Regular Meeting @ 5 p.m. - Nov 04, 2025

okay good evening i would like to go ahead and reconvene our meeting and mr clerk next item sure the next item is under action items is the wirehauser hawthorne industrial park county-wide wetland protection code okay and the recommended action is to approve status recommendation limiting proposed wetland impacts and so mr brown i guess you're going to lead us off and then ideally we'll hear from the applicant and then we'll go from there okay good evening presentation on the microphone a little bit sorry about that there you go there we go the hawthorne employment center also referred to as the hawthorne industry part on their county wide well and protection code application to for those y'all remember that it was actually part of the envision alachua plan the sector plan that was submitted to county in 2013 and then it was annexed into the city hawthorne and removed from the sector plan in 2015 the formal wetland delineation was conducted on the site by the applicant environmental consultant and verified and issued by the water management district as you'll see from a standpoint of wetlands are all in green here and then the rest of it's pretty much in rotational pine silver culture and has been since the early 70s the application that was submitted to the water management district and army corps included you can see here the conceptual from 2016 industrial area and then the conservation areas and green on this one can be seen in the purple areas that are also providing wetland mitigation it's part of the application also included uh the uh actually kind of 21 buildings associated with the primary buildings as well as um frontage of mixed use along uh state road 20 so the conceptual erp was issued by the district an individual permit issued by the army corps in 2018 uh the conceptually part uh erp expired due to no construction application submitted within five years the applicant submitted request for extension which the district granted this is an overlay of the wetlands that in red that are proposed for impact uh and therefore the total impacts associated with the proposed facilities is approximately 83 acres in january 2018 the board approved adoption of the county wide wetland protection code in may of that year uh epd director chris bird submitted a notification letter to the district governing board and copied uh city of hawthorne the applicant and other board members in terms of that the applicant needed to submit a application for based on the county wide code and they did that in 2023 um and they added additional to the 83 acres of impact they included the purple areas that were the wetland buffers that add up to 87 acres the applicant has submitted a good mitigation plan it's a good mix of upland uh and wetland both preservation and restoration enhancement activities focusing primarily on the the green areas that previously showed to their conservation areas they also have over 400 acres of off-site mitigation which is only about a mile to the northeast of the primary site uh that you know hooks up to little orange creek nature preserve that's managed by act so of the 87 acres of buffer impacts will be mitigated by 92 acres of upland preservation on the on the property whether it's design firm or the same thing with staff we look at options that may be able to reduce some of these impacts and the site had a couple features in mind that were really helpful one being that the western half of the site is pretty much we agreed with the applicant's plan concept plan uh there's very few wetlands proposed for impact we had had a suggestion to kind of um shift a stormwater basin out of this wetland but other than that everything in terms of both the frontage it's everything we agreed with and and had no issues with that um as far as the eastern half what was interesting was that basically two polygon areas is the concentration of all the wetland 80 80 percent of the wetland impacts associated with the project so in looking at it from the standpoint of of what may be able to apply to help reduce some of those impacts knowing that standpoint that there would have to be some facilities there um we actually looked at some alternatives for the not for the railroad the railroad is at a good location for the connection to see excess and actually voids wetlands for the most part for the um road that comes through these wetlands down here we were looking at potentially shifting a couple hundred feet on the curve and then as it goes further north it actually to have a division to where the road splits so that the traffic that wants to go to the northeast portion of the property can actually instead of coming swinging back around through this area would actually come to the east side of this polygon and then the traffic rather than have the access road this far north actually if it followed the existing you know road that's out there that's uh it's an improved road that actually that northbound traffic or excuse me that will go north and then actually would be able to be diverted and have a shorter route and take the the western to go to the western half of the project through that so we want to take that and just see how much impacts could be reduced based on still trying to achieve the overall plan for the the project so we looked at um and uh went out with the consultants and uh very helpful in terms of locating these areas we looked at all these terms of wetland crossings associated with potential infrastructure we also um looked at some of these pocket areas these smaller wetlands that that we located in terms of those stage one and stage two and brought those impacts onto this area so we could have them all on one sheet um so those are areas that could be avoided but would be problematic in terms of based on what the um all the other facilities proposed for the site so we had uh 17 crossings with seven and a half acres these the red areas and then nine areas with additional five acres of impact that are in orange for and then uh for some surface water ditches we ended up with 29 areas uh associated with uh 14 and a half acres of potential impacts so going to stage two we added the stormwater bases um again all of them in blue are the same as where same locations they're proposed by uh the applicant and the stormwater basins were sized according to to maintain at least a 30 of the upland areas within this receiving watershed for treatment of impervious areas so when you go into taking it from this level to stage three we wanted to kind of see how they match up in relation to the applicant's proposed plan it made it easier this way just to go ahead and numerically uh put numbers on the buildings so the areas in blue actually represent where buildings are the same location as what's in the application uh and stormwater basins as well the areas in pink are slightly different configurations than what uh is in the 2018 concept plan but otherwise it needs you know there's a matching in terms of buildings buildings are typically average around five acres in size there's a few that are a little larger a few a little smaller but the applicant told us last year that he was they were thinking about trying to have some larger facilities and so for to assist in that we actually uh modified this concept a little bit and actually had the road shifted a little bit further south and had um actually two three uh buildings that are a larger size that would accommodate any potential client for those locations and have the same amount of wetland impacts as what was just the alternate zone on the alternate one area so um with that you can compare them out of uh the water resources issue with um two plans the hundred year flood zone there's uh quite a few wetlands that of the 83 acres of impact a large percentage of them are in the flood hundred year flood zone so field material in those locations would require uh to avoid off-site and on-site flooding would need uh compensatory basins to be constructed in upland areas that would be actually better served to provide for areas for for infrastructure but actually from that standpoint also reducing the amount of wetland impacts would require less fill material and construction costs associated with these facilities as far as the storm water is concerned since these wetland areas are some of them in here large percentages those are proposed to be removed um a large percentage of those contribute wetland to the hydrology of the wetlands that are proposed for preservation uh and it will be placed by stormwater basins that are in some cases further away than from those wetlands so it's receiving less stormwater on areas that are proposed for preservation so as a top the alternate plan we had provided was actually uh constructing the stormwater bases adjacent to the wetlands so that would provide constant green uh groundwater seepage to those systems as well as overflow during uh high storm events so um and then with smaller wetland impacts you would actually have uh less need for for mitigation purposes so actually the offside area would could be removed from consideration if they didn't really need that for for additional mitigation purposes there's also a between the two uh conservation areas the primary ones there's a gap here of about 900 feet that actually provides a corridor connection for wildlife use both the on-site and on-site conditions that the proposed plan has uh basically would um impede to or block totally in some cases the amount of wildlife through it that would come in to utilize that because it would basically be uh parking and buildings in this location so one of the things that in alternative plan by having these stormwater features mixed in for treating of road and railroad conditions actually intermixed with preserving these wetlands would actually improve the potential corridor and provide a good separation from the uh impervious areas on the east side versus the west side so that wildlife can actually be a good in terms of a 60 acre wetland complex that would mix intermosaic mix of the different habitats so when we look at this the um particular language in the code um every one of the things that applicants need to demonstrate is every reasonable step to avoid and minimize adverse impacts well and some buffers so the question comes is like well what's reasonable you know it's one of those eye to beholder situations so one of the things that we look at in terms of where wetland action impacts are in terms of appropriate are areas where there's narrow wetland crossing areas necessary to construct road connection between upland areas and so uh that's primarily to these these red spots here that were the crossings are pretty much um they're already there that's where the roads located and that's where you know actually minimize the impact and then also small wetland areas with limited options to retain ecological functions after construction so this wetland could be avoided by the roads but it's locked in in a location would actually would would you know make it difficult for wildlife movement back and forth on those on to have access to that well also is what has been historically permitted in the county when you look at not only like the 2018 to 2025 there's only been six projects that have come to the board three of them are associated with um unincorporated areas with a total of six acres of wetland impact and then when you go back even another decade prior to that for both the unincorporated and the municipalities there's a total of 17 acres of direct wetland impacts between 2008 and 2025 which also equates to one acre annually and that's part of our strategic guide is to actually target that um impact of of authorized by the board so then the question is well how many how many permits do we issue you know that it seems like it was so little but actually we issue a lot of permits uh 1500 on average a year for building permits development review or a couple hundred years wetlands on a high percentage of those and applicants do a good job staying out of the wetlands and the buffers so when we were looking at the historic conditions of both what was interesting in looking up hawthorn and the only well and impact that was authorized by the district was a one-acre wetland where the truck stop is located right there on 301 that was back in 2002 so it's been a lot of years since the district issued a wetland impact permit to within uh within municipal boundary of of hawthorne so um with that actually what does interest so when we're looking back that four and a half acres associated with southwest 62nd crossing of hogtown creek right there next to the interstate is the highest impact acres that the boards approved in at least the last 20 years in probably 30 years you know it's like this it's so rare that the board is you know receives application or sees you know in terms of applications that propose impacts so then we we have a another reasonable step as we refer to as the five percent criteria we've never had an application that actually required to review it on this and so an impact area shall not exceed the rate of one half an acre per 10 acres of wetland area so in the case of the application concept the 2008 concept the there's a third of the wetlands are of the product make of the property and of that 27 percent will will be impacted as opposed to the alternative provided by staff actually would be 15 acres would be five percent so it meets the criteria there so when we get it from the standpoint of looking at it from that approach and the applicant actually provided the notation that they uh the site plans are conceptual in nature and we we recognize that and the development of the site will be tailored to the end users needs around the identified green infrastructure however there are no regulatory criteria in the wetland requirements of the municipalities their individual land development codes as well as the county's uldc and in the county wild rotation code that actually supports impacting wetlands that are could be impacting avoidable regulated wetlands and the butt wetland but surface waters and wetlands so from the standpoint that um to support it in terms of in end users needs and so um when we look at in terms of criteria a staff has determined that there's in sufficient information criteria required by paragraph a and it doesn't doesn't would not meet that criteria one thing we do agree with though with the applicant is they actually provide a very good uh mitigation plan and uh therefore that's the only criteria that we you know reviewed that we believe that is sufficient in terms of what meets the criteria and then but when you get into paragraph four um mitigation may be permitted for wetland loss only where the applicant demonstrates activity cannot practically be located and then in order to achieve that the applicant must demonstrate that one at least one of the three following applies minimal activity impact activity the provided alternative concept actually demonstrates that you know other than the seven acres of wetland impact associated the roads that basically all the other facilities could be you know placed in upland areas number two overriding public interest for the purposes of the county-wide applications we look at it from a standpoint uh public interest are projects that are beneficial to the public as a whole so these projects are typically you know publicly funded projects on public lands and that people recognize it whether it's roads you know schools and that what's interesting is there's a tendency to only look at what constructed you know facilities there's sometimes an understanding that you know this applies also to protection of wetlands and buffers for flood protection water quality treatment groundwater recharge so that those benefits benefit the public as a whole but because it's not you can't see you can see a road or a library or school but you can't see those aspects that are critical to everyday life so and then the third one is all economically viable use the properties otherwise precluded um so from the standpoint that the alternative concept demonstrates that even if it was partially incorporated into the applicant's design there could be in keeping the same one of buildings and locations and infrastructure that could be a substantially less wetland impacts so in summary for criteria four um staff demonstrates that the minor design revisions actually can result in avoidance minimization and therefore it's determined that the submitted uh code application for paragraph four none of the three would would meet that criteria so in conclusion there's um staff does not agree with the an implant as far as the 83 acres of wetland surface water impacts and 87 acres of buffer impacts and that the applicant's not uh successfully demonstrating achieving the county-wide the code criteria so staff has evaluated and provided potential alternatives over the last two and a half years since the application was submitted uh and we do recognize and respect the challenges the site conditions and goals to benefit the current and future citizens of halton and all over the eastern alachua county so as a result uh even though it does not meet the code criteria we actually staff can can support and recommend board approval of the amm plan with limitations and those limitations be successfully demonstrated by incorporating revisions to decrease the direct wetland and surface water impacts to not exceed 15 acres again that's three times more than higher than what the board's ever permitted on a project anyway so but it actually still meets the five percent total wetlands on the project site um we also had epac came in uh they also supported this recommendation to the board and we actually have if i can get the overhead screen we we had this added this and it provided to the applicant as far as um mark a m m m plan yes well yeah it's a tongue twister yeah what what does that avoidance minimization and mitigation plan thank you okay um the this uh on the staff recommendations pretty much match what we i just read off but we added a condition that you know if it's you know whatever the board decides depending on that that the applicant and individual businesses located within the industry park will be required to submit and receive construction level erp permits from the district and concurrently with those application countywide wetland protection code application will be submitted to to the county with copies of construction plans the district correspondence and mitigation reports in turn epd staff will correspond with the applicants and district staff in the evaluation of proposed well impacts associated acreages and designated mitigation that way from the standpoint no matter how many projects and how quickly the you know in terms of the projects proceed you know we're in still in terms of and looking at it from the standpoint of the same information that the districts are reviewing so we could actually coordinate and make sure from the standpoint that mitigation is reaching a certain level in terms of that way it could be for whatever it took 10 years 50 years whatever the time frame is for build out we can track it from the standpoint that way when we get calls about people you know from people saying well what's going on out there so at least we have something documented to know exactly when and where well an impact should occur so with that i i don't have anything else i'm glad to answer any questions you have so okay commissioners any questions for mark before we get to the applicant miss torres yes mr chair this is a quasi-judicial hearing and we did not swear in mr brown before he testified but we can go back and have him swear that what he told was the truth and everything beyond the truth and wearing everybody else who's going to testify and then talk about ex parte okay so why don't we start from the beginning with the quasi you read your thing and then we'll ask about ex parte and then we'll swear at everybody and y'all can swear back at us is that fair enough okay all right okay mr chair all persons wishing to testify present evidence during this hearing will be sworn in prior to speaking during this hearing except for mr brown all persons have the right through the chair to ask questions of staff or other speakers to seek clarification of comments and to respond to comments or presentations all persons who present written materials to the commissioners for consideration must ensure that a copy of such materials is provided to the clerk for inclusion in the board's record of the proceedings and official minutes while we welcome comments from all persons with an interest in this proceeding florida law requires that county commission decisions and quasi-judicial actions be supported by competent substantial evidence presented to the board during the hearing on the application competent substantial evidence is such evidence as a reasonable mind would accept as adequate to support conclusion there must be a factual basis in the record to support opinion testimony from both expert and non-expert witnesses so i don't think we've had any party requests on this issue no um but if anyone wants to be considered as a party a party is a person who is more substantially or directly impacted by the application than the public at large and they can speak to that now are there any uh individuals or folks that want to claim party status for the hearing okay i see none um mr clerk if we could inquire of each commissioner if you've received any ex parte communications involving this item and if so please disclose those commissioner alford uh just the meeting that we had uh with the applicant and then a meeting with staff same uh other than yeah i mean those aren't ex parte but um i i believe i had a meeting with a couple of the hawthorne city commissioners over the last two years um but nothing recently and nothing since the information has come in ditto but i did meet with uh commissioner martin and i think i spoke to mayor randall about it and all of that and i did hear from the applicant so yes and i met with the applicant too and also our staff um i don't think i've had any not with the uh hawthorne folks except for the santa fe i think that that has nothing to do with the wire house right right okay let's go ahead and swear people in including the folks that have already testified anybody wishing to address this item if you will please stand to be sworn at this time so if you're wanting to speak to this item if you will please stand and be you swear or affirm any testimony you're about to give will be the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth okay are we good i think we're good okay um commissioners any questions for mr brown on the presentation okay i've got a couple questions okay um on page seven the mitigation plan um can you talk a little bit about the 87 versus the 92 acres so 87 are impacted they're required to mitigate the impact of what no requirement to mitigate any of the buffers actually the buffer impacts are mitigated with upland preservation 92 acres they had to at least get one for one um replacement of that habitat and the um wetland in terms of other mitigation it concurs with the same thing that was actually approved by the water management district so the water management district has approved their plan the mitigation plan but they have yes conceptually but actually individual permits have to come in to address those individually so conceptuals are pretty broad scope there in terms of the in terms of the wetland issues but it'll be addressed in future construction permits okay and then um you said that the district so the district is approving this mitigation plan and it's the only approval other than the one acre that they approved in 2002 around that's the only one that they have records of in their file yes exclusive to dot projects and does the district have right dot does the district have um a public interest standard that they have to meet yes um and so one of the things that in terms of in fairness to the district they actually wrote in their staff report that what actually that issue was addressed is that because the applicant proposed to create jobs that that would be an overriding factor in terms of the public meeting the public interest test and meeting the requirements avoidance and minimization so that's something that is especially in their in their requirements that we don't have in the county codes okay okay thank you mr brown okay uh anything else for our staff okay let's hear from the applicant mr chair 5 30 public comment let's hold off on the applicant uh we're going to pause this quasi-judicial public hearing for 5 30 public hearing uh public comment so we do public comment twice a day once in the morning at noon once at 5 30 is there anyone from the public that wishes to address this board on anything not on the agenda going once going twice come yeah come forward you'll come forward introduce yourself and give us your thoughts we'd love to hear from you i'm auction now i need to know is this where i would comment i was on the call but i had a lot of appointments today is this where i would comment on the two items that were the most important to me mv and the snap this would be the time this would this is the time now and then warehauser is that'll be later okay thank you very much okay so and do i get three minutes for total three minutes for total total okay we're going to start with the starving people all right we'll start your time right now okay so as some of you that know me know i'm a mover and shaker and again my my experience is not in food paratransit medicines vaccines and all the stuff i have to now fight for and none of us are paid we all hate trump for free please record that um we need a new model i have met with brother the mighty god bless the work they're doing but as our dear commissioner presia shared a lot of the food that is being donated is disheveled food and also mary alford shared what about dietary restrictions i'm one of those people with dietary restrictions so i'm now going on what three weeks of not eating the food i need and you can hear i'm a little irritable because i don't have any vegan protein i can't really eat beans all the time i have a very special diet so we need a new model i have met with meg so far we're going to be on an emergency active food systems coalition i implore and beseech presia alford any of you that know who to put me in touch with because i will guarantee that no constituent or child starves within this county which 28 000 are starving and again when i was at the two other food lines today and had to see those children and then had to see a woman that's 84 living in her car that hadn't eaten in two weeks so i'm trying to hold it together because people come to me and talk to me because they know i am bra so what i want to see is healthy whole foods as a medicine medicine initiative i did meet with uf health street i did go to pleasant street we lost eranisha i don't know where she is now um also stop the silent starve that is these are proposals that i came up with this weekend when i was praying and meditating stop the silent starve is for the people that make had a lot of extra produce i of course couldn't eat it all and thank god for meg because she gives fresh food to people um i went and gave those to uf health workers that i know are starving but they're not going to come here and tell you that and then number three grocery buddies i was doing a lot of research on that so that can help the people as part of what mary alfred was sharing um they're already doing that in some other counties so for people like that have specific diet like right now i would love some coconut aminos i would love some tempeh i would love some vegan you know vega pea protein that i eat um number four zero waste all food justice folks round table come together and work with the co-ad that you shared last week and the emergency operations coalition and as wheeler shared last week prepare like we are in a hurricane because we are in a hurricane it's called maga and to implore all churches non-profits restaurants and philanthropists to solutionize to feed the 28 key 28 000 snap constituents in alachua county number five seed saving prisia knows this well food preservation and i also have a lot of experience in grant writing so get me on board with somebody that i can be i heard that working food needs people i can be getting us food that's not outdated you know we can get a bunch of cliff bars you know we can get some things things and then lastly food hubs number seven enforcement enforcement there's a lot of rules on the books in florida but we need enforcement of the zero waste ordinance now all food goes to families animals or compost and connect us all into one working group that meets weekly thank you thank you mo thank you for your comments anyone else okay i'll go ahead and close public comment um i do want to let you know mo commissioner prisio would you mind going over the 200 000 motion that we passed at the end of the morning session regarding this specific item on healthy foods and also grocery options sir yeah it's it's not a comprehensive solution by any stretch of the imagination but it's a first step um we passed a motion this afternoon to provide a hundred thousand dollars in support to bread of the mighty for their emergency food assistance boxes program that they are kind of spinning up now which is actually purchasing um grocery staples to provide shelf stable boxes to families to feed them for up to a week and then a hundred thousand dollars that will be provided to our farmers markets to keep their snap voucher programs going without the snap benefits being there and to work with our family resource centers to be provided fresh fruits and vegetables that they can hand out to supplement the bread of the mighty food boxes with fresh nutritious foods so um not a comprehensive solution oh and to ask our staff to bring back we have other money set aside for food assistance support and to bring back recommended ideas and solutions to us as soon as possible for additional efforts around food support thank you commissioner and i see our mayor of hawthorne and two uh commissioners of hawthorne here thank you all for being here um specifically in the um in the resource centers that money should should flow and it's specific for fresh foods hopefully from local sources um and you named in the motion mckenope high springs hawthorne uh swag and um and one community resource center which has a veggie bus and cold storage so they can coordinate with the others to help kind of bulk purchase and make it more affordable for us to get that fresh fruits and vegetables to you all i see the mayor speaking to the manager so that was good information i wanted you all to know that okay okay thank you commissioner um all right so public comment is now closed back to the item and if we could now hear from the applicant and their representatives swinger thank you for being here good evening uh commissioners i'm clay swagger with eda consultants uh it's a real privilege to be here tonight we'd like to give you a comprehensive presentation we're also going to try to keep it relatively brief um so we'll we've got several speakers um don't want to scare you so you're the only thing on the agenda tonight and we are here as long as we need to be here i appreciate that um i'd like to kick things off um thank you for the opportunity to be here we've been working with your county staff we've had a chance to meet with with with you all to brief you on this project out in the city of hawthorne i need to hit the button so we've got a project team here tonight um each of uh each of the folks on the slide here will speak to you um there's various leaders from the city of hawthorne including robert thompson the city manager jacqueline randall randy martin and also commissioner bowie hutchinson are here tonight to represent their their community and their speak to their partnership if you will with us and this project in hawthorne and so our project team and each of us will make a few brief comments includes greg galpin with warehauser he is a long time senior planner with that organization who knows this property inside and out and has a lot of experience dealing with this property i've i've worked with them along with david coffee and mike dennis for um we're looking at about 15 years now on this property in this project so there's a lot of history there we'll be happy to talk about any of it with you gray swope is here tonight from vision first advisors he's got an amazing perspective on the economy and the kind of project this can be and the kind of economic impact it can have for not just hawthorne but eastern alachua county mike dennis with breedlove dennison associates has done an extensive amount of environmental study research and permitting on this um on this property so he'll speak to you and give you an overview of what has been done on the property already david coffee has been a long time legal advisor for warehauser and partner on our team putting together all of the planning documents and approvals that have already come forward to the city hawthorne and other government agencies so mark did a very nice job of giving you a quick overview this is the hawthorne industry park industrial park it is in the city of hawthorne it's over a thousand acres in size it is in the federally designated opportunity zone and it's extremely unique in that it is at the intersection of two state arterial roadways with csx railway access that is accessible to serve future users on the property and so this is a very unique opportunity not just in hawthorne not just in alachua county not just state of florida but the southeastern united states and we have folks who can speak to the uniqueness of this property and the opportunity that it provides to bring major employment and light industrial users in to this um to this property and it's really a generational opportunity an extensive amount of permitting has been done on this property as well got it summarized on this slide with the city of hawthorne there have been comprehensive plan amendments approved there have been plan unit development master plan approval for the property along with a preliminary development plan to outline you know all the things that you all are used to seeing in pds here in the county it's just the city's version of that along with the preliminary development plan army corps of engineers section 404 clean water act permit permitting with the core has been done as referenced as well water management district erp permitting that's a significant amount of work and and i know there was a question from the the chair about does the does the district have a public interest standard and the answer is yes and so dr dennis is here tonight he can answer more questions and elaborate on that more if you like so as you can see and you can imagine of the years and the expense has been major design and permitting efforts done on this property as a result of these permits and the efforts that went in and the bottom line really is that the master developer has made this very significant efforts to gain entitlements to effectively attract one of these one or more of these major employers to this site not just in the city hawthorne burn eastern alachua county and at this time we're asking for the county to participate and approve our proposed plan for the wetland mitigation and protections and so we appreciate county staff's position and we're just a little bit different and we'd like to give our perspective on it and hopefully you all will will understand and and agree with us and so the request is a county approval of proposed wetland impacts consistent with the city's master plan that has been approved army corps of engineers water manager district environmental permitting and it really needs to be based on these findings that you see on the slide number one is that that generic cap that was discussed by staff um contained in the countywide wetland protection code may be exceeded in furtherance of a overriding public interest in this case and that number two the approval serves as an overriding public interest by providing hawthorne and eastern alachua county with a desperately needed sustainable economic base and we do have testimony to support that assertion on our part and we hope you agree uh and number three that the loss of these 84 acres that are all civic culturally altered wetlands they have been harvested for timber over the years is more than completely offset by the permanent preservation and protection enhancement of over 10 times out of that amount most of which is in the little orange creek strategic ecosystem we've got some maps and images to show you that as well uh in just a few minutes so just a quick overview on the things i've already touched on a few more but uh we do believe that the request before you tonight is is consistent with the countywide wetland protection code and that you do have the ability to agree with us that because of the overriding public interest um that you can approve the impacts that we have before you and that this is really as i mentioned a unique generation generational opportunity for hawthorne city leaders here tonight will attest to this their words mean more than ours this is a major economic investment and employment opportunity we've got an expert here on the real estate and economic side that can help answer questions and provide you some unique input as well and so i i believe this is an and proposal and not an or uh this is not you have to pick the economy versus the environment we think that we're handling both of these in a very responsible and productive way huge economic benefits can come from this property if we're allowed to bring the sites online as these major users need the larger sites which we'll talk about more in just a few minutes and so this economic opportunity is really sort of a once in generation thing we believe and we need your help with it and the infrastructure improvements that will be provided are going to help the town and the city hawthorne on a larger level and not just on in the limits of this project water improvements sewer improvements at utility infrastructure roads and also environmental this is a very sound and solid wetland mitigation strategy as your staff has um agreed with and that this is really a overall economic bend i'm sorry environmental benefit when you look at the mitigation plan the protections and all the things that will go through so you have an and proposal not an or in our opinion so we hope that you would agree and so everything that we're bringing forward and asking for is consistent with all of these local state and federal permits and the massive amount of work that has been done um and you know i mentioned major design decisions you know we got water manager district permits core permits all based on our understanding of the rules those major design decisions were made and local considerations were made based on the previous wetland rules the county has changed the county-wide wetland protection code it used to have a municipal exemption that was proposed that was removed so we were we were right in the middle of everything when when that happened and now we're years down the road so we we do need we do need your help and we very importantly i believe that this is very consistent with the effort that the county has brought forward on the forward focus uh i mean you're you're putting major um time and effort into analyzing east county what it needs um the county's website for forward focus the title says eastern alatra county is a comprehensive initiative forward focus is a comprehensive initiative to improve quality of life and economic opportunities in the eastern part of the county this project will identify and address critical needs such as affordable housing job creation access to health care and environmental sustainability by engaging community members conducting thorough research and collaborating with local partners we aim to create a thriving and resilient future for the eastern alachia county region so we want to be a part of that and a major part of that so with that i'll conclude my comments for now i'd like to invite the mayor of hawthorne and the city manager to come forward and give you some remarks with this time randall welcome good afternoon uh mr chair and board members i stand before you guys to co-share the community inside on this agenda item we have not only been leaders of conservation in this county but we've also proven ourselves to be champions in sustainability for our community in the past two years we've secured two million dollars for our wastewater treatment system alone last year we hosted our very first sustainability summit ensuring that we keep our community members in the conversation of resilience and also setting the standard of how we move forward as a city there's a blessing in not being the first and we've been able to watch the good and not so good in other municipalities in this county of how they've approached growth that allowed our board to be able to study a better approach to the conversation of expansion the message from our community remains the same we have no desire to look or feel like any other municipality in this county what we do see this as an opportunity to move from arm's length prosperity to generational prosperity the message from my council to this one is not only considering this project or any other we're not considering this project or any other project without the understanding or the thought of having you guys as leadership not just in policy standards but also in the conversation of partnership and that's what i'll leave my comments with thank you madam mayor manager welcome thank you good afternoon everyone um thank you for the interest of this topic in the first place and i appreciate what you all do um as a new city manager here i did some preliminary research with respect to this topic upon my arrival it appears to be uncharted water with respect to the ask of this volume you're looking at wetland mitigation to the perspective that is monumental compared to the county's asked in the history so therefore the current settings basically are moved with respect to this ask only because it's bigger than anything's asked before in this particular county i'm a traveled educated individual who has seen wetland mitigations in other parts of florida as a city manager as an assistant county manager and i've did my stand in dc so i fully understand the the politics associated with this ask here the bigger picture is this the new east side of this county has been stagnant this is the only way to look at it from my perspective and this here would be such a um insurgent of uh opportunities for not just the city of hawthorne but the eastern side of of um the county it puts a jobs back in the market it protects the wetlands into perpetuity not just in respect of the acres that are asked here but it's going to protect the land long term and again the ask it here is something that you all haven't had asked before from this perspective of this volume okay i know that it's it's hard to compromise i mean to to consider from that perspective but there's a solution here somewhere within the ask here from the county okay and all i ask is just look at it from a set of lenses that you know it can't be compared to a 4.5 acre wetland mitigation asks when there's such much more land in question here but also look at the bigger picture of how it's going to impact the county omitting the city from of hawthorne we're just a conduit because of the location look at it from the perspective of how this would impact the county and if it was in another city region it would have the same impact you you're already going to be building affordable homes in the eastern side of the county this would just be an enhancement with respect to the opportunities for growth you've heard my ask for santa fe university to come out there we're just trying to be um consistent with the rest of the county from that perspective and with that i thank you for your time thank you manager thompson big list of people who's next so your next speaker is mr gray swope with vision first advisors welcome good evening um my name is grace float as you can tell by my accent i'm uh from new jersey uh not really uh i'm proud to tell you that i had the great honor to serve as your secretary of commerce uh from 2011 to 2015 in the state of florida spent a lot of time here with your leadership and uh when i left that we started our small business here in florida and are still here today so when we came we're here in 2011 it's hard to believe how times change there we go we were looking at that time at 12 unemployment when i started coming down here and visiting with you as well as the other 66 counties in this state but happy to be here uh to talk a little bit about the project in hawthorne tonight and give your perspective from site selection so as i said had the great honor of service your secretary of commerce uh i was actually in the capitol this morning i told somebody uh when we were there i said you know uh it's been a while since i've been in here i said but you know the last day i was here i actually got a roll a push cart roll my boxes down the street to a regis office and we started our business and i'm proud to say today we have 11 people in our team uh we are based here in florida uh out of tallahouse they have a business partner in orlando but we also have a national presence now we have people in greenville south carolina an individual there we're in dallas we're in chicago we're in jackson mississippi and we're soon to add another person in december uh to do economic development work so what does that mean you look at our team here uh what do we do and how does this relate to hawthorne day in and day out we work with communities that are trying to figure out competitive strategies to change economic vitality for their community through job creation through payroll uh doing things that help elevate the community as a whole and there's lots of strategies that go with that but we also work with corporate uh clients day in and day out and help them look at locations and where's the best place they could locate one to be a good corporate citizen and two what's a good place where their business can thrive and when those come together both communities and corporations are happy and so with that and we look at our our work and i'm proud to say in just in our 10 years of history you know we we've now been able to do work all over this country uh we've had presence in all 50 states uh we uh at the same time we've worked with 29 fortune 500 companies on locations and if you look at that work you know it's almost 65 billion in capital and profit capital investment in locations around the country and the creation of 14 000 jobs and that's not us doing it that's our clients doing it and the work that they're doing in those communities so we come at this from a different perspective and so when you start looking at economic development strategy and whether your community trying to figure out you know where you want to go or where your corporation deciding where we want to expand or build our business it starts out with you know with data and and we look at data and then we start looking at how uh are we going to set a plan how we're going to start uh the decision for a business so in doing so i always think a strategy really falls into when you look at job creation and you look at how you develop a community it really falls into three categories and i wanted to share with those with you and where your alachua county fits into that and how hawthorne fits into that and the hawthorne industrial park fits in that specifically so if you think about market opportunities you have a market here whether it's the city of hawthorne whether it's the city of gainesville a newberry or whatever those are individual markets and those markets will drive small businesses or other type businesses to be in that market because of disposable income traffic counts or whatever then you start looking at a regional market and so if you look at your csa and the three county csa that brings in a different workforce and how does that the synergy of that area work together and so those are true market opportunities always get tickled it you know we go to a lot of places all over the country and we the rural communities the first thing they always sell we say we want a chick-fil-a well if you don't have the demographics in the market you're not going to do that i can't help you there and then some of the other communities we hear all the time is they want a cheesecake factory i don't know why those two things always come up but if you're one of those that owns us in this room good for you because those seem to be the most popular answers when we talk about market opportunities but they're different and that's where you as commissioners really can influence that and how people understand to do business in your community your county how do we do the things here in the county instead of the pathway and so those are those are different those are different what we're talking about in hawthorne industrial park then there's what we call facilitated strategies and being a university town you have really unique facilitated strategies the sid martin incubator is a great example of a facilitated strategy we take our research and our brain power and our intellectual capital and we're using that to start new businesses to solve issues for human you know humankind and looking at how we do things for these businesses whether it's agriculture whether it's new drugs that will help all sustainability all those things that happen inside of that incubator and so you do that same thing with tourism and the opportunities that you have here there are so many facilitated strategies that come here from an entrepreneur and a startup culture those are facilitated strategies but when you start talking about competitive strategies that's where it's a little different and that's where a region and our clients are actually looking for where is the best location and we talk about all the time being site selectors but the truth of the matter is we're really site eliminators and what we do day in and day out we're trying to find reasons why this won't work what's the fatal flaw for this location versus somewhere else and it's truly where we're competing uh where communities are competing for projects that could actually catalytic and change their community in the number of jobs and the in the uh payroll that is associated with the capital investment and what it generates for community all those things are game changing and they're competitive and sometimes you know i think we get lost in that oh no they're not competitive they're going to come here anyway it's a different world that we see in that in the state of florida has been able to compete on some of those projects recently and so we want to figure out what how do we compete here on those competitive projects so if you look at it i think the best way to look at it so what we have here is an asset it's an asset then it is rare in that you have 500 acres on csx the mainline rail with highway 301 and those transportation assets there with a large site so cushman wakefield and i think you've seen this study you know has identified in the southeast there's only 12 sites like this that even that even exist of this size with the flexibility for 500 acres of a rail site on a major transportation corridor that you can do something with for a competitive project and so we see that and we look at it and say wow that is an opportunity for a national county that would bring jobs not only to the county but especially the eastern part of this county it provides opportunity for hawthorne and it opens up if something happens there more market driven growth and opportunities for other types of businesses to be a part of it and so when you're looking at making a decision i think sometimes it's easy sometimes not to to think about the flexibility that's needed in competitive projects what drives competitive projects well first of all it's it's the flexibility you have to have flexibility because what what are we looking at as a site selector or a site eliminator we're trying to mitigate risk a rail site that has flexibility is important we can sit here all day and say this is where we think the rail should be this is where the site needs to lay but the reality is csx will tell you this or any other rail they need flexibility to figure out well no you've got this many cars we got to come off the main line this way uh no the radius here does not turn enough for the type of cars they want to use all these things come into play that we see locations time in and time out eliminate their cells by doing away with their flexibility and so when you're thinking about this i encourage you to think about keeping the flexibility of this site in the jobs that it can generate because it's an important important part of the process the other thing that we hear all the time so we'll change that if they come to us when you look at the number of applications and the amount of land that they were talking about using those truly aren't competitive projects and i have no idea what they are but i would think they're more market driven they had to be here for a certain reason so we're looking at an opportunity to do a development here we often say in our business if you don't have a site that's prepared ready to go you don't have a product for to be competitive and that's exactly what you don't want to do in looking at this and taking away the flexibility so what is the maximum value of that for hawthorne and for east alachua for jobs and job creations you want the flexibility because you don't want to lose uh the ability to to tailor to the type client that you want and so when you look at this and you talk about manufacturing opportunities there and the flexibility i think it's important that you keep that in mind as you make the decision on the wetlands mitigation plan that we want flexibility that's in it so that we can provide the opportunity for the have the site for the right opportunity for jobs and that gives the mayor and the commission the county manager and everyone there in hawkville and the ability to compete for that project that creates jobs not only for there but for the county as a whole and for the region as a whole and so we think it's just a a really unique opportunity it's one in 12 and that you don't want to lose that because when you start subdividing into 10 to 15 acres on rail then you really lose the maximum value of a rail site and so i hope that you'll take that in mind and look at that opportunity and the other question i always get asked all the time when you start thinking about what a rail sites look like is that something we really want in our community and i just will remind you rail is used in a lot of different things than what some people have in their mind i mean if you look at everything from renewable energies and the moving of wind turbines and neo cells all that's done uh if you look at the ev battery industry uh evs in the battery industry movement by rail is important and it's part of our site selection criteria when we're doing those type projects and then here of all things we have so much research that's going into our biotechnology biopharmas and what we're doing here from a research standpoint but we don't want to limit ourselves if they ever have the opportunity for the manufacturing of that here as well that provides highways jobs and opportunities to take what you're doing add value to it and uh be able to even provide more value to the community for what you're doing so you have a more holistic view of economic development thank you for your time uh like i said it was an honor to be here tonight and i hope my uh input helps you in your decision thank you thank you thank you commissioners my name is mike dennis uh it's good to see you all again thank you for taking the the time to focus on this project and this opportunity for the city of hawthorne um and i want to thank your staff they've done an excellent job of reviewing the project working with us um and that was that's that's been that's been good um i'd like to i'd like to borrow a line from a country song uh when we started on this project 15 years ago i was wearing a younger man's clothes uh if you all know that song do i have the clicker to get my slides on here you've heard a lot of the facts about the the site i want to emphasize a few things for you one is you're not reviewing what if or what it could be or an unknown project site all of the wetlands have been as mark said has been flagged inspected surveyed and approved by all the agencies federal agencies state agencies and your staff has looked at them too so we're not out here wondering where the wetlands are that's all done we have the corps of engineers or for permit in hand we have the water management districts um erp permit in hand and a lot of the criteria for those permits are the same as your wetland ordinance so yes there is a public interest test that you have to address in the erp process it's also inherent in the federal process i want to i want to focus on a couple of things one is a project purpose that's where you have to start in permitting with the corps of engineers you can't go anywhere with the corps unless you come in and tell them here's our project purpose um and so this this project has a specific purpose as you've heard from from from clay gray and and uh and some from uh mark this is a unique site um with the with the rail and with the um roads and with its location um and that's that's not a trivial thing for the permitting process with the the federal and state agencies or i would suggest with y'alls so the the purpose is uh to have a project of a size and a scope as you heard this is one of 12 in the i forget whether it's the southeast or the the country that have the uh um attributes that this site does to have a major industrial project on it which again if you've heard the the the mayor and the city manager there of hawthorne this is a this is a generational i'm supposed to be talking about wetlands but this is a generational project for the city and i i say that because we've been working on that and with the city for 15 years so the project purpose is important and and mark did a great job of showing your alternatives and alternative site plans um as i think i showed you all we had a uh 13 inches front and back in our application uh stacked up of of information that was provided in the state and federal process so we looked at all these alternatives we looked at those alternatives but we have to come up with the site plan and a permit that addresses the project purpose so i would um i would suggest that if you if you focus on that project purpose with the industrial site of a certain size with the attributes of the infrastructure it leads you to to where we got to with the the federal and state permitting um just a couple of things to mention the project site is not located in any of your strategic ecosystems areas but the mitigation site is and i'll show you that on a map in a second i think that's is significant um let me show you all right you can see the red is where the project site is not in your strategic ecosystems lands i told you your location was important if you look at the blue that's where the off-site mitigation area is that is in your uh strategic ecosystems plan here here's the and you've seen this map before um we when we were primitive in this we not only looked at the location of the wetland and and what it fit and how we could put a plan together to make it all work but we looked at the condition of the wetland um all wetlands are not created equal so a lot of the wetlands that we impacted were ones that not by only our account but by the federal and state reviewers were low quality wetlands a lot of this land all this land was in pine plantation as you all know for for decades so the impacted wetlands were ones that were selected in part because they are lower quality so they're what we call pine plantation wetlands they met the criteria but if you walked out there you'd say well this looks like a pine plantation uh so we focused on the the lower quality wetlands for impacts we uh focused on preserving the higher quality wetlands and putting uplands together not just a set buffer length but but the uplands that are around there so if you see look at the plan which i've y'all have done you can see that the wetlands and uplands own site are strategically linked together uh to form some sort of uh ecological uh viable community and then if you look at the uh the off-site mitigation area um it is strategically located there in in in in in a very significant location and it extends that green area that already exists to the bottom uh on to the on to the north um now if if we go with the the alternative that staff presented that that off-site mitigation area doesn't happen we've got enough mitigation with the on-site preservation of wetlands and uplands to fully mitigate the the impacts that were being uh proposed by staff so you don't we don't we don't get to the off-site mitigation area so i think part of the thing part of the the rubric to consider is on balance for resources natural resources wetlands and uplands in the county what what's the balance how valuable is that area to be added to the conservation lands in your strategic ecosystem mapping and i would suggest that it's pretty great just a just a couple of slides to illustrate what i was talking about uh these are the examples of wetlands that were were impacted or would be impacted by the by the plan these are the type of wetlands that are in the mitigation area and and there's a considerable difference so in um in summary this is this is what the plan looks like we've taken the best wetlands on site married them with significant upland buffers and additional areas beyond buffers we've impacted the areas that would allow for um development to have a big enough site to satisfy the project purpose so that's sort of where where we got to and be glad to answer any questions again i appreciate you all's consideration of this um thank you very much any questions okay we may ask you to come back stick around and that's fine and and i'm not going to sing the song you wait at 15 years you can wait a couple of hours that's coffee welcome thank you i am david coffee and here uh to provide you with a legal analysis and it's my pleasure to do so i hope you agree it is a pleasure to hear it this evening you are asked to determine what if any impacts to wetlands are to be allowed on the property that is owned by the applicant and lying within the city limits of hawthorne and is also as has been noted adjacent to an active csx rail line which provides direct rail connections to multiple ports and then within the southeast such as jacksonville tampa savannah and charleston as you know in january of 2018 this board adopted the countywide wetland protection code extending its jurisdiction beyond the unincorporated areas of alachua county and within all nine municipalities the voters had approved an amendment to the county's home rule charter in 2000 giving the board authority to set countywide environmental standards to prohibit or regulate air and water pollution the board waited 18 years before exercising that authority when it adopted the code to prevent water pollution the code is intended to protect wetlands and surface waters to provide water quality protection in furtherance of the 2000 charter amendment there are of course ancillary benefits such as flood buffering groundwater water recharge habitat and ecological connectivity that may emanate from wetlands protected by the code but because preemption of municipal authority by the code is authorized only as a water pollution protection measure it is essential that this limited purpose underpins whatever decision is made tonight the code requires avoidance of impacts to wetlands during development but where that is not feasible consistent with the purpose of the development it requires minimization of impacts while impacts are allowed it requires where impacts are allowed it requires mitigation this framework is typical of wetland protection ordinances around the state and i'm sure the country the code however goes further than most by imposing a generic cap on the total amount of wetland impacts and wetland buffers that may be impacted and then only if approved by this board when applied to the 1067 acres of develop that is the development site at issue here this evening it allows just over 15 acres of impacts the cap has served the county very well as you've seen by the statistics typical low density developments can relatively easily navigate around wetlands so the board is seldom called upon to approve unavoidable impacts but as you heard this evening uh but as you heard from mr swope if hawthorne and eastern alachua county are to capitalize on the historic and unique let's see i pushed the wrong the historic and unique up economic development opportunity for hawthorne uh this this historic opportunity will not happen if limited by the cap to 15 acres so when adopting the code the board included a provision allowing it to recognize unique circumstances where not just a public interest but an overriding public interest is served and in this case served by overriding the cap it is incumbent upon the applicant not the lateral county environmental protection department to demonstrate when such an overriding public interest exists ept epd has done its job by showing what's possible if impacts are limited to 15 acres but what you heard from mr swoop is that the market for rail-based industrial sites require 100 plus acre developable parcels which cannot be achieved here without impacting the number i've been working with is 82 plus acres you saw 83 in the staff presentation you also heard from mr swoop that if the 100 plus acre parcels can be offered to the marketplace hawthorne will have one of only a dozen opportunity sites available in the entire southeastern united states the overriding public interest to be served by making this opportunity for economic sustainability possible for the long-suffering hawthorne and eastern alachua county is undeniable what an historic and unprecedented opportunity this represents for the eastern part of alachua county entirely lying within the core of the city of hawthorne an area originally proposed by epd to be entirely excluded from the code the obvious economic opportunity this proposal represents for hawthorne and eastern alachua county probably supports a finding by this board that an overriding public interest is to be served by allowing the 82 acres of impacts if the impacts meant less water quality protection however it might be a tough call water quality is after all the sole basis for alachua county's jurisdiction to protect wetlands inside the city of hawthorne but the expert testimony of mike dennis demonstrates that water quality does not suffer by authorizing the impacts instead water quality is better protected by the required mitigation today the entire development see if i can get this right today the entire development site and the entire off-site mitigation property are in active civic cultural use and therefore explicitly exempt from the code it is only the request for development approval on the development site that triggers application of the code and it is only the wetland impacts that trigger the off-site mitigation if the impacts cannot be approved and the development proposal is withdrawn the entire development site and the entire mitigation site will remain completely exempt from any regulatory protection provided by the code the civic cultural use of both properties has been in place for many decades and would likely remain for many more decades if marketable development is not allowed the net effect of a denial is that no regulatory protection of water quality will be provided by the code because it simply will not be applicable to any of the 1511 acres while remaining in civic cultural use by contrast the approval of the impacts subjects the entire site to the code the entire development site to the code and within that development site requires on-site mitigation measures ensuring permanent protection and enhancement of the existing higher quality wetlands and wetland buffers more significantly approval ensures perpetual protection of all 443 acres within the off-site mitigation property all of which is within the little orange creek strategic ecosystem the entire off-site mitigation property will receive perpetual protection by a conservation easement established upon your approval tonight you heard expert testimony indicating that water quality for the orange creek basin and the oklahua river watershed is better protected by approving the impacts rather than simply denying those impacts it is easy to see why that's true today there is no regulatory protection provided by the code if the application is approved the code becomes applicable in 790 acres of wetlands wetland buffers and upland areas are permanently enhanced and protected commissioners you are presented with an historic opportunity to facilitate the greatest opportunity ever to bring sustainable economic development to hawthorne and eastern alachua county what is truly extraordinary is that capitalizing on this opportunity does not require any compromise on water quality protection which again is the sole basis for your jurisdiction instead this application provides an extraordinary opportunity to both bring sustainable economic opportunity and prosperity to elite elite elite eastern alachua county and ensure permanent water quality protection that no future regulatory change by this board future boards or state preemption can erase i encourage each of you to seize this opportunity by approving the application thank you thank you mr coffee um commissioner alford did you have a question for i don't know where i assume we're nearing the end of the you want to wait till the end just wait till the end yeah okay then we can call different folks up yeah yeah well i i appreciate um our team being able to articulate these points to you uh much better than i would have been able to try to summarize all of those um it's a very compelling case before you tonight um we strongly believe there is not going to be another opportunity like this for hawthorne in our lifetimes and we've got to have these large sites available and we've got to get this project as close to what you call shovel ready as possible to be competitive or this is all just a dream and we need the county's help with that you've heard tonight from multiple experts compelling testimony that the request is consistent with the approved state and local state local state and federal permits that have been conducted on this site we'd like to ask for the county to allow us to advance the project in accordance with those permits and the management and mitigation plan that has been prepared accordingly we've demonstrated to you that we believe that we qualify for the approval under the overriding public interest test in the county-wide wetland protection code you've heard from city leadership to the point of the the uniqueness of this opportunity and the benefits that will come to the city if we can bring the development forward enhancements and economic infusion employment infrastructure improvements they're going to come we need we need help getting there to get that ball rolling as i mentioned before we believe this is an and opportunity economic benefits and improved environmental scenarios although unique as we've discussed tonight that we are going to enhance the permanent water quality protection for the orange creek basin aquawa river watershed and we would also like to offer to the county that if if we're able to move forward with you that the off-site area in the strategic ecosystem would be placed into a permanent protection device now i say now as in we would start working with county staff to prepare those documents to prepare those lands to be taken out and preserved now up front whether or not development occurs on the property or not so it's an upfront good faith offer and gesture that we thought we could do to try to bring that to the table to you there's a lot of discussion of precedent what's the precedent we're impacting wetlands that's not a good precedent but i would i would i would counter that this bar is being set extremely high in that the opportunity that comes with this would be very hard to match with anyone coming for future wetland impacts that the precedent would be a good one and that this proposal is extremely beneficial and very strong and sound so there was an additional condition that staff had proposed we don't have any issue with that if we move forward it essentially allows sort of a way to track impacts over time so we we don't have any issue with the condition i i imagine that they have provided to you today i think it was sort of a last minute thing so we just want to mention we don't have an issue with that but we would very respectfully ask that you allow us to proceed with the project with the wetland mitigation strategy and permits consistent with what we've achieved already and we look forward to answering questions you have tonight thank you mr chair what was that what was he's talking about the additional condition of that stuff uh yeah so steve you want to we get it did i get it so added condition warehouse and industrial business located within the hawthorne industrial park will be required to submit and receive construction level oh no is that is that the condition yeah make it bigger yeah instruction level um erp from there you go thank you river water management district concurrently with the erp applications a cwpc application county wetlands permit application will be submitted to electric county epd with copies that's the condition you're talking about clay the additional condition that you're okay mr chair that's correct it's the the second part the part that says added condition was what staff was adding in and as clay and mark pointed out that's just an effort for us to be able to track the impacts as are happening the top sentence staff recommendation was the the 15 acre of wetland impact allowance okay q a so let's start with commissioner alfred then we'll go commissioner wheeler and then commissioner prisio all right uh my first question is for staff um in the staff recommendation did you factor in the loss of the mitigation area when you made the recommendation for the 15 acres yeah because they said they weren't going to mitigate it if it was only 50 acres yeah mr chair that's a very good question the way the code is written you can't jump to mitigation to offset you have to prove that you have reasonable doubt you can't go straight to mitigation and no matter how much is proposed to see whether or not it can override the wetland impacts i don't understand your answer i'm sorry and that's a very good question because there's this mindset that you know if you throw enough mitigation at it no matter how much impact you propose at some point it's got to be acceptable yeah i understand that concept i i do i just want to know if you countered the uh if you took into account the loss of that um i forget how many acres of mitigation they're proposing that's in the little orange creek area if you countered if you took into account the loss of that mitigation in if they only have to mitigate 15 if they only have 15 acres of impact that's my question right right and that's that's a good point and that's why i've mentioned that actually with lower impacts they would have to exclude that you know they could off off site area the way the code in terms of staff's ability to override that and say okay we're going to lose that mitigation to justify 83 acres of well and impact that's a stretch for staff to be able to do that i i understand that too i just wanted to understand if how how how you guys had thought about that um i i want to say there's a lot about this project i really like i think that there is a huge impact to hawthorne huge impact to elatrop county i think that um this is an opportunity that you're right does not come along very often um my thoughts are you know if this is really uh sustainable business development then each of these businesses as they come in and and they purchase these hundred acre tracks they should be incentivized in some way to minimize their wetland impacts right if they're really into sustainable development they're going to look at this and go oh i can design my facility so that i can minimize these impacts and so my employees can look out the back window and uh enjoy nature or whatever um so i i guess my question first to the wirehauser team are you planning on going in and grading and preparing the entire site all at once or are you planning on doing this at a hundred acre parcel at a time and i'm greg galpin i'm with warehauser and i appreciate the question no our intent is to work with the user that comes in based on what he or she wants and then introduce them to the project our goal is to get them far enough along that they'll share their site layout once they do that everybody that has come so far to us wants a rectangle or a square and when we show them our site plan plan they immediately look at why it's not and so our job is to be able to get their site plan and we can flip it around on there because they lose the scale on the sheet of paper as you know so once we get that yes we can then help them understand but our goal is not to do it up front only as the market brings it to us because we want to be flexible to the market as gray said we don't know who's coming and we want to be prepared for the 500 acre user that will come but yet also be responsive to any that do well i appreciate the fact that warehauser wants to maximize value of their property right that's that's basically the goal here is to maximize the value of the property and maximize the business investment and maximize the ability for investors to come to hawthorne it all fits together my my question is is is there a way that we could structure this recommendation so that you know i i like the added condition here but one thing that would make this added condition even better is if there was a way to incentivize the savings of wetlands as we go along so as you get to 100 acre site and somebody develops it or what or proposes a development uh plan for it and you see that hey you're not going to impact the 17 acres you thought you were going to it's only going to be four and a half that we save those other 12 and a half acres and that that we're going to be impacted there's a way to incentivize that you see what i'm saying because i feel like even though you're asking for impacts to 86 acres or 83 acres or 82 i forget however many 87 that i feel like there's a way that we could do this that would um you know allow there to be a a a way to do this better right so so that we we can say well you you you you might do this but in all likelihood it's going to be less than that well where this comes into play in the market is the cost of the infrastructure and the capital investment that a company's coming to make they're looking for ways that they can decrease that amount some are and some aren't um well any of and everyone that i've talked to they're looking at ways that they can get in there cheaper than to meet their performer so one of the ways that they're going to do is look at how can they minimize their site costs right and so automatically they're looking at ways to avoid where the cost of those impacts and the cost of additional fill is mitigated by avoidance right so there is that natural tendency it's not a requirement it's an incentive to them on their bottom line so how we do that structurally is i think i don't know if we can do it quite frankly i think the best way we can do is understand the flexibility needed to make this site a real potential and an opportunity and i know trust is a tough word but you have to understand how the process works and how these people that are coming in are looking to mitigate their investment and the way they do that is by avoiding wetlands that we share with them we share with them what our permits are what it means and some of them will look at them and decide we'd rather leave that as a buffer for whatever reason maybe it's avoidance of cost maybe it's because they don't need to so again that flexibility is needed that's why it's important for us to stay with our permits that we got from the state in the feds um and that's my best answer to your question oh i i appreciate that and i and you know while you know what is approved by the state and the feds is typical for what happens across the state we all see what's happening to our state and we don't want that in alacho county and that is why i'm elected to where i'm sitting today and so that's why we have extra strict rules here in alacho county that we are trying to find a way to give hawthorne what hawthorne needs and wants but also find a way to protect the groundwater and the wetlands that you know the voters have put us in charge of and and you know and and so we're i'm just trying to find a good compromise here so i'm i'm putting that question out there there's a way that we can think of where we can minimize that you know the the um we can could i guess a better way to say it is to incentivize the saving of wetlands for each parcel there's some smart people sitting out there i'm i'm hoping that's all turning around in your head right now and we can come up with some good way to to figure that out before the end of the evening um let me see i had a couple of other questions no i think i asked all my questions all right i conclude we can come back to you if we need to okay commissioner wheeler and then commissioner presia thank you i'm i'm still trying to understand how you are going to develop this is there going to be a roadway that is first we're putting roadway we're putting infrastructure in you know um it seems to me it's going to be more appealing to whoever it is you're trying to get in there if those things are in place um so what comes first the chicken or the egg here that's a great question we've been arguing that with for 15 years the chicken and the egg and in our commitment to hawthorne quite frankly is not to burden their current ratepayers taxpayers and citizens our goal is to work with them to get economic development funding for infrastructure and we can do that now because of when he was governor here governor scott and gray for that point put into play the governor's uh job group grant funding we've applied that uh for that with the city on numerous occasions if not for the changing of administration hurricanes whatnot we've not been able to get a grant that is our method of how we plan and desire to do it we have plans we have conceptual plans that follows the conceptual layout but again we don't want to build too far in advance because we don't know who we're going to be catching and we want that first user to come in and help us secure funding and guidance on how and where that infrastructure goes okay well would you need then you would need approval for the whole 83 the old 83 acres in order to promote that to anybody coming in yes ma'am so even if we were to talk about you know starting with a small section smaller section not small section but you know just say okay okay let's see what you can do with this let's you know let's and then then then move on and get the rest of it in there because i know that um hawthorne has been disappointed before and we don't want to let i don't want to let hawthorne down again and i am committed to making sure that if this is the gig they need over there i want them to have it another question that i have well you know again can we start small is or put a roll in there and then offer this up but say okay this is potentially what else you have here so if you need more just say and we'll you know run it by the county if there's an issue there shouldn't be an issue they've already told us we can use this land and i think that's what we're saying at least that's what i'm saying yes ma'am i understand that and i appreciate that but what the market needs is certainty and if we're going to make the project smaller we're not going to be one of 12 will be one of however it's not to make it smaller it's just to start small is what i'm saying but but what the fear is if we can't provide the certainty and then we get one user and we come back in we have a different county commission and the feelings change our certainty is broken and our and we don't want to do that that's why we're here for the entire project we're requesting approval based on that and the gotcha mitigation plan we put forth are you all following the army reserve base that we have over by the airport uh we we've been talked about the possibility of rail from there to jacksonville if we could use that rail if there was somehow we could connect you know if that's a possibility i don't know if the army reserve is a place that might want to use your facility we would welcome them yeah from that opportunity well they're just really open so you could go talk to them no i just you know i just feel like that anything that we can do to have some assurance that there's actually going to be something going there um you know because we want to right now you don't have anything right at this point in time we do not okay have a host of interested the reason for our submittal of this application was because we had somebody willing to come and we filed originally uh application for exception that was denied and then required us to submit this full application so at that time it was felt for us to be successful and to promise and i mean actually produced on the promise that we have provided the city of hawthorne we need to come before you with the entire footprint the entire plan as well as the mitigation plan at one time do you have a plan b we do not okay all right thank you mr chair thank you commissioner wheeler uh commissioner presia sure so i guess i i have some things i'd like to say but i think first i'm going to ask a few questions to get some clarification um my questions are primarily for our staff um what is the approximate approximate number of acres of wetlands in the wildlife corridor that you have on one of the slides that sort of allows for the um you know the connectivity of the wetland components breaking up the two polygon areas the northern one um which um let me see if i can get a better view of it there you go that uh between the two wetlands area the ones that the northern portion is 49 to 39 acres um from the standpoint that would be the higher habitat of the wetlands that are proposed for impact as opposed to some of the wetlands on the southeast corner the polygon area those are are as mike indicated that we're having more pine uh pines located in it and have been so but how many acres are in that habitat corridor connector i think it's 39 acres and there was 87 proposed total yes and how many of the proposed um 15 that you all are providing is in that 39 acres uh good question probably only a few it's associated with the um access road in the railroad no excuse me i take that back just the railroad we excluded the access road it's outside of outside of that boundary okay i thank you that's helpful um and to hawthorne do you all have impact fees associated with development for roads and things like that madam mayor or mr thompson you have to answer to the mic sorry so that the public that's watching can hear you yes ma'am we do have impact fees um okay so here's what i want to say for roads specifically mr thompson impact fees so there's park fire roads which which what could you just describe the impact fees you have the impact fees uh would be for water and sewer at currently with respect to the usage and so forth and if it's going to be a larger usage portfolio it might be um lift stations and or even treatment plan upgrades associated with it so not for roads uh not at the current time not for roads because we haven't grown our roads in a period of time but we can entertain it because i have some elected officials we can probably vote that in for impact fees we'll sit over here while you do that no i'm just kidding right yeah we can sit here right while you work on that um i just have a quorum tonight yeah i guess i i just um i i okay so i'll i'll get to that in a second thank you for your answers i appreciate it um so like my colleagues i i want to get to yes on this like for me um you know i hear the the beautiful and grand proposal of a historic opportunity um you know of a generational opportunity of the overriding public interest and and i agree with you and i think that you know historically we are in a situation where we pushed a lot of marginalized communities into less desirable areas i.e areas that are really difficult for development right so all the wetland areas and then it makes it history pushes this constant conflict between the environmental community trying to protect our wild our wetlands and our habitats and our wildlife against the people who are trying the hardest to create economic development for their communities and a livelihood for their families and that is a really honestly like almost impossible and really unfortunate situation that's been that we have all been put in because of historic policy decisions made by local state and federal government officials and we need to write that wrong right we need to figure out a way that we can do both and and i heard everyone talking about this being an and solution but i think that there's also this argument that like these aren't those greater wetlands that these are you know these are these are what did you call them um tree wetlands or or silviculture wetlands or timber wetlands but those were done under a 404 exemption permit that wirehouser made a bunch of money on so wirehouser got to impact those wetlands for free without any kind of requirement for mitigation because they were making money on it and now they're going to make money selling the property as development and they have not they have a requirement they do need to think about those wetlands as still wetlands right i mean i understand they were impacted under a a silviculture operation but i just i think that's a false argument to make i just want to throw that out there because i do think that saying that those wetlands are less important because they're impacted is is a false argument to be made right those they were impacted because they were allowed to be impacted to make money and saying that they don't have a responsibility to still think about the protection of those areas or areas in similar volume you know in other places i just want to make that case because that happens a lot in all of these conversations around the environment so i'm just trying to set the record straight on all these things you know i think we have a real economic opportunity here um but it does make me nervous i have to be honest with you because we're watching what these big distribution companies are doing to alatua like we're watching them bring in low wage jobs they're not providing benefits they're not high wage jobs and they're destroying the roads up there they're tearing them up with their big trucks so we need to be thinking about the kinds of companies we want to attract here and making sure that as we move into this that we're thinking about those high quality high impact jobs that you talked about that we're talking high wage opportunities with good quality companies that care not just about the bottom line and they're they're being able to build the you know something that can pencil out on a piece of paper but care about our community and care about the employment they're bringing and the the generational opportunity they're bringing because that's what you're arguing is the overriding public good right is those high wage jobs is those opportunities for economic development in our community and if it's just a bunch of warehouses that are going to bring in cheap goods so that they can ship them all over the country and sell them to people while they exploit our labor like that's to me that's not a high impact overriding public good so i also want to put that out there for the record right now but i don't think that i my guess you all don't have i can't ask you a question because you don't have anybody that you have on the hook you don't have any companies that you're bringing to prove to me i guess in some ways that it's an overriding public good right that that it's going to be good high quality jobs i'm just trusting you i trust you that that is what you all want and i know for a fact it's what mayor randall wants and it's what the commission wants out there like i and i know that they'll hold you to it so i think there's a middle ground to be struck here i really do and so you know i do have a motion that i'd like to put on the floor but i want to hear from my other colleagues before i do that okay um do you want to speak or yeah i'll just say that the way i'm approaching it is a compromise on both sides exactly yep i think if we can't get a compromise on both sides then it's not going anywhere anyway yep so um that's where i stand i've listened to all of the facts uh i have talked to commissioner randall randall i mean mayor randall and commissioner randy martin this is something hawthorne really wants and so i want to make sure it happens uh but i also want to make sure that economic development does come to hawthorne and not while i'm dead pushing up daisies that's that's the point i want to make today is that uh we can be promised anything uh but that don't mean we're gonna see it in the next uh five to ten years it might be 20 30 years as long as it takes but um at least i would like to see it in my lifetime so that's where i'm coming from so i want to compromise okay thank you i conclude okay i've got a couple things um i want to before i start though i want to say that i don't view what we're doing tonight as setting a precedence i view what we're doing tonight as a unique opportunity there's not another hawthorne in alachua county there's not another 301 there's not another rail spur so i think when you look at what gets done tonight i don't think it it opens up our code the way i believe the community thought the whole envision situation did back in 2014 so i just want to state that up front like my colleagues i too want to figure out something that we can all be happy with when we leave here today or all equally upset about that's how the best compromise happens and so i want to say that to my colleagues that i don't think we're you know setting a precedence of okay now 83 acres of wetlands is okay to mitigate i think this is a unique site a unique opportunity and a unique situation so that's just from the top how i feel um i've got a question for mr coffee i've got some questions for epd and i have a couple of questions for greg if we could if i could go in that order so mr coffee yours is really short um it's always great to get the legal analysis from a guy who had his fingerprints on writing our code and i appreciate um actually much of what you said tonight you made one statement i just i don't have this history you said quote originally this site was proposed by epd to be excluded from the code um fill me in because i i maybe you were talking about a time before me or maybe while i've been here that i just forgot um i'm pulling up the map from the presentation made by staff uh when the or the adoption of the code was being considered in 2000 or 2018 2018 okay and you see for i don't know how to point to let's see are you seeing yep yep okay the right here within the red is the area to be excluded to not be covered by the code because it's core urban space the recommendation from staff was to exclude those areas from the application of the code this was presented at the final adoption hearing and the board of county commissioners at that time decided to not exclude any of the exclusion areas throughout the entire county yes all right thank you that's uh that's an important reminder because i was here in 2018 of that okay to our epd staff um steven and and um and mark so uh from the standpoint of evaluating the i'm going to call it the the acronym the avoidance the minimization and the mitigation when you are recommending that for us how if we approved your recommendation or moved forward with your recommendation how would that affect the existing permits of the applicant across the board chair they have a conceptual erp from the water management district uh the districts issue very few conceptuals anymore uh for for various reasons but one of the things is it's it's you can't go to construction with it you have to have a construction level permit and so but that would that means the details for any proposed development activity on the site business-wise that hasn't been done i mean they've got the watershed uh mapped out in terms of modeling and the wetland boundaries and you know formalized and then and the wetland impacts from the standpoint unless somebody comes in and modifies that on the conceptual they can go to a construction level permit to utilize that for basis of approval okay so it's your opinion that um your alternative recommendation has no impact on the existing permits that they've already received because they're conceptual and they will require more detailed permits prior to yes yes now the army corps i'm on the applicant to see if you have the same opinion but that's yeah the army corps permit is is valid i mean they could go for that but not for the state they still have to come in with a construction level permit okay but my my question and your answer is if if there was a compromise or some or take staff's recommendation it would not impact their existing permits they would have to go back and re-get new permits i don't know about that that's a good question i don't know if they would modify they would probably have to modify the conceptual in terms of what the wetland impact acreage is but the other aspects of that conceptual will still be valid it would just be relation to the impacts okay thank you uh question number two um and and anna talked on this about they there was an opinion stated by i believe it was mr coffee or perhaps it was um one of the other experts that the water quality of the of the area of hawthorne is better protected by the mitigation than it would be protected by the minimization of the impact on the site because of the quality of the wetlands that they are talking about permanently preserving versus the quality of the wetlands that are offered to be uh that are being proposed to be mitigated do you agree with that statement with all due respect to mr coffee i i don't agree with that it's a different type of water quality from standpoint that's coming off of impervious areas versus something that's naturally occurring such as sediment coming downstream or something that may apply in terms of like an off-site area but it's it's it's so it's a basis of difference in terms of and i don't i don't know if it was mr coffee i actually think it was mr dennis who said that the water quality would be his quote was water quality would be better protected by the mitigation so it's your testimony you just disagree with that statement oh definitely i mean in terms of their as i pointed out some of their mitigation areas that are proposed on site are going to have less water and then going towards them under a post-construction condition unless they modify their design because there's less water you know will be less water percolating in the ground and that water will be diverted to rectangular stormwater basins that are not adjacent to the wetlands so from that standpoint yes there would not be improvements of of enhancement to actually do a detriment to some of the wetlands that are there and the reason i'm asking you these questions and then the applicant lasts is because i want you to be able to respond to these questions the way i interpreted the presentation was that's in a strategic ecosystem we're trying to protect that strategic ecosystem these are to anna's point um silver culture impacted wetlands so that they've kind of kind of been you know trucks have been ridden over them and so the the quality of the wetlands are better in what they're proposing versus what they're proposing to mitigate do you agree with that statement i agree with that yes sir okay but but you wouldn't take it so far as to say that it impacts the water quality because you believe that just avoiding the the wetlands would obviously improve the water quality would would be better for water quality in the area correct and maybe i'll refer to the applicant as far as whether they are saying that because we're not going to log that wetland that's associated with the off-site area we're going to see a net improvement so but the question there i'd no respect no disrespect that well has been proposed for conservation through the water management district already so it's standpoints that they unless they want to in violation of what they agreed to with the district they couldn't log it so you know that you know it's it's i'm not saying a double dipping situation but in fact providing that conservation easement over it is something that we would in terms of epd would support as well and require saying we're already going to have that protected correct okay very good thank you for that answer and then um okay those are my questions for you thank you all right greg if i could have you and then whoever you want to call up um so so i really appreciated your dialogue with um with commissioner alfred because it it really hit on something that i thought was was really important and i have it written down somewhere where did i put it um oh there's one uh thank you so it is your intention to may have a site ready approval so that when an opportunity presents itself be that a hundred acres 500 acres or the entire site that you have the flexibility to work with the site plan um so that the uh entity whoever that is can minimize their infrastructure costs i think that was a great point that you made i mean i don't know of anyone that doesn't want to minimize their infrastructure costs is it warehousers policy to pass those costs on to the entity or does warehousers share in those costs i heard you say that once you had a site plan you would then be able to apply for grants or look at the job growth grant funding from the state uh and that and obviously with warehousers reach you have a lot more reach than a city or maybe even a county may have with the state legislature and the governor um certainly more than this county has with a governor but is it your is it warehousers intention to actually cost share with that development or is it typically the entity and grants and state funding that will build the infrastructure it's a it can be done all different ways the opportunity presents itself for a potential sharing with the community primarily because they're the only ones can receive the job group fund grant they can only spend it on city-owned lands and so the partnership is we are pledging land for that public infrastructure if any is needed to serve a customer that we bring jointly to the community we hope to do it through the job group so that so the city of hawthorne receives the land they then apply for the grant and the infrastructure is built and then you work with the site plan to build additional infrastructure to minimize their costs on mitigation and stormwater so we're almost in my words may not be the best words for warehousers here but we're a facilitator conduit of the of the transaction we're trying to help bring a client that the city desires and willing to work with them it is up to us to help the interested party get through the process of being final site plan approval and building permit okay that makes a lot of sense and so from you know my perspective my business thought perspective i would think and this is what i just can't get my head around i would think that most entities would would want to avoid the wetlands me too as opposed to mitigate them because of the enormous cost of trying to move water and what i'm hearing the presentation saying is while that's true and that may also happen it really depends on the opportunity we need in your approval county commissioners the flexibility and so it's almost as if you're saying the worst case scenario is impacting 83 acres but perhaps it could be significantly less because if i'm a company coming here i'm going to want to avoid those wetlands because i don't want to pay to mitigate them if i can avoid them as long as the site can handle it as long as it's big enough for my needs is that an accurate statement that is an accurate statement um and it is the worst case our permits are the worst case that's the only wetlands we can impact and what i what we are offering as a compromise we being warehauser is to put the off-site under a protected covenant so that we do not log it between now and when development occurs and it's protected all up front normally we won't mitigate that being off-site until we need to and so what i'm hearing the applicant say is even though that's the worst case and we're hoping that a site company comes and says let's avoid the wetlands we actually like the county's plan it's cheaper for us because we don't have to impact those wetlands warehauser is is putting the mitigation in place immediately and and the reason you're doing that is because it gives you big word flexibility in attracting different opportunities whether it's a 10 acre site 100 acre site or a 500 acre site and i would venture to say it gives you the comfort that that mitigation off-site is committed to up front it's not postponed 20 years down the road and oh we didn't really need it what we're saying is we're willing to put that as the compromise under that restricted covenant or conservation easement today and how do you respond to mr brown's point of you're doing it anyways is it a timing thing we're doing it now versus over the next two decades yes and only if we need to in 20 in two decades if we don't need to we'd never put it under understood okay that that for helps clarify your position and i understand that um okay would you like to respond to what you heard because i see waiting and that was my big question yes sir briefly if i could just clarify some questions about permitting uh corps of engineers doesn't issue conceptual permits so you have to go in with your plan justify your plan project purpose you have to go through avoidance minimization he mentioned that with the core i was talking about the other permits so the core the core is that the uh the state has a conceptual permit and uh my experience is that and maybe it's because we work on mostly large projects and with a large project you don't have all the details at the outset to know this pipe needs to be this size this spigot needs to be this the details the engineering details so my experience is that you go in on a larger site like this and you identify the wetlands the wetland impacts in the wetland mitigation so that's known later on the engineers will come in and submit a construction permit which will have all of the construction details that are engineering not environmental engineering so um that's the way that that's the way the conceptual permit and the individual construction permit if you come in with a construction permit and it's consistent with the conceptual permit then all you have to do is satisfy the engineering criteria uh of that one other thing i'd like to to clarify is we went through uh this is on the water quality question yeah so yeah so let me just reframe this i asked maybe you said it either you or mr croffey water quality is better protected by mitigation yeah here the on-site wetlands we identified and the ones that are being preserved we had to go in and determine what the post-development hydro period of those wetlands would be where the wetland where's the water going to be in the wetland we couldn't go in and get a permanent after it's developed after development so we have to we have to assure the water management district up front getting the conceptual permit that the hydro periods the wetland uh amount of wetlands water that's going into wetlands all of that will be the same as it was before or we don't get the permit so we go in we put hydro period nails and get them surveyed and then the engineers design the stormwater system so that we have the wetland water protected at the right level in the right duration so all of that has to be done so that's that's that's dealing with the on-site wetlands and the on-site water quality the stormwater system as you know has to deal with the the uh the runoff from the impervious surface in the development areas and that's where the stormwater system and ponds and all go in and that has to meet the test of making sure that when any water goes off site it's not it's already treated so water quality on site is dealt with that way now that i think what mr coffee was also talking about was the off-site mitigation area and i would submit to you that the state of florida has spent hundreds of millions of dollars buying land to protect wetland and upland systems uh for the environmental and the water quality benefits of protecting those so the mitigation site is located upstream as you saw in in that system so by putting the conservation easement over that restricting any future development or or timbering or harvesting or timber in there that protects that watershed more than it would be right now in an unprotected state okay thank you thank you thank you very much okay so i have heard four of my colleagues which is all of them say that they're hoping for hook uh to find a yes a compromise has um warehauser and staff talked about what that might look like between what they're recommending and what warehauser is recommending or are you going to leave it to us to try to figure out up right here on the dais because that that always gets dangerous okay you have a recommendation all right well you push your button he's got an answer well yes i was just going to respond and say we have not had that dialogue because their alternative eliminated the project purpose that we started with that we pledged to the city of hawthorne and we cannot provide it with that alternative so as i we came here tonight the compromise that i brought forth to you guys was the up front conservation easement protect the off site up front and that's what i feel like we can sincerely offer and still uphold our pledge to the city of hawthorne okay thank you i'm done with my questions uh we got commissioner wheeler and then commissioner prisio i would like to ask the board if you are hearing what i'm thinking i'm hearing is that if if we agree to the 23 acres and and give that to them you know as the opportunity to to develop that if it doesn't get developed it's still going to be there but not developed and that's what i'm saying there's no plan b so if nobody comes and wants to buy in the wetland area there's no no there if there's nobody coming you know it would medication yeah okay so it's either people are going to come we give them this permission the people are going to come or not come is that is that what you are hearing too that there's the opera there's every real possibility nobody would want to buy on that site or work on that site because it is wet because of flood issues or possibilities you know i mean back in the 50s we they sold swamp land in florida right um it's it feels kind of like that okay i'm i'm asking is that what you all are hearing that is it's either going to be developed or not developed because nobody might be developed until there's an opportunity to develop it they're looking for a permit to give them the flexibility to market it so that if in fact they need to mitigate that they have that they have that pre-approved permission from this board but it would be industrial not residential it would be industrial and if we approve this it would only go for where a wirehauser and not for whoever you know if they sell the whole property to somebody else that those rights would not go with the rights would follow the land they would follow that that's the whole point of tonight is they want the rights to follow the land so when they sell this it has the development rights with the wetland mitigation or the wetland stuff already attached the the individual to the individual businesses that would be buying there okay but if nobody buys then it's going to sit there correct yeah yep okay that is true thank you okay commissioner president okay all right i think that you know i guess i've been trying to listen i think staff have a set of goals and and our code does that's really about protecting resources protecting our water quality and and the overall biodiversity of like our ecosystems and habitats but water quality as a predominant and i i when i look at this map and what staff are proposing really what what i see is the critical component is this wildlife corridor it's this component that creates the connectivity between the wetlands to the north and the wetlands to the south and if we can on the site and if we can protect that then i think that being able to allow for some additional wetland impacts will give them the flexibility that they need give us the assurance that we're going to protect the wetlands that create that corridor and still allow for some off-site mitigation and so but i also understand what mary helen is saying like we don't even know this is going to happen and so here's my proposed motion i propose that we move staff's recommendation including the condition plus an additional 10 acres up to an additional 10 acres of impact with each final development plan that's approved by hawthorne or up to 44 acres for a full site development plan approval except that no additional encroachment or impacts on that wildlife corridor so essentially i subtracted the wildlife corridor 39 acres from their total of 83 i get to 44 so we're basically pre-approving 44 acres of impacts ahead of time for the total site plan or if it's just these little guys that come in 10 acres at a time pre-approved without having to come back they've got it they've got their flexibility to be able to negotiate with landowners that want to or i mean businesses that want to come in but it gives us some assurances that we're not just blanketing and it gives us that corridor connectivity which is so critical for our natural resources and if that before i see here if there's a second um if they had a site plan opportunity for a 500 acre site would the entire 44 acres 500 acres yeah they have 1067 acres but are they have a five do they have a 500 acre parcel though i don't think they have anyway i know what you're saying a large scale a large scale yeah then they would have up to 44 acres and they would have to protect that wildlife corridor yeah okay uh so that's your motion i'm going to ask that the clerk put it up on the screen once he goes back and listens to it do i have a second on that motion i have a question before a second okay so my question is is that if each parcel is allowed a certain amount that actually might end up being more wetlands impacted than if we gave them a total and ask yes but if it's i i don't know if i don't know if 44 is enough or 10 acres or 10 acres per site yeah i'm just trying to figure out a way to minimize you know to incentive i'm i think i'd be more comfortable with it if it was just the total and it was up to them to minimize it on each site as they went along because then there would be as they sold the first few parcels there would be a real incentive to minimize those impacts because as they moved on to additional parcels they would want to have that more flexibility does that make sense i mean i guess the point is to try to give them flexibility if it ends up being a lot of small projects then they can get approval of up to 10 more acres with staff like working with our staff they just get that that 10 acres they just have to show us that they're minimizing their impacts and then if they come in with a large scale development plan they get 44 acres of impact yeah i guess i'm just saying that why why why give them 10 just give them the whole 44 and they're going to want to minimize it as much as they can because they're going to want to do the whole site i mean that's my you know i hear you yeah i mean that's just that's yeah you're the one who does project development so i kind of hear what you're saying but i guess well what i'm hearing mary say is you got the 44 by taking the 83 minus the wildlife corridor so basically protecting the 39 acre and wildlife corridor which which defaults into 44 acres of impact is that right 83 minus 39 83 minus 39 so 44 acres of impact um could up to could staff show on the screen what but i said with final development plan so they have to bring their i mean my point is that this gives staff some ability to sort of monitor that they're still doing the best they can to minimize it gives overhead please gives everybody like that what you were saying sort of the discomfort and comfort you know yeah okay so i'm going to ask staff to explain this and then what i'd like to do is see if we get a second if we get a second i'd like to recess for 10 minutes and give everybody a chance to talk amongst themselves and then we'll reconvene and i i'm happy to just second it okay so we've got a motion and a second for discussion okay yeah okay okay if i could ask josh if you could zoom in a little i think it'll help it's kind of hard to see yeah right about there is good so what i believe i heard uh the commissioner described okay so outside of the conservation areas which are the green and pink there's 87 acres of wetlands outside of those areas so the applicant is asking to impact all of them you you've in your motion i believe the area that is identified as habitat corridor connector which is outlined in green is 39 acres of those 80 of those 83 acres so if we were to protect that area you're basically suggesting that the applicant would have the authorization to potentially impact the rest of the wetland areas on the property outside of the conservation areas in the habitat corridor connector the one thing i do just want to point out is that mark did i think he mentioned this the rail spur is it has some minor impact so i'm assuming you would say excluding the impacts of the right but those are in the 15 acres that we're already approving so that's so it's the 15 that staff approved plus an additional up to 44 acres of wetland impacts to wetlands not identified at the moment so not within the corridor or the conservation area so a minimum of 15 up to 44 it's one way to think it but there there's some minor impact for road in the spur within that 39 acre wildlife corridor that's what i was getting at there was a little bit in there that um i just want to make sure that the motion is not creating you know a complete barrier between each side to be able to have the infrastructure proposed so that i understand around the site okay um clay do you understand this motion nope okay i'm going to go ahead and call a 10 minute recess we'll reconvene at 7 32 to give you all a moment to just chat amongst yourselves and then i'll ask for the applicant to respond to the motion and then we'll see if there's a substitute motion and if not we'll then open it up for public comment okay fair enough we're going to recess for 10 minutes okay we're going to go ahead and reconvene um this hearing i see two people at the podium so we put the motion up on the floor for everybody to read uh we've got a motion in a second i'm going to ask uh steve and the manager to give us their thoughts and we'll open it up for public here for public comment so go ahead go first all right we took a lot of discussion um the what the applicant is requesting is that the ability that should they get a large client someone for instance who's asking for a 500 acre area that the the area within the wildlife corridor could come back for the board for review of additional wetland impacts so it still fits with the motion in place but if they wanted to come back uh for additional impacts they would come back to the board is the maker of the motion okay adding that as a condition a seconder okay okay we've got a yeah and if i may add to that the objective here is to ensure that we have a continuous collaboration between the city and the county with respect to individual clients that come in and want to entertain these parcels it allows warehouses to market accordingly but yet there's a caveat that we still want to keep the county at the table to say if we can minimize the impacts it was one factor also but if we have the ability to manipulate the structures to ensure that we protect the corridor that's in question here incentivize the reduction of mitigation wetlands and so forth and all the while still meeting the needs of potential clients because at this time we don't have any clients but we want to make sure we have the ability to market but and still collaborate with the county your staff to ensure that we can meet these needs giving you flexibility giving everyone flexibility to achieve what they're ultimately trying to do ultimately go right okay okay thank you mr manager thank you questions any questions commission before we open it up to the public we need to modify the motion to uh to reflect that wildlife corridor or conservation areas would come back before the county commission that's fine yeah again like i said the objective here is to make sure we do keep you all engaged and at the table for said reduction of mitigation into wetlands steve do you want to give us the exact wording i was just going to add um any impacts within that uh 39 acre of wetlands in the what corridor excluding the impacts for the spur and and road access we want to be able to make sure they they can do that up front um any of those projects well i said staff's recommendation and then i said accept no additional encouragement so but i should i add it makes it wouldn't hurt to have a little more clarity there yeah any impact wildlife conservation areas will come out of the program yeah can you just add the um up by staff's recommendation including the impacts to the wildlife corridor no no no no yeah staff's recommendation including the back to the wildlife corridor and the condition of up to additional tenant how about the transportation impacts to the wildlife corridor does that make it better yeah it would be specific the railroad and the road yeah the road the access road and the rail spur yeah okay including the railroad spur and access road is that right both sides agree steve are you good with that yeah okay okay i'm having uh deja vu moments of hutch and mike writing motions on the fly so missy is that is that clear does that make sense the third the second third impacts the wildlife quarter and the condition yeah it makes sense if he's referring in the condition and in the added condition below or can you just read that and that and the condition yeah there's the condition oh the added condition then i'd say the whole thing is honestly a condition so you don't even have to say the added condition you've got like one and two or staff's recommendation including the impacts and up to an additional and that's number one and then number two or i mean you can leave it added condition but it's you've really got like three separate conditions in there okay i think staff understands that the applicant understands it hopefully and um clay did you have comments before we just to clarify the the original staff recommendation was an impact of a maximum of 15 acres so you're modifying that you're you've got a different approach i was i guess i was allowing those 15 acres just wanted to clarify yeah yeah so take out maximum on the staff condition on the staff recommendation mr coffee do you have some comments before we open up to the public uh yeah i would just like clarification with regard to the motion is it saying that 44 acres of impacts are authorized yes any up to up to 44 acres and any impacts that might be desired later that fall within the 29 acres that are to be protected 39 39 i'm sorry that are to be protected would require a later approval by the board of county commissioners correct so you are that's what it's saying yeah so you are getting approved for up to 44 acres with with the flexibility that if you have an applicant that requires impacts to the wildlife corridor that that would require you come back to the board of county commissioners uh impacts other than those other than those 44 well and the impacts of the rail and the road going through and the rail and the road going to i think it needs to be written differently that last sentence then because anyone could take that back to the wildlife for i guess i could take out just take out the accept no additional encroachment to the impacts and put any impact to the wildlife corridor conservation areas that should go instead of it's 44 acres total yeah take out that you should just go type no let's let's tell them what you want they can have 44 acres total yeah yeah mr chair if you want to take public comment on the motion we can work on rewriting it yeah we understand it okay yeah let's do that we'll let staff i think i think we're there i think we just need to say excluding the the road and the and the rail spur but we'll let staff sort that out and then we'll do a finalized motion okay so right now we've got a motion we've got a second we've had public we've had commission comment we're now going to open it up to the public to um give us their thoughts on the motion as soon as mr coffee is done mr coffee go ahead you recognize i just wanted to also clarify whether or not this presumes the commitment to provide the off-site mitigation up front is still in place yes because we're still struggling with whether that makes sense at this point so i just wanted to make sure that's what your intent is while i believe it is and while you take it yeah i i i definitely think so because we're we're looking at i mean 44 acres plus potential impacts to the other 39 that's pretty darn close to what y'all asked for so yeah the difficulty is unlike what normally occurs there's no sort of parameters to provide guidance for anyone involved including the port of county commissioners in making that subsequent determination i mean there's just no nothing to base the decision on yeah from my perspective i'd want that mitigation up front i think that's what we're getting as a county and i think this is the compromise on the difference between staff's recommendation and warehouser's request okay okay all right let's go ahead and open it up to the public to speak to the motion we'd love to hear from you go ahead and come on up to the podium introduce yourself you'll have up to three minutes and both podiums are available so let's not guess if we're wanting to speak let's queue up welcome hello my name is george papati um i have i'd like to focus on uh environmental impacts and economic prosperity um for years during the last issue regarding plum creek uh economic prosperity and hawthorne was was dangled uh to try to persuade and uh so i asked robert hutchinson one day when i had a chance to uh so what's the deal with hawthorne and the plywood plant does that supposedly hire local people and um if uh plum creek promised to uh with new industrialization to uh uh hire more people uh does does anyone have a history in this way and he said actually he had a good friend who was the manager of the plant and he asked him uh does this plywood factory hire local people and he said that's a myth they're consistently purchased 50 to 75 miles away so that flies in contrast and against what the the claims are and as far as the um comprehensive plan we alachua county should be very proud of its traditions and of commissioners who um uphold um i guess you could some people would call it a holy grail but i think that it's very meaningful it has a tremendous amount of impact uh beneficial impact to the kind of the community and uh i frankly find i can't imagine a large corporation for and they they're very vague about how they their time scale how they mention it how they describe it and um the the the potential for industrialization just opens up a can of worms i'm a little concerned about um attainment with regard to orange creek basin and the nitrate non-attainment there um they want to um develop in uh war in wetlands and uh i'm again concerned about the track record uh so i hope that when any decision is made the commission reflects on what has happened and what the comprehensive plan represents to the county and virtually all its citizens because it has a high standard thank you thank you thank you eric good day great at gainesville chamber of commerce um just very thankful as i look at what's happening throughout our county i really appreciate the um forward-facing uh east alachua county the investment made by you guys and the staff and the work that they're doing out there it's an exciting time in our community the other point and i'm going to be very brief is that i'm just very also excited to see the uh spirit of collaboration because we understand the importance of the investment and economic development in our eastern portion of our county and especially the city of hawthorne and the collaboration i've seen here tonight is heartwarming and i'm very excited and the next portion is that we need to protect our wetlands and i'm looking at a customer that has a plan and it's willing to collaborate and work continuously with the county i see a city a company and the county working and collaborating and i can tell you from the chamber standpoint we are very supportive of this uh project and we're very excited to see it move forward thank you very much thank you mr koday mr new welcome thank you and thank you mr chair for the opportunity to speak to you and the board on the on the motion that's on the floor i'm an engineer that works with a local statewide consulting firm and i urge the board to support the motion that's on the floor as i listen to the testimony tonight i i see that warehouser i've had a lot of firms come in and meet with me about development and i would tell you that warehouser is as earnest and as well put together and as forward thinking in terms of what does the host community need from us as any that i've ever dealt with i find them to be uh uncommon in that regards also all of the conversation tonight about hey if you you can't go to funding agencies with a concept if you don't have a concrete plan you will you are not going to make it there most recently we had that conversation with greg videt at useda in atlanta and he said look we want to help hawthorne we like the concept you've presented to us but we have you know stacks of folks that have real employers behind them and you have a hope and i know that moving this infrastructure the same thing happened time and time again um when i was in newberry and i would tell you the one difference in elichua folks may not like the waco property but it had its entitlement it had its infrastructure and when those emails came in from the chamber that said we have project code name whatever um we were able to send them a response that says this is the size of land these are the utilities that are available and this is the utility capacity this is the zoning we have an end and um i'd say we had an 80 success rate when i worked in elichua maybe i was just lucky at the time because i went to newberry where we didn't have all those things in place and we flip-flopped that and i had about a one percent success rate and it was the county it was the equestrian center great project but i think that warehauser has come with a very earnest offer and i believe that had the county commission simply approved their application with the offer for the exchange wetlands area i think that the county commission and county staff could have went home feeling great about themselves that we have an opportunity that's going to produce jobs uh good jobs for our community and we have further protection of our environment and i think the fact that we have negotiated more in the county's favor and that warehauser appears to be very supportive of that it fits with all of my conversations with warehauser that they get it they get what local government is seeking and that they want to end up being they want to be a good partner as they move through these things so i i applaud the bocc county staff and warehauser for working so hard to come to what seems to be a successful compromise and i urge the county commission to support it thank you thank you mr newt we'll go this way and then we'll come back to the middle thank you mr chairman landon harrah greater gainesville chamber of commerce i want to give you a little bit of background on some of these economic development you guys were talking about how it might just sit there forever it's not because i'm the one who's been seeing a lot of these not just come from the state but a lot of these project requests come from other site selection agencies and a lot of the interest is in hawthorne we at the very beginning of the year when we helped we were part of the applying for a job growth grant through warehauser and the city of hawthorne because we did have somebody on the line we had somebody who had us and one site in georgia and the site was that one right in warehauser the warehauser site and the reason that they went to georgia is because speed of to market was they were already shovel ready we needed that 0.8 miles of infrastructure to be able to get them to their site i mean it was somebody down in west palm who wanted to build a company or had built a company he wanted to give it to his daughter and he wanted out and she wanted to be in as fast as she could and so they went where it was fast another good example is about a year ago we had the the local rep the florida rep from csx come to us and kind of beg us saying do you have any sites that are above 70 acres that are rail served we are dying for sites we are dying for these large sites we have these large users that want to use them but people are selling them and piecemealing them all across the county so this would be one of the biggest sites not only in the state of florida with that main line but in the southeast one of 12 right so that would definitely put us on them on the page for some of these very large businesses so i just wanted to add that little bit of context uh once again the chamber is very much in support of this and we appreciate the collaboration between everybody involved thank you thank you for your comments mr mcdaniels welcome welcome uh thank you for the welcome uh first off i want to say that i got i believe a different perspective on this because of the experience that i've had uh one of the things that i think is is pivotal is understanding the uniqueness of the hawthorne project uh i uh military-wise have served with 143rd transcom 257 transcom uh and 377th out of new orleans and part of the issue even with the site that you have out at today out here at the airport is the uniqueness because you're three hours away from tampa and you're three hours away from savannah now what site can do what hawthorne site does in connectivity to the three ports that are on our eastern coast so i believe that if you keep it at the current proposal you will be one of 12 but if you do other types of things and play with it you won't be and you use lose the uniqueness of the opportunity and i urge you and encourage you to help the citizens of hawthorne i'm a long-term citizen there or in the area we need employment for the children we need employment for the adults we need all of those types of things this provides an opportunity for that i concur with what you've done it was a great negotiation between everybody people were willing to give up some to get some so that's what we should see in government and i thank you for allowing that opportunity thank you larry thanks for being here next speaker mo um i feel like aaron brockovich right now so i'm going to start with my quote my what was going to be my closing comment and this is not my first rodeo with warehauser so let us return to the drawing board warehauser is not the answer warehauser is like dancing with the devil let us truly empower hawthorne and the environment wild doing no harm let us please organize a town hall on this as this is not just about hawthorne the decisions made here tonight will affect thousands of wildlife habitat wetlands water and the next seven generations as we say as an indigenous person a whole mitakweas and all my relations i implore acboc to vote no for the following reasons let us look at the gifford pinchow warehauser in washington where i'm here from the olympic national forest and the whole national force i will gather facts on every community that warehauser destroyed and divided and their trained spin doctors divided our communities hawthorne mayor and city manager i can show you this i will also share with you redwood summer where former maxam corporation and pacific lumber employees during redwood summer in 1998 after years of working against the environmental movement several pacific lumber and maxam employees joined forces with us became environmentalists why because their houses slid into the matole river they lost their homes so you can speak about the acoe approval like that is something good no acoe is not good acoe approved the dakota pipeline which impacted tons of indigenous communities in a truly negative way also warehauser uses these wonderful terms like harvest natural resources conservation asset and capitalize all of which are spin doctor words and concepts who is going to relocate all of the species that are in these wetlands and some of you spoke of rick scott thank god i was not here during rick scott's mortarboard tenure because rick scott destroyed florida i do my research so again please please please vote no on this and there are so many other things like permaculture farm mushroom farms sunflower farms hemp farms that you can actually really empower hawthorne without destroying the environment also there were so many questions by some of the commissioners to greg he was not able to give a clear answer they're looking for ways to get them in cheaper and out quicker speaking of investor developers we have conceptual plans quote unquote i remember trump saying that when asked about health care nationally so let's get back to the basics we have an ability to not sell out land to warehauser that is not the solution we have an ability to have further conversations with hawthorne and empower them so they are not coming to you in 20 years and saying you know what we made a really bad decision we can really do the right thing with this and i implore you to also bring on ecologists and biologists from the sierra club thank you thank you ma'am next speaker please all right hello my name is ronald cobb the second thank you for having me tonight um and also thank you for taking up this issue um so my background i have a background in construction and real estate so right now um i grew up in hawthorne florida so i've lived there my entire life but now with papine realty we have a 400 home development in hawthorne florida just across the putnam county line so we work a lot hawthorne is being discussed in so many other places than just here in gainesville literally yesterday i had the privilege i was sending site plans up to atlanta because that's where people are talking about what's going on um in hawthorne with the development that we're working on out there so the united states has you know a housing crisis right now nationwide where there are not enough housing there's not enough places for families to be and to live and so out there where our development is at papine you know we are offering um houses that are literally in many cases at like national home builder prices but this is local so um thank you for taking up this issue i think that this is very very important for the collaboration for the community there's just a lot going on and there's a lot of people obviously who are affected and who are involved but it's wonderful i think for me to be able to see hawthorne grow especially having lived there my grandfather um him and his brothers had a construction company so they built um the house that i grew up in they built the house next door to that and they had land in hawthorne and so it was wonderful to uh be a part of a family that did that um but also just to see okay well how can we move this forward now as well um for the people who come behind so i think this is really really important again thank you for all of you um and your consideration and thought to the idea i mean just sitting out there and listening to the conversation and the collaboration that was happening it was very very it was refreshing to know that okay well people are standing here talking and then you're also listening and processing that information but that it's not just you know in one ear and out of the other but the realization that lives are being impacted by the decisions that happen in this room so again thank you so much um thank you for the wirehouser team and thank you for everyone who's come to the table and the people from the city of hawthorne as well just to ensure that this issue has the consideration and um the thought uh that it needs so that it can be done thoughtfully in a way that does not negatively impact the community and the goals moving forward so thank you so much thank you mr cobb thanks for being here tonight all right anyone else go once go twice we're good okay let's bring it back to the board um sylvia do you have some revised wording for the motion to consider yes mr chair i'm sending it to the printer right now i was going to hand it up can you send it to the clerk to put it up too can you get email here we could put it on the that's where we'll put it oh okay oh printed i see that's right if you want it on the screen i was saying she could email it to you then you could but that's fine that should be back shortly orban has been relegated to the printer fetcher he relegated himself there that's nice additional additional duties as assigned absolutely as assigned we all collate how about the gators i feel like we're just sitting here quietly and i couldn't get any worse yeah right i was going to say does anybody know any good jokes that's usually that's a dangerous thing that's i was going to say that's usually the one that people throw out there they're still waiting on high springs returns yeah we could get an election update voter turnout is up to 19.4 percent for a city of gains we could get a copy to the um applicant thank you okay if the reader of the motion could just read that um that looks accurate okay second or okay with the warning um yes the wetland and surface water impacts okay so um i'll go ahead and just read it into the record where how they're lot owners and contractors constructing infrastructure example roads railroads utility shall be restricted to impacting no more than 44 acres of wetlands and surface waters within the boundaries to the hawthorne industrial park but outside the delineated wildlife corridor conservation area the only impacts allowed within the wildlife corridor conservation area without additional approvals from the border county commissioners are the east west railroad spur and access roadway additional approvals of impacts within the wildlife corridor conservation area will be reviewed by the border county commissioners in accordance with the county-wide wetland protection code impacts may only occur after final development plan approvals by hawthorne showing wetland and surface water impacts warehouser and subsequent property owners within the hawthorne industrial park required to be required to submit and receive construction level environmental resource permits erps from the saint john's river water management district concurrent with the erp applications the county-wide wetland protection report will be submitted to the elastra county environmental protection department with copies of the construction plans district communications and mitigation report environmental protection department staff will correspond with the applicants and district staff on evaluation and proposal of wetland and surface water impacts associated acreages designated mitigation i think we need to add applicant the applicant will put the mitigation area whatever that condition was i have a question about that the applicant will put the mitigation the 1500 we have to off-site mitigation off-site mitigation will be done up front i i but to that point if if we're asking for that off-site mitigation up front then when when or if they come back about any impacts to the wildlife corridor conservation area we shouldn't require any additional mitigation for that since they're mitigating it up front we just need to negotiate you know what i'm saying we're asking for mitigation up front for for that and i'm getting a lot of knotted heads so if we're asking them to come back about that 39 acres we can't ask for additional mitigation for that because they've already mitigated it they haven't mitigated it because they're yeah that that was there oh you're talking about the the off-site mitigation i'm talking about that they yes you see they know what i'm talking about so i i just think i think we need to make sure that we don't set them up for failure for failure in the future so as long as it meets the parameters for the total amount of acres right as long as the off-site mitigation as long as there's still the appropriate amount of acres within that then that would still count towards the off-site mitigation for any impacts that are approved yes by the few by future accounting commissions is what you're saying right exactly okay that's i think that's fair i think we should be fair so part three would be i think she's writing it so mr chair we're thinking it would say something like off-site mitigation area which is the 443 acres will be put into permanent protection prior to any wetland impacts okay can you reset that make sure off-site mitigation area which is the 443 acres will be put into permanent protection prior to any wetland impacts wetland or surface water impacts but that doesn't address my concern though yes it does because that's 443 acres so oh okay but okay i guess we just you were talking about if they came back and asked for additional that we wouldn't ask for any additional mitigation right that's what i want to make sure that some future commission doesn't say um you you have to have additional mitigation because they've already mitigated okay so are you is the maker of the motion okay with what sylvia just read yes okay second or okay i'm okay with that part i just want to make sure we are covering yeah i think i think this covers it and this is the intent of the board any other questions from the board or comments i got commissioner prisia i think commissioner alfred hold okay commissioner alfred does everybody understand the motion yes okay uh any further discussion seeing none can i just say something really quick i just want to say something to the mayor and and the commission of hawthorne i thank you for being patient i know that this has been a long conversation and i think this is a good compromise and it's a good way forward and i would just ask that as you you know i i i would love to believe that wire house would be a long-time partner and help us achieve our goals and attract really quality employers to this space but i don't know if that's the case they may sell this to another developer who wants to do those same kind of things we don't know they sell all the parcels to individuals but i think no matter what happens i hope that you know we're an edo now and we really want to work with you to attract quality employers that meet our values that are going to bring high-paying jobs and clean industry to our community and we will work with you to make that possible so thank you so much for being here with us and for continuing to be collaborative and work with us on compromise and to the applicant and their hard work thank you for being willing to compromise as well especially on the fly yeah and i i would add that it is not um it's not lost on me that a majority of the hawthorne commission is sitting out there and has been working on this project for some time and i appreciate you all being here and hopefully you can take back the collaborative effort that this commission wants to have with you not just tomorrow and the next day but for the years going forward okay and with that let's take it to a vote all those in favor of the motion say aye aye any opposed that motion is unanimous okay thank you all very very much very kind for y'all to applause you didn't have to do that okay um we have one more order of business madam manager we passed a motion at the very end of the morning meeting and you have heard from the manager do you have uh something you want to tell us um yes mr chair if you could include in that previous motion or pass motion now to give the manager the ability to spend the money for the hundred thousand or the two hundred thousand for bread of the mighty and for the resource centers because her cap is 50 so if it could just be clear that she has the authority to go ahead and spend so moved i'm happy to add that as long as the focus is on the local food local produce on the fresh fruits and vegetables that was part of the mission okay great all right second yeah second hey guys um if if y'all could just give us a one quick second where we're going to wrap up and then we can chat in the chambers all right so we got a motion in a second to give the manager authorization on the earlier motion any discussion any public discussion back to the board all those in favor say aye aye any opposed that motion is unanimous any commission comments or can we call it a night call it a night this is in your inbox you've been talking about ai we've been talking about surveillance we've been talking about those issues i just this is in your inbox i it's a good read okay all right we are adjourned talk away thank you