understand it. It's peaceful out there. And having a whole lot of people come who aren't from there could interfere with the essence and the ambiance. I definitely understand. So I feel for you. I'm here as a poet because there's something going on in our community, like how we all want to get along now. Just sitting over there hearing this, I wrote something because that's what I do. I'm a poet. I hope to be elected to the Elastricht County Art Council. Hopefully that's something that gets discussed later. But I'm not here for that. I'm here for people. I joined the Marines at 17. I've been a Marine since even before that, just doing what my mom and daddy told me to do. They just reinforce that we are all people. I'm just a shade of green, y'all. Other people are lighter shades of green. That's how I see everybody. I love everyone. This poem I wrote is called Changing of the Guard. Apparently, some things in life are hard. It's hard to have that changing of the guard. Changing of the guard is hard. It's like that last yard on fourth and goal. Who's going to be the freight train to run through that hole? Who's going to stand in the void and say, you pass no more? It's hard to convey courage when the coverage of carnage is public knowledge and overwhelming. I understand the helming of leadership can't be easy and heavy as the crown. Many are the complaints. To some it seems the town is burning down. How do you drown the howls of the naysayers, disturb the sway of the influencers, and bring divergent people together? Power of prayer. Endless rounds of meetings in which you stare, dare each other to offer solutions. Drawing up local constitutions to remedy the gun violence pollution, politicizing our lives. I joined the Marines at the age of 17. I've never been green. I've always known my words are powerful, so I speak intentional and today inspirational. I love our country, and I gave all to protect us. I'm here as a poet to help you, those that elect us. I believe in you. That's my time. Thank you. Any further citizen comments? Please step forward, please. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and Commissioners. Thank you for allowing us to speak. My name is Kenneth Metzger. I'm a full-time faculty at the University of Florida in the School of Theater and Dance and the School of Music. And I'm also a lifelong musician, long-time attendee of the Grassroots Festivals up in New York, North Carolina, and Miami. And I've been bringing joy through music my whole life. I hold a bachelor's degree in music performance as a percussionist. My work has taken me across the U.S., Europe, and Caribbean as a performer, instructor, and collaborator with ensembles and dance companies. I've performed in a variety of high-profile and international settings, including festivals, television, competitions. And I'm thrilled to be part of the Wildflowers Music Park Project. I'm on the board. I'm a board member. We aim to uplift and respect the Melrose community, while bringing people together from far and near to share in the joy of music. Music has a unique power to build connections, and I'm excited to help shape a space where creativity, learning, and community thrive. But I've lived in Alachua County since 2019, and as a nature enthusiast, world traveler, I look forward to connecting with the community, making friends, and helping Wildflowers Music Park become a place where everyone feels included, inspired, and connected through music. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Shantivani, and I moved to Gainesville in 1979. And to use my time well, I'm going to share that I have organized events in Gainesville since 1989, beginning with the AIDS benefit for Jerry Pfeiffer, my friend. And then I went on to actually mark the hippodrome, hosted the Martin Luther King Celebration of Unity, many years in a row. I think we were about seven or eight years in a row on the hippodrome stage. We brought people of all walks of life together for all kinds of music and rap and story and poetry. And then I ended up using my free time and my savings to produce the Earth Day festivals in the downtown plaza. If you remember around between 2000 and 2005, we brought the Native Americans from Stark. We brought the African dancers, the Indian dancers. We had beautiful, beautiful events. And then also, some of them simultaneously, at the Florida School of Massage, we had the Winter Healing Arts Festival. So the Earth and the people, when we celebrate and we make music and we dance and drum and play together, it creates community. And I understand that there are fears. And I'll tell you one more thing. In 1969, I drove from Boston, Cambridge, Mass, to Woodstock. And in my little lavender VW bug that I had painted with spray paint and masking tape. And I attended that festival. And all right, that was chaos. And that community survived. We were sliding in the mud and doing all kinds of crazy things. Now, this festival proposal is a very organized, professional, beautifully created plan. And in these divisive times in our country, when there's so much pain and so much fear, I think it's even more important that we find a way to gather together to join hands and make this beautiful thing happen. It's not just going to slam in like Woodstock did on a community. And even after Sam Yazgar was dear, dear friends with the people who came there, he saw what we were doing. Now, these are different times. But I think we can do this. And I think we can do it in a beautiful way. And by the way, my son Eli is following in my footsteps. He has the joy of bringing creativity, music, and community together. And I'm so proud of him. He has the yellow house down here behind the Hippodrome, Depot Village. And I couldn't be happier that I got to bring him into the world nine years after Woodstock. Thank you, commissioners. My name is Eli Collins, and I'm the vice president of the board. And I was invited to be on the board because I believe in building community. I'm also a business person who, like my mother said, loves bringing people together. And one of the reasons I really like being part of this project is because I'm very into sustainability. I'm very into community building. And this isn't your typical music festival. There is a lot of dance, which many of you might know I'm involved in a university dance program for many years, providing dance for people moves my soul. We understand there is some concerns. We do not want it to be a late night ruckus vibe. There will be a lot of daytime events, and we plan on leaving the property available for every one of you in this room who want to come visit, ride horses, those things of that nature. Anyways, I'm just very, a little bit of motion after my mom's speech. I just want to say thank you for hearing me out, and I hope you choose to let us have a temporary use permit. Thank you. Good morning. Thank you to the commissioners for the time today. My name is Kevin Scott. I live in Melrose on 255th Drive. Okay? I don't think anybody else has from, you know, that has spoken today actually live near the site. Okay? So, the problem that we have today, or it's not even a problem, it's I think we're being rushed into this. The property was only purchased a month ago. Okay? And now we're being asked for a temporary use permit without any kind of criteria being delivered as far as traffic safety and assessments. Okay? I was told that it's the same as Virginia, you know, 35th Avenue, 255th. There's four miles of shell road, okay, along the perimeter of the site. Okay? It has nothing to do with Virginia, you know, I don't think you can draw a comparison. You need to do a study. Okay? Just anecdotal, I drove over 35th this morning to get to this meeting. Okay? I needed my four-wheel drive vehicle to get through the six or eight-inch deep sand that was in the middle of the road. Okay? That's not conducive to several thousand cars traversing that road. All we need is a good downpour and it turns into a quagmire. Okay? So, that's all I'll say about the traffic. We also need an environmental study. Okay? We know there's gopher tortoises on the property, but there's also been sightings of eagles and large owls. Okay? We don't know what else is on the property. We need an environmental study. Security. I've seen no plans. I mean, I'm right there. There's been no town meetings to talk about this. I haven't seen any plans. I haven't even seen the comprehensive site plan or a finalized site plan. Okay? But, you know, again, security is a real concern for me because there is no perimeter fencing or gates to this property. It's 270 acres that's open. No perimeter fencing at all. Okay? Then there's first responder issues. We don't have enough people on this side of the county to actually support the increased population that we're going to see during this event. After event cleanup. That's very important to me. Can you please conclude? I will conclude. The after event cleanup is very important to me because what all I've heard from various people is we're going to have volunteers in there doing the cleanup. That's not good enough. We need to guarantee that the site and the surrounding area. Okay, sir. Okay. Thank you. Is a problem. So, thank you. Sorry when you start talking. I've never done this before. I don't speak in front of people. But I also live on 35th Avenue. I know a lot of people have gotten up here that love this idea, but they don't live there. A lot of these people came from out of state or out of town. Can you state your name for us, please? Cindy. Cindy. Hindball. Thank you. And I was reading. I mean, who doesn't love a music festival? I went to Bluegrass. I've been to concerts. But they were usually held out away from communities. We are a neighborhood. Just like anybody else, our houses just aren't that close together. We've got, what, a couple miles, but we're all a neighborhood. We're neighbors to each other. There's no place for it out there the way we see it. There's plenty of other places that would be good to hold it, even the airport. We used to have them at the airport, have bluegrass festivals and such. And then I'm reading here when it was talking about a survey, I mean, a special area study and plan, it would require consultation assistance and the cost of over $200,000. Who pays that? Is it coming out of our tax dollars? I just, I'm retired. I can't afford any more money coming out of mine. And then, let me see, we have a lot of gopher turtles out there. I've spotted four just from the road. I have one on my own property. And the right, about the owls, when I was working second shift, I'd come home and they would be screeching and hollering all over. I mean, you can hear them even all over my place. So, that's just, and I wonder, are they, once they get this land to do this with, are they, are they going to rent it out to other people saying, oh, you have a venue, can we please rent this out from you? To have this, so we can have our thing there? So, it could wrap up to be more than just three times or four times a year. And the music, I love it. But at night, you can sit out on my porch and hear nothing but crickets or frogs for hours on end. And every time I have somebody come over and visit from my back home, from where I came from, down in Florida, they love it. They say, I can't believe how quiet it is out here. And I finally got my thing almost paid off. I have retired and wanted to live in peace. I think, I don't see what's wrong with that. And having all this. And one other thing, do I need to get extra insurance from when these people wander off drunk or whatever? I don't care if they get drunk. But when they wander onto my land, and I think it's somebody trying to burglar me, somebody might shoot them. Do I have to get more insurance if they fall and get hurt on my property? Do I need more insurance, property insurance, to pay for their health, medical bills? These are things that people need to think about. Thank you. Okay, after this gentleman here, that's going to be the last one. Nobody is stepping forward to speak. Thank you. I'm sorry. Hi, I'm Amy. It's Michelle Baer. I'm a native Floridian, and I live directly adjacent to the proposed Wildflower Music Park. My name may seem familiar, because I've emailed all of you many times without any response. I've lived on that property continuously since 2017, improving a forgotten hurricane-damaged property, which had become an eyesore to our agriculturally-zoned neighborhood. Maybe I'm too much of a 90s kid, but part of the role of local government is to bridge the disparity between the haves and have-nots, with the goal of creating a cohesive and equitable society. Allowing an organization to utilize our own tax dollars via grants and monopolization of resources funded by local constituents, such as EMS, police, roadways, as well as leveraging legislative loopholes against us, essentially raping the community for profits without giving anything back, is simply not acceptable. My neighbors will bring up a multitude of reasons why they do not support this proposal. I'm concerned about environmental impacts, especially on our water. We are all on well systems. I'm concerned that runoff, especially after these events, many who attend will be coming with campers with no hookups for sewer on site. Another major concern is adding additional traffic onto a roadway, which is hardly a roadway, one which was recently serviced by dumping a bunch of sand on it, loose sand that my elderly mother can no longer drive on with her compact car to visit me, an issue we haven't encountered since 2017 when I moved there. This servicing is instead of work that really needs to be done to fix the issues, it instead creates additional ones, low visibility, continuous required maintenance, damaged personal property and vehicles, and concerns over respiratory health. This material stays airborne even when you can't see it every time a car drives by. I'm fortunate that my property isn't directly on the road, but many people's are, and if you drive by, it looks like it just snowed. I strongly encourage everyone on the board before they approve this to drive down this road and see what the conditions really are like there and what our neighborhood is really like. Melrose is not Gainesville. I thank you for your time. Thank you. Hello, Mr. Chair and Commissioners. My name is Tim Adams from Melrose, Florida. I'll just a couple of real quick things. The road for number one, when they're talking about, have you come in off of Quail Street lately? Any of y'all in a vehicle? Right now, you have to pull over to let somebody else go by you. There was some talk about maybe they were going to block the road or something. Really? They're going to block one of our egresses? The 35th, as we all know, has just turned into a sand trap. It's just a mess. It's terrible. 270 acres, half a section of land, unfenced, completely open. Potentially the same rush from 2,000 to 7,000, they're saying. 7,000 people. How many latrines are they going to provide? They've got a plan for that? Think about it. People camping, motorhomes, whatever, tents, you know. What are they going to do? Are they going to walk all the way to the other side to go find a bathroom in the middle of the night? No, they're not. They're going to walk across the street. That little dirt road that separates our property from the corner of this show that's going to be going on. They haven't thought this thing out at all. Fine. You know, I was in agriculture. I'm the ground superintendent for University of Florida right now. So as far as cleaning up a mess, I know about cleaning up messes. Because that's what we do. We handle football crowds. Think this thing through. Fine. If you want to do it, prove what you're going to do first. I mean, remember the old saying, you know, it's easier to ask forgiveness than it is permission. Don't forget that. Somebody spent, what, $3 million to buy a piece of land out in the middle of Melrose? Plan on putting a festival thing there? That's quite a... How did you come up with that idea? Did one of y'all already say, don't worry, we'll approve this? I doubt it. So, you know, I just see it. It's just going to escalate on us. And, you know, the thing is, make them do the due diligence. Do the environmental studies. Find out, figure out, how are we going to get them down the roads? How are you... If you've got 5,000 people out there, can you imagine what could happen on a hot summer day? It could be terrible. How are you going to get them out? Are they going to pay for a helicopter to fly people out? No, they're not. Melrose City does not have the resources. What are they talking about? They maybe could put one unit out there with two medics. I mean, you know, these are things that need to be thought about. And the impact to our area is just, it's going to be terrible. You know, and I just, you know, I understand the music thing's fine. Go out there off of 20 when you've got the big open tracks of land right there on the hurricane evacuation route. Go buy you a chunk of land out there. Middle of nowhere, ain't nobody around. Plenty of good transportation. Do that. But to go into a little small town, I don't know what's going on here. Thank you for your time. Okay, Mark, are there any phone calls? Yes, Mr. Chair. We have a caller whose number ends in 0316. Caller, if you could hit star six to unmute your phone, state your name, and you'll have three minutes. Okay, that person seems to be having some issues, Mr. Chair. We have another one who's identified as, there's no number associated. Yes, can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. State your name. You have three minutes. Yes, my name is Telford Cartwright. Good afternoon, commissioners, chair, those in attendance, and those who may be watching, wherever they may be. Yes. I would like to comment or give a people's comment on the Latchewa County court services, which is funded by the county, managed by the county, in Latchewa County, Florida. And court services... Mr. Cartwright, you might need to hit star six again. You seem to have bumped off. No, I didn't hit star six, sir. But once again, court services is managed, funded by the county, Latchewa County, and court services, how shall I put this, utilizes unlawful tactics, or members of court services utilize this unlawful tactics in violating those who would be on county court misdemeanor probation. And how do I know this? I am currently on county misdemeanor supervised probation. Now, take, for example, I was temporarily held against my will in the Latchewa County Jail starting from January 8th of 2025, and I was released on June the 24th. No, June the 25th of 2025. Now, the probation officer by the name of Amanda Mash was in the process of violating the probation while I was still in the Latchewa County Jail. So, okay, now that can be verified, that can be confirmed. Speed up, I have been on this probation for going on three months. I have paid almost $1,000 in fees and fines. I have met special conditions within three months. I'm currently working at a Fortune 500 company, by the way, also, within three months. I have been able to acquire reliable transportation in less than three months, by the way. I am moving considerably fast in rebuilding my life due to unexpected, unsurprising, unwarranted chain of events associated with the city of Gainesville's police department, or shall I say policy enforcing department. And I wanted to give this comment so everyone could know what's going on with the county in regards to Latchewa County Court Services. They have intentionally provided false information to the court, which made it nearly impossible for me to free myself from confinement. Okay, we have another caller whose phone number is not showing up. They're the only caller still on the line. So, if you can hear me, you can hit... Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Please state your name. You have three minutes. Yes, this is Mokin now, and for me, you know me, I would have normally been in the meeting, but I'm really not well right now. And first, I want to thank the county for fixing the roads. You guys have done a phenomenal job, and if anyone wants to go give a hard time to anybody, go to the city commission, because the county is doing a good thing. And I would have been there for envy, but listen, we need you. We need you right now, Tony, because I remember Mary Helen Wheeler said the buck stopped here, and so did Michelle Lieberman. The city is trying to erase the medically disadvantaged community, of which I am part of, and I'm at a doctor right now. And we rely on paratransit services. There are four programs that will be cut, the medically disadvantaged, the evacuation program, the foster, grandparent, and the elder care. They also will not operate at four in the morning for the kidney patients. And they are not, there's no way that, that RTS is going to have this up and running within basically three months, and we cannot be erased. We cannot be giving takes for the city. And, you know, they refuse to meet, like, the group meetings we said for MPPO and for the joint session, and thank you for sending that letter, but they have completely disrespected us. And I won't say all of them, you know, there's a couple of commissioners that really care about us on the city. But with the county, you all care about us. And I'm begging you, I'm imploring you, I'm beseeching you to have pulled their thing, that they can't do this to us. And we also, and they don't seem to care about it. They are, they, they have families. They're employees. Half of the people, most of the people are African-American people and black-crossed people. And they just have not labor jobs. They need to have that esteemed decorum for their 10 labor jobs that they had with the U.S. to our D.S. negotiations, which took them two years. They cannot just erase us like this. We need your help. Because Ward is not listening to us. He doesn't listen. And he just puts up, you know, the Homeland Security thing and basically profiles us and treats us very poorly. And the county does not do that to us. And we need you to please save the medically disadvantaged program or people are going to die. Like, this is serious. And the other part is, I think you're well aware, RTS has several mosquitoes on them. I've heard about three, two of which they ran over people, and there's two other ones in which they ran into the back of the car. We've got to feel comfortable being on the bus with them. And MB really cares about their people. They care about their employees. And I know that Willis is concerned with these 10 union jobs, but I really disagree with four commissioners on there. And I feel like there's only a couple of routing for it. So please implore you, I think of you, pay dramatically. This is Vanished Paratransit, one of the most vulnerable communities. And thank you once again for fixing the roads, and we love you, Tony. Thank you. That was the last caller, Mr. Chair. Okay. Yeah, sure. Okay. Want to have time to comment? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So this will take us to our next item, Mr. Chair, Animal Welfare Advisory Committee appointments. Okay. For this item, we'll appoint one local not-for-profit animal welfare organization member position with a term ending September 30, 2028. You'll have two applicants to choose from out of that. Would you like to do each three separate or? Yeah. Okay. Any of them here? Any applicants here to speak? I have Chelsea Bauer, Jacob Schaefer, Jennifer Webb, and I'm sorry if I mispronounced their names, Saventla Kortovic? Yeah. What you said. No one? Okay. So for the first one, if you want to choose out of Chelsea Bauer and Jacob Schaefer, this is for a term ending in 9-30-2028. I'll start with, you want to do all three? Yeah, we can. I have my three, so. You want to do all three? Okay. So if I can just take your top three, I'll start with Commissioner Parizia. Thank you. Chelsea Bauer for the nonprofit organization member, Jennifer Webb for the citizen at large, and Jacob Schaefer for our alternate. Commissioner Cornell. Chelsea Bauer for the nonprofit, Jennifer Webb, and then Svetlana. Svetlana. Okay, Commissioner Wheeler. Chelsea Bauer, and Jennifer Webb, and Jacob Schaefer. Chair Chestnut. Okay, Chelsea Bauer, Jennifer Webb, and Jacob Schaefer. And we do have Commissioner Alford still, right, on Zoom? Commissioner Alford, if you can hear me. I don't have a paper in front of me, so I believe it was the woman first. Chelsea Bauer. Chelsea Bauer. Chelsea Bauer, yeah. And then basically the same as what Commissioner Parizia voted. Okay. Chelsea Bauer, Jennifer Webb. Jacob Schaefer. Jacob Schaefer. Yeah. I would move Chelsea Bauer for the nonprofit, Jennifer Webb for the citizen at large, and Jacob Schaefer for the alternative. Second. I have a motion and a second. Any further discussion? Those in favor of the motion, vote by sign of aye. Aye. Those opposed, same side. Motion carries. Madam Clerk. Next, we'll have the Art Council of Alachua County appointments appoint one citizen at large member to the Arts Council of Alachua County with a term ending September 30th, 2029, and one with a term ending September 30th, 2026. Our applicants are Alexander Hamilton, Christine Larson, Chyna Vincent, and Corey Williams. If Alexander is appointed, you must select a candidate to fill his resulting alternate member vacancy. Take your top two. Are there any of them here? Anyone here to speak? Or any applicants? Corey was here earlier. He spoke up. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So if I could start with Commissioner Cornell. Corey Williams as the first one, and then Chyna Vincent as the alternative. Commissioner Wheeler. Do we not have two for the first? No. No, just one. Just one. One full member position, and then one full member position with a term ending in a... Oh, are we appointing two at the top? Appointing two for the first one, and then one for the second. Oh, okay. Then Alexander Hamilton would be my other one. Alexander and Corey. Alexander Hamilton. Okay. Commissioner Wheeler. Only if Mr. Hamilton is selected does the board have to then fill his resulting alternate. So there's one vacancy. Oh, one vacancy. Okay. Yeah. All right. So Corey Williams. So just pick one at the top. It was Wheeler. I'm waiting on. Oh, I'm so sorry. It's okay. I'm trying to figure out why I'm not understanding this. I think I just have it listed twice on accident. It's just one person. I see. Okay. Corey Williams. Do we need to... Oh, for the second one? There's just one, unless Hamilton is appointed. Okay. Commissioner Prezio. Corey Williams. Commissioner Alford. Christine Larson. And Chair Chestnut. Williams. Corey. I would move Corey Williams for the full member position for the term ending September 30, 2029. Second from somebody. Second. Oh, I need a second. Still trying to understand this thing. Okay. You second? Yes, I do. Okay, good. Got a motion and a second. Any further discussion to the motion? Those in favor of the motion, vote by the sign of aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed, same sign. Motion carries. Madam Clerk. Do we need the alternative that's going to stay the same then? Yeah. Yes. Okay, thank you. I think that was the confusion. No, it was confusing to me, too. Thank you. All right. Next, we'll have the Environmental Protection Advisory Committee appointments. Appoint three full-term citizens at large members with terms ending September 30, 2028. One full-term citizen at large member with a term ending September 30, 2027. And one alternate member with a term ending September 30, 2026. Want to go with your top three? Top three, yeah. Okay. Let me start with Commissioner Corneau. Any applicants want to speak? I'm sorry. I'm here. You don't want to speak? This is Summer Waters EPD. I'm the liaison, and I do believe we have at least one of the applicants here in the audience to speak. So, if I can find Ian. There he is. Okay. Okay. Yes, and we need to know the other gentleman's name, too. Good afternoon, Commissioners. My name is Ian Kress, and I volunteered for a position on the Environmental Protection Advisory Committee. A little about myself and why I volunteered. I was born in Gainesville in 1970, went to grade school in Santa Fe here before I joined the Army, then graduated from the University of Texas with an engineering degree. I worked in the oil business for 25 years, traveled around the world, and when I retired, I knew I wanted to move back to Gainesville. A lot has changed around here since I was a kid riding my bike to the Duck Pond or all the way out 8th Avenue to the Oaks Mall, but a lot hasn't, and this area is still a beautiful place to live. It is, however, facing tremendous development pressure, and if it is not managed with the goal of keeping intact what makes this place special and beautiful, then we will lose it. Many others have worked long and hard for just that purpose, and I feel it's my responsibility to continue their work. With my technical background and history here, I feel I would be a useful member of the EPAC, and I respectfully ask for your approval. Thank you. My name is George Deloach. I just kind of wanted to see what was going on today. I didn't really prepare anything. I moved here to Gainesville in 1996 from the Houston area. I was a police officer in Houston. When I moved here, I traveled around a lot, but now I'm retired. I am the president of the Board of Directors of the Friends of Payne's Prairie. We raise funds to help the prairie in their mission, the state park out there. And when I got involved in that, I saw a lot of things going on here that are really affecting the prairie, and I would like to be able to at least have some input as to those issues, some issues anyway, some good things. But again, I hope to be able to add some good things to this board. Thank you. Commissioners, my name is Jay Rosenbeck. I just finished a year as chair of EPAC. I appreciate the commission's extending us for another five years. I recognize that you all have to make very difficult decisions, and I suspect those decisions are getting harder. I suspect also that it's hard to find sometimes a good position or a good pillow that allows you to sleep at night. And while community engagement is probably not as good as NyQuil to help you sleep, I do want to pledge mine and other committee members' support to the decisions that you have to make, and I appreciate everything you do. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, so I'll take your top three. Your applicants are George Deloche, Jen Franson, Timothy Renfro, John Rosenbeck, and Ian Kress. If I could start with Commissioner Parizia. Top four or top three? Because we have top three. Yeah, let's do top. It's three. Yeah, top three. We have, yeah, there's three three-year positions open, and then one two-year position open, and then an alternate. Alternate. Let's do top four because then the alternate will fall out. Okay, great. So my top four are George Deloche, Jan Frensen, John Rosenbeck, and Ian Kress. Okay, Commissioner Wheeler, Deloche. Renfro, Rosenbeck, and Kress. Commissioner Cornell. Deloche, Renfro, Rosenbeck, and Kress. Chair Tresnay. Deloche, Franzen, Rosenbeck, and Ivan Kress. And Commissioner Alpert. Kress, Rosenbeck, Deloche, and Renfro. Move, George Deloche, Ian Kress, and Timothy Renfro. Oh, sorry. George Deloche, John Rosenbeck, and Ian Kress for the term ending in 2028, and Timothy Renfro for the term ending in 2027. And Jan as the alternate. And Jan Frensen as our alternate. Second. Got a motion and a second. Any further discussion to the motion? Those in favor of the motion will by the sign of aye. Aye. Those opposed, same sign. Motion to be clear. It carries. Got it. Madam Clare. Okay, great. Thank you all. Thank you. Next, Chair, that will bring us to Alachua County Veterans Services Advisory Board Annual Work Plan and Accomplishment Report. I don't know if he gets to leave. He's glad he doesn't have to do this anymore. Good morning, Chair, Commissioners. Alachua and White, Director of the Alachua County Veterans Service Office. I serve as a staff liaison to the Veterans Services Advisory Board, and it's my pleasure to present to you this morning the Annual Work Plan and Accomplishments. As an overview, the mission of the board is to make recommendations to the board of the county commissioners regarding veteran issues. Now, this ensures that the needs of the veteran community are heard and addressed properly. Okay, they're also preparing annual work plan and accomplishments, review provisions for the operation of the advisory board, and receive staff reports from the Alachua County Veterans Service Office. In receiving the regular reports and the updates, this, again, ensures that the services are effective and responsive to the veterans in our community. They also serve, kind of extends into the community, so they carry out the work of an engagement board. They serve to promote the community awareness of the Alachua County Veterans Service Office, and the veterans' organizations as well. At this time, the board brings together many different organizations and representatives from various organizations across the community to ensure that the veterans' voices are heard. Our meetings are held monthly for discussion. We share updates and collaboration on ways to serve our veterans and their families. Administrative support is given and provided by veteran services and community support services. Now, the board proudly supported several veteran-centric events to include our annual veterans' celebration, which was held at Veterans Memorial Park on November the 11th of 2024. We had our former chair, Commissioner Alford. She provided the welcome comments and kind of got things kicked off for us. The city of Gainesville had the ribbon-cutting of the new playground. The Veterans Memorial Committee presented the new Gold Star Families Memorial, and the memorial was definitely a moving tribute to the veterans' families in Alachua County who paid the ultimate price. So it was definitely a great thing to see that day. Our event included skydivers. We had the wreath laying. We had our flag ceremony, helicopter tours. Of course, our food and vendors, and patriotic music was provided by the Lincoln Middle School. Of course, the board wants to extend a special thanks to the board of county commissioners, our county administration, our special guests, and many volunteers who really made this event spectacular. Here are some photos of the event. And also, in addition to Veterans Day, the board supports us when it comes to our Memorial Day event as well. The event was definitely a community effort. It was held at Evergreen Cemetery. We had our chair, Mr. Chestnut, provided the welcoming remarks. We had our very own service advisory board member, Ms. Sandra Torres-Pentos. She started as a provider of the event. And again, it was definitely a collaborative effort with the Alachua County. We advised our credit union. The city of Gainesville and Evergreen Cemetery really came together to honor those veterans. Of course, a special thanks to Milam Funeral Home for the food and donation. We had our service advisory board member, Fred Judkins, who played the taps. The Milton Lewis Young Marines for the representation of colors. They also did the Pledge of Allegiance and also the flag ceremony as well. So, again, a special thanks to county staff, of course, the board of county commissioners. We had our county administration, our very own CSS divisions, community support services, communications, public works, public safety, facilities, our VA chaplain, Santa Fe College veteran students, and, again, many wonderful volunteers. So a lot of hands went into making that event a success. And some photos of the event. And the goals and objectives for the upcoming year. So the goals and objectives of the board is committed to keeping an active board. They serve as the liaison between the board of county commissioners, veterans organizations, veterans and their families, and the community itself. They will continue to promote our veteran-centric events to include Veterans Day, our Veterans Stand Down, and Memorial Day. Again, they will continue to collaborate with the University of Florida, Santa Fe College, and organizations that serve our veterans in the community. And also they're standing to promote the PACT Act. And the PACT Act was legislation that was expanded VA benefits for veterans who were exposed to substances in their service. So, again, a really big push to include those veterans and their families in our services. Again, they're looking to support veteran initiatives, which include the veteran housing, mental health, health care, dental initiatives that benefit the local veterans, and, of course, continue to support our office when it comes to providing information and serving the veterans in the community in our outreach efforts. And last but not least, may I have the overhead, please? We would like to invite everyone in the community to our Veterans Day event. So Alachua County, in collaboration with the Veterans Memorial Committee, will be hosting this year's Veterans Day event, which is going to be held at the Veterans Memorial Park, November the 11th, 2025. The event is scheduled to start at 9 o'clock in the 1230. The formal program is to begin at 11 o'clock, and this is open to the public in this free event. So please come out and join us, celebrate our veterans. Thank you. Commissioner Cornell. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. White, thank you for that report. I really appreciate the work that not only our Veterans Services Department does, but really the Advisory Board working together with all the citizens. A day, a week doesn't go by that we don't hear either a reported story or a personal testimonial about the empathy and the help that is provided to our veterans in this community. So thank you for the report. Commissioner Prizia, then Commissioner Wheeler. Yeah, I also want to say a big thanks to our Advisory Board for all of their hard work. I know it takes a lot of people to make these big events happen and to celebrate the commitment and the dedication that our veterans have given to this community and to our whole country by serving. So thank you for the work. And I did just also want to say a big thanks to the Veterans Services Office. We rarely get, you know, words of thanks and words of praise at the commission, but just today we received an email that I'd like to read an excerpt of. They said, good evening, commissioners. I want to take a moment to share my gratitude and provide feedback on the Alachua County Veterans Service Office. I'm going to skip down a little bit. Essentially, a family asked for Veterans Services support in filing their benefits. And they said, after meeting with Mr. White, my father told me he felt respected and cared for. He shared that they took the time to listen, explain the process, and make him feel important. He did not leave my father's bedside until all of his questions were answered, and since then has stayed in touch, and he has kept us updated every step of the way. Each time I talk to my dad about his VA claim, he mentions how grateful he is for the help and wants to thank him personally. So, I mean, it's just an accolade and a testament to the work that you all are doing and the hard work that you're doing to make sure that these Veterans feel heard and supported as they go through the process of getting the benefits they deserve. So, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I was going to read the same thing, but I couldn't find it quick enough, so this young woman here is on it. Because it really was heartwarming to see someone publicly thank for the services that you all are providing over there, too. And I also wanted to say this Veterans Day celebration and also the one for the Memorial Day, they're wonderful. They're wonderful. And if we're not there, it's because probably we're out in the county where other people are trying also, you know, to have those events. So, it's not that we're ignoring what's happening in Gainesville. It's just that everybody in the outlying, even Archer, has had some nice gatherings. And I was at the memorial that they had opened in Newberry last year. So, that's another beautiful setting. I was really impressed, too. They had a police, they had a dog there, too. You know, the dog service. Have you seen that one, too? Yes. Yeah. It's wonderful what our county is doing to recognize the service of our Veterans. And you guys are valued members of this community. Thank you very much for your work. Thank you very much. And I also want to say, I know that it's Veterans Services, but like I said, it's definitely a team effort. We have a whole team of community support services that really assists us to ensure that our veterans are being served properly. So, a huge thank you to the veteran staff, but also community support services as well. Commissioner Cornell. I just move that we receive the Veterans Services Advisory Board presentation and the annual work plan and accomplish this report. Okay. Got a motion and a second. Any further discussion to the motion? Are there any public comments? Let me ask a veteran in conclusion. As a veteran who came here after Vietnam, this gentleman and this community were the most welcoming place in these United States you could come and live, partly because the VA hospital and Malcolm Randall and the influence that he spread brought many of us here, and we stayed. Some of us even got popular and got elected. Thank you very much. Okay. Thank you. All right. Those in favor of the motion, vote by the sign of aye. Aye. All right. There's a poll, same sign. Motion carries. Next, this will bring us to public improvement revenue, public improvement revenue note. We've got court services, technical assistance, recommendations, action items, court services. I'm sorry. I did. Court services, technical assistance, recommendations. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Heather Ocpon, Assistant County Manager for Justice and Workforce Strategies. Just want to introduce our topic, court services. We certainly are very proud of our court services department and the hard work they do to serve our justice-impacted individuals. But we also are realistic that in the past, our court services department was probably considered the preeminent department in Florida and in some parts in the country. Over time, although our employees continue to work hard and we continue to assist these citizens, we have had somewhat of a scope creep that has strained our resources and the impact that we are able to make on our justice-impacted folks. And so we started on this journey about a year ago to, under the direction of the county manager, to take a comprehensive look at court services and see what we could do to reorganize it, to move it back into that position, not just for us, but for the individuals that are impacted. So we started with National Institute of Corrections. You saw the report from Kathy Waters. That was last year. That was our initial report, which led us to wanting to do a deep dive, a comprehensive review of the department. And we were fortunate to find CEPP, which we have been working with for the last six months. What we asked them to do is to provide expert guidance and support in assessing, designing, and implementing a reorganization plan for the department to enhance operational efficiency, improve service delivery, and align the department with current and future needs. And we believe that this report will show some great recommendations in that area. So I want to invite Dr. Kelvin Banks and Ms. Tara Blair forward to provide the review and the recommendation that we have going forward. Thank you so much, Heather, and greetings to the board, Commissioner Chestnut as well. It is a pleasure to be in front of you, and we're certainly thankful for the opportunity for our organization to support your local efforts in regards to redesigning court services. We do have a presentation that we want to present. We also want to just make note there is one edit to the written report that you received. There's a footnote. I believe it's footnote number nine on page four. It's replacing a footnote of Florida statute 948.031, parens one, with 948.08, parens one. And so just that's the only edit we would like to make to the report. And so we do have a presentation that we would like to present and kind of go over some of the salient points from the report. Hopefully you guys enjoyed all 36 pages of the report that we submitted, if you will. We poured all of our years of expertise into this report, my colleague Tara and I. And so, again, so we're talking about reorganization report, again, and the recommendations. And we just want to highlight that these are recommendations that we are, you know, respectfully and humbly submitting to you guys for consideration. Just a little bit about our organization. CEPP is an acronym for Center for Effective Public Policy. We've been in business for about 45 years, supporting communities, reimagining a justice system that works for all, providing training, resources, strategic planning, grounded and local, as well as national expertise. And this is our website. This is our team. We have a phenomenal team who we oftentimes refer to as the A-team in a lot of ways because we have many years of expertise, and we come from varying backgrounds from across the country, if you will. Many of us have led large urban organizations in terms of I was director of pretrial services in Detroit, Michigan, my home state, hometown, as well as in Houston, Texas, and Harris County, as well. And my colleague, Tara Blair, led the entire state of Kentucky in terms of pretrial. In terms of our areas of expertise, it ranges from, you know, the full continuum of the criminal justice spectrum, if you will, from pretrial to, you know, to reentry. And everything in between, again, centered a lot of stuff on gender equity, system disparity, as well as justice reinvestment. In terms of our approach, these things that are non-negotiables, our information and the work that we do is research-informed, collaborative, focused on human dignity, as well as equity-centered. We've supported work in the entire country, all 50 states, trained thousands of judges, lawyers, community members, correction staff, and professionals. We have many a library of tools, reports, as well as guides. We've supported over 1,000 counties, and we've trained over 83,000 individuals nationally. In terms of what we're going to cover, we're going to cover these five areas. We're kind of into our introduction and openly remark. We are going to unpack a little bit of the phase approach in terms of this work that we're contracted to do. We were before, I think it was a PCC, to present about the assessment. So we're going to focus on number two, which is highlighted, which is the design, which completes with this report, and then talk a little bit at the end, potentially, about our supporting of the implementation. We'll talk a little bit about the six keys to successful organizational restructuring, get into kind of some of, again, the high points of the report and recommendations, and then yield the floor for any discussions, potential next steps, as well as closing remarks. We'd like to start with a quote from the father of change or evolution, Charles Darwin, who says, It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the most responsive to change. And so in terms of a phased report, I yield the floor to my colleague, Tara Bowblair. Thank you, Doctor. Thank you, Chair and Board of Commissioners. My name is Tara Bowblair, and of course, I'm a senior manager at the Center for Effective Public Policy. I just wanted to go through the process that we went through to come up with these recommendations in the report. So we started this work in March. We met with all stakeholders, including you all individually. We met with, of course, the county manager, the jail director, the judiciary, the public defender, state attorney, and all of the court services staff. We went to the jail. We observed first appearance. And when I say we went to the jail, we went there on the night shift. And we started at 5 a.m. to watch first appearance. So we were able to get a true feeling of all of the processes that court services does. We started doing knowledge-building training for the staff. We held weekly and bi-weekly meetings with an internal work group to get to know the staff, to get to know more of the processes, to better understand Alachua County. Again, we did knowledge-building training, building strong teams, and change management. We came back a second time in June and, again, observed first appearance, met with staff again, did more of a deeper dive. We, again, continued the bi-weekly and monthly meetings. That's when we started synthesizing all of the information that we gathered. We started reviewing all the best practices. We reviewed local data that was provided to us from the court services department. And then we did a legal analysis of your state laws, your statutes, and your local court rules. We began drafting the report and the recommendations in August of 2025, which was just last month. And, again, this phased approach that we're doing now is to help support Alachua County to implement any type of recommendations that you as a board approve, develop an implementation plan, collaborate with local stakeholders. Part of this, we did the beginning of the information gathering, and then we provided the recommendations. So, based on whether or not you all approved those recommendations, we would then share that with the stakeholders to get feedback on those. And, again, that requires us to review and adjust as needed. Back to Dr. Banks. So, just speaking briefly in regards to just, we believe there are key principles to successful organizational restructuring. They lie in, again, a multifaceted approach, encompasses clear communication, employee engagement, strong leadership, a well-defined business case, as well as for a positive return on your investment, or, as you may understand, good use of taxpayer dollars in terms of how you guys are using them. It's not just about, really, the technical side of the organizational restructuring, but also managing the people side of change, ensuring that the restructuring aligns with the company's strategic goal as well. So, the first one, again, is clear vision, business case, you know, strategic alignment, again, positive return on investment, and then just really communicating the why. You've heard that the journey started over a year ago, and there's been a lot of conversation around that as well and expectation. Effective communication being transparent, regular updates, clear and consistent messaging, as well as stakeholder management, number two. And then, number three, employee engagement and support, involve an employee, providing support, address concerns, as well as change management. And then, number four, strong leadership, setting expectations. This board has done that, leading by example, as well as visible and being visible, as well as accessible. And then, you've heard about this phased approach, again, starting small, prioritizing, and then adapting as needed. And then, again, adapting to the new structure, and we'll revisit this here shortly, restructuring departments and teams, redeploying and retraining, focusing really on the outcomes. And we believe by adhering to these six key elements, organizations can increase their chances of successfully navigating organizational restructuring and achieving their desired outcomes. And so, in terms of our report, we'll kind of unpack it. Again, you have copies of it, and we'll just kind of get to the salient points, and then we'll yield the floor for any questions that you may have. The report has about eight sections, from the background to the statutory and accreditation requirements, stakeholder meetings, information gathering, the common themes that came out of those individual and group meetings. And then, we contrast the best practices compared to the current practices for community service, pretrial probation, as well as treatment courts. And then, there's a workload analysis based on the local data, reorganization recommendations, our conclusion. And then, we also have appendices, as well, in that report. In terms of recommendations, again, just going to come back and hit this again. In terms of restructuring the department and programs, just reorganizing roles, responsibilities, and workflow to align with the new structure, redeployment and retraining, redeploying employees to different roles, potentially, and providing necessary training to equip them for success. And then, focusing on the outcomes, ensuring that the changes are aligned with the desired outcome, and that the new structure is efficient, as well as effective. Again, starting small, implementing changes in the phase to avoid overwhelming the organization, prioritizing, identifying areas that will benefit most from immediate change, as well as implementing those first. And then, adapting as needed, being prepared to adjust the plan, as needed, based on the feedback and any emerging challenges that may occur. Our recommendation, after having an extensive conversation with many, including Heather and Claudia, as well, is to rebrand the department with a new name, shifting from court services department to a more broader branded name for cut justice support services department, is our recommendation. Again, we talked about our phased approach to this work, but we also believe that the implementation should also be in a phased approach, with phase one, beginning six to nine months after you adopt, and if you adopt the recommendations, and that could be noted correspondingly in Appendix E. Implementation phase two, 12 to 18 months, can be noted in Appendix F, and then implementation phase three, which is 18 to 24 months out. So, basically, we're suggesting about a two-year, if you will, up to two-year process of evolving and shifting on a phased approach from the current state to the future state. And Appendix G notes that, as well. In terms of the phase one, just kind of unpacking that a little bit from the six to nine months. Again, the positions of justice for reclassification, transferring, or elimination. Number one, one assistant director to be positioned to be reclassified as a community service division manager. Number two, criminal justice system security manager to be reclassified as a probation officer lead. Number three, criminal justice system specialist to be reclassified as a probation officer. Number four, senior programmer analyst to be transferred to county IT. Number five, drug testing technician, number one position to be eliminated with the role transferred to external drug testing vendor. Number six, vacant court officer position in pretrial services to be reclassified as the pretrial services division manager. Number seven, vacant court officer position in probation to be reclassified as a probation division manager. Then the reorganized executive leadership team as it relates to phase one would include a director, a deputy director, formerly assistant director, jail population manager, community services division manager, pretrial service division manager, probation division manager. Ultimately, we want to recommend that probation be transferred to the court administration in phase two, and we'll get to that shortly. Administrative support division manager, fiscal assistant, and those are asterisks because those are not necessary departmental positions. Administrative assistant, criminal justice liaison transferred to court administration in phase two, and then the court services assistant, again, who also serves as the terminal agency coordinator or the TAC as it relates to FBI seizure standards. The reorganized community service division in phase one, again, this is proposed reorganization for all this, for this division is premised on transferring all level one probation cases to the probation department and all court attendance requirements to the executive leadership. And that will, the new community services division will include community service division manager, a community service supervisor, court compliance officers, three positions, and then three positions of field compliance specialists. The reorganized pretrial services division, again, this proposed reorganization is for this division, this premise on the transferring of all GPS, EM, and TAC probation cases to the probation division, and on all pretrial services division staff, supervised pretrial services cases with GPS, EM, as well as TAC. And so this particular division will include pretrial services division manager, two pretrial services supervisors, one for pretrial screening and the other for pretrial supervision. And these are currently the positions as titled in the department of pretrial. Under those, under the screening, we have pretrial release assessment specialists, three positions, court officer, three positions, pretrial officers, three positions. I mean, then also we're suggesting that a record technician would go up under that as well. And then in the pretrial supervision side, under that supervisor, electronic monitoring officer, court officer, as well as pretrial officers. And we're going to recommend here shortly that these positions be collapsed into one title of either pretrial services officer or specialist as well, and so that there's some cross-training that's related to that as well. And then as it relates to the reorganized probation department, again, transferred to the court administration is our recommendation. In phase two, that the proposed reorg for this division is premised on transferring all probation supervision to this division, including level one, day reporting, as well as GPS, TAT, as well as EM monitoring. This new division will have a probation division manager, one, a probation division supervisor, three court officers, and five probation officers. And then the reorganized treatment courts transferred to the court administration in phase two. There's already an existing specialty court manager with under the court administration by statute, and so we would just suggest creating or transferring the supervisor one position of that, and then three court officers with that as well. So in addition to what we're suggesting from a technical change in terms of the reorg, these are some additional recommendations that we have in terms of the phase one. Number one, to support the reorg efforts that the deputy, excuse me, director, deputy director, division manager should participate in ongoing professional development focused on the 12 qualities of effective leadership as defined by the Center for Creative Leadership. These include, number one, self-awareness, respect, compassion, vision, communication, learning agility, collaboration, influence, integrity, courage, gratitude, as well as resilience. Number two, in terms of additional things to support the technical changes, is ongoing positions should be reviewed to ensure correct classification, job titles, as well as pay. For example, all front-line roles, excuse me, front-line roles as a pretrial release assessment specialist, court officers, pretrial officers, electronic monitoring officers, and pretrial services should be, again, evaluated and possibly renamed in new roles and cross-trained roles of pretrial services officer, as well as pretrial services specialist. Candidates for all the division manager positions should possess adequate knowledge of that specific division that they will be assigned to. And then that the newly created division manager positions be responsible for developing policies, procedures, and practices in addition to onboarding and training all staff in their respective divisions. Producing, number four, producing and disseminating criminal history records should be just restricted to the courts and judicial officers. Number five, all staff within each division should undergo cross-training to improve efficiency, effectiveness, as well as sustainability. Number six, that the drug testing laboratory functions and operations should be transferred to a third-party vendor, according to the county's procurement guidelines. Number seven, that it is best to explore whether the county has the statutory authority to supervise felony-level cases, which appears to be the case in treatment courts. Number eight, performance, process, and outcome measures should be created for all divisions, and regularly reporting, such as monthly or quarterly reports, should be shared with the board of commissioners. And then number nine, all divisions should review best practices and national standards for their respective focus areas, including applying the four principles of what is known as procedural justice, a concept that was created out of Yale Law School by Dr. Tom Tyler, who we work closely with. He basically says is that all interactions, not only with the community, but even among supervisor and supervisee and colleagues, should be that everyone should be treated with dignity and respect, number one. Number two, that people are given an opportunity to speak their voice and their voices be heard. Number three, that decision-makers are neutral as well as transparent. And then number four, that decision-makers convey trustworthy motives. What this concept comes out again out of Yale, and what it shows when it comes to in terms of citizens and those that are impacted by the justice system, they say that if you do these four things, even if a person is sentenced to life in prison or some long-term, that they will consider their experience to be fair. That's all this is about treating people fairly. Even you can hold them accountable, but you still want to treat them fairly, and that's what this concept is all about. So Appendix E, it really just kind of memorializes in terms of an org chart, what we kind of described here for Phase 1. The green represents the positions that we're recommending for continuance. The light blue are non-departmental positions. The yellow positions are the positions that we're recommending to be transferred to court administration. And then the positions that are highlighted in red are the positions that we're recommending for repurposing, transfer, or elimination. Then Phase 2, 18 to 24 months out, again, correspondence Appendix F. 60 positions are started. We started with 63. So we've got now down to 60 positions, including five vacant positions. And positions suggested for transferring, number one is a probation division manager, probation supervisor, probation officer lead, as well as nine probation officer positions to be transferred to court administration, necessitating an ongoing need for funding. That treatment court supervisor and a treatment court officer specialist, three to be transferred to the court administration, also needing funding as well. And that the criminal justice liaison be transferred to the court administration, needing funding as well. And then the court compliance officers to be transferred to the executive leadership. The new reorganized in terms of Phase 2, executive leadership positions, will include the director, deputy director, jail population manager, community service division manager, pretrial services division manager, administrative support division manager, fiscal assistant, administrative assistant, court compliance officers, three, and court services assistant, the TAC. And then the reorganized community service division will now have the community service division manager, community service supervisor, court compliance officers, and then three field specialists as well. And then the reorganized pretrial services division will have the division manager, a pretrial screening supervisor, nine pretrial services officers or specialists, and then two record techs. And then the pretrial supervision area will have 10, if you will, pretrial services officers and specialists with also two record techs. And then the things that we suggest that support the Phase 2 implementation is that all positions transferred to court administration must receive ongoing funding and that annual workload analysis should be completed to inform the need for fill-in vacancies, transferring, repurposing, as well as eliminating positions. And this is Appendix F, again, Phase 2, reorg with the green areas recommending for continuance. The light blue are non-departmental positions. And then the yellow are transferred to the court administration. And then we didn't have any that are repurposed or transferred or eliminated in this particular phase. And then our last phase. And then we'll wrap up here. We're down to now from 63 positions to 41, including three vacancies. Positions suggested transferring. Number one is record tech to be transferred to the executive leadership. The record tech positions to be evaluated to determine if there is a need to fill the two vacancies, to transfer, reassign to administrative support, or eliminate the positions as needed. And then number two, that pretrial services specialist position, again, there's a vacancy there, be evaluated in a similar way if there's a need to fill the vacancy, transfer, reassign, as well as eliminate the position as well. The new, again, Phase 3, again, this is the end product, you know, if you will, of all this work over the two years. The reorganized executive leadership will now include the director, deputy director, jail population manager, community service division manager, pretrial services division manager, administrative support division manager, physical assistant, administrative assistant, court compliance officers 3, court service assistant, which is the TAC again, and then the four record techs will now be in the executive leadership. The reorganized community services division will conclude with our, you know, with our recommendation in terms of Phase 3. We'll have a division manager, a supervisor, court compliance officer 1, and then the three field specialists. The reorganized pretrial services division will have a manager, two supervisors, nine pretrial officers, if you will, specialists in the pretrial screening, and then 10 pretrial officers or specialists in pretrial supervision. And then the additional things that we suggest are similar to Phase 2, all positions transferred to the court administration must continue to receive ongoing funding, and then just an annual workload analysis should be complete to inform the need for filling vacancies, transferring, repurposing, as well as eliminating positions. And then this is Appendix G, which is kind of the final org chart, in terms of our phased implementation. Again, with the green positions being noted as continuing, the light blue being the non-departmental positions that support the department. And then the red in this one are really about repurposing and just looking at the record tech, the two open positions to see if you need them. And then also that one pretrial services officer really just looking at seeing if you need them, you know, once you get to that 18 to 24-month area and see if you need to repurpose this based on the volume that you're having at that particular time. And with that, again, we want to shift to our last area, if you will, just the discussion and next steps and closing remarks. We want to yield the floor to any questions or clarifications, and then we ultimately just defer to this honorable board for decision as it relates to this as well. Commissioner Prezio. Thank you. Thank you so much. I can see a lot of work went into sort of thinking through this and looking at the different ways we might, I guess, reorganize the cards on the deck to be better and more efficient. I do really appreciate your sort of, I guess, I'll call them the driving principles that you presented at the beginning, you know, the ideals of being research-informed and collaborative and equity-centered. I think that's really important to this board, and I know for us, you know, being of service to justice-impacted individuals to ensure that they can serve their time and then move back into community and being effective citizens or finding diversionary tactics that support them staying, you know, productive members of our community rather than having to be incarcerated is always our goal. I guess I do have, I guess, there's a lot of detail here, and in trying to read the report and dissect it, it was really rather overwhelming to me to try to understand all of what you're proposing, especially to understand the why of what you're proposing. I did appreciate the information you brought about the risk and needs assessment pieces in your report and some of your suggestions around reporting behavior and finding more strategic ways to do that rather than sort of an every-behavior-gets-reported kind of strategy with the courts. So I'd love to hear more about those ideas and if those have started to move forward and how those are embedded in this report. That's my first question. My second question is, how has this report been delivered back to the stakeholders, the state attorney, the PD, the courts, because a lot of this is predicated on them taking over a lot of these roles, which I guess for me feels a little bit of like a big black box of what that would look like, how that would work, what the impact would be on our justice-impacted individuals, and what the impact would be overall and if the courts are even interested in taking over those roles and what that might look like. So I'm interested to know what the stakeholders had to say about your recommendations. And then my third question was for staff, and that is, have we done a legal review? A lot of this also seems to be predicated on statutory roles and responsibilities, and I'm wondering if our legal team has had a chance to review that and weigh in on that piece of it. So those are my three questions. Great questions and great to see you again as well. So just in terms of question number one, we just believe overall that if people's needs are here, the services should be here. It should not be there, which can cause problems, and it should not be here. And the quickest way to identify is to have an objective assessment to kind of give you that information in terms of what people's levels of needs are, and that's kind of across the board. And so what we found is that there's, in many communities, there is an over-supervision, over-conditioning, over-accountability, and it's causing people to fail, and the departments and the staff don't even realize that they're causing people to fail. And then sometimes there's not enough services or not, but you can't really do that on guesswork. You've got to have some structure, infrastructure in place that help you be able to classify people. You know, we get classified in a lot of ways in this world. You know, we may not always agree to it, you know, whether it's the car insurance, and because that vehicle is red and different things of that nature, there are different in ages that come into place. There's a lot of stuff that goes into the actuarial risk assessments or assessments in terms of gathering. And we're just saying, hey, use that information, you know, to kind of inform these individualized areas where you can support people, and not just have blanket conditions and supervision. Because, one, also, that's also not a great use of taxpayer dollars. You may be wasting, you know, taxpayer dollars and not use it more efficiently. So that's kind of our mentality and our work in terms around that. And, you know, again, me and Tara have done this work. And we really, if we can personally say, we really enjoyed meeting with each of you and the staff and really feel honored to be a part of this. And we poured all of our purpose and in addition to all of our everything into this report. And we kind of gave you all some of the things that we even didn't get in some ways in terms of as we were working in local government to try to support you all. Because you have some phenomenal people here that are working really, really hard across the board that need some guidance and some structure to be, to regain that preeminence that Heather spoke about within the country, I think, is the first response to your first question. Did you want to add anything? I want to add something just on the first question. And, you know, the way that court services has been structured is it's sort of all blended together. So you have people that are on probation that are being monitored by pretrial services, which has a completely different mission, right? The people are presumed innocent, and then you've had people that are on pretrial that are subjected to intensive supervision through the day reporting center. So what we wanted to do is separate those two because the missions are different. And everyone on probation needs to be under probation. Everyone that's presumed innocent that is still in the pretrial should not be subjected to probation practices. So, again, you know, through our analysis, at one time, probation was using a risk assessment and was using the risk needs responsive model. But because of, like, vacancies and people leaving, they stopped. So that's another one of the recommendations is to bring that back and separate those two entities. Because, again, like Dr. Banks said, I mean, we're causing harm to people by subjecting them. So I hope that answered in its entirety your first question. It does. Thank you. I think I understand. I mean, I think I hear a little more of the why, some of the structural changes, which I really appreciate. And I do appreciate the idea of sort of right-sizing, if you will, the level of support and the level of supervision that we're providing to make sure that people can be successful at what we're asking them to do rather than sort of setting them up for failure. So I really, really appreciate that approach to what you all are recommending. I guess my second – it does lead to my second question, though, because a lot of what you're recommending is shifts, right, and moving things around, not just moving within our organization, but moving things out of our organization, which I guess can be a good thing but can also potentially create more difficulty for people being successful if they have, you know, a state entity overlooking their situation versus the local county that understands their needs in their own community. So there's some concerns for me there. And then secondarily, what our stakeholders had to say about these recommendations and how they feel about the shifts that we would be making. Yeah, so in terms of the way we kind of unfolded it, because it's such a major shift and to protect the integrity and the fidelity of the board, and we agreed upon it with the county management as well as, you know, in terms of how we communicated out. We did meet with all the stakeholders and gathered, and we kind of, you know, posed some questions even to the court administration and the judge was like, hey, what if probation was under, you know, court administration? What would that look like? And I just remembered, particularly with the administrative judge for the county, just giving some feedback on that. But, again, we were just floating those ideas. Because when this was published, Commissioner Prizia, on Friday was probably the first time everybody saw it because we wanted to keep it really close, and everybody was anticipated, you know. There was many of the staff that were at a conference this past week with my colleagues, and they were coming up to, like, what's in the report? Like, everybody wanted to know, and we didn't want to preliminarily release the information until it was agreed upon that we agreed. So the communication plan was not to go back to the respective stakeholders, but to really vet it up through the board and then have the subsequent conversations once it's published, if you will. We took into account all of that information. If you go to that, the common themes, we poured everything that we heard into this, you know. And so we did try to, you know, hear all those things, but also once we got to the point of a final report, you know, we wanted to make sure we protected that and not preliminarily release it in a way. And so that was kind of our plan with the county manager as well as Heather as well. And so that, you know, I don't know if you want to speak to that as well, but that was our agreement, and that's what we followed. Yeah, and I just want to speak to that. We did have a meeting, a presentation with the PSCC, and what we were doing there, and so CPP followed our direction, which was to give them, this was after they had met with the stakeholders, to give them an update, a timeline, understand the methodology of what we were doing. They were not prepared to do recommendations at that time, and they had no recommendations at that time. So they had conversations with them. They talked about some ideas. And in using best practices, I mean, they're great, but they're not reinventing the wheel here. People are doing this. Other counties and departments and agencies are structured this way. And we did want, I mean, I understand that there is interest in this, but we wanted to make sure, and we did put it in the backup, the PSCC meeting when we went to it, the minutes are in the backup. And it says specifically, and I'm the one who said it, that the process we will follow is we will return the report to the county manager, take it to the board, and then have that conversation with the PSCC. So they did follow our direction in that way. Well, I just, if I can just follow up on that, I'll just, I appreciate that. Thank you for the information. I'll just speak to my colleagues for a minute. You know, for me, I think that, you know, it's hard for me to start a, like, for me, a collaborative process, participatory processes need to be participatory all the way through in order to be fully transparent and for the people to be bought in. I mean, it actually says that in your report, interestingly. And so I think that, you know, from our perspective, I understand you were doing what you were guided to do, but I think that holding the recommendations close to our chest after asking for input from stakeholders for them to put all of their energy and their ideas into it, but then not share back the results and say this is what our recommendations are going to be and give them the opportunity to respond to those things and also to hear from them about what the impacts would look like, what the costs and budgeting would be. I mean, to adopt these recommendations today would mean that we would be saying we're going to go through all those things without understanding the potential cost implications, without understanding the response from those major stakeholders who ultimately may be really excited about this or may be really upset about this. I don't know. And without hearing from our justice advocacy organizations about the impacts they feel this would have on our impacted individuals. And while I read it and hear what you're saying and feel the same, I think this would be a really positive outcome for folks in general with regards to the way the impacted individuals would be able to navigate the system more seamlessly and to have a better sense of who they're supposed to talk to for what sorts of things and who's on first, if you will, with regards to how they manage their situation, I just feel like we need to take another step before we adopt the recommendations and that is listening to the other stakeholders in this arena to hear their response to these recommendations. Not to say that we're not going to stand firm on the recommendations. The recommendations are the recommendations, right? You made them on best practices. You made them on what you heard. I don't think they necessarily need to change. But as the policymakers, we, you know, us just passing off recommendations saying this is now what we're going to do without really understanding the overall impact it's going to have on our community and what those stakeholders have to say, I think, would be a mistake because we wouldn't have carried the participatory process through to its logical conclusion. So I guess my ask is that we take this to the PSCC or we take this to the individual stakeholders in meetings. It doesn't have to be at the PSCC. It would be one-on-one. But I do think we should also present it there and get that input from our, you know, our justice advocacy organizations as well as the other people who are going to be impacted by these changes before we finalize our adoption of recommendations. And I guess I didn't hear about the legal. I guess I'm also, we did want to know what the legal, right, if we've had a chance to, like, get legal review on this. And then we could just say, you know, we support that. I mean, you know, as well, you know, Commissioner, if that's, you know, the route you guys want to take. We were, you know, again, working within those parameters. And, again, just thinking back to the young lady that came up from an organization that represent them and how she spoke highly of the recommendation, it sounded like she, you know, was speaking on behalf of impacted people as well as the gentleman that was on the call in regards to his experience with probation as well. And so we were very, very hypersensitive to that. And so we don't have, you know, we would, you know, we would, if you want to take it back or however you guys want to unfold this, we defer to your judgment and expertise on that as well. We were just working within those parameters. In terms of number three, there were some questions that we were sent over. We have two lawyers on our team that were kind of reviewing this as well, and they gave some recommendations. That was one of, you know, that kind of influenced some of the feedback in terms of the statutory stuff as well. And so there were some questions that we sent over to the county attorney, the state attorney as well, I believe, trying to get clarification on some things as well. And so there was some interaction from that standpoint, but we would yield, if you will, to the state attorney, if you will, or the county attorney to give feedback, if you will, in terms of what that interaction was as well. So, Mr. Chair, we did not receive any questions from the consultant. This is the consultant's legal analysis. We were not involved in this process, in the drafting of this. I did send a couple of questions that the consultant had to some attorneys in the county attorney's office earlier in the process. Okay. Well, I guess I just asked, like, now that we have the final recommendations, and a lot of them are based on statutory, like, our role versus court's role and who has that role, I would just love, like, a quick overview from our legal office as well. It just sort of looks at that, I guess, again, and just sort of, you know, because it was a little bit confusing to me. It sounds like this is supposed to be in the court's realm, not in our realm, or there's a question it could be in our realm or the court's realm if there's a contract. There was just a lot of sort of gray area there, so I would love a legal analysis from our team as well as your team to sort of understand where we land on that who's on first piece of who should be doing which pieces of it. But thank you for pointing that out. And just thank you. That was great. And we just wanted that the edit that we made was based on feedback from the county attorney as well. So we did get some feedback from them on that. But we defer. You know, again, we want you guys to do the due diligence, you know, for your community and what's bad. So we don't, you know, we defer to you guys. This is great. It really is a great report. I can tell that you put a lot of time in there, and I appreciate all the work that was put into it. I just want to make sure we get that community piece as a final step in the process, ideally. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Commissioner Cornell. Thank you, Mr. Chair. First of all, thank you. An enormous amount of work. And your national expertise in bringing best practices to Alachua County is very, very much appreciated. I, too, was kind of moved by Emily from release with her testimony today where the two things that I wrote down that she said is that in your report, and I think it is the view of this board, that we seek to minimize jail time that doesn't affect public safety. I thought that was really strong, and that we fund an intensive outreach effort. Obviously, that's literally what she does and what she has been doing for us. And so thank you for noting that. But help me understand, talk to me like I'm in third grade, because there's a lot of data here that I am trying to get up to speed with. But tell me the difference in the reorg between the pretrial screening supervisor and the pretrial supervision supervisor. So pretrial is basically can be divided into two parts. The front-end folks that are working when people are initially arrested, and then they gather. Innocent until proven guilty. Yep, innocent until proven guilty throughout the entire pretrial stage until the conviction, acquittal, dismissal of charges. And so those individuals are gathering information. Those folks are coming in now at 5 a.m. in the morning. They're gathering information. They're running criminal history. You know, they have some interviews, different things of that nature. They're gathering all the information, and they're giving that to the courts in first appearance and subsequent. Before first appearance. Absolutely. They're meeting with them before first appearance. Yes, and then that's kind of the screening part where you're using all these information. Okay, so before first appearance, after first appearance. Yes. Screening, supervising. Yes. Thank you. And then supervision is the part where they're ordered to be supervised by pretrial. So now they're released into the community. Now you have to have somebody that's overseeing that. And Tara mentioned this earlier, Commissioner Cornell, as well. It's important to separate probation, post-conviction. I don't know if I'm preaching to the choir on that. No, that was blinking red light in our report, and I think that's a staffing issue. As you said, we've got amazing court services staff, but as vacancies happen, you know, people pick up after the other, and I think that's critical that that be a, you know. If you're in the probation department, that's different than the pretrial department, which, innocent until proven guilty, totally. So thank you for that. Second question, on the, I guess it was the yellow, the transferring of roles to court administration. Talk to me about the interviews that you had with the court, and if you think that's viable. I mean, I, in one regards, I agree with Commissioner Prizia that we need to get the stakeholders' buy-in. In the other regard, there's a county department, and we need to collaborate with them, but the county needs to decide how the county department is run. And I want to use best practices that are recommended by national best practice entities, and I want them to be collaborative in how we phase it. I think a three-year phase-in is exactly that. You are saying we're going to start slow. We're going to get feedback. We're going to listen to you. Maybe we adapt and adjust, but this is a county department, and this is how we want to restructure it with outcomes being the end result and efficient use of taxpayer dollars, which will become a much larger conversation in the next two years after the legislature, but I think it's great that we're starting this right now. So talk to me about when you talk to the court administrator, because you then also said transfer and fund. So, you know, sometimes it's transfer and you fund. Sometimes it's we'll fund it if you'll just do it, but talk to me about their response in your interview so that we can anticipate, you know, the phone calls tomorrow from the discussions of today, which is something that we all have. We all have the Wednesday calls, right, the Wednesday and the Thursday calls, and when I talked to Stacey Scott and I talked to Sheriff Scott, this Stacey Scott and Sheriff Chad Scott this morning, they hadn't read the report yet, didn't expect to read the report yet, which is fine, but they plan to start to read it now. And so what would you say the level of, yeah, we can accept that recommendation is? Because that's a big one. Yeah, so two things. One, thinking about the four areas under court services, and so the keeping court services, the current pretrial operation, again, where people are presumed innocent, that department needs to be an autonomous department that is independent and impartial in a lot of ways and doesn't have accountability to the judiciary but not necessarily reporting structure. That's what that is. And then community service is very similar, you know, in that regard. Post-conviction, treatment as well as probation, it's best suited, you know, from APPA as well as All Rise as well for those that be positioned under courts, if you will, with that oversight. You know, when we did have the conversation, there was some, one of the reasons we put there in regards to the funding, Commissioner Cornell, was that Judge Miller-Jones, I believe, and I don't want to speak on her behalf, you know, but there was a question about funding, potentially how with that funding, because they are the state and the county pieces and what that, and so some of this is really just, you know, in terms of just saying that there's a need for those departments or divisions to move forward as well as funding to support them moving forward in terms of serving the citizens of Alachua County is kind of where that, our mentality is. Is there any discussion about felony probation versus misdemeanor probation? Yeah, well, you know, the statute in Florida, as well as many states, it's very clear that the Department of Corrections, the state, has the sole authority to supervise anyone convicted of a felony. That's out of our realm. That's, yeah, that's, so what we're strictly talking about is misdemeanor probation, which is in the county court. And it was there any discussion about the types of misdemeanors? Or is it just, no, okay, misdemeanors, okay. No, we didn't get that far into the weeds. How does the size, third question, how does the size of our department compare to other counties in our state? Well, it depends on the county. We did, I did reach out. Leon County would be the one I would ask you about. Which one? Leon County. I didn't get any information from Leon County. We have the, the, appendix A. Appendix A has a breakdown of where all of this, these tasks and departments are in all of the counties in Florida that we could get information from. We got about 40 counties to respond. Yeah, that was the thing that you had to hit the. Yeah, it was a hyperlink. It was so big that we couldn't add it as a. Yeah, I didn't, I didn't, I didn't hit that hyperlink. So that's why I'm, yeah. But we did reach out to two counties in Florida and then other, another county outside of Florida just that were comparable as far as the types of work. So are we right size, are we bigger, are we smaller? A little bit bigger, basically. But again, I think as what Heather said from the beginning is you've had a lot of mission creep, right, and the department is doing a lot of work that normal departments don't, right, a lot of court-related work. So I think by transferring some of those duties that are outside of the scope, then you would be more in line with other counties in Florida that only do probation and only do pretrial. And that's under phase one. Phase two is for the transfer. Phase two is that transfer over. We wanted to note it for the sake of kind of this whole change management and kind of prime. After nine months. Yeah. Yeah. Give nine months. Yeah, it would give nine months, six to nine months, an opportunity to have the conversations to get to the point where to see where the funding source is going to come from, what it looks like. But, and then, too, for, again, post-conviction. It would come from us and the general fund. What do you mean? I mean, that's where it would come from. Yeah. I mean, if, and there's a lot of pressure on the general fund right now. Yes, sir. So, I mean, I think, I think to my colleagues that this is something that is really important that we, if we're not going to adopt these recommendations, that we don't delay them because we've got to get to them rather quickly in this budget cycle. Yeah. I was going to say it's, we're paying it now. Right. So, if it's in court admin or it's in our department, we're paying it now. So, moving it to court admin doesn't necessarily, I mean, we have to study it more. It doesn't necessarily add to the cost. I mean, but it moves that department under the court, which is where best practices says it should really be. Okay. On the legal question under the phase one recommendations, number seven, I think that's the item that kind of is getting this big question that says it's best to explore whether the county has a statute of authority to supervise felony level cases, which appear to be the cases in the treatment courts. That's why I asked the felony misdemeanor. Are we supervising felony cases? Yeah. Well, in the conversations that I've had, there is an administrative order that Alachua County has, and there's two types of felony drug court. There is the diversionary one where someone is not convicted, and then there's the post plea. So, it's unclear to us if court services is doing any supervision of people that are convicted of felonies, and if so, that needs to be looked into because Florida law is really clear. And in that appendix that was the hyperlink that you didn't open, every other county in Florida, the Department of Corrections is supervising the treatment court participants on the post plea drug court. Alachua County is the only one that the Department of Corrections is not. All right, I guess I'll conclude with, and I hope Mary is, I know Mary's under the weather, but she's also been the chair of our PSCC, and she's been really active. And so, Mary, if you're online, I'm very interested to hear your input before I kind of conclude with where I am. I want to kind of hear where your thoughts are and obviously where Mary has dropped off the meeting. She's feeling, okay, so never mind. So, that's a bummer for me. So, I'll hear from Mary, Helen, and Chuck, and then we'll see what we want to do. And if I could just briefly say, hopefully we're here to support that implementation, that we, you know, the implementation plan would include those conversations that need to be held and what it looks like. And so, that's why that timeline is there and to kind of do the small wins, the small things, and then have the necessary conversations. So, that's a part of that that kind of embedded in that intentionally as well. But we'll yield the floor. Claudia had a clarification, I think. Claudia Tuck, Community Support Services. Relative to treatment courts, when our staff go to conferences across the state, they're regularly asked, why are you doing treatment courts under county government? Across the board, it's all under the courts. We're the only county, as they said, that is doing that, and they're always asked, why is the county doing that? Yeah. And what is the answer? I mean, I guess that's my concern. I guess my concern is that, you know, a lot of the push for these diversionary courts came from the county. It came from us standing up and saying we need these courts, not the courts saying we needed them, right? And us being advocates for having more diversionary tactics and more diversionary courts. And so, that's, I think that's what the genesis potentially is of some of these things sitting in the county. But I'm interested to know, why is it that we have it and they don't? Because over time, the courts have said they want us to do it, and we haven't said no. And that's where the mission creep has come. But to the point on treatment courts, this is DOC that does this statewide across the state. And it really is. The felonies really do fall under the Department of Corrections. We don't have misdemeanor treatment courts for most of what we have. They're felonies. And in every other county, the DOC is handling those and overseeing those. And there is a state court, there is a court position that is a state-funded court position overseeing treatment courts. They are receiving funding for that position. That is the position that's noted. Yet, we are taking on the burden of that, I wouldn't say burden as in handling, but we'll take responsibility for that. And that's why in other counties and also why DOC. There's also a provision for DOC to contract with other entities or for counties, and they fund those services that may be contracted, and we are not doing that either. So I think there may be a mechanism, and that's why their recommendation is basically to explore this, because there may be some mechanisms if we wanted to continue doing that. But I think it would require DOC contract and potentially funding. But there is a position that's already in court administration by state. This is state function. Correct. It's a state function. Why are we paying for it? Why do we have to pay for it? I don't want to take my time, but go ahead, Commissioner Wielu. Mike, I need some clarity, too. We paid for this report, right? These are recommendations. We're just voting today to accept the report. But we can change the recommendations or not take them, right? So I guess I don't understand why we have to worry about more input at this point. This is your report, and if we take that input, are we expecting them to change the report? No, I think they're asking them. No, they're asking them to adopt the recommendations. Well, but if we accept the recommendations, it does not mean that we have to implement them, right? That's exactly what it is. So I just don't understand why the big discussion. That's all. I don't understand why the questions regarding who was inputted. No, I'm trying to finish the question. I'm trying to understand why we are asking for more input for a report that's already been completed. That's all. I'm not. I'm asking for more input before we finalize what our staff are going to do as a result of this report. I'm fine to accept the report. I'm fine to it. And I think their recommendations, by and large, are actually really good recommendations. I don't. But I feel like we started a process that was participatory with the courts, with the state attorney, with the sheriff, with the public defender's office. And then we finished the report, and we said, and I was at the PSCC meetings. I've been at every one of those PSCC meetings. I've been a part of this process, and I've been waiting for it to come back to the PSCC and for input from our stakeholders, like, to hear what they thought of the recommendations and where this was going to go. And then that didn't happen, and then it showed up on our agenda, and I was like, wow, it's already here. And I guess I feel like we just missed a step. It's not necessarily that we would change. The recommendations are the recommendations, like you said, based on best practice. We can accept them today, but I just want to make sure that accepting them today doesn't mean that we're adopting all of them today. Do you know what I mean? But that's not how it's worded. I mean, essentially, you can have that second step. But that's not the recommendation today, and that's why my question. You're asking me why my question, and I'm trying to explain to you that my question is because this says adopt and basically, implement, like, we're directing staff to implement the changes in this report. And I'm just not, I don't feel like I understand all of the recommendations well enough to feel comfortable with us moving forward with every step in this. And what I don't want to do is get into a situation where we're in a pissing match with the courts. That's essentially, I mean, if you want to be frank about it, that's where I'm at. Like, I want to have a collaborative relationship. Like, we want, we're trying to lower our, our jail population was over 1,000 last week on many, many days. That's, like, almost crisis level for us. They had to, like, do special things, and our sheriff had to work really hard. His jail staff worked really hard to figure out how to maneuver to get that number back down under 900. Like, we're bumping up over and over again against the top levels we've ever seen in our jail. And that's a result of judges making decisions to keep people in jail, either setting bonds high or not giving pleas or all the things that we know are increasing that jail population on top of people making bad decisions in their lives and ending up in jail to begin with. But the last thing that I want to do is create an adversarial relationship with a body that we need to start thinking differently about the way they're doing business. And so I want to make sure that the work we do as we're moving into this doesn't create that kind of situation. I also want to make sure anything we do is really focused on reducing that jail population, increasing diversion opportunities, and opportunity for people to be right-sized in terms of their supervision. So you would be comfortable saying not to implement, to receive the report, accept the report as presented? Of course. Yeah, I mean, I think it's a great report. I think the work that was done was fantastic. I just want to make sure that we don't end up in a situation where we're – I mean, don't get me wrong. I want the courts to be doing what the courts are supposed to be doing, and we shouldn't be paying for things that they should be doing, either. It's just that I don't – I just don't – I feel like we skipped a step here. I mean, I just feel like we skipped a step. You know, if – It's almost the same thing. Imagine if it was vice versa. Yeah, yeah. You know, I mean, imagine if it was vice versa, and the courts just were like, you know what? Well, the state does it all the time to us, actually, where they just look at something, and they're like, you know, we're changing things, and here you go. Now counties, now it's your job. And what do we – and what does it do? It pisses us off, and we're like, how are we supposed to fund that, and what are we going to do, and what does that mean? And I just want to make sure that we are not doing the thing that we ask other people not to do to us. And so I just wanted to have that conversation, understand from the PD, what does this look like to them? What do they think? Like, how is this going to impact justice-impacted individuals? State attorney? You know, all the people that we ask for input, usually when you ask people for input, then you return the results to them, too. And we just haven't done that. So I'm asking why we do that. I do want to clarify something before you take any action. This board meeting is the end of our contractual agreement with CEPP. So yes, Commissioner Wheeler, yes, the recommendation was to implement it, but we don't have anyone to implement it yet. So if we're adding a new step, that has to be an internal thing. We don't have, we will not have the outside expertise of these folks to then help us with the conversations with them, because the first phase of this was the recommendations. The second phase, which we considered implementation, would be to have those discussions. So I just want to be clear, it's certainly up to the board, but this is the end of our contractual agreement with CEPP, this board meeting. I'm sure they'll talk to us after this, but they're not required to do anything after this. So I just want to clarify that. Well, could I go first? I mean, I'm always last. You know, a lot of the programs that the county has been doing was because of the judges in our county. And I think that that's how those programs came about. And I think our staff was trying to do what the judges were asking them to do. And I get it. I mean, best practices, I get it. I mean, I understand. Sometimes people don't like change. I mean, that is evident, that people don't like change. But some of the things, you know, I want to hear what our stakeholders say. I mean, that's important to me. And are they willing for us to transfer their services to them? And if they don't want those services, what do we do then, right? I mean, that's where I'm at. And so I know it sounds great, I mean, but I just want to know practically how it's going to work. And will the court services, the court administration will do this work? And will probation do the work without us paying an increase to them or paying an increase to the courts? Because that's where I'm at budgetarily. That's where I want to know the most important part. You know, if we're doing things different than other 66 counties, then I would like to know, you know. And at one point, I think our court services were really recognized years ago, way before my time. They were recognized, they were on top of their game. And they came up with drug court, all of that kind of stuff because of the judges. And so that's why I go back to that. So in other words, the courts are our partner to some degree because they asked us to do these things and we did those things. But it came with a cost, too. And so if we're going to follow best practices, then let's follow it. But I want to hear from my stakeholders and I want to know the cost. I mean, that's just it, you know. And so, I mean, you guys did an excellent report. I appreciate it. But, you know, there's some practical stuff to it that I have to get. This was a lot to digest over the weekend, to be honest with you. As a commissioner, doesn't know much about court services, you know what I'm saying, about the ins and outs of the criminal justice system. That was not my major. I'm a funeral director. That's all I know. But it's important to know how it works and to hear from our stakeholders, you know, the public defender, the state's attorney's office, as Commissioner Cornell said, the sheriff's office, it's important to get that buy-in that we'll know how this thing is working and how can we reduce the jail population. That's the most important part there, I think, on our part. I have no problem with implementing anything, but I just want to know the outcomes in terms of the cost. That's all. That's what's important to me. And the taxpayers. I just want to say this to you, Commissioner, as well, that one of the things that they weighed into is the conversations with the local judges and nationally as well. There was a desire to have more accountability in some of the, like, the probation and sometimes having that being your boss, right? You know, and that's a different, you know, accountability structure, if you will, in terms of that transfer as well. And so we did hear that. Again, you know, I think it's due diligence to have the subsequent conversations to, you know, implementation. And we would like to be a part of that. You know, contractually we know our obligation is ending with this report in terms of the phase two of this work. But the implementation, we are, you know, we would like to support, continue to build the relationships and help you guys get to where you want to regain that preeminence in a new branded and reimagined way in terms of what are the current spaces of best practices related to these operations. And could I ask a question, since you all are the professionals, tell me the difference between the state probation and what our county staff is doing in terms of probation. Basically, it's charge level. So you've got misdemeanors, which are typically people can be sentenced to 93 days or one year, one day less. It's kind of the differential in terms of the charge level. So from felonies to misdemeanors. And so the county has the authority to supervise people. Misdemeanors, right? Misdemeanors. Misdemeanors. Yes. And the state does the felony. Yeah. So we're doing both you're saying we're doing now? Or are we just doing the misdemeanors? Not in probation. Probation, you're only doing misdemeanor probation. Oh, okay. That's why I was getting confused. Okay. The treatment court is where some of the felony clarifications, we're suggesting that you guys review that. Yes, yes, and have that either a contractual agreement with DOC or some type of understanding and clarification in regards to that work. Okay. I'm sorry. Go ahead. Are you good? Yeah, I'm good. I'm done now. So, okay, so I want to hear from the manager how would you implement this report if we accept the staff's recommendation versus if we went with a recommendation of accepting the report and beginning the implementation but asking for changes from our stakeholders within the next 90 to 180 days. How would if we did something like that where we began implementing the report but we asked for another meeting at the podium with any changes to that in the next 90 to 180 days after all the stakeholders have read it, how would those two motions differ from a staff's perspective, an implementation perspective? So, Mr. Chair, first of all, let me say that there was not an intention to, you know, keep this close to the vest and you're just all to say, sudden, here it is, you know, when we had a collaborative process moving forward. I think that, you know, this was a report based on best practice and efficiencies of the positions and that would not change. Now, however, the recommendations, I mean, from the consultants, the implementation piece, yes, requires further discussion. I think the importance is to note there are things within our control that are in these recommendations that we can do if the board says we accept the recommendations and that we can start moving towards over time. And then there are pieces in this that require an outside party to be willing to make those changes in order for those to be implemented. So even saying move forward in that direction doesn't mean that they happen. And so with that, if, for example, court administration says, no, we're not comfortable with doing that, then that's something we have to come back and say, okay, we've worked with them. They're not willing to accept this role. Here are other options to do that, recognizing the purpose and the reason why it was recommended. I think that's kind of getting down to the why it was recommended and how do we get there if not that way. And, yes, Tommy's not sitting right here. Money is important, but, and the funding piece is important, but it wasn't not, it's not the sole basis for the decision making because we really have to, if we're going to do these things, we really have to look at best practice. So while an analysis of the money piece is important for our budget and moving forward and what we choose to do, I also think we have to look at the best practice and the why. So to your point, if, you know, I think what we need, and maybe implementation was not the best word to use, but I think what we need is an understanding from this board whether you are in agreement with the reasoning behind the recommendations and exploring moving forward with the recommendations. Obviously, that has to be with the input and, in some cases, the agreement of the stakeholders. Yeah, so, so this is a, thank you for answering that question. This is a devil is in the details problem. And I hear Commissioner Parizio loud and clear. We don't want to impose on the courts, this is what we're doing. We want to say, this is what we're recommending. We need your help to implement it. Are you receptive to that? And so I'm changing the staff's recommendation with some words, and I want to run it by my colleagues, and I'm open to making changes to this because I think what you just said gets me on the same page as Commissioner Parizio with regards to if it affects another party, whether that's release, the jail, the courts, we've got to get their buy-in. And the first step of their buy-in is them reading the best practices report from the experts and hearing our discussions, but then we've got to have a series of meetings with all of them, and that's going to take time. And that was actually what I really appreciated about your recommendations was, you know, you eat this elephant one bite at a time, and it takes three years. And if you can do that over three years, you get to a really great spot than if you just try to do it next month. So, Commissioner Parizio, give me some input if you don't like this wording. So, I would move that we receive the report provided by the consultant with gratitude, authorize our staff to proceed with the 24-month implementation of recommendations, and meet with each of the affected stakeholders to work on a collaborative implementation process to achieve the cited best practices, and bring back any changes of the recommendations from this input within the next 90 to 180 days. So, you're saying vote to implement it, but then have the conversations after the fact, and then we'll change it. I'm saying we receive all the recommendations. The end goal is the same. Where it involves an outside stakeholder, we can't implement it without their buy-in, so meet with them. And then if they have input that changes those recommendations in the next 90 to 100 days, 80 days, bring that back to us so that we can authorize that. That's fine. I'll just say this. I just want to say this for the record. We talk all the time about community engagement. We talk all the time about our, we ask our teams to do community engagement, to do collaborative processes, to do things in ways that are participatory. And I'm just saying right now to you all that this process didn't end in a participatory way. It ended, and it's not the consultant's fault, because that was what you were asked to deliver, and I probably should have caught this when we put the contract together with you, that there wasn't time built into that contract for you to do a delivery of this back to stakeholders and have a second kind of iterative step in that process. I didn't catch that, and that's on me. I should have. But I think that in the future, when we do something where we talk about a participatory process, part of a participatory process isn't just asking for input at the beginning. It's delivering the results back and getting response to those results. Like, that's as important in a participatory process as getting the input to start out, because if people do not see where their ideas and input was inputted into the plan and where they fit into the plan and have the opportunity to respond to that, it's not a truly participatory process. So, that's my problem, and it's not on the consults, it's not even on the staff necessarily, it's on me for not catching that, on us for not catching that, but I think we need to have a participatory process. So, yes, we need to have a step where we take this back to the members of the PSCC and the community that is invested in these issues, like released reentry, community springing, community advocacy organizations for justice-impacted people, and get their response. Because this is going to have major impacts on potentially our jail population, on the way in which people interact with court services and with our court systems in general. This is going to have a huge impact, and I feel like I got it on Friday at noon. I haven't even had time to really digest it. I don't even fully understand it, and it's going to have a huge impact. And so, just adopting it today does not feel comfortable to me. It just doesn't. I don't feel like I fully understand it, and I don't. I didn't get a second, so it's a submission. I guess my motion is that we accept the report with gratitude, for sure, for all of the work, and that we develop a next-step process for participatory engagement of the stakeholders, for input on the recommendations, and bring an implementation plan back to us in the next 60 to 90 days. I'm still trying to understand, you know, what it is we are expecting from this report. We're paid for the report. We got the report. We don't have to accept it the way it is, and if you don't want to implement it, that's okay. We don't implement it. Just leave that up, and just don't even talk about time frames. If we're going to be taking it back to this board for – I guess I don't know why we paid all this money for this report if we're expecting to change it. If you want to talk about implementation, I was thinking the only thing that would make it different for me was if we put a word in front of recommendations, optional or alternate recommendations, something that – Yeah, I hear you. I'll second Commissioner Prezius. I mean, that's basically what I'm saying. I'm saying we need to take one more step, and rather we take this up with the – I mean, this actually has a budget in here for implementation, and if we need to take a step where we can bring the consultant back in to go through that next step, I'm open to that. I think the report is a well-done report. I don't have a problem with the report. I have a problem with the fact that we didn't do the final step. What we hired the consultant to do, in my opinion, and what we asked to be done was that they did it. Right. But what we didn't do was the final step of the participatory process. But my thinking is if you don't want to implement what they recommended, okay, fine. We send them on their way. They're gone. They've done their job for us. They've given us best practices where we are falling short on some of those. Then it's up to us as a board, then, to take it to our other folks in the community. That was my motion, basically. That was my motion. But for how many days and all – I mean, you know, it gets confused when you start adding too much. So try again with the motion, and maybe I'll get it this time. My motion was to accept the report and to take the report back to the stakeholders who were involved in the original processes and any advocacy organizations that care about this issue. And to bring back implementation recommendations within 60 to 90 days. Implementation recommendations. We're accepting the report. We're providing that report out to the community. We're asking for input from the community. And then we're coming back with the implementation plan to the commission with this is what we're going to do. We're going to do all the things in this report. We're going to do 90% of things in this report. Plus, also, Claudia and Heather realized we need to do this and this. And the, you know, PD said, oh, my gosh, that's going to make this crazy. And, oh, maybe we should fix this thing. And the court says, yes, we'll take back this probation. But when you said to me, who are we talking about? Who's going to do this? Our staff. They were going to do it anyway. Yeah. I don't think it changed as much as what they were going to do from what I heard from the mayor. Can I just say one thing? This can't happen in 60 to 90 days. We do not have anyone to do what we just said. I have no problem with meeting with the stakeholders and all of that. But we need the expertise to be able to be having those conversations. We don't have that. So 60 to 90 days is not realistic for us to come back. We have to go through the procurement process. We have to procure, I mean, someone to do that. And, obviously, we have to procure it. So we have to follow the procurement rules. That's going to take some time. We don't have to do it. RFP, depending on how much it is, the proposal. We could have a separate phase, a pre-implementation phase. That might be a little easier because that would probably be fit under some procurement rules that we could get it done a little faster. But I think 60 to 90 days with all those stakeholders is still pushing it. How is it changing from what you were planning to do anyways, that motion? How does this motion change from what you're planning to do anyways? Well, the next thing, we're going to negotiate with the procurement process to implement it. And we already have budget for that. So, as I said, this part ends now. We would have to negotiate. I mean, I did talk to our procurement people about what would be the next step. And the manager has a certain authority. So, we would have to come back to the board if it was above that amount to get that approved. And so, we have to get a proposal from them. So, if it was under a certain amount, we have it budgeted. If it's over, we would have to come back to the board anyway. So, the procurement rules here would, that at least is going to take 30 to 60 days to get that done. Because we cannot do this internally. This has to be done with the assistance of experts in this field. The goal was to bring all this back and move through the process in time for budget. So, if there were changes, I think we would have. So, if the board wanted to move forward with implementation, we would move to the next phase to procure the services to work with us and the stakeholders to do that. And we don't know how much that's going to cost. We just put some money in the budget for it. It might be more than that. It might be less than that. I mean, I can see splitting this up into another part now, which is the stakeholder engagement phase. My fear is if we don't move forward, this is a 2026-2027 discussion because we're not implementing the recommendations of the report. But your question is a really good one. You just told me that you were planning to engage with all of the stakeholders anyway. And that no matter what, this was going to require the stakeholder input and engagement and buy-in. So, all of that would have been included in the implementation. All I'm asking is for us to have a set of meetings and to take this recommendations report back to PSCC and get responses and initial input on the recommendations before we move forward with final implementation. And you're telling me that to do that can't happen and you can't have a conversation with those stakeholders in the next 90 days. That's three months. We can have the conversation. I think Heather's point is that we want the expertise of a consultant or these consultants because if there are requests for changes or differences, we need that level of expertise. Heather is not the person to know whether that impacts the recommendation on a positive way or a negative way. And we need that either way. Correct. That was part of the implementation piece if we went forward, we were going to go procure and bring somebody in for the implementation piece. Okay, so how about this? I recommend we accept the report and that we include in the implementation phase of this report a process where we engage the stakeholders on the recommendations in the report and take those recommendations and that input into consideration as we move forward with an implementation plan and then that implementation plan be presented to the board when it's ready. Second. Got a motion and a second. Are there any further discussion to the motion that's on the floor? Okay. Are there any public comment to the motion that's on the floor? And the budget. And the budget. The budget part. The budget part. Yes, please. Yes, sorry. That's all right. Your goal, though, is that this is a – when we're implementing these – this is the first discussion. When we are implementing these, this is a 2026-27 budget discussion. Yeah, that – yeah, okay. I mean, that's where I want to get to. I don't want to put it off another year. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Citizen comments, yes. Hi, my name is Max Sipping. I'm the policy director at Community Spring. We're an economic justice organization that works to break the cycle between poverty and mass incarceration. So, this is something we're very interested in. So grateful that this process has started a long time ago and all the effort that's gone into it. The – a couple things I just wanted to highlight that didn't – that were in the report but didn't quite make it into the presentation. And I just want to kind of keep front of mind out of the best practices. There were a couple different things around, you know, risk-based supervision, voluntary supportive services. Under the pretrial one, though, I want to just flag the best practice of having a failure-to-appear intervention program, which I think is an excellent idea to eliminate unnecessary bench warrants and unnecessary people ending up in jail for very silly reasons that no one needs to be there for. On the probation side, I would just echo what I think has been mentioned a couple times now. But having a very specific policy that doesn't require probation to inform the court or the judges of every single little violation for probation, if you actually look at some of the probation requirements, you can understand just how onerous they are and how – you know, if you have to inform somebody for every single little one, that could – that, as they said, that is not actually best practice. So I would just make sure that that's another one I would lift up. And then finally, under the treatment courts, there was a recommendation to kind of look at and make sure that there's adequate funding for the intensive outpatient treatment services, which I think is also – you know, if you look at – in terms of cost-benefit, those ones tend to be incredibly beneficial to people. So – and then the last thing I'll point out that was actually mentioned in one of the examples that they had, I think, for a place in Washington is that they had their kind of equivalent court services doing screenings for indigency early on in the process. And that's actually just – that mirrors some of the conversations that I've been having with court administration folks recently of trying to figure out how we are making sure that people who are very, very, very, very low income are not being overly and unfairly burdened by the justice system. And I know that that is top of mind for this board, which is honestly leading the country in reforming some of those justice fees that are utterly unjust. And so I think that just keeping in mind the opportunity in this kind of reforming of court services, that this could be an opportunity to really make sure that we're capturing those folks who are indigent and making sure that they're not unfairly burdened as they go through the process. Thank you. Thanks, Max. Being poor should not be a crime. Any further public comment? Well, I actually work for court services. I work first appearance team at court services, so I'm sitting back listening, and I heard you all say a lot of things, but I didn't necessarily hear the part of the buy-in on staff. You said, you know, the courts and these people and the outside stakeholders, but the staff is part of that stakeholder implementation that's coming about. So we'll be meeting with them later, I'm sure. However, you know, it's a lot of different things that I read in the report, and when you're saying budget, money, job responsibilities, and all of that kind of stuff, are you guys going to take that into consideration as to us in the implementation of this long-to-old three-year project? Because I got 30 years in, you know, with court services, 25 at court services, and a lot of us have a lot of input and a lot of interest in this report. And maybe that part of that meeting that you all set up could involve us as staff. Thank you. I just want to say something from what Rolanda said. I want the board to understand that this is a hard-working department, but we are at a point where we have to do something because we are resource-constrained by all of the things that are being asked for us to do. We have 73 positions, 10 of them aren't filled, and we have been holding positions. So I know we've been holding positions on the team Rolanda is on to get this report done because we want to move forward in a positive way. But, I mean, I think our point is fair that we do need to continue listening to our employees and understand we are, the way that the department is set up now and all of the things they're asked to do, we need more resources then. If we're going to keep it like this, we've got to fill those positions. That's why we're looking for a way forward that's efficient, but also is in the best interest of the citizens. So I completely agree with her that we definitely need to listen to the employees, and they will be part of this process. Okay, if there aren't any further citizen comments, we're back to the board. Any further discussion before we vote? I just want to be clear, something you just said kind of concerns me because you just said if we're just going to keep things the way they are, and I don't think that's at all what this board has said. I think we've all said that we want to move forward with recommendations and that we think the report has a lot of merit and makes a lot of sense in terms of reorganizing and restructuring both our operations and the staffing of the department. So I don't think leaving it the way it is was ever said up here. And so when I heard that from you, I just want to be clear that that isn't what we're saying today. That's not the motion. Right, that's not the motion. Okay, well then let me clarify. We have 10 positions then that if we're going to move this process out and add some other steps, which we don't have a problem with, we're probably going to have to start filling those positions. I don't think we're adding steps. I didn't hear that adding steps in the motion other than. Well, we'll figure that piece out. I think the point is that we can't, and I think you all have recognized this, we can't continue in the manner we've been doing things from a capacity standpoint, one. And I think realistically, as hardworking as everybody is, we're doing a lot of things at this level when we need to be doing less things at this level. And this is where we need to be. And because we're spread so thin, we're doing too many things at this level, which is not an acceptable level. And so we have not filled positions because we didn't want to fill positions that we then said, okay, next year this position we're eliminating. And it also gives us flexibility in moving staff around so that they have a place in the process so that we understand and there is an urgency and we will work with a sense of urgency to move this forward. We did meet with staff briefly on Thursday. The consultants are going to be, I believe, meeting with them after this meeting to talk to them more about it, and we will continue to keep staff informed as we have over the last couple years. So will there be a report from staff in terms of where they're good or anything? No. Staff was talked to by the consultants. Staff was also, I'd say shadowed. I don't know, for lack of a better term, spent time with by the consultants doing their job, and you see the results of that in the report and the recommendations about streamlining different activities. No, I think that what I heard, I guess the staff person said that they wanted input. And so we haven't heard that input, I don't think, from the staff. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Before the report. It's in the report. But I'm talking about after the report. They're meeting with them after this meeting. I thought you asked that y'all could be a part of, like, the stakeholders, putting your input into it. Right. They're meeting with you all today, voting on it, but we get the meeting now. So how do we know what you all have said? Well, what's in the report, some of the stuff that's in the report. But just giving an input on how the report was written. And it's already written, but the meeting that I guess we're having afterwards will give input on what we felt about the report. That's the meeting that's coming up next. Yeah. We got it in an email, so we printed it off. We read it the same way you guys read it, and then we'll have another meeting. Okay. Okay. Maybe I misinterpret. We're back to the board. Those in favor of the motion, vote by the sign of aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed, same sign. Motion carries. Madam Clerk. Okay, now this will bring us to the Public Improvement Revenue Notes Series 2025. Move adoption of the authorizing resolution, budget amendment, and authorize the chair and the clerk to sign all bond closing documents at the pre-closing meeting scheduled for tomorrow. Second. Got a motion and a second. Any further discussion to the motion? Are there any public comments to the motion? Want to say a few words or keep moving? Keep moving. Thank you. Looking forward to the closing. We've been talking about this for three years. Yeah, yeah, correct. The project's well underway. I do want to acknowledge real quick PFM Financial Advisors. This is the financial advisor to help us to negotiate this deal, as well as the submissions we got from TD Bank, and the bonds are being issued through TD Public Finance, LLC. The county got an excellent long-term deal with lots of options for prepayments, et cetera, with a great interest rate. Thanks, Todd. Thank you. Those in favor of the motion, vote by the sign of aye. Aye. As opposed, same sign. Motion carries. Next, that'll bring us to the green procurement policy. Move approval of the recognition policy. No, sir. No? Sorry. Okay. I guess I will say this, though. Also, something else I want to say is, like, agenda management is, this agenda is insane. It's, like, super, super packed. And we've had, like, two agendas that were super light and not a lot, and now we've got agendas that's got everything. This is going to be the most packed one that you all have seen. Yeah. I don't remember one like this until 2015. And I understand that there's a lot on here that people in the community want to get to, but this is something that I specifically re-agended and asked to have come back to us because we... I would draw my motion waiting for Commissioner Prizia's input. Like, I really want to hear this. We're trying. Melrose, I'm trying. We'll get there. Okay, Mr. Chair. Steve Hoster, Environmental Protection. It is a short presentation. I'll run through it. This was requested that we come back. If the board recalls, back in 2022, there was a motion that we spent a lot of time looking at the zero waste policies that focused on waste reduction and county consumption and our procedures. And coming out of that, we worked a while to develop our procedures for greenery, green procurement. And coming out of that on May 27th, there was a motion to bring this item back to present on those green procurement procedures and come back with a recommendation of a sustainable procurement policy, which is what we'll present to you today. Just to outline what the procurement procedures are, it's basically five different categories. The first one focuses on, you know, five guiding principles of zero waste or what we call circular economy, and that is to keep resources local, foster job growth, emphasize and support upstream solutions, mitigate for climate impacts, and sustainability principles. The second aspect of the procedures are to work with departments, recognizing it's their responsibility to purchase products that are environmentally and socially and economically responsible. And in doing that, we'll provide information to the departments on how they can accomplish that, and that is outlining the procedures. We also are going to create a zero waste committee. This is an ad hoc committee that will meet at least quarterly. And the concept here is that they'll develop a training process for staff to understand how to purchase products that are environmentally and economically smart. We view requests by directors. So this will give an opportunity for feedback from the departments. If they have questions about what they're purchasing or how to purchase those products, and then that committee will also give recommendations back in terms of practices or procedures that will help them accomplish these goals laid out in the procedures. We also, this committee will provide updates for procurement procedures where multiple departments are being impacted, so that we are sure that they're understanding what is required of them. And this committee will be made up of a representative of our Resiliency Division and EPD, which would probably be our sustainability manager, procurement officer, solid waste resource recovery member, as well as someone from the admin team and other departments that typically are purchasing equipment and supplies for the county. The next aspect is best practices and procedures and strategies. These involve things like reduced waste at the point of purchase, purchasing durable and reusable goods, leasing and renting equipment where appropriate, specify product and packaging takebacks with programs for vendors that have that ability to take products back and reuse, buying goods in bulk or in concentrated forms, managing surplus supplies effectively, which is actually I'll hit on that in a minute. We've already started to do more of that, procure commodities that are certified to meet sustainable standards. So we have a list of what those are in the procurement information, procure remanufactured goods and use refurbishing services and to purchase goods containing fewer toxic constituents as well. A common one we've done for a long time is reuse of paper products, and we already have current guidelines in place that hit a lot of these recycling strategies that are then outlined again in the procurement information. And then finally, we provide definitions and a glossary in that information as well as resources and standards, which will help staff find and locate this information. So that was what we did back earlier this year, and the board saw that document. It's about a seven-page document. What we've come back with is what we hope is a policy that kind of sets forth how we're going to administer these procedures. This is the purpose of the policy. The policy purpose is very similar to the procedures, except that it affirms that we're committed to doing the purchase of materials, both sustainably, financially, effectively, and in a way to reduce as much waste as possible to be environmentally and socially responsible. The scope does apply to all county departments, employees, contractors, and vendors that procure, operate, or deliver services to the county. And the policy commits to basically these four areas. And I can quickly kind of walk through those four. First is sustainable procurement. So this is in terms of product and services that hopefully are environmentally and socially responsible, durable, recyclable, reusable, and re-manufactured is the preferable approach. They meet certain standards and outlines in terms of waste reduction in a circular economy. Secondly, the department should prioritize waste prevention by reducing, reusing, recycling, and composting materials wherever possible, and surplusing property and reusable items as much as possible as well. The next strategy is resource and energy efficiency. So this is where we are looking to be more energy and water efficient in the equipment and the vehicles we purchase. Renewable energy and energy efficient building practices should also be incorporated in the county operations where feasible. And then finally, the last one is a continuation improvement led by example. What we mean here is making sure staff are trained and provided the proper information to understand how to buy this materials in a way that meets our goals, which is to be more sustainable, economically efficient, and responsible. So that kind of lays out how the policy is written. We are going to bring forward a policy we'll probably integrate into the comp plan amendments as well, which is maybe more traditional what you see in terms of policy. So we'd like to bring a policy forward with our comp plan amendments as well that will address this issue as well. But with that, that concludes my presentation. I know I flew through those really quickly, and I'll be glad to take any questions. Okay, Commissioner. Proceed. Yeah, one, thank you. I know, like I said, I know I was the one who pushed for this. I really appreciate you all pulling this together into a policy that allows us to be able to communicate out to the community what we're doing and keep track of what we're going through. I just have three quick comments. One is we adopted GFPP for food, so if we could add that under the sustainable procurement as a third-party certification. The second is under waste reduction in circular economy. One of the primary goals, as you all outlined so well, was keeping resources local and fostering job growth. So if we could make a note under the waste reduction in circular economy about purchasing from locally owned businesses and locally produced products when available and meeting the other goals, I would really appreciate it. I think that highlights how we want to try to support our own local businesses and build our own local economy here. And I think that's important. If folks are okay with that addition. And then the last is under communications. If we could highlight that we highlight how we've implemented these policies at public-facing events. Because I think that's a big place where we interface with the public on these issues, where we're buying food and other supplies for those and being able to highlight those as a part of the communication section of the policy. And with those changes, I would approve staff recommendations with the proposed changes. Second. Second. Got a motion and a second. Any further discussion? Are there any public comments to the motion that's on the floor? Back to the board. Those in favor of the motion will buy the sign of an aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed? Same sign. Motion carries. Madam Clerk. Yes. Chair, I bring us to the legacy community development of workforce and market rate housing. Okay. Mr. Chair, can the clerk reflect aye on that last one? I was in the back. Good afternoon, Mr. Chair. Commissioners, Ralston Riudica, Housing Director with Community Support Services. And so just as a refresher, on June 24th at the board meeting, we did receive four proposals to which none were accepted. And so the board directed staff to come back with a refined scope of work for desired outcomes and to determine the best direction moving forward. And so you'll see what we're going to present today is staff recommendation of moving forward with a grant application. But these were the options that were provided. And you choose the vehicle, whether it's an invitation to negotiate, a grant application, or a request for qualifications. And so continuing on with the board motion, staff did reach out to multiple developers just in general to get feedback. Also, other committee input for this item. And really, the intent is to put the community interest first and ensure whomever the county negotiates with has a financial capacity and qualifications. The community is looking for a single-family developer with a history of developing market rate housing that the community would support and be proud of. And so really, these are the considerations that staff had gone for the past few months regarding community expectations, the feedback from the development and the builder community, also the different funding sources that typically have four single-family developments, and again, the best process for the board's desired outcome. All right, so staff's recommendation is really to move forward with a grant application process, where we would rank and make recommendations to the board, and we would develop the criteria, obviously, with the grant application, and then move forward with final terms with the top-ranked applicant for board approval. Once that happens, we would present a grant agreement to the selected proposal, and so this is part of the refined scope that we have in the original scope for the legacy project, is to build at least 30 homes, single-family detached homes, whereas it would provide mainly market-rate housing, but a portion would be for workforce housing, so it would be a mixed-income development, focusing on the workforce housing, and the workforce housing definition of 50% AMI of 50% AMI of 50% up to 120% AMI. So our workforce housing definition actually goes lower to 30% AMI, but just recognizing the ability to qualify for a mortgage loan, it wouldn't preclude them or exclude them, but that's the focus, right, for this proposal. And obviously, one of the goals is to construct durable, energy-efficient, cost-effective housing, where there would be maximum site utilization, while preserving neighborhood character. That doesn't mean, you know, really high-density, but maintain the character of the neighborhood, where there would be, it would generate community benefits, including attainable home ownership and economic impact. And we're also asking that they incorporate community amenities, very similar to other developments, single-family developments, not just in the neighborhood, but throughout the county, focusing on livability and neighborhood identity. So some of the developer qualifications that we would propose that we look at, a single-family developer that's obviously, you know, has demonstrated experience, not just in market rate, but also for workforce housing. So really a mixed income development. Evidence of financial strength, bonding capacity and demonstration of the ability to secure financing, history of navigating development approvals, infrastructure planning, commitment to green, sustainable design, and community engagement. And so these are the categories that we're considering for the grant application, organizational qualifications, financial feasibility, conceptual site plan, including housing size, styles, and price points, development timeline, and key milestones. And again, most importantly, community engagement and their impact plan. So staff's recommendation is two parts. Number one, use the grant application process to offer the land plus potential funding for the workforce housing component, consistent with usage of the wild spaces, public places, infrastructure sales tax. And number two, consider allowing options that include mixed housing types, such as attached single-family or duplexes and triplexes designed appropriately. And so these staff recommendations really come out of all the conversations, the input that we've had in the community, especially with builders and developers who have and are building market rate housing, single-family housing. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioner Prisian and Wheeler, I guess. I was just going to move staff's recommendation to move forward with the grant application process and allowing options that have mixed housing types. Second. Question. Okay. Commissioner Wheeler and then Commissioner Cornell. I just have a quick question. What were some of the reasons that those proposals were denied? You said there were four that came through that were denied for this? We denied them. We denied them. Excuse me? We denied them. We denied them. Oh, so we saw them and we did. Okay. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Never mind. Is the community next door to that property an issue at all in terms of what we're trying to get people in there to build? And I can never remember the name of it. Carver Gardens. Carver Gardens. Yes. Is that still on our radar as something that we might potentially be a part of owning? I just didn't know if we talked about that at all because it's kind of an area that might deter anyone from wanting to buy in that area. I think we just funded renovation money for them, correct? For Carver? Yes. Good. Well, that will help with that. Mr. Chair. Yes. So Carver Gardens, they did apply through the Alaska County Housing Finance Authority for taxes and bond financing to do the renovations. I think I believe that's currently on hold. So I'm not sure if this answers your question, Commissioner Wheeler, but it's an ongoing process through our Housing Finance Authority and several other parties. That's fine. I just know that it's kind of been problematic, you know, and that might somehow hamper someone from wanting to invest in property there. That's all. The builders. If they're building there, they may not be able to get their money back out because of that location. That's all. I didn't know if that was an issue. It's been certainly an issue for me when I've been over there walking through it. Andy Nixon, Assistant Director of Community Support Services. Throughout all of our discussions with developers, none have mentioned any problems about the public gardens. Okay, good. The hope in the future, working through the HFA, is that that property will be sold and rehabilitated. Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just want to make a statement here about Carver Garden. Carver Garden was at one point well run. It had no issues. It was well maintained. I can't remember his first name, but Mr. McKnight was the manager. He was very strict on his residence there. And then he died. They hired a new manager. It's been downhill ever since, just to be honest with you. So it's management. It's not the people. It's management. Right. And I think that man is out of area, too. I don't think he lives in the state. I don't know, but I just know that it's the management. It's not the people who live there, because they abide by the rules, but it's just the slack management. It's owned by the proposed developer. Thank you, Candy. Thank you. Okay. I just wanted to make that statement, because I don't want anybody to misjudge Carver Gardens, because that's not fair. Absolutely. It's just the management. It's not the people who live there. That's my point. Good point, Mr. Chair. Yeah. Yeah. So got a motion in a second. Okay. I'm sorry, Ken. I'm overlooking you, man. Yeah, that's okay. That's okay. Sorry. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So I just wanted to make a quick comment. Thank you, first of all, for staff for really listening to that discussion and incorporating those elements from what I saw into the RFP. I think that's really, really important. Second part is the last two words on item two are really important. You know, when the community, when the community, the multiple community meetings, you know, we kind of landed on single family residents and that still needs to be the primary focus. The proposals that come back, if they need to add some units for a dent for enough density to make the project sustainable, I've seen really beautiful duplexes, townhomes, triplexes that kind of also look like single family residents and are designed appropriately. And so when it comes back to us, that's something, you know, I'm going to want to look at and look at other examples of where they've done that so that it really conforms with what I think the intent of the community and this board have expressed. It's only 13 acres. So they don't have 70 acres to work with. So we understand that they have to we have to be kind of flexible. But how they design that is is something that normally we don't get involved in because that's normally a final development stage thing. That's other people. But in this case, I'm going to have a keen eye to that when looking at the different proposals. So thank you, Ralston, for listening to us and to the community. Yes. Yeah, I guess I just wanted to hop in on that and agree with you. I think that, you know, much like we I mean, I know that our our TODs and our TNDs tend to be much, much larger developments. But I think I think some of us sort of can envision what could be if this was sort of a mini version of that, right, where there was some commercial areas of commercial development that could be supporting locally owned businesses with maybe some apartments upstairs for live and work type situations or some duplexes or small cottage type houses that were closer to the center of the neighborhood and then expanding out into larger single family as it got larger. What I will say, though, to my colleagues is that when I've spoken with developers about that idea, one, the site is super small. And so it makes it really constrained for anybody to do anything of substance that would make any money. And secondarily, oftentimes those developers are not the same kind of people. Like people who develop single family housing are not the kind of people who do multifamily housing are not the kind of people that do commercial housing unless you have like a really big developer and really big developers aren't going to be interested in a small project like this. So we may end up, I mean, I think that we want to make clear in this grant application that we would accept like partnership projects where, you know, maybe multiple developers work together or there's a master developer and they have a partner that's going to do the commercial side and they're going to do the, you know, the family, the single family side or something like that. But I think we're going to need to be flexible in terms of what we allow for the structure of partnerships to make a project like this work well. So I just wanted to put that out there. Okay. Motion in a second. Are there any public comments to the motion? My name is Carrie Parker Warren and thank you for the opportunity today. And I was just here, I thought I was here today just to say that we have faith in the process. I know you haven't seen us in a while, but we have some members that are ill today and could not make it and we have some others that are out of town and could not make it. So I was here to just tell you that we have faith in the process. But after I saw that report, my heart started beating very fast when I saw the point that Commissioner Cornell brought up. And I'm not sure that I'm going to have to take that back to my community about the triplexes and the attached single member home because that's when my heart started beating very quickly. I would just like to ask that gentleman, is that a recommendation that you got from us? Is that a recommendation you came up with or your committee came up with or the employees came up with? I like to know that because this is the first time that we've heard that. And I'm not sure that the community, that's what we asked for. That's what we wanted. I'm not sure that this is my first time hearing about that today. But I do want you to know that we are still meeting, we are still talking, and the community knows that it's taking a while, it's going to take a while, but we believe that we're going to have a good community when it does happen. So we aren't worried about the time as long as it's still rolling, you're still talking about it, and you still know that we're there and what we want in our community. So I would like to have the county or the committee come back to one of our meetings and tell us, where did you get that from and what do you mean and how are you going to do that? Because that's something that we had not talked about. Thank you. Yes. Yeah. So CPW, thanks for being here. Carrie Park Warren. The last two words are really important that we have community buy-in, but the first three words are also really important. Consider allowing options. So this is just giving options. I think when I talk to staff during agenda review, it's coming back from the various developers that they've talked to. The more options, the better options you're going to get, not we're going to do a multifamily and change the direction of the community. So that would be my comment from a commissioner's perspective. I don't know, Ross, if you want to add to that or anybody else want to add to that. Yeah, I guess I would just add to that, that I think it's really clearly spelled out in the grant application. And I appreciate that, that the developer would have to do community engagement and show proof of that. And so any concepts that they would bring forward that would have these multifamily components in them would have to be, essentially presented to the community and the community would have to understand and agree that they made sense in the context of the community and that they still fit the community character. So that's why I'm comfortable including this in because I do think that from a financial standpoint, in order to make this development viable, we may need to have a mix of housing, but I think it really is the devil's in the details about how it's done and that it's done in a way that's quality and that it's done in a way that fits with the character and that the community likes and can accept. So I'm hopeful that developers that come up with plans can sell them effectively to the community and help the community understand what's a good idea and listen to the community about what they need. Mr. Chair, from the staff's perspective, this is hearing from builders and developers of market-rate housing. And so the focus is still on single-family detached homes. And the city of Gainesville single-family is still considered, you know, duplex. So we're not proposing multi-family at all. This is strictly single-family detached homes. And again, like you said, the option, right? So it's really going to depend on what the builder or developer will propose. But it's just an option. The focus is single-family detached homes. And Mr. Chair, if I could, to be clear, we have set this process up where everything is going to come back to you. It is not as if there's not going to be able to be even further public input with you all on the dais and the public as well. So it would all come back to you. Okay. Mr. Chair, I have a quick question. Yes. Commissioner Willard? When we first had these discussions in this neighborhood, some of the neighbors were interested in also in businesses out there. I didn't know if that was off the table. Are we still talking businesses at all? Is it the possibility that we'd have somebody who would come in and develop that as a business complex rather than housing? Or is that a possibility? I'm seeing Carrie nodding her head. It does not have housing. I mean, it does have business in it. Okay. So I didn't know if that's anything we're talking. Right. I just didn't know if that had been, you know, inserted into any of those. What's in here? Candy Nixon. Yeah. Business retail is still considered an option. Okay. Thank you. And all these people that are applying or that we're talking to know that that is a possibility too for them? Yes. Okay. Got 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. Those opposed? Same side. Motion carries. Madam Clerk. This will bring us to presentations. Temporary use permitting review. Madam Clerk. I think we did the consent item was. I thought it was. Yes. Q2C. Yeah. You wanted to do the consent item prior to number one under presentation. Yeah. So could I? Sure. Yes. So thank you, Mr. Chair. So I talked to the attorney during agenda review on the Senate bill 180. And I think it concurs that we can defer this one. So just to give a little bit of context at fact last week, I chair the community and urban affairs committee, and there was probably 40 members on that committee. It's a pretty big committee. So more than half the counties I think are participating in that. We had a discussion about this Senate bill 180 item. And the overall discussion was there's a lot in that bill. There's two paragraphs that are causing all the heartburn across the state with regards to we can't do anything that may potentially be more restrictive to a developer. But the Pasco attorney said in the testimony that that I chaired in that meeting that in fact the county attorneys are kind of taking the lead on this from facts perspective. And the discussions they've been having with the bill sponsor was that the intent of those two paragraphs was to allow for folks to rebuild in the event of property damage. And the intent was never to stop any local control over additional development. And so at our committee meeting, we discussed passing a policy that fact work with the current bill sponsor to actually fix the glitch. It's we're naming it a glitch fix policy from facts perspective. And the bill sponsor seems really receptive to fixing those two paragraphs. And so there was additional discussion that a number of municipalities have already filed a lawsuit and that of all of the 67 counties as of last week, only one county had joined. I think Orange County, Manatee County, I think had joined as of yesterday. So there's only two counties. Sometimes it's really good to be the first in there, but it probably makes sense for us to just pause, see where we are in a month or two. We can always join the lawsuit and see if we can get the legislature to fix those two paragraphs. And so I would move that we defer this recommendation, ask the attorney to stay close with, stay close to who joins in the coming month or two, and then revisit this in either November or December once we have more direction from FAC and the bill sponsor as to what the intention of the legislature is. So that would be my motions. Can you just clarify why joining the lawsuit precludes the ability of FAC to move forward with asking for a glitch bill? No, it doesn't. It doesn't preclude it. It just puts us on a list of counties that are in a lawsuit versus waiting with the legislature. I don't want to be on the list. Why not? Because I want to give them a chance to fix it. Well, maybe a little pressure helps them fix it. Well, I mean, that's certainly the will of this board. I will vote against it if that's the will of this board. I want to wait. I'm happy to defer it. I guess I don't think that the two are mutually exclusive. So at FAC, sometimes counties take the lead. Sometimes cities take the lead. This is a case where the cities, there's 23 cities that have taken the lead. I think we can get this fixed by talking to the bill sponsor as opposed to through the courts. I think the courts are just going to agitate them. Again, because I don't think it was the intent of the bill sponsor to see what had happened. And so I would rather us not spend the money and join the lawsuit yet. If they don't fix it, then I'll be ready to join the lawsuit. Just furthest before the end of the year. Okay, but before the, there's another FAC policy meeting, isn't it? Yeah, so. So will that be brought up then to discuss? Yeah, in Tampa. That's what I always thought. Yeah, November. Where the final decision would be made. Yeah, in November, we'll have the FAC policy meeting where we'll finalize the FAC policies. Right. At which point, that would be the time that I would think if we're not getting anywhere, we join the lawsuit. Well, against lawsuits, it's just a matter of, let's wait. Instead of announcing. Yeah. Need a second. Second. I beg your pardon. Got a motion and a second. Are there any further comments to the motion? He keeps laughing. He's having a good time. Yeah, while she... Any citizen comments to the motion? 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. Okay. Good afternoon, Mr. Chair. Chris Dawson, Principal Planner for Development Services at the Growth Management Department. I have a brief presentation today where I'm going to talk a little bit about how we handle temporary use permits. Okay. And then we can answer any questions that you might have. So really, there's kind of three parts that we're going to talk about today. So we have permit tiers, temporary use permit tiers. We have exemptions from temporary use permits. And I wanted to talk just a little bit about how they're related to special events, which are in the fire rescue realm. Generally, every application for a temporary use permit, big, small, whatever, requires that you include a statement of the use. So tell us what it is, how you're going to lay that out on the site that you're on. If you have a plan for sanitation and public health, that may not apply to, you know, Christmas tree sales, for example. But if you are going to need to have a plan, description of the property, an emergency management plan, and then how you're going to enforce those things. So, you know, whether that's a limitation on the number of people or what it is. We also provide for, in the code, whether it's a staff approval or a board approval, to have conditions or standards that go along with that use. So things like signage or setback, hours of operation, things that would sort of be, because it's temporary, that would go along with that. And they're not specific to any particular use because this is a pretty broad section of our code. So there's a little bit of flexibility for either the board or staff in approving these different levels of permits. My slides got moved around. That's fine. So I'll talk about, even though I like, I wanted to talk about tier B first, I'll talk about tier A. These are temporary sales, markets. So we have in our code, these are broken down into tiers. Sports or religious or political or music, community events, concerts, carnivals, car shows, and then things where you close the right of way. So a block party, maybe a race, you know, a running race or a bicycle race, something like that. Any of those would fall into a tier A. These have a maximum of three days that they can go sort of in a row. They can do that up to six times a year. We say up to six times a year because they're also required to be separated by 60 days. And these do not permit overnight camping. So you can do one of these things and it can be three days long, but you can't have people camping there, right? And it requires that there be fewer than 2,000 people in attendance at any one time. Tier B, temporary use permits are seasonal and holiday sales and events. So these are pumpkin sales or fireworks, Christmas tree, that kind of thing. Maximum of 45 days for the permit. So, you know, Christmas tree sales go on for a good while. No more than 90 days in a year. No more than twice per year. And again, there's that limitation of 2,000 people at a time. You never have 2,000 people hanging out in the pumpkin patch. But just hypothetically, that's the limitation on those. Tier C is sort of the next level. These are basically any event that has overnight camping that has an anticipated attendance of more than 2,000 people at a time. And so any Tier A or Tier B that includes these things would be kicked up into that Tier C automatically. And any Tier A or Tier B that would want to exceed the duration or the number of permits in a year would also be kicked up. So even if you were, you know, seasonal sales and you were under 2,000, if you wanted to be three times a year, you know, you would be kicked up into that Tier C approval by the board. And this is for each time that you would sort of trip that threshold. So we don't do temporary use permits for repetitive things. So we don't say, yeah, you can do five of these in a year and it's approved by one permit. We would require each of those times to get an individual temporary use permit. And if that requires going to the board, you'd have to go to the board for however many times that is. So I just wanted to sort of summarize again. This is sort of when you saw temporary use permits a year and a half or so ago. This is just a summary table. Again, those Tier A maximum of three, maximum number of days is 18. That's if you had six, maximum number of six. Tier B is that 45 days, maximum of 90 days in a year, maximum of two per year. And then Tier C, and those are approvable at the staff level. So we administratively approve that. And then Tier C, any of those, anything that falls into that Tier C, it comes to the board. There are some exemptions from these requirements in our code. So where you're not closing public streets or sidewalks and you don't create any on-street parking impacts. Alachua County Parks property doesn't require a special or a temporary use permit. Alachua County School District property, if you're using that, does not require a temporary use permit. If a use, something that's permitted as part of a planned development, like in a zoning master plan, already has a special use permit or has a special exception or other development plans. So we have this, for example, in Celebration Point, they have some allowances within their development plan to allow those kinds of things, events that might happen. It might otherwise be a temporary use permit, but you've already provided for that in their development plan. Funeral repasts are similar. And confirmed agritourism operations with no substantial off-site impacts. Those do not require a temporary use permit. We're preempted by the state. Fire Rescue has a special event permit. Many of our temporary use permits would also require a special event permit. It's separate, but we process them sort of in parallel if needed. They have more levels of these. Level 1 event is generally up to 500 persons. Level 2 is between 500 and 1,000. Level 3 is 1,000 to 2,000. Level 4 is 2,000 to 10,000. Level 5 is 10,000 or above. They have some additional things in their special event code that have to do with, like, volatility of what's happening. So fireworks, a fireworks display might kick them into something, some different category than if it were just, you know, Christmas tree sales. They may require an emergency plan or staffing from Fire Rescue as part of that. We would look for, in any of our temporary use permits, whether the fire marshal is also requiring those things and make sure that we're lining those two permits. I did just want to give you just a quick history of what we've taken in for temporary use permits. This is over the last four years. So you can see it's not a huge number. We've, the majority of these are these small events that happen that are just a few days at a time. We do also have seasonal events that, again, that's your pumpkin patches and your Christmas tree sales. We've, in the last four years, since FY21, we've had two Tier C events. These are large events. And those were both the Hogtown Medieval Fair. So that's what those two events are. And then just some examples of what those Tier A events are that you can see. So, like, the Luby Bat Festival, for example, which is about 1,500 people in attendance. You know, if they had gotten up to 2,000 again, that would trip them into that Tier C. But it just gives you an idea of what kinds of events we have going in our community that we're approving in that administrative level. Mr. Chair, that's all the information slides I have for you today. We have staff here to answer questions about events, if you'd like, and to provide any input that you might have. Okay. Commissioner Wheeler, I see your light. Oh, I'm sorry. I know. That's all light. Commissioner Cornell? Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Chris. So how do we come up with 2,000? Is that just a historical thing? So, Mr. Chair, when we were looking at the temporary use permits and trying to line them up better, laying them up better with the fire rescue permits, we looked at what their breakpoints were and tried to align that Tier C. And you can see that sort of that breakpoint in the special events at fire rescue are the 1,000 to 2,000. We felt that up to 2,000 was appropriate, but certainly that could be a smaller event. What's the difference, and you may not know this, fire rescue and what's required under a level two event versus a level three and then a level three versus a level four? So it varies, Mr. Chair. There's a lot more variability in the fire rescue special event permit about what's required. It often has to do with the amount of staffing it has or the kind of staffing that it has from a fire rescue perspective. That's not always dependent on the number of people that are there. It also sometimes has to do with the kind of event that it is. So it's not as cut and dry as our temporary use permit. Would an emergency plan or staffing be required under a level three? Do you know? For a level three event, yes. What about for a level two? It would depend, Mr. Chair. It would depend on the type of event. It would depend on the type of event. Okay. And then under the temporary use permits, generally the standard signage, setbacks, hours of operations, traffic and access, noise control, fire safety, alcohol permits, insurance, previous non-compliance. How does staff evaluate these items for off-site impacts? So, Mr. Chair, I think we kind of take it in a hole, and I think it's just like any other use that we would look at. You've got a site plan or a development plan, if you will, something that shows how that activity is taking place in a particular place. Some of them inherently have off-site impacts where we're closing rights of way, right? But it's about whether you can manage that. So, you know, you're not closing, I'm going to use Northwest 83rd Street maybe, but you're closing side streets or local streets, something like that. If you were proposing Northwest 83rd Street, maybe you're looking at how you mitigate that maintenance of traffic issue, situation. And I think it's different for every use that comes in. And so we're going to look at the use, look at how they're proposing to use a site, and I think look for some reasonability about how it's structured. You know, if you're proposing that you're going to have 1,000 people on site, do you have enough room on site to park 800 cars? That's a reasonable sort of realm. How are you going to set that up to make sure it happens? What's your maintenance of traffic? If everybody's going into a driveway, you know, how is that being accommodated? There are situations where even one of those sort of temporary, the smaller temporary uses might still require the sheriff to do maintenance of traffic for it. It just depends on the particular situation. Two more quick questions. Tier A and B are staff reviews. Tier C is county commission review. When we say staff review, what level? Is it a department head? Is it assistant county manager? Is it county manager? Mr. Chair, it's the Department of Growth Management is the responsible entity. He doesn't typically sign off on those. It really comes through our zoning division. So the zoning administrator, Holly Banner. But she reviews that in coordination with our other departments. She's talking to public works. She's talking to fire rescue. We're looking at EPD to say, are there environmental situations? We're talking to our other planners on staff to say, you know, are there things that you know about that are going to be in conflict with this? Okay. And thank you. Last question. As I understand, Senate Bill 180, which we just discussed, we can't do anything more restrictive. So if we wanted to change that threshold from 2,000 to 1,500 or 1,000, question for the attorney. Can we do that? Or are we precluded from doing that until the glitch fix is done? So, Mr. Chair, what I would say to you is that we do that analysis on a staff level on an ordinance-by-ordinance basis. And we have brought you some ordinances where we have said in the aggregate that it wasn't more restrictive or more burdensome. And you have made those findings in your ordinances. So I wouldn't, I won't speak necessarily to just the one restriction. I think there certainly is a question of whether it would be more restrictive. It very well may be. We would have to make that finding and then get an opinion about that. You would need a basis to make a finding that it wasn't more restrictive or more burdensome. To the applicant, whether that applicant is a landowner or developer or whoever. I mean, I'm interpreting that we have what we have until Senate Bill 180 changes. Right. So if you were amending your ordinance, you wouldn't be talking about an applicant. You would just be talking about changing the rules. If you were looking at a temporary use. But the applicant would be prompting that activity that would cause us to say, hey, let's talk about changing this. But it is a general rule change. It isn't just a single one. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Chris. Mr. Prizia? I mean, I guess I would just say I feel like we have a good temporary use permit process. I mean, I think we've seen that it's worked well in the past. And I mean, occasionally we have traffic issues. I think that's the one that's the hardest to predict. And some of it depends on the roadways that it's on. And so I think that any major project that's going to be undergoing a temporary use permit better be thinking about traffic provisions and parking and how they're going to handle that and have a really good plan for it. Because that is, I mean, we saw it with Hogtown Medieval Fair on Archer Road. It was a mess. And even though, like, we tried our best to review that, you know, you just can't anticipate that everyone decides they're going to go at the same time of the day. And with something like a festival, for example, they're likely to all come at the same time because it starts at a time and it ends at a time. So I do think the traffic piece is probably the biggest sticking point in our temporary use permit process. But I think that staff are really knowledgeable about those issues and have seen the bumps that can go. And I trust that the process we have is a good one. And I think that beyond the temporary use permit, hopefully anything that was going to be long term would have some kind of a special use permit long term or a special exception to be able to operate in the long term. And the temporary use permit would literally be for a one-time event or a couple-time event. And they, I mean, they could only do six a year anyway for a maximum, right, a maximum of three days? Yes, if it's a tier A event. But I think I also would say that, you know, staff might find a situation where, you know, this fifth or sixth event, maybe it's not possible to do that in a particular situation. And I mean, I can't give a specific example of where that might be or what might cause that. But I think there's certainly that possibility where we can look back and say, no, you can't do it the same way you've been doing it. Or maybe that's really the approach. You can't do it the same way you've been doing it. You need something additional. The Hogtown Mean Evil Fair might be an example. If that had sort of come back on Archer Road, we might say, no, that was a mess and we need to plan for something different. So I think that that's, it would to some degree be that learning situation, I think. We also do look at this as like, that is actually a temporary use and not a permanent use that somebody is getting a temporary permit for on a regular basis in order to avoid regulatory processes. I mean, I would say, yes, Mr. Chair, that's probably true. But our code does provide for doing it sort of up to that number of times a year. So on any piece of property. Thank you. Thanks for the review? No, just a, we just wanted to get a presentation of the review. I don't know if people want to talk to me. Yeah. For the next one. Okay. Yeah, those people, I think, who did not speak earlier, can have the opportunity now to speak on the item. On this item? On this item. Because a lot of folks did it during public comment. Well, I think they're going to speak on the next item. The Mellor is special. Our Bureau is kind enough. Don't start the clock. Come down this morning. Well, you're already talking, so they need to start the clock. Start the clock. Start the clock on. We're family. Really beloved. Oh, that's your line. My name is Mark Goldstein. I've been farming for 50 years. Member of the Farm Bureau, as I think one of you are. I encourage you all to join. I will buy a membership for the county commission so that you get the regular input. We're doing a great deal out in the rural eastern Alachua County area to feed the local area and to make sure that we can all depend on the fresh vegetables and the dairy and all of the other things we do. Citrus is my thing, and everybody that I know is replanting citrus in large numbers right now and putting in irrigation. I see Brian Lewis is here who I know is putting in hundreds of trees, and I've just put in new trees, and we're waiting to maybe make a dollar back. With respect to approvals of things, that means my farm, I can bring in 2,000 people. You're not going to count them, I think. I don't think you have the ability to count the number of people I bring in. So if I want to bring in 2,000 people and my neighbors come down here and say, well, did you guys approve of it? I think your staff just told you no. I can do this many times a year, and your staff told you it doesn't have to come to you. So if the people after my event in my neighborhood make a big mess, they're going to come to you. So you're going to see them afterwards, but you won't see them before because you don't have to approve of my event. That's what your new law says, type A or type B. So I get 2,000 uncounted on my property. For whatever reason, I pay taxes. Some people don't when they put people in their property. They sell tickets, whatever they do, but they're tax-free. I'm not tax-free. Well, most farmers aren't tax-free. They pay taxes. They build a house. They build things. They pay taxes. So at the moment, I can have many parties of uncountable numbers of people without coming to you. I wouldn't do that, but my neighbor will. I've got 100 acres over there, and the current plan. So I think what you need to do and what I'm asking you to do, and I think the people are asking you to do is, if you're going to have 2,000 people, rather than have us all start up new tax-free organizations to have 2,000 people and sell tickets nationwide, I think they've got to come down here and ask you. So if you change that law, if you make a motion to change that law to make sure it comes before the county commission, a lot of us would appreciate it. Thank you. Any further citizen comments? Okay. Got one more? Take your time. Take your time. Thanks for hearing us this afternoon. We don't have a lot prepared, but I think we sent in some 600 signatures petitioning against wildflowers. I hope that you'll consider the impact that it will have on all the adjoining properties. My friend who couldn't be here today, the dance tent, she'll be able to see it from the front porch, and she lives on 30 acres. That's just not a good thing for Melrose. Excuse me. It's not a good thing in Melrose. The traffic, the roads, the sanitation, people tent camping, car camping, there's different charges for those. In the middle of the night, where are they going to go to the bathroom? They're not going to hike it to Porta Potty, and there's runoff on that land. So please, please consider not allowing this to happen. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Seeing none, back to the board. There's really no action on the first item. So the next item, Madam Chair, I guess, item two? Yep. Item two, Melrose special area plan discussion. Okay. Mr. Chair, good afternoon. Jeff Hayes, Growth Management Director. This is another item along the lines of the last one you heard that the board asked for a presentation on, about a potential special area plan for the Melrose area. First of all, a little bit of background on Melrose and the special planning we've done in that area. Melrose is designated as a rural cluster, so you can actually see on this map. One difference you'll see with Melrose as a rural cluster than some of our other rural clusters is we actually did go through a process back in 2016 of delineating the actual rural cluster boundaries. When you look at our future land use map, you'll see a lot of other rural clusters, Earlton, Orange Heights, that just look like circles on the map. Those are ones that we haven't gone through a process of actually delineating the rural cluster boundary on our future land use map, but Melrose is one that we did. At that time in 2016, we did not continue with any sort of future or further planning process in terms of special policies for Melrose. The board at that time decided to discontinue that process. All of the areas surrounding the Melrose rural cluster, at least in Alachua County, are designated rural agriculture on the future land use map similar to most other parts of the rural area. And, of course, there are three other counties right on the eastern side of Melrose, or part of Melrose really, which is Putnam, Bradford, and Clay. This is policy 6.45 of your comprehensive plan future land use element that has the requirements and delineates the process for a special area study and a special area plan. And really what a special area plan is to do, and you see it highlighted there, is to address unique needs and circumstances that are not addressed through the generally applicable comprehensive plan policies. And so we have this planning process designated so we can go through that process. Some of the special area plans that you might think about, we've spoken about recently, we have one for Cross Creek, you know, which has very significant historical resources and environmental restrictions. We have a special area plan for the Idlewild area, you know, on the prairie that's actually inside the urban cluster, but we have special policies that deal with those areas. And then you can see in policy 7.1.29 really the purpose of special area plans enhance livability, protect the character of neighborhoods, provide amenities for neighborhood residents, plan for neighborhood traffic management, and protect natural resources. A lot of our other special area plans where we have adopted special area plans in the comprehensive plan also deal with some historic, you know, non-conforming uses. So it's an area where generally the use would not be, so maybe you can think of some commercial uses and even Cross Creek is an example like that where there's some existing commercial uses that otherwise wouldn't be allowed in the comprehensive plan, but through the special area planning process we've recognized the historic nature of those uses. In terms of the special area planning process, we do the first step is we designate a scope of work. So that defines the study area, the issues that are to be addressed, and lays out the process of the special area study, and that does require approval by the Board of County Commissioners to actually go through and approve that scope of work. You've done that recently with the Pine Hills special area study that we have ongoing. You did in the past with the Hickory Sink special area study that was a privately initiated special area study, but this Board approved the scope of work. Then we go through the study part of the process, which is analysis of the issues and formulation of recommendations. And then the next step, which is typically adoption into our comprehensive plan and then sometimes into our unified land development code, is the special area plan, which implements the recommendations of the study. And like I said, could include conference plan amendments or ULDC amendments. In terms of estimating a timeframe, generally speaking, and, you know, everyone's a little bit different. As I said, we are going through the Pine Hill special area study. That was a special area study that was Board initiated primarily because it was an area that included strategic ecosystem, where the ecosystem really hadn't been delineated, as well as some pretty significant infrastructure needs. And so we're really right in the middle of that. You'll be seeing some recommendations here in the next few months from that study. But the first part, as I said, is scoping. In this case, and I just have to be frank with you, we really would need to have a consultant on board. And that's primarily because we are also in the middle of our evaluation and appraisal process for the entire comprehensive plan. We are in the middle of the forward focus process. And we are in the middle of the Pine Hill special area study right now. And the staff that would be working on those are working on those three efforts. And so we really would need a consultant just to be really upfront with you. We would go ahead and kick off that process into the first year, do some data collection analysis, and then eventually get to adoption. It really is a two-year process, so it's a 24-month process. As I mentioned, we have forward focus ongoing. So that is a larger process. It's ongoing in growth management. It's certainly a multi-departmental effort. But in growth management, we have our comprehensive planning staff primarily working on that effort with Missy Daniels. Like I said, it's a larger process. There may be further special studies that come out of that for multiple communities. And we already did have a Melrose listening session for that one. Some of the issues that came up, intergovernmental coordination amongst the multiple jurisdictions, economic development needs. We've been working for this board and for the MTPO on some of the traffic issues on State Road 26 in Melrose and some of the speeding and safety issues. Law enforcement, health care needs, lack of post-secondary education opportunities, and, of course, the music park discussion. So if this board did want to undergo this process, we would need to delineate the area. We would need to define objectives of a study and plan and really develop a scope. We would want to contact the adjoining counties to gauge interest in a study. And then we would need to identify the consultant budget, which is not currently budget and growth management, and direct staff resources either away from existing projects or lengthen the timeframe past those other projects to really get a study like this going. And with that, staff will answer any questions you may have. Okay. Commissioner Prizia and then Commissioner Cornell. Yeah, I mean, I guess. Go ahead. I'm sorry. My thing is, like, I don't know why we would need a special area study or a special area plan for this area. We have the rural cluster that's really well defined, and we have the forward focus process, which we've asked staff to kind of get an all-hands-on-deck approach to listening to the whole eastern part of our county and developing sort of strategic plan that could guide specific focuses for strategic steps for, I mean, sorry, for special area studies where we need them. But I feel like we have a whole set of processes going on right now with regards to planning, listening, also updating our comprehensive plan. And so it feels to me like this would be kind of a – I just feel like it's very – it would be very unnecessary. It feels very unnecessary about the whole special area planning process that would take two years and a consultant and a lot of money when we already have several planning processes underway. And anything that would be around, say, the music park or other major initiatives would have to go through a special exception process that we already have outlined that would come to the board, and the larger temporary use permit that would come to the board. So I feel like we would be requiring anybody doing anything in that Melrose area, such as the Wild Barge Music Park, to come before us anyway through whatever processes, you know, they have to go through in order to be able to get approvals to do what they want to do, which is not ag in an ag area. So they're going to have to get approval for that anyway. So I guess I just don't understand what a special area plan would be for. Okay. Okay. Commissioner Cornell. Thank you. Then Commissioner Wheeler. Thanks, Chair, and Anna, thanks for those comments. I mean, I brought this up mostly because every time I walk out of my house and go into Melrose, someone asked me, what do you think of the Wildflower Park? And I was like, what do you think of it? I don't think anything yet because I want to know what you think of it. But then when I started to research it, it really came up because of slide eight. The forward focus process has brought out a lot of input from the Melrose community. And unlike on the eastern part of the county, Hawthorne and Waldo and Micanopy, who have elected representatives that represent the interest of those communities. Melrose has a group of four counties that kind of self govern. I mean, that's what it is. It's a it's a cool community that is rural in nature, but has many of the issues on slide eight, starting with transportation. You know, it's got the lake. It's got health care. The music park is another thing that has come up. And so from my perspective, I think it makes actually a lot of sense to invest the money to develop a plan to study the area, get input from all the stakeholders and then develop a plan for that area. I actually think it helps the music park because the music park is going to do what they're going to do with regards to ask for special exception. This would be concurrent. It is more meetings, but part of the goal of the music park is to get the community's buy in. And so I feel like this actually helps with all of the processes from all of the stakeholders that are in Melrose because it's a planning process. And look, I get it staff has got we've got a lot on the plate and I don't think we need to add another thing to staff. I think we would need to hire a consultant, but I also think that it would go right in line with everything that's happening out there and give everyone a voice in studying all of the stakeholders interest from the music parks perspective. I think it also gives them an opportunity to really build consensus around the community as to what they're trying to do or not, you know, some areas that I've read about. This is really, really great. And it really becomes a part of the community. We heard some testimony this morning about that from folks that are, you know, talked about a town of 1500. There's a lot of interest in Melrose, not only in the music park, but also in the four counties, how they interact with each other and all of the things that are happening out of Melrose and to invite the three surrounding counties to participate in studying this unique part of Florida, Florida, which has an outstanding Florida water that I think is one of the best in north central Florida that the lake dwellers have spent decades protecting while at the same time bring job opportunities, but also a quiet, peaceful place for people to retire to is important. It's also got a huge elementary school right across the street in Putnam County that they're about to spend, I think, 30 million to redo. So it's not just a bedroom community anymore. There's kids out there. There's parents out there. There's lots of things going on out there. And I think it's probably we probably should have done it back in 2016. It came up in 2014. I wasn't on the board yet. We did the Melrose rural cluster, but we really didn't study the area. And so, and so that's why I brought it up. And if a majority of this board would like to move forward, I would, I would make the motion to have our staff go in that direction. But I'll wait to hear from my colleagues. And I wish Mary were here. I would just like to say to that rural crust cluster was initiated by the Santa Fe Lake dwellers in order to protect the lake. Cause I was part of that board that pushed real hard and worked. And I, I know that, um, Mike Byerly helped us with that quite a bit too, in terms of getting that done. Um, and the purpose, what is the purpose then the purpose of, of delineating this area around here, Ken, what do you think is the purpose of doing this? Uh, because you were the one who, who's requesting it, you are requesting it for a group of people in the area who live there. Cause I own property up in there too. It's in Bradford County because it's where it all comes together. I, I also have spent, uh, 30 years out there from, uh, time to time and watched Melrose ebb and flow. Chiapinies, you know, I've been worried about Chiapinies going because those guys, you know, have been friends of ours for a long time, you know, and to watch the grocery store go down now to a liquor store, you know, it's, it's hard to watch that. That happened there. Uh, we've got the dollar general, we've got, you know, what is the other one? Family dollar. Those are the kinds of things, you know, that are happening out there rather than the more historically cultural. And, and the people for the elementary school had to fight like heck to keep it because they were going to close it down, you know, too. So, you know, um, I just, I would just like to understand the purpose of doing this to take a two year, make a two year study that would cost 200,000. And I understand the idea of maybe working with those counties over there, but that part of the county, those counties up there don't really care about that little section. There has been mine, but so tell me, you know, your, the purpose. Yeah. Top of slide eight ongoing planning effort to address the needs of Melrose. That's what forward focus is. We already, we've already. Some part of the county. Exactly. Of which Melrose is a part. Which Melrose is a part. Part and we're involving them in it. I guess I just feel like this is like throwing another administrative hoop at our staff and a lot of expense to do a planning process on top of a planning process we've already initiated. It is. And, and, and to, to respond, um, the city of Hawthorne has a comprehensive plan. City of Waldo has a comprehensive plan. The area that I'm talking about of Melrose doesn't and it has more people. There's more people. And so as county commissioners, it's literally our responsibility to say, should we plan that area? Especially now with other things that are coming into that area, which maybe are coming into that area because we don't have a plan. And so that that's the whole purpose is think of it as cities have comprehensive plans for their areas. Melrose doesn't have that. It never has had that. It's got four counties that all connect in one place. It's got a volunteer fire department that we fund. And before, you know, when I got on the board, it was funded by very little dollars. Thanks to that commission and this commission that is now a funded fire station. We've, you know, and so we rely on things that are just across the border for our citizens like fire safety. And so it's an opportunity. We have an opportunity. And again, I don't think it hurts the wildflower park. I think it actually helps the park because they're going to do what they're going to do while this is going on. So this is an opportunity for them to actually lean in to a special area study to become a stakeholder into how we plan the community going forward. So that's, that's the purpose. Think of it as a comprehensive plan for that area. Okay. To go with what Anna's talking about this forward focus. I've been to several of these meetings and we've been trying really hard. I know from our TDC to focus on the water and the gigs that the people in the eastern, you know, the communities in the eastern part of the county have to offer so we can help them build their gigs. You know, so far we haven't had a whole lot of luck with the gigs. You know, Hawthorne has its rails, the trail that goes up there to there. They've got a new ice cream shop. It opened last week. You know, and Waldo, we've been trying very hard to get interest out there so that we can, we can support the growth of that community to, and get housing out there, get businesses out there. You know, trying to get a Santa Fe center out there, talking about one of the concerns that we had about the forward focus in terms of post secondary education opportunities. You know, I mean, we're really trying to find ways to help people grow sustainably, of course, because we're seeing in the west, you know, that's unsustainable in a lot of ways. But we are trying to give the eastern communities their own personality and help them maintain that personality. I got you. And, but one of these things, when we're talking about the special area plan, it's in an agricultural area, right, that we're looking at. And my concern about ag anymore is because we're looking at climate issues, and a lot of our farms now are not being farmed for food. They're going to solar farms in order to be able to maintain the land. And I would hate to see, you know, any of our areas out in that particular eastern side of the county going into solar farms. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm the middle man, I guess, because I'm kind of torn. I can see the value of having a special area plan if it's for the farming community or to, so that we don't get rid of our farmlands. I can see the value there in terms of not getting rid of all of our farmlands, because if we get rid of all of our farmlands, we won't have anything to grow or eat. So I get that. But I just think that it doesn't hurt because, you know, if we do a special area plan, if they go ahead and file for their permit now, they'll be grandfathered in. So I don't see where that will hurt them unless they're not ready to file yet. But, but anyway, so I'm just saying, so I don't. Maybe we can hear from the public. Sure, sure. Yeah, sure. Go ahead. I guess what I want to say is that, for me, this isn't really about Wildflowers Music Park. Like, I know that's why a bunch of people are here, and that's why you put it on the agenda. But the reality is, for me, this is about, like, a bigger conversation about our, our comprehensive plan is our comprehensive plan. And it's Melrose's comprehensive plan. And they're a rural cluster in our comprehensive plan. And the outlying area of that is rural agricultural, and we have really good policies and really good procedures to protect our rural agricultural areas and to ensure development happens in the way it's supposed to happen in the places it's supposed to happen. And so I don't think they need another comprehensive plan because they have the best comprehensive plan in the state already for their area. And we have a rural agricultural cluster that's been identified. We have the rural cluster that's been identified and took the time to actually carve out their area. And we're spending money and time and a lot of resources to do the forward focus process to listen to all the areas in our eastern county to see how we might improve our comprehensive plan and other planning tools. And if something comes out of that at the end of that process and staff bring back that they think a special area study is warranted for that area or any other area in the eastern part of our county, I would be willing to move forward with it. But I think right now it feels like we're just throwing a process on top of an already existing process that we're doing. Like we're already, you know, we're already on the path. Let's finish that path. Let's finish that process. And then when we get through with that, see what comes out of it. And if we decide we're going to do some special area studies, there may be two or three areas. And we might get bigger bang for our buck with a consultant as well by having them doing, you know, sort of a process that would involve multiple areas that need special focus. And if Melrose is one of those, then Melrose is one of those. But I think right now it feels a little like we're putting the cart before the horse to do a special area study ahead of finalizing and finishing the EAR and the forward focus process, both of which we just started. That's kind of how I see it. And I think, again, I think that the Wildflowers Music Park, on the other hand, is an important conversation, but it's a conversation we're going to take up through the special exception process, through temporary permitting processes, through whichever process and multiple processes probably because I imagine they're going to have to go through multiple steps to get to what it is that they're envisioning from what I've read, from what I've gotten from them on that, you know, that original proposal. That's all I know. It's the only presentation I've seen. But what they're undertaking sounds like it's going to be a type C event at the minimum if it's a temporary event, which means it comes to us. And at the maximum, they need a special exception to be able to be operating as a rural event space in a rural agricultural area because that's not allowed by right. So people will get the opportunity. They're here now and get to talk to us and they'll have the opportunity to weigh in in other ways, not to mention the forward focus area where we'll be continuing to do community input. So those are my comments. Mr. Chair, may I ask you, what is the scope of this area that you're talking about? It's just within this, you know, how big an area? When I originally made the motion, it would be including the rural cluster and the farmland up to and including the wildflower park. So is this specifically to address this? It would incorporate it, but no, that this is not going to happen by the time they submit any special exceptions or temporary permits. This is going to be over a two year process. To me, it gives them my opinion. They'll probably tell me otherwise in a few minutes. It gives them an opportunity to lean in and talk to the community about what they want to do. For two years? For two years? Well, I think a consultant would probably, I mean, it's taken our staff a couple of years. I think a consultant would take between 12 and 18 months. It's depending on the scope and, you know. But that's my envision of it, Mary Helen, would be the rural cluster and the surrounding farmland, including the wildflowers park land. But only in Alachua County, that wouldn't go into the. Well, we can't. Yeah. I mean, part of, you saw in the slides, part of it would be to contact adjoining counties to gauge interest. You know, we would contact Clay, Bradford and Putnam. Anna's right though. When I talk to those commissioners, this area is not, hasn't historically been a focus unless the citizens of, you know, Putnam tell the Putnam County they want to join Alachua County. And the likelihood of that is low. They may send some staffers to our meetings, but I think we would have to take the lead. It just, it, the timing of this just feels odd to me. That's all. I mean, if we did it now, we'd have to hire a consultant. If we wouldn't with Anna's approach and the, and after forward focus, it came out that, yeah, we need that. Then staff would be done with the EAR. They would be done with the pine hills and they would roll right into maybe doing it that way. I just think that with what's going on out there with the wildflowers park, with all the people that are here. You know, when you ask me, is there interest? I just look out and say, yeah, there's interest. And everywhere I go, whether it's a farmer's market or an art thing or dropping in at Chia Peenies to grab a beer. They're approaching me. What do you think of it? What do you think of it? And you're getting half and half, right? Cause I am too. Yeah, I'm getting a lot, getting a lot, which is the purpose of the study. Okay. Yeah. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I guess I understand everything has been said, but it says $200,000 and there's no budget established for this currently. So what will happen? Yeah, we have to use reserves. It was really necessary. I could understand digging into reserves to do it. But I think right now we have an ongoing planning process where people can give input to just what you're saying, right? They can kind of, they can continue to weigh in on what the future of Eastern Alachua County and their area of Melrose looks like. They can continue to weigh in through the EAR about what they want to see. Sorry, forget about the dang mic. And in terms of like our protecting our rural agricultural areas. And I, you know, to that end, I think we've done a really great job. I mean, we have the new rural agricultural lands protection program, which allows people to nominate their property for protection. If they're at ag lands, if you're an ag land and you would like to protect your land for ag and permanent status, you can sell an easement to Alachua County. We'll buy your development rights so you can stay in ag, but you can keep your property in private ownership and realize some of that development value. We have our small farmers grants. We have the work that we're doing on the food hub for processing for local food and aggregation. I feel like we're doing a lot to protect our rural agricultural areas and ensure we have a strong and robust rural agricultural economy. So I'm not, and I'm not sure that a special area plan would do anything more for that because, I mean, and one of the biggest ways we do that is protecting it. But is protecting it with our rural ag cluster and trying to, you know, having, I mean, our urban cluster and having development go where development is most efficient and having our rural areas used for rural purposes. And so, I don't know, I guess I get where you're going, Ken, with it, and I don't think it's necessarily a bad idea. I just think it should follow the processes we've already kind of laid out with forward focus and the EAR and then rolling it kind of after that to sort of focus specific things that come out of those reports to be able to, or processes to be able to hone in on what that scope of work would look like. Because right now it's just, it doesn't, we don't even have like a focused set of scope for it. Okay, we'll open it up to public comments. You can both stand there. Good afternoon. My name is Guy Fortune. I'm the president of the Wildflowers Music Park, Inc., the organization with the 270 acres. I really just want to speak about myself, my experience. I live in Hawthorne, moved out of Miami where I was the executive director of historic Virginia Key Beach Park. That's an 82-acre facility in the city of Miami. And we took that property from something that had been closed for 26 years. And it's a historic preservation site. It's an environmental restoration site. And so I'm very prepared to do what's needed with that property. In Hawthorne, I sit on the planning and zoning board and have had some great talks with our new city manager. And I haven't been to the ice cream place yet, but I will. I heard it's very good. Hawthorne is growing and looking to, you're going to see a lot of things happening up 301 in the next, I don't know, 18 months, 24 months. I just want us to have the opportunity to work with all of you closely, to work with citizens that may have fears, may have doubts. Our location was the host site for what was the Virginia Key Grassroots Festival of Music and Dance. That's how I got very connected with Jordan here and many others over 12 years. And have gone to the festival in Trumansburg and Shakuri Hills. I know what it brings to an area. Miami, like anything else, very different situation. But many similarities of something new coming to the community. In our area, it was Key Biscayne. Afraid of traffic. Afraid of noise. Noise carries over the bay. And we just did everything necessary to still have an active site. Still have birds that travel thousand miles to nest on the property. A pond with crocodiles. And how you manage all of that. And I'm real excited about Eastern Alachua. I mean, a year and a half ago I heard about Eastern Alachua and the idea that the county was looking to really move that forward. Please conclude. I look for that opportunity to work with everyone here on how we make this a great public space for surrounding communities and all of Alachua. Thank you. Hi. Brandy McKinney. I'm here representing FACT, farming Alachua County together. And I do want to remind the board that just because you guys offer a certain program for like lands, you know, preservation for farming doesn't mean that the farmers are going to take advantage of it. And if you have a commercial business coming into farmland, those surrounding farms may decide not to stay. They may decide to sell to more developers, just as a reminder. And then I'd also like to thank our county staff over the last year for the forward focus Eastern Alachua County initiative and for coming out to Melrose in the meeting that they had out there. It was a good meeting and a lot came out of it, but there is still more studies that need to be done, especially before any consideration of a large commercial business in Melrose, a very small community with a large population already. And as Mr. Ken pointed out, which I was a part of that trying to keep our school open there in Melrose, Putnam County is investing quite a bit of money into that. So it would be great to have a special area study. It's more important now than it ever has been. And I want to thank you commissioners as well for your patience, for listening to all of us, because I know you guys have some big decisions to make. Thank you. Goldstein. Good afternoon. Good to spend the day with you. One commissioner suggested we sell our land already. Doesn't have to suggest it. The pressure for agricultural land is great development and developers from South Florida are looking to come up here. The water is coming in down there and the offers for farmland are high. We can do that. Actually, I could put a chair out and put a banjo on it and just do what go tax free. We can all go tax free. I don't know why we bother paying taxes if you can set up a music barn to go tax free. Some of us are concerned about that. We're concerned about the loss of farmland, which, as we speak, is happening by the acre. Every acre. I'm surprised that the one person who's supposed to represent farmers is talking about selling our farms today. Commissioner Prizia. I can be surprised at that and distressed by it. I'm also concerned. So, well, if you don't want a farm, you can put it into some kind of thing and sell it to the county and get some kind of that doesn't keep farming going. Farm is just sweating and getting in the toil and building things and spending your money. And we're losing it in the United States and in Florida. And there's not much left. And if you look at the thing I gave you today from the Farm Bureau, you'll find out that the loss of farmland because of the pressures of development, which you have, the pressures of purchase because there's more money in the world than there are farms to buy, and the pressures of new commercial development in farming areas, including things that are going to run us off, like noise and problems and tax-free operations that sell tickets across the nation. If you don't have a special area plan, I think your staff is good staff, but they overpriced it. You don't have to spend $200,000 to have a special area plan. You got a staff. The chairman brought that up. Tell your staff to bring back some kinds of regulations that don't come in and say, oh, well, you can have 2,000 people anytime you want. You don't have to pay any tax and collect tickets and do all that kind of stuff on your farm. Well, I'll start tomorrow, and so will all the other farmers, and you'll find out we're not here anymore. Special area plans to protect rural agriculture, and that's where it's happening. It's to find out what you're really doing about rural agriculture, because you've got a couple of things that are special use permits and temporary use permits, which essentially negate your zoning and your land use planning. If you don't do a real land use plan, special area plan, you'll buy your vegetables in Brazil like you are now, and they won't taste so good, and they won't be very fresh. So you've got one farm representative here who says, sell them. This county's got to stand up for us. Hello. I'm Julie Smith, and a lot of you guys know me because I do go around the county with High Springs, What's Happening, Alachua, and Newberry, but I've also traveled over to Melrose and to Hawthorne. I've met with the Gainesville Chamber, and they're, like, really wanting to help some of the small businesses on the eastern side. They feel like it's the forgotten. In Alachua, we are number 14th out of 300 for the Levitt Grant in all the businesses. The small businesses really got together. So number 14th, we'll find out, you know, that's 10 concerts a year they're going to give us to help the businesses, the small businesses. And with this, they may be camping a night or two, but they're not building housing developments. It's ecotourism. There has to be a balance because the small businesses need that revenue when they come in. Maybe it's the food truck. Maybe it's the bands that are playing out there. But for a private person to do it, we would love that in Alachua because we just actually went through a whole grant process to get bands there because it's outside and it's enjoying, you know, the area. And it's not a housing development. It's not a solar farm. Yeah, they may say a night or two, but they're not, you know, the dirt. So there has to be a balance between events and between ecotourism and not necessarily building, you know, a huge subdivision out there. But the small businesses, when I went through Hawthorne, there were so many closed businesses. And then I went through Waldo and all the empty businesses because they had to leave because there was no revenue. But at least if like this Wildflowers Music Park, like the people have to eat. I mean, they'll be like able to sell their goods out there. I mean, there is opportunity if there's compromise. And I do think like there's good in everything and there is bad in everything. But the small businesses, the heart and soul, the entrepreneurs are really struggling right now to find that balance. No, they don't want a huge subdivision. But then it's like, you know, you know, I fight the fight in High Springs just because of the brewery. I'm fighting the fight there. And now we got a special use and we're able to open on Sundays until they vote on it. But it's just where is that balance? Where's that balance? And, you know, you have to respect the farmers. We all want to eat. You know, they're the heart and soul. But then also we have to respect the people that want to sell the food that they, you know, from the food trucks and from the food parks. So when you look at it from that, you know, there is there's nothing on the east side that says, hey, come here. Let's let's go out to Melrose for a concert. Go to High Springs is five different bands playing Friday and Saturday night. And the businesses are trying to survive off that. So that's why I encourage you guys to look at both sides, you know, because we all need to try to compromise. And do what's right for the whole county, not just one area. There's a lot of outdoor venues here in downtown Gainesville, but there needs to be more in the outskirts, too. I voted for Alachua. The music. Hello, commissioners. My name is Robert Hutchinson. I'm really happy to be here. And when I say here, I mean here, not there. You guys are. And just the range of things you're dealing with is remarkable. So good on you. I got involved in this project because it was at the perfect intersection of protecting land, building community and music. I had the opportunity to watch your agritourism all day workshop the other day. It's on YouTube, very well produced and very informative. And one of the things that was interesting as a panel discussion were all four of the farms that were represented on there have music festivals on their property. The way that they are making their farms work is by branching out into all kinds of agritourism and other activities. We will be a farm. We'll be not necessarily a farm that grows rows of vegetables. But we're already committed and have somebody who will be growing native flowers and grasses for the seed production that is necessary for other conservation areas to be able to do the restoration on their land. There's a huge shortage of native flowers. The other thing that I'd like to bring up is the processes that you have. I mean, I was on your side of the dais for a long time. And now that I'm on this side, they are very thorough to the point where I don't know how anybody gets through them. And so kudos to all those developers out there because what we're figuring out is. You wrote all these. I know. Thank you. There's plenty of hoops. And to add just another set of hoops and another two years of public meetings when we're going to be doing a temporary use permit starting next month. When the first festival is done, we'll all see how it goes. Then we'll be doing a special exception permit, which is a whole zoning thing. We're going to be doing special event permits through the fire department. We've got the health department that we're working with, the water management district that we're working with. And there will be no shortage of scrutiny by public officials, by your staff, and by the public. I'll be the first to admit that we did not do a good job in reaching out to folks early on in this process, frankly, because we didn't know everything that we needed to know. And I've been the one mostly promulgating the frequently asked questions that you all have seen. And each time we have a meeting with anybody, I go back and edit those things and fix whatever it was that we were learning. So anyway, I urge you, don't give us yet another hurdle. You've got plenty of hurdles now and we'll do a good job. Thank you. I'm going to take some more comments, but at close to 5 o'clock we're going to have to recess, I think, a quarter till, because they have to reset the time for us to start the 501 meeting, which is our budget part. And so we're going to try to go through it as fast as we can, but a quarter till I'm going to have to stop and recess and then come back at 501. So I just want to share that with you. I'm Brian Lewis. I've farmed out there and it's all about 2,000 acres to 3,000 acres in Melrose for the last 40 years. I have never, ever seen anybody come out there. All the way up to three years ago, a year ago, I had the whole place leased. We ended up selling and groving eight years ago, 600 acres up the road. I farmed out for 25 years before they came. There was 14,000, 1,400 acres east of it that was the carpenter ranch that I helped run that. We have did this for 40 years in this area. Even where the wildflower is, I cut hay there up to two years ago. From Hugh Nichols, I leased it. I have never seen anybody come by that, say hello to this day. I live in the middle, right there in front of it. I have had nobody come and discuss anything. We have the dairy in Windsor, which was now the blueberry farms by Altostron. We have, I have seen the farms go down. We have lost 2,000 acres that is not farms there now in the last 10 years. And I paid the taxes while I farmed. The taxes hardly ever got paid on some of these farms. They fought them. But we farmed and tried to help. But I have never, ever, have y'all ever seen me? None of y'all. I went to school. I went to school. I went to school. Yes, sir, sir. Sir, please make your comments to me, not the public. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Because you're speaking to us, not to them, okay? You're speaking to us, not to them. I would just ask them if they have ever seen me. I'm just wondering if I've been seen. Yeah. Well, ask us that. Okay. So, like I said, I have seen the farming go down pretty bad. It's in half right now from what's out here. One of the big ones I've seen that stay and did real is Altostron, which is a very good farmer. The blueberries had a big dairy that we, it was a dairy farm because the dairy farms have went away from the gas and the pollutions and every little things, which we understand that. We go with the environmental, what they need to do to make things right. And a lot of places, we don't see things until things happen. And I've seen that. So, whatever we do, we really need to focus on what we're doing because what I've seen is it's not farming no more. It's real estate. I ask you to conclude, please. And that's everybody's choice, you know? It's a free country, free speech. And I just wish that everybody would come together and make things so you can see what's going to happen in the future. Okay, sir. You're getting on my patience now. I'm giving you latitude. Okay. So, please conclude. Thank you. Yes. My career was overbooked, so Summer has asked me to speak for her. Okay. Dear Commissioners, I am writing in support of Wildflowers Music Park and its mission to preserve the land, celebrate culture, and foster community. I am a certified nature and forest therapy guide, a resident of Melrose, and a lifelong Florida native who grew up just 10 minutes away from this park. I had the opportunity to walk the park with a friend who is both an avid supporter and conservationist, and I was moved by the beauty and potential of this land. I can easily envision a partnership where my guiding business can flourish while also providing wellness and nature connection opportunities for the community. As a deaf and disabled person, I also value the vision of creating spaces that welcome people with disabilities to enjoy and benefit from nature. Wildflowers Music Park has the power to unite people through music, culture, and ecological stewardship while saving this land from development. I urge you to support this project and approve the forthcoming temporary use permit application. We need more places like Wildflowers Music Park, spaces where neighbors can gather, enjoy nature, and celebrate community in meaningful ways. Sincerely, Summer Crider, resident of Melrose and Hawthorne, owner of the Wild Cypress and Company. Thank you. Yes. Yes, sir. Good afternoon, Mr. Chair, esteemed commissioners. Thank you for the opportunity. My name is Andy Kane. I'm a professor of environmental health at the University of Florida. I'm here to ask for your support of the Wildflowers Music Park in Melrose. I have known and attended grassroots-like festivals, the grassroots festivals, over the past 35 years. And I deeply appreciate their value and what they provide for the communities that they are, the respective communities that they're in. I have lived in Melrose. I love Melrose. And I have a really good feel for the community just as one individual. I am proud to serve on the board of the Wildflowers Music Park, where we are creating space that celebrates the arts and entertainment. From an environmental and public health standpoint, Wildflowers Music Park offers bright and unique opportunity for community education and economic development to benefit residents in multiple dimensions. The 270-acre property features meadows, and diverse habitats that support local wildlife and native plants. We already have the park's wetlands delineated as one of the many initial steps in our commitment to developing conservation plans and protecting those environments. I am particularly excited about developing immersive science and environmental health programs for homeschoolers, middle schoolers, and high schoolers. Helping young people and families connect with nature and learn about ecology, sustainability, and responsible land stewardship. By integrating educational programs with community events, music, and the arts, Wildflowers Music Park will be a place where people of all ages can gather, learn, engage, and find awe within the natural environment. Wildflowers Music Park aims to preserve these environments through conservation, education, and the arts, while fostering community, well-being, and stewardship for multiple generations coming forward. Thank you so much for your consideration and support of this prospect. Can we get a hand of how many more people wants to speak on this item so we can expedite? Okay, I ask you to please stand and come to the podium so we can expedite it, please. Those who just raised their hands, please stand and go to the podium, please, so we'll know. Thank you. Good afternoon, Chair and Commissioners. Thank you for hearing our concerns. Sure. They're addressing the particulars of the Wildflower Music and Dance Festival. I'm a long-time resident of Melrose. I've been, we've weekended in summer there since 67, moved there in 74. I left for several years to California and Boston. My wife and I returned 35 years ago, raised our family there, four children. And it's been a very special and unique place. My wife works at the law school here at the University of Florida, so it's proved to be a perfect bedroom community for us. However, we've observed over the last 10 to 15 years some troubling trends. Businesses closing, not being replaced by new ones. Social capital diminishing in our community. We own property in Marshall, North Carolina, very similar to Melrose, bedroom community to Asheville, but an arts and music community. And they have carefully and intentionally forged that identity, and it's flourished and grown. My thoughts concerning the festival, we've added it. I spoke with the editor of a newspaper in Trumansburg. They said it's a huge net positive for our community. They came to our home, chatted for about an hour, hour and a half with us. We're not only long-time residents of Melrose. We live directly across the street from the proposed site. We are deeply enthused by this, very hopeful that it will provide a substantial building block for increasing social capital, creating economic development in our community. I mentioned this on Facebook. It's an unscientific poll. It's anecdotal, but I noted between a 2 and 3 to 1 people in favor of it. The group opposed. They're very vocal, but they are by no means a majority. Many, many people that I speak with are deeply enthused by this. And I'm hopeful that this commission will give special consideration to the thoughts and concerns of those who believe this provides a unique opportunity for Melrose, which should we allow it to slip through our fingers, I think it will prove to have been a serious and costly mistake. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, sir. Thank you. Good afternoon, Commissioners. David Schwartz. I don't have any formal role with the Wildflowers organization. I'm assisting in the areas of land use on a volunteer basis, purely informal and as a volunteer because I think it's a great project. I would like to say that the organization closed on the property, they purchased the property in reliance on the regulations and the comprehensive plan policies that were in effect, that are presently in effect. And apart from this new growth management, having purchased the property in effect, that I believe they're entitled to have their application when filed, that is filed now and not in two years, to have their application processed under those regulations and not to be rolled into a two year planning process. And delayed. But I think it's a great project. And I fully support it. My daughter's here. I don't know if she's going to get a chance to speak, but she would speak in support separately, not because I made her or she owes me. But I think. Is that all right, Sophie? All right. Yeah. I think she does a lot more music festivals and things than I do. And I know that she and her mother and our family are pretty excited about the whole thing. So thank you very much. Appreciate it. Have a good evening. Yes, sir. I'm Mark Stowe, Southeast Gainesville. In 1975, I became treasurer of a 900 person outing club. And one of the ways we earned money was to run dances. And I would never have believed it, but I became a country dancer and somebody who's been dancing now for 50 years. So I've gone to hundreds of festivals of folk music and folk dancing all over the country. I've been involved in organizing quite a few of them. I've seen interactions with the community. And there is something different about a group that doesn't. But basically, for people who are very tolerant of beginners tend to be basically the sort of people who work very hard to make sure that everybody who's dancing, that every partner that you meet is getting what they need out of that interaction. And so that is going to apply in spades to this group and how it's going to work with the community. And so if you're worried about people not getting to the porta potties, that's really not an issue. I've literally gone to hundreds of these festivals. And people are, if anything, you know, cleaner and neater than most of the events that you have ever seen. So the other thing is I've been to events where there was this, you know, really strong concern about entering the festival in the wrong direction through the wrong roads. And there's just, you know, if you make the publicity explicit about the fact that you just can't go in the way that the natives don't want you to, you find out that people don't go that way and that there isn't an issue. So you have this noncompliance as part of your criteria. And I think you'll find with this group that you will be able to, you know, rely on the fact that you can fall back on that and not worry about having specific rules, conservative rules that block this thing ahead of time. So, anyway, support this effort as much as you can. Appreciate it. Yes, sir. Good afternoon. I'm Eric Amundsen. I'm a retired dentist and a director for the board of the Alachua Audubon Society. I direct the Bob Simons Southeast American Kestrel Nest Box Program, which is, in effect, saving a bird that is specifically here in Florida. And we possibly have less than 3,000 of them, and we're working tirelessly on assuring that these birds survive. The Alachua Audubon Society supports the Melrose Wildflowers Music Park because of a couple of reasons. We've had a number of experiences with the people running the program, especially Hutch. And we realize his environmental responsibility and the way he approaches things like this. We've been invited out to the site. We've done surveys out at the site. It's a wonderful habitat for numerous different species of birds. And we foresee it being a Florida hotspot on the par of some of the best that we have in Alachua County. Also, we see the potential for putting nest boxes out there and for doing more surveys of the other wildlife on the property, which Alachua Audubon is also very interested in, is birds, wildlife, their protection, their habitat protection, and sustainable development. Thanks a lot. Thanks a lot. Thank you. Yes, ma'am. Hi. My name is Linda Kemp. I live in the rural cluster in Melrose. For the past 20 years, I've been involved in the art and music scene with Bellamy Road Gallery, Fine Art Literature and Film, Shake Rag Gallery, Mossman Hall, and now the Melrose Bay Art Gallery. We used to advertise Melrose and called it the small town with the big art scene, with the big art and music scene. But after seeing what's going on in Melrose with the closing of our family grocery store and Cipini's for sale to other properties I've seen for sale a couple of days ago, we are at a crossroads. For Melrose to be sustainable, we need to bring people and more music and art, and I fully support the Wildflowers Music Park. I think it will help to revitalize Melrose, and I'm all for it. Thank you. Yes, sir. Thank you for having us here today. My name is Steve Rogat. My wife and I used to live in North Carolina near Chicory Hills Music Festival, and the same people that are developing Wildflowers basically developed the Chicory Hills. And I volunteered up there a lot, but I really believed in the vision that they're going to try and mirror down here. So, you know, when we talk about keeping things natural or honoring nature, honoring the land, having it sort of a park. I've been there. I've seen it. It works. We would take a walk through the campground and deer would be running around. We'd be sitting in a blanket at a stage and wild turkeys would be running by, you know, past our feet. The traffic, I know they're talking about fencing in the entire area. I've seen it. Been there. It works. I've seen the road maintenance and the traffic control. I've been there. I've seen it. It works. I've driven through it. And then the other point I wanted to make out was the family atmosphere. I think it's wonderful that the kids weren't running around unsupervised, but they were running around untethered because it was safe. And they had face paint and they had cornhole. They had puppet parade. Okay. So it was family safe. Public intoxication was discouraged. I mean, so it was just a real, to me, it was a real draw for the community. We got to meet neighbors that we had never met before and we'd been there for 15 years. Oh, you live right down the street. I didn't know that. Well, yeah, now you do. So we totally support this. And we do live in the Milrose area, not downtown, not across the street, but we hope people take advantage of this basically as soon as possible. So thank you. Thank you. Yes, sir. My name's Richard Voorhees. I've been involved with various farms around. Been working out there a little bit on this one. I want to put it to rest that this is an agricultural sand. Unless you can figure out a way to sell sand spurs and cactuses, we aren't going to be using that property for farming anytime soon. So I had the opportunity to go to the Burning Man Festival seven, eight years ago. Anyhow, one of the things that was really special about that is they had this big tent, which they have a tent now, a 30 by 80 tent, and they had musicians. And they'd go around each one playing probably 50, 75 musicians. That was one of the most special music venues I think I've ever been on. I think this thing is a real benefit to the Milrose area. I think it'll produce other business ventures there that we can't even envision right now. And I'll leave it at that. Thank you so much for your time. Okay. Thank you, sir. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. I'm Marcia Rogat. I also live in Melrose, but on the Putnam County side. My background is in counseling and conflict resolution. And as I'm listening to all of this, I'm realizing that we haven't taken the next step yet, which is to believe in the possibilities. That whenever the change is proposed, I think it's natural human nature that people feel anxiety, because we can't always predict what the outcome is going to be 100%. But the other side of that anxiety is excitement, because there's possibility, there's potential. And with Wildflowers Music Park coming in, they're offering the possibilities that we have heard about over and over here with connection with nature, connection with resources and talents in our community that we haven't even met yet. We can bring in locals. We can share together. We can get to know people. We can have respect for the environment. Those possibilities go on and on, and I think it's very important to make sure that we don't slow, we don't negate the possibilities and the potential out of fear and anxiety of moving forward. I also agree and appreciate, Ms. Wheeler, your comments about Melrose, because in the short time that I have lived there, I've seen places close. And I've also seen division. And that's where I feel like Wildflowers offers an opportunity for cooperation, for actually coming together. If they're, you know, Wildflowers offers the opportunity for public input and voices of people, people can show up at those without feeling like they're combating each other. We can do this, and I feel like Wildflowers is a beautiful step to lead us in that direction. Thank you very much. Thank you. Hello, everyone. Good afternoon. My name is Kathryn Booth. I'm the communications and community engagement lead for Wildflowers Music Park. Now, I want to make it very clear, they didn't come to me needing PR. I actually met Jordan at a music event here at Depot Village at Eli's Place. I heard about their vision for this property. It's my lifelong dream to create a healing retreat based on the healing powers of music and food. I've also attended music festivals throughout the country for the last 20 years since I graduated here from UF. I've spent the last 20 years since I earned my Bachelor of Science here doing community focus groups, one-on-ones, gauging the community feedback. I've met with over 200 Melrose residents just in the last six months, whether it's one-on-ones or roundtables. And I can confidently say, in my professional opinion, we have about 80% in favor. So I would just like to say that I came on this project. When I came on, some of the authors would say, why don't you put this in your own backyard? Well, I've lived in Clay County, Alachua County, and Duval County my entire 40 years. My own backyard in my hometown was taken over by true developers. It's all subdivisions. It's all storage units. There's no plan for drain-off. Trees were supposed to be protected. These giant live oaks that we have on our property, we have over 300 hundred-year-old live oaks. My mom tied herself to a tree back in the 1990s in Clay County to get a tree ordinance established. It didn't matter. Developers would just pay the fine or they would take them out overnight. So when I heard that the only other three offers on this property were from housing developers, I had to get on board with this project because my heart was literally breaking, seeing all of the destruction throughout Clay, Alachua, St. Johns County. I also am a homeschool teacher. I lead a homeschool kids club for my godsons. We have a huge homeschooler population, not just in Gainesville, but also Middleburg, Keystone, and Melrose. Almost everyone that I've met with actually homeschools their students. So you heard from Andy Kane, one of our board members, environmental scientist at UF. Him, some other professors are getting together. We're going to create science programming for homeschoolers, which was one of the toughest things for parents to teach on their own. Also getting on board with this property, I had never been to a grassroots festival of music and dance. So I said, before I can truly speak for this project, let me go see what this man has created. I went up to Shikori Hills in North Carolina. I took my 10-year-old godson with me so we could find out, is it truly family friendly? We set foot on the property. You hear dancing. You hear the clogging. You hear the tap dancing. There's dance tents everywhere. There's kids running through. I have never been to a more family friendly event. I went to Trumansburg this summer to see the summer event, and I spoke with dozens of people that can vouch for Jordan's vision 20, 30, 40 years of knowing him and seeing this. I couldn't be more excited to help bring this vision to Alachua County, where we can combine all four counties in the heart of Melrose and really turn what is already an arts and music community even to more so. And again, this is going to be our annual property fundraiser. We have so much more plans. Please conclude, ma'am. Thank you very much. Thank you. Go back to the board. That was our last public comment. We don't have it. We don't have anything, motion or anything. So, okay. Okay. All right. Madam Clerk. We're going to give it. No, I'm just going to recess for 10 minutes and then we'll restart. If we, if we recess, we need to recess for 15. 15. Because they're going to reset. Okay. But when we come back, we will be requesting a revised order and suggesting that we take, because there are currently five items left on the daytime agenda. Plus we have two items left on the evening agenda that's supposed to start now. So, um, we'll be making a recommendation to you when we come back on some items that we can bump to next, because they aren't as urgent, um, that we can recommend to you. Uh, and then reorder maybe to shuffle for, um, better efficiency to get through some of these. Okay. Sounds good. Okay. So recess to 515. Yeah. 515. 515. 515.