Save Our Indian River Lagoon on 2026-05-15 8:30 AM - May 15, 2026

Bankhead, is this thing on? I'm Dick Bankhead filling in, obviously. John Dice. Can you pull it a little bit closer to the microphone? Oh, sure. Because I need to sit back. I need all the help I can get. My wife would attest to it, too. So if we could get started. Okay, roll call. Donald Dice. Mark Trope. Yes, please. Rick Nipper. Bruce Larson. Here. Kimberly Newton. Deborah Harmon. Here. Laura Lee Thompson. Here. Nicholas Sanzone. Here. Richard Bankhead. Here. Aaron Adams. Kurt Smith. Fred Goldstein. Here. Trevor Wall Scanlon. Eric Maness. Here. John Windsor. Here. Charles Venuto. Here. Are you going to do the agenda, or do you want me to? You can do it. I was just going to clarify a bit. Please. Aaron Adams should be joining online. He is online. Yes, I'm here. Okay. Okay, approval of the agenda. I'll make a motion to approve the agenda. All right, do we have a second? Yeas? Noes? Yeas. Yeas. Yeas. Sorry. So that was, Deb made the motion. Who was the second? Fred. Okay. We have a new assistant, Bethany, and Jeannie, y'all met last month. She's trying to train Bethany. So if we can just help Bethany with the names today. Appreciate it. Minutes. Approval. I'll make a motion to approve the minutes. This is Deb. Second. All in favor? Aye. Those against? Okay. Trying hard today to get through. We have a lot. And if we could, we'd like to get to 11 o'clock and get to something about new, just past new business. So if we could hang in there and work hard towards that, I'd appreciate it. So for my monthly progress report, I'm going to be very brief because you get more detailed quarterly reports next. So just the top line, the 133 community projects completed, it says 2,499 homeowner projects, but if you include all of the connections that have been made to the sewer expansion projects so far, that's 2,954 homeowner projects. And of those, 994 are connections to sewer. Terry submitted our federal work plan to the National Estuary Program. Bev removed one more derelict vessel. The public hearing on extending the sales tax will be Tuesday morning at 9 a.m. downstairs in the commissioning chambers. Uh, and the annual audit for the trust fund has been completed. It's going to be presented to the county audit committee on Wednesday, May 20th, and then we'll have the auditors present that to this committee in your July meeting. Um, on the, the back side, uh, lots of presentations. Um, thanks to Fred for helping us with Blue Origin, two, two, um, events at Blue Origin, Brevard Zoo. Um, we had a great time with Project Sea Safe and, uh, the Clean Water Collective. The National Estuary Program allowed us to, uh, present a couple of their subcommittees. Um, VR High School and Cocoa Beach City Council, uh, it, for people looking for events or ways to volunteer, um, there's the Eyes on Seagrass Blitz, uh, throughout the month of May that's being hosted by Florida Sea Grant. Um, lots of ways to participate with Waterway Warriors or Marine Resources Council or Keep Brevard Beautiful or Brevard Zoo or, uh, IFAS Sea Grant, um, Surf Rider, or for folks wanting to help mark storm drains, there's a email link for Carlos Cuervos, who, uh, works for our stormwater program. Um, and so just, uh, under future topics, the only thing I would add there is the, the audit report that I just mentioned. We'll come back to you in July. That's my report, Chair. Good morning. Okay. We have received 4.0 million, 4.0 million for February collections, and the total revenue from conception is 522 million. For the monthly financial statement, the anticipated 571 million in revenue by the end of the fiscal year was 29.1 million. For expenditures, the total assigned to projects and programs is 100.8 million, and actual spending is 19.6 million. Since this is a quarterly, this is our, yeah, so, so last month there was a request to kind of show, um, how the, the total assigned and the total spent for this, um, month fits in with the, with the bigger picture. So we added that graph at the bottom of the sheet, if that helps address the committees. So for the financial tables for the second quarter, it, which everyone has the package with them. Scroll through that quick, quickly. And then our grant financial tables for the second quarter. And as I'm scrolling through here, does anyone have any questions? Thank you. Um, I have a couple. Um, so looking at public education, it looked like there was $4,742,000 budgeted for public education. And, like, I assume that the cumulative actuals, that's what's actually been spent. So $2,068,000. Are we going to spend the other $2,000,000 on public education? Do we have plans for that? Yes, just over multiple years. Okay. Then, um, this one's really specific. The Titusville Causeway Shoreline Vegetation Project, it looked like $35,326 was budgeted, $5,629 spent. We did, we did have some freeze, you know, freeze impacts. Um, is there a way that we can spend more of that $35,000 on the shoreline vegetation on the Titusville Causeway? Okay, so part of that project includes monitoring and survivability of those plants. So, if need be, if they need to replant something, that is a possibility. Okay, thank you. Okay. Bruce, you had a question, right? Yeah, so, um, a couple meetings ago, we had started to see a declining trend in sales tax revenue. I'm wondering if the trend is continuing, and do we have a, uh, current, uh, percentage gap from plan, uh, projected end of year gap, and what does that mean for next year? If the program continues. Well, a lot of the sales tax drop is, because right now we're looking at February. So, the previous month, you're looking at January, and then you were looking at December. So, things were dropping a little bit. Um, and I think when we do the quarterly, which I believe will be next month, where we're receiving the past three months, and I think that figure will increase. Yeah, I guess my, my concept, we, we, we had new legislation that says sale tax holidays and new categories of sale, of exemptions that were the main drivers in a reduction in revenue for us as a body. Uh, and I was wondering if that trend was continuing, or, uh, if we can expect it to be next year as well. I think it, yeah, I think it is going to be a roller coaster. Yeah, and so some months are better than expected, and more months are worse than expected. So, I still think we will come up a little short on our 583 million, but it's really hard to say, because, you know, it'll be down two months, and then way up a third month, and then back down, and then up. Yeah, no, that's good, I just think they're, you know, perhaps at the quarterly, if you could summarize what you think the main drivers of that are, so that when, you know, uh, leadership, the commissions at the county level are thinking about a half cent for the future, what does that mean? It's actually not the same as it was before, so it's not like you're doing the same as before, you're actually going to be doing less than before. Thank you. Okay, any other questions? Okay, thank you. Okay, good morning. I'm going to go over the quarterly presentation with everybody. So, this is for progress from January through April. I'm going to start off with the Titus Bill Nanobubbles. This is not a Sorrel-funded project, but Sorrel is participating in the monitoring of this project, and I think it was last month or the previous month, Aaliyah gave her little presentation on our zooplankton imager, and we have some images, so I wanted to share those with everybody, so. Okay, going into public education, um, we have seven projects. One is complete, and that's the oyster gardening project, and we have six ongoing. I'm going to let Brandon go into more detail on all of these education campaigns, but for the Restore Our Shores project, that's now 80% complete. This project focuses on outreach, oyster gardening, clam restoration, and the seagrass nursery, and here we have our very own Fred Goldstein with his oyster habitat. For wastewater treatment facility upgrades, we now have 10 projects in the plan, and four are complete. The West Melbourne Ray Bullard facility began construction in November. It is now at 9% complete, and they're continuing excavating work and started on some electrical work. And Melbourne has the Grant Street water reclamation facility. They're planning to rebid that one in June. Um, the South Brevard water reclamation facility received their deep well injection permits, and their preliminary design work is underway. The South Beaches is preparing for bid, and the Port St. John wastewater treatment facility has a task order open looking for potential locations to relocate that plant. And the Cove was recently approved in the 2026 plan update and has not yet gone to contract. Rapid infiltration and spray fields, we have two projects. Uh, the Long Point project was one of our first completed projects, um, and then we have the Sterling House condominium, and we are waiting for our, uh, media testing results before we proceed with that project. For package plants, we have two in the plan. One is complete at Oak Point, and the Willow Lakes is receiving their bids today, so they should be going to construction in the next couple of months for that project. For our sewer laterals, we have six projects in the plan. Five of the smoke testing projects are complete, and the open one is the repairs for those, um, leaks. So this quarter we had an additional eight repairs, uh, so now we have 1,173 of 1,209 repairs complete. For our septic to sewer, we have 42 projects in the plan. Five are completed, 15 are in construction, and 17 are in design. The county is assisting the city of Melbourne with three of their septic to sewer projects, and letters were recently mailed out to the Roxy residents, who have not yet connected. Um, South Beaches O and P, uh, construction broke ground. Uh, Zone O is now about 50% complete, and Zone P will have significant progress in the coming weeks. Mico, the final as-builts were completed, and property owners are gathering quotes for connections. Sikes Creek N is making progress. They're excavating to build the lift station, wet well, and pump house, and run the force main to connect two of the existing sewer. Sikes Creek Zone T poured the vacuum pump house foundation, and Lake Ashley completed their first asphalt lift, tied in, and pressure tested the force main, and poured the concrete pads. And Dundee Circle also completed the first asphalt lift, installed sewer lines, and manholes, and milled the road. Merritt Island Zone C, Zone F, and South Banana B are being bid together for economy of scale, and are in the bid queue. South Central A had a successful bid, purchasing advertised the notice of intended award to the lowest bidder, which closes today. And then we will begin the contracting process for that. We have 13 in the design phase. Sharps A, B, and Coco C are having bid documents prepared. South Central D completed initial data collection, and are evaluating sewer system types. And there are four projects that have not yet been contracted, but the Palm Bay Zone A scope is currently under review. Here's our septic upgrades and quick connects. This quarter, we received an additional 213 applications for septic upgrades and completed 134 of those, bringing our total to 787 septic upgrades. We also received an additional 15 quick connect applications, and nine septic tanks were connected, bringing our total to 539. For stormwater projects, we have 248 in the plan, and 58 are complete. This quarter, we completed two more. The city of Titusville completed their Coleman Pond Circulator and their Osprey Pond Circulator projects. Those are pictured here. In the construction phase, we began work on Basin 2258, the Babcock Road woodchip bioreactor. And then Basin 1280B Flamingo Road denitrification project is completing punch list items, so that one's about done. We also have the Cocoa Beach Ramp Road project underway. Most of the stormwater pipes and inlets have been installed. There was a delay in the project due to discovering ordinance, and they will be requesting a time extension to address that. Melbourne has the Apollo General Aviation baffle box underway, but they're experiencing some issues with dewatering. But that same contractor began construction on Espanola baffle box, and that is anticipated to be completed in the next couple of months. The final design is completed for Basin 1398 Sand Dollar, and construction started this week. We have another eight projects in the design phase. Kings Mill has the design and permits underway. The Huntington Pond existing conditions model is complete, and comments have been sent back on the drainage report. The Angel Ave project is working with FPL to get power to the site to operate the pump. Elliott has a design at 60% complete, but may need some revisions based on most recent surveys. Richland project has 60% design complete, and they are working on the 90%. Spring Creek baffle box is in design, and they're looking to acquire land for the project. And St. John's River Water Management C10 project has about 3% of the design completed. We have 3 stormwater projects that are where contracting is underway, and 9 that are not contracted but are planned to get underway in the near future. For vegetation harvesting projects, we have 11, and 10 of these are now complete. This quarter, the unincorporated countywide vegetation harvesting 3 project began, and they're working in the southern chain of Lakes ponds, and that's an image of what that looked like before they got started. We have 21 muck removal projects and 15 interstitial projects in the plan. This quarter, restoration continued at the Grand Canal dredge material management area, where about 800 native plants were planted, and the center was seeded and sodded, and a new fence has been installed. The O'Galley contractor has been mobilizing. A notice to mariners was issued letting boaters know about the pipeline, and the contractor is expected to start dredging in June. We successfully transferred the Cocoa Beach muck capping project from the city of Cocoa Beach to the county, and we've been working with FPL to provide power to the site, and the contractor is starting to mobilize. Sykes Creek Phase 1, or sorry, Phase 2, the bid documents are currently under internal review, and we anticipate advertising within the next few months. And then we have 11 projects in the design phase, and Titusville East, just as a reference, Titusville East and West was combined into one project in the plan update. And that had the muck probing and fiber cores completed, and we're evaluating design options. Indian Harbor Beach and Satellite Beach are piggybacking on the O'Galley contract and plan to start dredging their canals next year. Spring Creek project estimates came in higher than expected, and staff are evaluating their project, and we have three that are currently uncontracted. For oyster bars, we have 28 projects in the plan, and 15 are complete. This quarter, the zoos started construction on the Coquina walls on the central and north project areas. We have five oyster projects in design, and five are uncontracted, but we do have contracting underway for the ZIP project. Under planted shorelines, we have 10 projects in the plan, and nine are complete, and we have contracting underway for the Hub SeaWorld Research Institute Coconut Point shoreline project. Under the clam aquaculture stimulus, we have contracted with all 18 out of 18 farmers, and we now have a waiting list of farmers waiting to participate in the program. This quarter, we reimbursed seven farmers, and these are some of their photos that they shared. The IRL clam project also completed seeding 15 million clams at the grant location. On April 25th, as Virginia mentioned, Project Sea Safe held an event there where the community helped plant mangroves, clean up the shoreline, and got to watch the drone take off, fly, and the picture on the right shows the little baby clams going into the water. We're going to be monitoring the survivability of this project over the next year or so, and then the Titusville project finished the pre-monitoring. So in overview, we are at 183,000 pounds of annual total nitrogen reduction and 144,000 pounds of one-time reductions, equaling 3,027,300 pounds. We've received 231 scopes of work, 217 projects have completed, or in design, 170 have completed construction, and 133 are now complete. So I just wanted to break this down so you could see it in one spot. So we've completed one education project, 16 wastewater projects, 68 stormwater projects. This is including the vegetation harvesting, seven muck and interstitial projects, and 41 restoration projects. And then, as Virginia mentioned earlier, our homeowner projects, we have almost 3,000, 2,954 projects completed there. So as an overview, here's our infographics showing where we are with our total nitrogen and total phosphorus removal, and then here is where we are at the end of 2025 with our cumulative total nitrogen reduction. We're just under 1.2 million pounds with all those projects completed combined. And then here, this is that same graph showing our cumulative total nitrogen reduction, and then on the top line shows our average lagoon total nitrogen concentration. So in 2016, we had an average of about 1.6 milligrams per liter, and in 2024, we're just under 1.2 milligrams per liter. So we've seen a decrease in the total nitrogen concentrations. That's good. And then here is the overview of where we are financially. We've spent $107 million on projects. We've received $127 million in additional grant funds. $336 million are contracted projects. We've spent an in-progress $450, almost $455 million. Collected $522 million for our projected $583 million. Lastly, I want to share the, on Tuesday, St. John's River Water Management District shared their latest seagrass documentation. And so in 2025, their aerial surveys documented over 17,000 hectares of seagrass. So this is a 7,000 hectare increase from 2023. And that equates to just over 13,000 football fields since 2023. And I think you have this information printed at your stations. And that is all I have. Well done. Thank you. And Terry, or perhaps Virginia, it would be, is it St. John's, do they do a chart that shows which areas are most contributing to that seagrass increase and which ones are falling behind? And would that allow us to focus funding geographically? So, yes, they have maps. They've released the maps on their website of where the seagrass is recovering. So you can see that. The way that the funds are distributed and the projects are located is more to do with how much improvement is needed in the water quality. Because the seagrass response, while it is related to water quality, it's also related to things like seed bank availability and, you know, supply of seagrass to come in. So, that... No, no, I get it. It's just, if you look at what are the big winds for us, the average resident doesn't see water quality. They smell water quality, perhaps, but they see manatees, and manatees need seagrass, and quality of life may need clams and oysters or whatever. But, so if we look at, is the projects that we're investing in being successful, are they contributing to enhancement of the seagrass beds? Then great. Well, let's take credit for that and say, yes, double down on this as we look at redoing the half penny sales tax. Right, so we're seeing the majority of the seagrass recovery is in the northern part of the county, you know, Mosquito Lagoon, the North Indian River, and the northern Banana River. The central lagoons are from 192 south, is seagrass recovery is not really happening there. So, we have a lot of work. But, the district's C10 rediversion project should make a huge difference in water quality in that stretch of the lagoon. But, again, if the biggest challenges and worst problems were north, in the dead ends of our lagoon, and that's where a lot of the focus has been and a lot of the big projects have been, then they're being successful, not only because we can measure the water quality, but we're being successful because we're recovering seagrass. Thanks. Laura, Lillia? Yeah, the St. Johns River Water Management District, that map that you showed, that was in a press release. And I think it would be really beneficial if y'all could send that press release out to the COC members, because it does have links to the maps. And when you look at the web map and follow it from the Mosquito Lagoon all the way down to Jupiter Inlet, it's so obvious where the successful areas are. And I think it would be really helpful if you guys had access to that. Thank you. Yeah, a couple of questions. I think it was 230 or 213 applications this quarter for SIPP. Is that up relative, given our new approach? I know you were getting hammered, so what's... Yes, but I don't know if we would have gotten there anyway. We certainly have more interest since we introduced the $6,000 minimum. I have us at about 100 or so total homeowners who are impacted by that minimum being part of the program. So I do think we're just naturally more popular, given state, statute, and word of mouth going around. Yeah, and the second, the graph that showed the nitrogen, can you send me the study that that was done on, that that came from, that showed the drop over time of the nitrogen in the water? Yeah, that's from the water management district's data. Okay, it's just from their data that you pulled, okay. Yeah, so that is the average annual concentration in the banana and north combined. The central is pretty flat line. Yeah, I was wondering where they pulled it. Okay. Yes, sir. Yeah, so more of a comment, but one of the graphs got my attention was the vegetation harvesting, and I think there was nine or ten discrete projects that have been completed, and the last one, I don't know, was uncontracted, but it said to me that that's going to be an ongoing project for all the unincorporated areas for the vegetative harvesting, or at least that's the impression I got. No, when they submit the application, they specify which lakes they're going to concentrate on, and they're not ones that have been previously funded with sorrel funds. Gotcha. But I think it also, from a longer-term perspective, that this is something that's going to have to go on all the time, you know, like cutting your lawn or, you know, some other project that you have to do weekly or some frequency. So something that should be communicated to our public as well. Thank you. One more quick comment. I was out Tuesday fishing, which was great, until the dolphins showed up, and we had to stop, but the, off of 528, but south of 528, I put out a video, super clear, and I saw, I took my GoPro and was shooting under, and there was star grass there, and then later, when I went through the video, I saw some other grass, and I'm not the grass expert yet, that also is there, so I've been submitting those, but it was fascinating to see there was more than just areas of star grass that were starting to come in, but other grass as well. Question, just between us. You started us, Lorela, explaining how Titus Wheels developed north of US-1, and then I drove that, and then both ways. I was shocked, well, one, it was so accurate. So sometimes we look, there's so many things going, should we look at that on all the things that are going there north of US-1? That water comes down a lot farther from St. John's, and I ever dreamed. I'm not sure I understand your question, but are you talking about, as you drive north on US-1, north of Titusville, you don't see the view of the river anymore, and it's kind of out of sight, out of mind? No, no, no, not at all, not at all. Maybe we need to do this one-on-one, but when I went back there, and then I drove up, you know, 46, 50, yada, yada, I had no idea that water came as close to the Indian River as it did. And you were saying it was developed back in, you know, the 50s or 60s there, and so, and I'm sure we've done a whole bunch of things there, and I just hadn't put the whole picture together. I'm still not quite understanding your question. Okay, we'll do it one-on-one. Okay, yeah. I apologize. The sorrel has done extensive work in the ditches in the north end of the county, putting in bioactivated media and different ways to try to filter the stormwater as it's flowing through those ditch systems and going into the northern Indian River Lagoon, and I think that has helped. I mean, that's where the seagrass is growing. And if you look at that map on the St. John's website, and you'll see a long strip of seagrass all along the western shore of the Indian River Lagoon, and it's there, and I think probably that has a lot to do with it, because we have spent, the county has spent a lot of money in that northern Indian River Lagoon, retrofitting all that ditch system that's up there. Thank you. Sorry, Brad. Apologies. All right. So now we'll talk about communications as reminders for the previous quarter, so January through March, and we continue to increase on our website for the county. Now, just a quick note, the county has recently, just as of yesterday, they have updated their website across the whole county. So it's the same information that was there before, but it's in a different format and different navigation. So it's supposed to be more mobile-friendly for people using cell phones. But we encourage you to take a look at it if you have any questions, comments, or having a hard time finding anything, you know, let us know. So they've put at the top some basically quick link buttons, pages that people go to most frequently, and those will change as needed throughout. So they will let us change some of those, like when we have our project application time, we can put that button up there as a highlight just so people can get there quick when they go to the home page. And Lagoon Loyal, it, you know, has been pretty steady, you know, over the last, compared to the last quarter or two, it's, you know, has its ups and downs as far as the website views go. So, and they have been increasing in their sign-ups, though, so even though we haven't rolled out the new reward system yet, it's getting more attention and more people are starting to sign up for that program and just to get more information on how they can help the lagoon. So I think we're getting more awareness of the Lagoon Loyal program, which is good. And on our social media, we, you know, again, see spikes on certain things. There will be a topic or two that gathers public interest, and our top posts this time around was one on just as people are doing their spring trimming and things, not to pile their branches and other things near the stormwater drains. And then we also had one we put out on the cold weather warning when we were getting close to the freeze, and just to let people know where to report if they had any fish kills. So those were our top. And normally, the top in views are also tend to be the top in the number of comments, but this month was a little different, so I added that in. Normally, I don't show you the top engagement ones, so people who like, comment, share. Typically, they run the same because the more engagement you get, the more Facebook tends to push those posts out. But for whatever reason, this month or this quarter, the top commented or top engaged ones were completely different from the most views. So we had one about our 125th project completed, one of our clam projects, and then the World Seagrass Day post that we put out. Lagoon Loyal Facebook, you know, same kind of pattern that we were looking at with ours. And the Lagoon Loyal one has started doing business spotlights of Lagoon Loyal businesses, and that was one of their top views this quarter was one for change of greenery, which was one of the native plant landscapers who helped us with the community action project where we had people in the communities doing the, you know, whatever communities had most actions, got a reward, and change of greenery helped us with the planting of the reward in the Rockledge area. So they put a butterfly garden in one of the community centers up there. And then their other post was one reminding people that if you have a brown lawn in the winter, it's a normal thing, and you don't need to dump a bunch of fertilizer on it to try to make it green. And as I said, you know, the engagement usually goes the same, and theirs did follow that pattern. Our Instagram, of course, our numbers on Instagram still are a lot lower than our Facebook. Facebook tends to be where people go the most, but we do get, you know, engagement on Instagram as well. And the top post there was the one about our freeze warning, where to report fish kills. And then we had to make a second amended post of that because we did not realize the fish kill hotline is only operable during the weekdays. And on the weekends and evenings, it goes to a voicemail that tells them to call the main FWC emergency line. So it was no longer monitored regularly. So we did a change in the post and gave out the main emergency line just so that people over the weekend wouldn't have to make an extra step to call one number just to be told to call another. And the engagement also was a little different in our Instagram for Save Our Lagoon. So we had one of our HAB reports that got a lot of engagement relatively for Instagram and then one of those cold-weather ones. Then Lagoon Loyal, so they do a little better on Instagram than Sorrel does. We do better on Facebook than Lagoon Loyal, but they do better on Instagram. And their top ones, they did a series of Valentine's posts. So it had different lagoon animals they could scroll through and send someone a lagoon valentine. And then another one on the floating vegetative islands. And again, there is tracked the same both in engagement and number of views. Our newsletter is continuing to get more subscribers. So we get a handful each month, and then we'll see spikes when we go out and do programs. We try to sign people up with those programs. And so we should see the next report will have a larger spike in the number of people signing up just because we did a lot of programs in the month of April for that Earth Day, Earth Month. And our open rate continues to be above the national average. A little better open rate on the general monthly newsletter than the HAB newsletter, but they're both above the national average, so I'm happy with that. But the reach on the newsletter, on the HAB report, isn't because we had a decrease in the number of people. It is because we had more weeks in the month of January than in February and March. So it goes by just by the sum of the ones we put out. And if you have any questions, I'm happy to take them. Yeah, I'm sorry. Two questions. When you show Lagoon Loyal, that's the outsourced that's done by the external marketing company? Right. And is there any other projects besides Lagoon Loyal that the outsourced marketing company is covering or providing? Yeah. So they work – Lagoon Loyal is a collaboration both with Sorrel and with Stormwater. And so they do some programs through Stormwater just to meet the goals of the Stormwater Department, but it's under that Lagoon Loyal umbrella. Okay. And is the contract – I don't know if you know this off the top of your head, but the outsourced marketing company that we use, is that contract available for us to review easily? It's on the website? Yeah. It's on the website? It's on our contract – the county's contract management database. So not under Sorrel specifically, but I can find that. And if I can't, I can hit someone up and you can help me. Yeah. Okay. All the county's contracts are on a contract management system that's available to the public. Yes. Okay, great. And the funding breakdown – in Terry's report, it was $4 million was – excuse me, what was budgeted. Is there a line item for that that I'm just missing on where those dollars have been spent in marketing, like how much of it went to Restore Our Shores, how much of it went to Lagoon Loyal's contract? Is there a line item somewhere that's already created? It might – again, Virginia's opening our grid, so is – so on each contract that's there, it's in my packet right now in front of me. Thank you. That's great to know. Yeah. I thought as much, but I wanted to cover it while I had your attention. Okay. Table one in the performance table. Yeah. So we break down the – Oh, yeah. The outreach education, the fertilizer, ponds, grass clippings, all of those different subcomponents. So, again, if I wanted more specific information, that would be under the contracts. So I did review that this week, just for the record, so that you know that I did look at that, the table one. So I actually have a screenshot on my phone right now. That breakdown is – will I be able to find the specifics on, like, what those dollars went to? I just – I don't – again – Yeah, so the contract management has task orders, and so those task orders say specifically how those funds are being spent under the task orders. Because – and I saw, like, Restore Our Shores is 80% complete, and so I was kind of disappointed in that because it seems like a long-term program that should continue. I don't know if that collaboration with the zoo – excuse me – would be relevant for that or if it's something that Sorrel would just step away from and they continue their program. But just wanted to review some of that as we go into more contracts. The percent complete on the education programs are based on the amount of money that's been spent towards that? Yes. So as we reach the limit of that budget, it's going to get to the 100%. Now, if we add more money in at a later time, that's going to then change. Right, and again, looking specifically at Restore Our Shores at 80%, that's something that I think that we should prioritize. It's been a great outreach. Community reach has been good with their programs, and the zoo takes on so much of their responsibility to coordinate that community education. So that's good. Okay, thank you so much. Thank you, Brandon. Oh, I'm sorry. Apologize. No worries. Great work, as always, and that open rate is really impressive. I just want to encourage everyone who's here and listening to subscribe to all these channels, and also the YouTube channels as well. Is there a reason we can get maybe the data on those as well next time and add that to the report? Is it worth adding the subscribers and the views and the click-through for the YouTube? Yeah, YouTube, I mean, I haven't seen – we don't get as much in the way of subscribers on YouTube, and we're getting views and things on there, but, yeah. Okay. Just as a help to boost it on YouTube as well, because I don't know about you all, but I also do scroll the reels on YouTube as much as I do on Facebook. Yeah, on YouTube, we have used that more as a place to house these videos, and then we link to them through the website, so a way that we can have them post on the website, because we can't put them directly on the county website. So we put the links from the YouTube on the county website, and so that drives the people. That makes sense, yeah. I just noticed that the difference between the two pages was a little dramatic in the number of subscribers from the Save Our Lagoon versus Lagoon Loyal. So try to get the Lagoon Loyal numbers up if everyone wants to subscribe to those. Last one. Yeah, I would just add, those YouTube videos are great for responses to questions. You can always go through and find one and use it. Yeah, thanks. Thank you again. Appreciate it. Dick, I had just a quick follow-up to that. I'm sorry. I had just a quick follow-up to my question. Okay. So I did open the first page, the performance table one. So under expanded fertilizer education, it's $975,000. Where would I find the breakdown over where each of those dollars went specifically? Like fertilizer education for social media, for events. So that's in those task orders. That's in the task orders. Yeah, so the task orders gives a percentage. And that's under the county, not soil-specific data. It's under county contracts. And is that grouped in such a way that you could prompt me how to best navigate that, or maybe I'll go try it and then circle back with questions for direction? But there's not, like, is it alphabetical? Is it contract? Is it topic? Is it sorrel? There's a search window, and you can search by the vendor name. There are different ways to search it, but we can, Brandon can help you. Okay. I'm sure he can. Yeah, and the breakdown on those, you know, there's some that goes just towards the general website upkeep to, you know, that has information on, say, fertilizer. And then we have the fertilizer videos, and then advertising those videos during, like, the month of May, they'll boost advertising, pushing those out to more people so that hopefully, you know, people see those. And then we've done different, you know, things like the fertilizer signs in the stores, and those are all wrapped into that fertilizer under different task orders. So each one might happen in a different year, and it'll be under a different task order. Right, well, and at, you know, almost a million dollars just for fertilizer education alone, I'm guessing that those task orders are going to be broad. That could be an extensive list, because I would think increments wouldn't be substantial for each. I mean, I would think it's not two projects at 400 grand each. No. It's multiple. Yes. So, okay. I'll circle back with you if I need help navigating that, but I think I should be good to go. All right. All right. Thank you so much, Brandon. Thank you again. Appreciate it. Video? Yeah, so we'll do our video this time. We did a project up in Titusville, so we gave them funding to put in some circulators into one of the ponds that is, it's near the Osprey Wastewater Treatment Plant, but it's not part of the plant. It's actually in the chain of water treatment that comes down from further upstream, and we'll talk about this in the video, but it connects to some of the other projects that we've done further in Titusville from vegetation harvesting and some of the floating vegetative islands and other areas. So this is the last step before that water gets to the lagoon. They added in some increase in the treatment of the water there through this. We're here today in Titusville at the Osprey Pond, where we're installing a solar bee circulator. So stormwater is collected from miles away from the lagoon, and it travels through pipes, oftentimes emptying into stormwater ponds, where it'll get some treatment removing some of the excess nitrogen and phosphorus pollution. There's different technologies that can be added to these ponds to increase their effectiveness of removal, and one of these is the solar bee circulators, which mix the water, adding in extra oxygen to increase the biological processes that remove that pollution. A solar bee is a solar-powered circulator that is placed in a stormwater pond that helps mix the water. The mixing of the water helps promote oxygen, which will help reduce algae blooms in the future, and it also increases nutrient uptake in the floating islands that we have already placed in the pond. We're putting the solar bee in today, so it's going to help mitigate cyanobacteria blooms. Our intake hose is set about five to six feet down. It's going to pull that water up from that level only, and what that does is it disrupts the cyanobacteria breath cycle, and once we disrupt that, it kills the cyanobacteria and prevents blooms. So, first off, it's anchored on the bottom of the pond here. It's an all-stainless steel structure. It just mixes the water at 5,000 gallons per minute, turns an impeller at 80 RPM, mixes 365 days a year, 24 hours a day. So, we have an electronic control box on top of the solar bee. It's a water-tight housing, but it does have cellular and GPS capabilities. It can communicate with the cloud, so the city can just pull up a web browser, check all the telemetry on it, see the health of the machine overall. To make stormwater systems more effective, we can use what's known as a treatment train, where we're treating the water in several different stages before it reaches the Indian River Lagoon. This pond is connected to upstream stormwater infrastructure in the city. We have other projects upstream of this, including Drayfield vegetation, harvesting Drayfield floating islands that have all been funded through the Save Our Indian River Lagoon program. This is the last pond prior to it discharging directly into the Indian River Lagoon. Even if you live miles away from the lagoon, rainwater can pick up pollution like grass clippings and fertilizer, carry it down our sidewalks and streets into the storm drains and into these stormwater ponds. So, by reducing our fertilizer use or blowing our grass clippings back into our yard, we can keep it out of these ponds and require less treatment before it gets to the lagoon. Visit LagoonLoyal.com for more tips and tricks on what you can do around your home to join all of us in getting to a healthier lagoon faster. So, I really appreciate you putting that circulator in that pond because we get a lot of fish kills in that pond. There's low oxygen and it's a really good place to tarpon fish. So, tarpon come in from the river and hang out in that pond and thank you. Yes, real quick, one thanks for the tarpon insight. And, two, how much does a unit like that cost and how many other ponds like that might there be? The two projects, the Coleman Pond and the Osprey Pond, one was $80,000 and one was $100,000. And there's plenty of stormwater ponds. That's what I'm thinking. Right. And we have a sense of what that reduction will be and be able to measure that. Yeah. Great. Yeah. And that pond also had some floating vegetative islands, if you noticed, in there. Any other questions? Yes. You said 80 and 100. Was that for the whole project or just for the B unit itself? It was for the unit and the installation. So, for the installation. And is that, you know, can we try that in other locations? Is that stormwater pond specific because of currents or is that something that can expand? Are we testing that? Going to find out after this? The county installed one several years ago on Merritt Island where the new amphitheater is and demonstrated the increased uptake in the floating wetlands around it. And then based on that performance, we relocated the system to Wickham Park Pond that needed it more than the Merritt Island Pond did. And we saw, you know, similar uptake there. So, that's what the cost share is based on is the performance that we measured in our applications. Is that the only company that creates that kind of unit? Or do you know? Was there a bid on that? How did we get introduced to that particular? It just looks very efficient. I'm going to have to go see that in person. I don't fish, but I'll. Yeah. The price has doubled, you know, since we got started, like everything has post-COVID. Um, I don't, I don't know what other competing things are, but right in the city. So, you could do other circulator types, not the solar ones, like with electrical. Well, that's one of the things about that particular unit that looked great besides the hugeness of it was that it's solar self-contained. I mean, obviously, you can't hear anything on there. It was very close to homes. Um, but I would imagine that if there was a noise pollution issue, it would have been addressed already. So, it seems efficient in that way as well. We could just get, like, how many ponds, did you say? A lot? A lot. Hundreds. Okay, go ahead. There are 4,400 private HOA ponds, for reference. Yeah, and that particular unit, too, has, like, an uplink so they can monitor how it's performing and do maintenance if needed. Go ahead. Thank you, Chair. Is this the type of thing, like, a mechanical harvester that can be used in a location for a period of time, do its work, and then be moved to another pond? What's, like, is the lifespan of this device capable of going to multiple locations? Well, I think you want the benefit continuously. So, yes, they can be relocated. The only reason we relocated ours was because we had a higher need elsewhere. So, we moved it to where we were going to get the best performance out of it. Once we understood what it could do. Perfect. Well done. Okay, thank you. Appreciate it. Lady of the hour. Anda or Logan, can you turn the TV back to the screen? Thank you. All right. So, our next item is old business, going over the funding application and guidelines. We've done this a couple of times now, and it's been tabled, so I can go over the whole presentation again, if need be. But I just want to highlight that the original application form was designed to be very straightforward and non-onerous on the applicants, gathering as much information as we needed to rank the projects based on their cost effectiveness and total nitrogen reduction. In the previous meeting, Don made a recommendation. So, this is what the current questions look like. Other Indian River Lagoon benefits, and then it has in parentheses biological oxygen demand, reduced risk of overflows, bacteria, et cetera. Don made the recommendation to please review Section 2.3 of the project plan and briefly describe any additional benefits your project may provide in reducing pollutants entering the Indian River Lagoon. And then he has them all listed, and include any additional actions you are considering that could further reduce pollutant inputs into the lagoon. And then one other option was to have these as checkboxes. So, here's just a brief mock-up saying, other Indian River Lagoon benefits, please check all that apply, and here's what it could look like. And then you could enter more information in the other text box here. So, we need guidance if we want to keep the application form the same, possibly accept Don's recommendation, the checkbox recommendation, or something else. Well, I would like to make the motion, but I guess I can't do that, can I? Just discussion. We're not necessarily voting on it, so I think it's just discussion, so yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sorry. I don't want to stay here an hour, okay? And if I had to say off the record, it'd be a motion to adopt Don's recommendation. I thought he did an excellent job. Now, if I'm bad, I'm bad. Now, hands, Lorelai? I like Don's recommendation, but I like the checkbox presentation of it better, because I think it kind of stays with the same format of the rest of the application, and it covers it, and I would make a motion that we approve the form with this addition. Okay. Now, are we in discussion now? Okay. Someone needs a second in discussion. Okay, got it. This is Fred. I'll second that motion. Appreciate the help. Just a quick comment on this, because I think that is a better way to do it. The question is, do we know? So, in other words, we've reduced the water inflow through a project, so suddenly, well, yeah, that should have been packed less bacteria, viruses, et cetera, coming in, but is it meaningful? Is it something we're going to report on? Is it something that requires us to then do something with it, and somebody says, oh, well, suddenly, they checked pesticides, and they didn't? I mean, how is that going to be used? I think we just need to think that through, but I agree with the idea that we can show more broadly what an impact might be, but are there actually measurements of that or anything? I think no, whereas with nitrogen, the others there are. Yes, sir. From a history, I'm sorry I missed the last couple of months, because I tried to truncate this discussion three months ago, and I was unsuccessful then. I'm probably going to be unsuccessful now. I'd like to get it over within the next two minutes if possible, but I don't have a vote, and I can't make a motion. You know, in the eight years I've been reviewing these, I've not heard one committee member bring up an objection or a discussion about what a great benefit there was because somebody filled in the block or mentioned something. In fact, I started noticing that people were leaving it blank, and people were saying, those are great projects. Those are wonderful. And so the message that's going out to the community is this doesn't mean anything to the review committee. So if you're going to include this, you're going to have to go a whole lot more in detail, and you're going to be creating a real big problem for your review because this is all going to have to be documented in some way as being valuable, useful, or some benefit, and you're going to have to quantify it in some way. Why do you want to do that? Remember, the original intent of this, and Charlie said this last time, and I don't think anybody listened to him. The original intent of this was in the early days of this program, when we were reviewing 40 and 50 applications and proposals were very complicated, we got down a couple of cases that were really good proposals, and they were really good projects, and we wanted to fund them all, but we couldn't. And I kept saying, listen, some of these projects offer other benefits. It's not just nitrogen. So we added this thing in there about additional benefits to help us make a decision between two projects. It seems to me we're shifting focus now away from nitrogen and phosphorus being our primary concern, and we're more worried about this because we've spent more time talking about this than we ever talked about nitrogen and phosphorus in the beginning of the review of this program as being what we're actually quantifying. So I would suggest, if you have to put something limited to what Don suggested, I would suggest leaving the process exactly as it is and not adding anything to it. That's what I would suggest. I'll stop there. I believe you, I watched the last two meetings, and I was furious at home with this discussion going on and on. I've vented a little bit now. I feel much better. Thank you. One more. Laura, I'm not sure which one I'd be afraid of. And Dick, I've had my hand up. Somebody, I think. Yeah. If you could. Just a minute. Oh, after. Laura Lee, go ahead and follow up. Well, I would withdraw my motion. Oh. Second. You withdraw? Okay, so in regard to this, this was prompted by some of the conversation that I introduced. My request had nothing to do with additional benefits from projects. My request specifically was, and still is, that any entity that's filling out an application, whoever the point of contact is for that, include if they're using any nitrogen and phosphorus products, specifically to Dr. Windsor's point, in any other management capacity. So if it's a homeowner, are they spending $100,000 a year to maintain their landscape through biocides? So I think we have a huge opportunity here that's twofold. One is for public education, which, again, that's why I'm here. Um, so I will be respectful of time, but this is not something that should be rushed over. Um, I think this is the most important year in sorrel previously, and maybe even going forward, and this is a huge deal. So it just, to simply include a question, what biocides are you using? If you're a city, if you're a homeowner. So if we want to do a checkbox addition, make it very simple, and, um, just checkbox. Are you a homeowner? Are you a city? Are you an organization? Are you a peer group? And what chemicals are you using? What other management processes, you know, for, again, Danny, love you. It's just an easy example for me. City of Melbourne, you're using $250,000 a year, um, biocides. Or for two years, or whatever that might look like. So when does that vendor contract expire, and what means are you looking at your comprehensive plan to discontinue use of that? This year, with the community being more diligent to scrutinize every single thing that this committee has done, and is doing, and will ever do, um, to be able to have, you know, this, the public cares about spraying. Um, we're very public awareness focused this year, um, constantly. And each time we've had members of the community come up and talk about, like, last month, the, the stormwater projects, you know, they are completely compelled by any conversation that includes discontinuing biocides. So whether that's... Bring it to a close. Whether that's spray management, I will finish my thought. Thank you. Well, I... I appreciate your direction, but I have been here, and I would appreciate not interrupting me so that I can finish my thought. It'll go a lot quicker, and you'll be much happier, I'm gonna guess. So, again, community right now, to, to just ignore my repeated requests, to add on there basic, simple questions, are you using these chemicals? And we can even include a link to the state commissioner agriculture approved list of products. Um, you know, it could go more detailed. Who is your certified, licensed green industry best management practice person for this? Or we can keep it simple, what spraying are you using? How much is your budget? And I think that's very comparable. If, if there's an entity that has a half a million or a million dollars to be using on herbicides, and they're coming to us and asking for the same or even less for a different project, this is a huge opportunity for education for those governing, managing people to look at what they're doing, and see how they can improve in best management practices, green industry best management practices. So, it's real simple, and I think as far as public engagement and public light goes, I think if a story were to come out of soil right now, where we are revamping the application to include, at a bare minimum, a low-hanging fruit of what are you using, and how much money are you using on those projects, I just don't see how that's too much to ask. I think, you know, we're last in the world at catching up to the harm that's caused by these chemicals. This is not a debate. If you're still in the debate over whether or not these chemicals cause harm or cancer or water degradation, you know, that's not where we're at. Like, if you're there, go be there. But if you have the, you know, minimum level of education on these subjects, you know. And I recently met an FIT professor who I'll leave unnamed, who I had not had the pleasure of speaking with previously. And they told me, I asked, I said, is there a possibility that these tributaries being treated with these chemicals as maintenance for ditches for stormwater management, is there an option that it's not directly harming the lagoon? And their response was, if that's the case, it's the only water body on the earth that's not directly affected by tributaries being sprayed. So, and this was a professional high-ranking FIT professor who has great knowledge in this. Yes. I would like to ask. Point of order. Point of order. Point of order. I would like to have the body take a vote of confidence of whether we want to add additional time to Kimberly's discussion or not. I don't think we need to vote on whether or not I can continue speaking. But I'll take direction from the chair. I will take direction from the chair to be towards the end. I would like to request that we add questions in direct correlation to education, outreach, and advocacy for the lagoon, that we start gathering data on what entities are using what chemicals, especially how that coincides with them requesting sorrel money. So, for asking taxpayers, for asking citizens to pay for someone's baffle box or that bumblebee thing, which I love, you know, that's great, but we need to have accountability for what is going in. And the general public across the state is completely on board with this. Every community conversation that I have been in, even when they don't know who I am or that I'm on sorrel, that I care about fertilizer, goes back directly to what sprays, what herbicides, what pesticides, what water quality treatments are being used. And I think that it's absolutely all but nefarious to not include gathering this and quantifying this kind of data as we move forward with who is using funds for the best use and best purpose and not just saying, hey, we'll spend half a million bucks on spray and we'll go to sorrel and get the money for a different project. Even if that's what the outcome is, ultimately, that accountability is key. That conversation is key. And so, I don't know if that's something that we need to vote to add these questions to. I would hope that sorrel would look at this as an opportunity to educate the community about the use of these poisons and also as an opportunity to show the community that we actually are listening as an oversight committee for the citizens over what they're saying and what is important to them. It's twofold. It's an opportunity. It's easy. It's a grant. It's not too much work. I understand the basics of streamlining the application makes complete sense. But at the same time, if they have to go gather a few more data points on how much money their homeowners or city or organization is spending on spraying, I think that's minimal ask in regard to the amount of compensation that they're getting for their request. So, again, if we bring it to a vote, I hope that you all would vote yes, that we can add a few qualifying questions about herbicide spray. And if you don't feel that that's an important measure to collect data and to have a connection point to educate these entities, especially, you know, preaching to the choir, they're the ones that want to bring this. They're the ones working to put projects in place. There are best advocates to educate and make sure they understand the harm that spraying ditches several miles away from the lagoon, as Brandon included in this video, which is why I clapped, because he actually said, even if you live miles from the lagoon, your stormwater matters. It's making its way there. So, again, whether your stormwater management is miles from the lagoon or not, you spraying these pesticides, these herbicides, these management chemicals, it affects the lagoon directly. It's not secondary. So, again, I don't know if it's a recommendation. If we can add it into the application through staff, if there has to be a formal motion and vote to alter the contract application, I don't know the exact logistics on that. I think we need a motion. I will move that we... We need a motion. Question, though. This topic doesn't have to do with the reporting up front, but the reporting of what might be the benefit. Not that how much did you spend on it, how much are you doing, but might this be a benefit? Correct. This is exactly opposite. So, I think we want to get back to this first discussion. Yes. I believe Laura Lee withdrew her motion. I understand that, and that's what we're discussing. And the question then becomes with this, just as has been pointed out, is what does it mean? I look at this, and I say to myself, the one thing it might help with, if it doesn't require a ton of trying to figure out exactly the numbers or numeric basis of any of this stuff, is that individuals out in the community will understand that the benefits are beyond nitrogen and phosphorus. And so, whether that's through Don's language, which makes some sense that we need to go with, I do think something like that will help from that perspective. And I think, hopefully, we can actually get to this first, and then if you'd like to make a motion, obviously, to add something, you can go ahead and do that. I think it would be separate. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. We've got two, three people talking at once, and I appreciate it. I'm going to go back and recognize Bruce. Okay. So, Laura Lee withdrew her motion. I will make a motion to take Don's language and add it as the instructions to the project description so that there's really no change to the document or the process for applying what is more informative and instructable on how to write your application. I think that speaks directly to Dr. Windsor's position and gets us the fastest way through getting this, but adding the value of front-side education on what are you supposed to be writing about? Oh, I didn't know I could do this with my project also. So, I think there's value in both. But making the checkboxes would become a measurement and quantification problem for, on the front side, do you know what your turbidity is today and do you know what it is afterwards? You won't know how you affect that. So, Don's narrative language is excellent. Add that as, my motion is to add that as an informative eye circle, the instructions, information button when you're filling out a project, the project application online. I'll second that. That's what I was going to ask for. So, we have a motion and a second. Yes, ma'am. We have discussion. I'd just like to make a comment. Dr. Windsor, at the February meeting, which I could not attend, but I did watch, you made the comment to us about the fact that there were so many other benefits, these things that are reflected here, that come about as a result of the projects. And I don't, and I think that was a very persuasive statement that you made. It made me think differently about these projects and how we educate the public. I think the intent of this, as it has evolved, is to be an awareness, an awareness and to give the committee something to understand the project a little more deeply, not to be an evaluation criteria that's quantitative. So, I want to just say I can't second it. It's already been seconded. I think that's an excellent compromise and a way to get your council into the thinking about these projects without making it onerous to anyone. Yeah, and if I might, sir, just to amplify this, is if you're thinking about a stormwater project and you can do it for X dollars and it costs this much more to do an advanced baffle box, this is an incentive for the community to invest more because there's more benefit on the back side. But we shouldn't be forcing measurement front side or back side, but rather educational and outreach and incentivizing. Thank you. Sounds like we're ready to vote. Public comment. Yes, ma'am. Yes, public comment. Yeah. Excuse me? We've discussed. Yeah, you have to ask for public comment before a vote. Excuse me? Ask for public comment before a vote. Okay, public comment before the votes. Is there any public comment? Excuse me, folks. Okay, I think you can vote. Okay, would you repeat it again just to make sure we're clear? The motion is to take Chairman Dice's language that he's written here and add it as informational into the project narrative portion on the online application. Okay, all in favor? Aye. Aye. All against? Well done. Appreciate it. If you'd recognize me, I'd like to make a motion on this same topic. I'd like to move that we add inquiries, three to five questions, basic questions, for whatever entity is heading up the application, that we request information on what biocides, herbicides, water treatment chemicals they're using on other projects. Where those projects are and the amount of money total that that managing body is spending on herbicides for chemical treatment. Okay, first the other one passed. Yes. Okay, just clear. And you're making another motion now? Correct. This is on a different topic. Same revision to the application, different topic. So my motion again, feel free, staff, to help me word it more concisely if you feel it's appropriate, I would welcome that or anyone else, make a motion that we request from any applicant for funds that they also tell us how much in a quantity and how much in monetary use they are contributing of their own to use in herbicides and pesticides. So project, the amount in bulk and the amount in money that they're using for spray treatment on stormwater management drains, ditches, ponds, whatever other projects, parks, riverfronts, we don't have to include all of that specifically. If they need help with the application and they call Terry, Terry can say, oh, just what lake are you using the herbicide on, real basic. So, and again, this is a very low-hanging fruit and a huge opportunity to show the community that this committee is listening to the rest of the citizens. And again, I understand that I have been prompted to take less time. However, I'm not a three-minute buzzer person. I've been doing this here for over ten years, specifically working with this project. And my motivation was because we need to eliminate the use of biocides. So this is why I'm here. This is my moment after ten years. I would appreciate a second. I would appreciate the headline out of this meeting being that the committee passed an opportunity to educate more about the use of herbicides and biocides, not that they had zero interest in working towards what the oversight committee is meant to do. Is there a second? I'd love a second. I'll second it. Thank you, Laura Lee. Discussion? Yes, sir. Yes, sir. I'd be curious. And I agree, you know, more education about herbicides, pesticides is warranted. You see these people spraying every crack in the sidewalk in these different parking lots and whatever. But I'm just trying to understand how this would work from a process standpoint. So I guess if you're the city of Melbourne and you're applying, putting a project application in, so you'd have to identify all the quantity of herbicides, pesticides that the city of Melbourne is using? Correct. And it's real simple because the city council votes on it every so often when that vendor contract is up. So those numbers are easy for them to quantify. They have vendor contracts, and they know that they're spending X amount of dollars on X amount of pounds or gallons or however it's measured of whatever herbicides they're using for their chemical treatments. And then how would the reviewer use that to assess the project? I don't think at this point in time that it would negate a project, but I think, again, it's a huge opportunity to reach that person that is applying, that is already on board with, you know, treating the lagoon and letting them know that every drop of herbicides, I mean, we have a ban on fertilizers for months of the year for normal citizens to use these products. And some of these products have loopholes where cities or other entities can still use them even, even during the ban. So that's not where I'm headed with this. I think that it would be more of a data quantifier to see, okay, well, let's look. There's, you know, 10,000 pounds of nitrogen going in just in this area from this entity, and look how much money they're spending. And I think in the future, if we have an opportunity to continue the sorrel program, that we can use that to educate an entity on where they can put other practices in place. I know Melanie's stormwater pond management document is completed and going out. There are several other entities that are working on that. Florida Friendly has a new webinar program this year. It's a monthly webinar for new people to Florida. There's multiple touch points for people to have education and advocacy conversations about how to prevent, just like the septic to sewer. You know, originally, let's remove all the muck. Well, it was quickly identified we need to prevent the muck's components from entering the lagoon. So we reprioritize. Instead of just taking out the muck, let's prevent the pollution in the first place. So instead of just taking out the muck, let's prevent the combination of chemicals that are going in that are fueling those algal blooms that that bumblebee contraption is taking out. So the prevention aspect. And again, it's huge money. These are hundreds of thousands of dollars that are being spent. So I don't know if you had an exact question or if I answered it, but I tried to respond to what I think I heard you say. So, again, to quantify, to have a conversation for educational touch points, I think that it's a bare minimum just to connect with people. So, again, I have a second. I don't know if there's any more. We're in discussion. You're done? Okay. Yes, sir. Just a couple things. One, you said, as we all recognize, by the way, I've worked with the Michael J. Fox Foundation on Parkinson's for eight years now. We know Paraquat. I understand all of those issues. Of course. We've discussed it before you were on the committee. But if this is an educational issue, you've already mentioned that everybody knows it. So the question is, what are we doing with it? And so I think that's the important thing to point out. And I'll turn it over to the next person. Well, Fred, give us a question. This is just a discussion on your motion. I think that it is an important topic, and it is an important concern not for the application, because if you put it on the application, you have to measure it before and measure it afterwards. We can't even do that effectively with nitrogen because then that would discriminate against some of the intended recipients of these funds. But it is very much an educational issue and very much needs to be done. So I would offer a constructive amendment to your motion of establish this as a champion project in the education arm of our investments so that it can get front and center. Putting it in the application becomes problematic, and perhaps even I defer to legal counsel, but we can't discriminate against any one entity because I know that there are many organizations that could apply for our funds that won't have those numbers. It isn't already unknown, and they don't have a master contract where they could measure a herbicide application today. So I'm trying to get both sides of this. It's an important issue. It is primarily an educational issue. What I hear from your discussion is that you wanted education enforced into the application. That's problematic for me because then it forces measurement pre- and post-project. So make it a champion educational issue that we invest in as a committee. I disagree with that it's problematic. I think that's a theory, that it could become problematic. I think to call it problematic before we even have the opportunity to see how it works is a reach, at least. You know, and everyone knows, when I say everyone, I mean the majority of the people who have a genuine concern about the lagoon that are actually taking action and working in that space. Not just professionals or committee members, but, I mean, your citizens who are switching to Florida natives. So, again, to add minimal questions, are you using this? How much are you using, and what is your budget for that? If these are entities that are putting in an application for money and they don't have those basic numbers, I think that's proof of mismanagement that they should already be disqualified because if they don't even know the number of dollars they're spending on management outside of what they're requesting from us, you know, they need to circle back and they need to re-look at what they're already spending. But, again, my point was that if we can't even do that effectively for every project, then you can't do it for any project. If you can't do it for nitrogen and phosphates, if you can't force measurement of no one input and no one outputs at post-project, then you can't do that here, in my opinion. I don't think the quantifier would have to show, you know, how that affects their project specifically. I don't think those numbers would need to be in that tier. It's educational, and I don't disagree. And it perhaps is a PDF that gets pushed when you're applying. Did you think of this also? Here's the other benefits you might be applying in your project. But to make it a mandatory declaration is probably not something that, well, I guess I'll defer to our attorneys as to whether that was even feasible for maybe for another meeting we could have that discussion. But it becomes challenging that we can make that a discriminator on the front side. If you would please explain what you mean by discriminating, like using that information to discriminate against. Because there's going to be a bunch of organizations that won't have those numbers. Won't have what numbers? How much you spend on herbicides. No, how you would, just like in your budget with anything else. Can we go through the chair for this discussion instead of having this back and forth? I'm trying. Sure. I just wanted to make sure I understood and stick. I didn't recognize you before. Absolutely, sir. Please. Thank you. Okay. I think your point is to try to put it out what organizations are using herbicides and pesticides. And I just think all we need is a simple question. Are you using herbicides? And then they either check yes or no. That's it. That's all we need to do. We need to identify, put them on notice that this committee is starting to look at other things besides nitrogen and phosphorus. And, you know, if I'm a reviewer and I have two projects that are totally identical, and one has checked the yes box and one has checked the no box, I'm probably going to lean towards the person that has checked the no box, that they're not using herbicides. I think that's all you're trying to do right now is put people on notice that this is an issue. It does impact the lagoon. I mean, I have seen where contractors have come in and they're going after Brazilian pepper and they're spraying all around spoil islands. And then the next day you come and there's stingrays and fish and blue crabs floating on the water because of the pesticides that have been used on the island. It's horrible. It needs to stop. But I don't think it's, I don't think this application is the place to do it, but I don't have a problem with asking them, are you doing it or not? I think that's brilliant. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Oops, sorry. When I can't recognize, sir. I'm going to finish your, okay. I'm done. Okay. Yes, sir. Thank you, Laura Lee. And with the intent of the motion regarding it as part of the application specifically to a project, we're just for a point of clarity, we're asking that the applicant for this specific project is talking about, are they using it on this project? Is that, is that clear? That's what I'm asking to the chair. No, no. I'm asking. If someone applies and it has this box that they can check, they're talking about this project, not that a municipality uses it in this park over here or this park over there. We're talking about on this location for this project, for this application, are they using anything? Is that the intent of this motion? No. And if I may respond. No. Just a second. Because I would say that the intent of what would be maybe more functional for the application would be this project. Does this project contain any herbicide use for this project? Because that seems more applicable for an application because someone that's doing something that doesn't use it at all, you know, whether it's oyster restoration or something like that, is very different than Brazilian pepper removal. So, and that would make more sense than if they are just a municipality that does, let's say, both, right? And they're applying for oyster restoration, well, herbicide application doesn't apply to that application. Does that make sense? May I answer his question? It wasn't my understanding, but. I would like an opportunity to answer his question. Is there anybody else who wants to say anything before I go back? Anybody that was raising their hand? I do. Yes, ma'am. I do. I just want to say, Laura Lee's story is a horrible story, but the problem there is a misuse of an individual or a company that's doing that. And I just want to point out, for things like Brazilian pepper, I support getting rid as much of herbicides and biocides as we can. However, for things like Brazilian pepper, used properly, that's really one of the few options available. So I think the context matters a lot in this discussion. Yet, I think also, we have a presentation coming up on how this program has helped through things like vegetation harvesting, et cetera, to reduce the use. And we want to continue to show that we're reducing the use. But there are certain chemicals and certain applications used properly, not improperly, that needs to be done and that needs to be factored in here, which is why I agree that this application is not necessarily the place to do that, but we could make it a project to figure out how to address the overall concern and reduce the use and continue to educate the public. Are you, help me to understand, are you suggesting you do that separately? My opinion is the application is not the place to do it because of the complexity of the issue. And I think that we could find another way for Sorrel to address what many of us think should be a reduction. But it is problematic because just this conversation points out how many complexities and dimensions there are to the topic. And the public interest, I believe, would be equally well served if we look at it not as part of the application, but it's something that we can continue to do and look at the broader picture. And I understand Kimberly wants data, what data is already out there. There's a lot of things we can do besides adding something this specific that may not be applicable. There may be an organization that uses Brazilian pepper appropriately, and if they check yes on that box, people who don't understand the complexities of this problem might reach the wrong conclusion because it is a complex issue. We have a lot of complex issues in this program. So oversimplifying something that is this complex, I think, could be just as problematic as not paying attention to it. But we can pay attention to it other ways, and I think we appreciate Kimberly's passion on the subject. But I personally think that we'd be better off to look at it in a different context than we are right now. Chair, may I respond to his question now? I think in this last one, we'll go to a vote. Go ahead. So to answer Nick's question, no, not project specific because most of these projects, if not all of these projects, are designed to replace what would be a biocide treatment. So with biomads or with mechanical harvesting or baffle boxes, all of these alternative in this shore water train are used for the reduction of chemicals in the first place. So I don't think that any of our projects would specifically be using a combination. In regard to Brazilian pepper, absolutely. I've met with the top experts across the nation. I have a report and a presentation coming up for us in a couple months that includes that the suitable treatment for Brazilian pepper for a woody like that is to use a brush-on, never a spray, a brush-on herbicide. So this is real basic. You know, do you use herbicides? Checkbox. I would take that. I think that's a good first step. To Deb's point, if it's oversimplified because, oh, well, then are they using a brush-on for the Brazilian pepper or are they just spraying because it's easier? I think that there's an appropriate place to put a basic question. Does your managing entity use herbicides? How much money is directly related to why we're here? We're here to give them money. So if we're evaluating whether or not that money is being used in a diligent way in what the taxpayers have voted to tax themselves, ourselves, if we are not being accountable to what that money is used for, and we can identify that, hey, you know what, they don't need $100,000, and they only need $50,000 because they can reduce their herbicide spraying. That is being a good steward of oversight for this money. It's so basic. I don't understand the pushback over why we can't just ask, are you using herbicides? To help us, could you restate your motion in a short thing so we can get a vote? I would do my best. So my motion is that we add basic questions, whether that's in one form, checkboxes. We can do logistics after the fact. I request that we add questions to the application. Are you using herbicides to be defined so that they understand what that is? Or, again, a link to what that list is. Are you using herbicides? How much in quantity of those sprays are you using, and how much in money are you using? So a basic data point of, yes, we use it. We spend $100,000 a year, and we have 100 gallons that we use. Basic. And if an entity doesn't have that basic budget information, they should not be taking taxpayer money to pay for anything. We're ready to vote. Yes, ma'am. Comments? Yes, ma'am. Thank you. My name is McGann Murphy, and I'm a member of an HOA, and I can speak to this because I am part of the pilot project, and I would say that there are some simple questions that you could ask. A little closer to the mic. I think that there are some simple questions that you could ask that would be effective. Something along the lines of, and do you have a comprehensive spray contract? Do you utilize targeted spraying as a part of a comprehensive long-term plan to reduce the chemical inputs in your landscape and stormwater management program? Is this project part of a comprehensive initiative to reduce the chemicals used in your landscape and stormwater program? And have your vendors or staff taken IFAS, GI, BMP, best management practices training, Florida-friendly certified professional training, or stormwater qualified instructor training? Thanks. Thank you. Thank you. I think that's brilliant. Sorry to forget you back there. I appreciate you coming up to share that. I think I love those questions. That went a little more detailed than I think the committee would even consider today, especially with the last question of have you taken any of these trainings, or do you have someone? I think most of our entities would have that on staff, that someone has that qualification, that certification, or license needed. Can we proceed now? I am proceeding. Thank you. I'd appreciate a little more respect. My value here is no less than any of the rest of you, and I understand this is a tedious process. I'm sorry? I understand this is a tedious process. I do. But I feel that the disrespect here, I'm not one to not call that out. I was just asking a question so we could get a vote. Yeah, absolutely. That was the only thing I was saying. That's fine. I'm not trying to start anything again. Okay. So, we can start if we get a second for her vote. You have a second for her vote. Oh, you have? That's, I didn't. You seconded it an hour ago. Yep. Okay. All in favor? Aye. Of the motion? All against? Nay. Nay. Thank you very much. Onward. Okay, we're going to new business. Yes. The first item on new business is the proposed schedule for the 2027 plan update. So, what's today? Today's May 15th. Okay. So, May 8th, we had the agenda packet sent out to the COC members that includes the cost share eligibility rates. That's going to be our next item. Today, we would like you to vote on the cost share eligibility rates, and we hope to post these application changes and the cost share eligibility starting June 1st for the funding applications. We will have these open for about four months through the end of September. We will review these applications as they come in and compile everything in the month of October and send them to the committee for review in early November. We're going to try to get this packet out to you two weeks ahead of the meeting. So, if there are any questions on any of the projects, you can reach out to us and we can address those ahead of time. Our meeting for November is scheduled for November 20th, and then whatever you recommend, we will add into the 2027 plan update, and there's potential to cancel the December meeting to give you time to review that. We aim to give you that draft plan update by the middle of December. We will then post it online towards the end of December. We will have the Citizen Oversight Committee January 15th to review the whole plan and recommend that to the Board of County Commissioners. It needs to legally be posted for 15 days for the public to review before going to the County Commission meeting. So, depending on that timeline and the County Commission schedule, we're anticipating February 9th or 23rd for the Commission to review and potentially approve the 2027 plan. plan update, and then we can start going to contract for those new projects. Okay. So, again, you're on page five of the information you sent us, and you're looking for input? No. I would move that we accept the schedule that's proposed for 2027. That's better. Do you have a second? I'll second. Thank you. Input? I have a comment. Thank you for including more review time for the committee. You're welcome. I'm sorry. I couldn't hear you. I said thank you for including more review time in this schedule for the committee. I think that will help a lot next year. And if there's anything else you could suggest to us as time gets closer about how we can get some basic questions answered. Sure. Because that was the, I think we're all more knowledgeable this year about the process, but thank you for that extra time. It's a lot to go through depending on the number of applications. Other input? I'm sorry I couldn't hear. Comment. It's been a good day. I don't see any public comments. No comments? We ready to vote? All in favor? Aye. Aye. All opposed? We're doing great, guys. Hey. Time-wise. All right. The next item is to look at the cost share eligibility per project type. And so unlike prior years when we've just showed you the first column, what the current cost share eligibility is, and then a proposed column for next year, now we have three columns because we have, what will we do if the tax is not renewed and we are left with the same dollars to potentially reallocate versus what if we are trying to recruit a whole lot of new applications for another 10 years of funding. So I highlighted in the middle column what is different from current. So last year for septic system upgrades, the committee recommended sticking with the $1,600 per pound. But then in November, based on state changes in rules and lots of people needing to upgrade their septic but not qualifying for funding, the committee recommended a pilot program to provide that $6,000 minimum. The county commission approved that, and that was then included in the 2026 plan update. For stormwater projects, we have looked at more recent information. We have more bids available than we had last year. It was a very small sample set last year when we came up with the 574. And so we're recommending $816 per pound with or without renewal. And then last month, we had a whole panel discussion on a homeowner grants program for green stormwater infrastructure projects. The county, the cities have also been implementing green stormwater infrastructure projects. They cost a lot more than traditional stormwater, and there's been a lot of concern about they're a good thing to do, but they cost a lot more. And so that traditional stormwater cost share really wasn't touching it. Cole did some estimates, and the green stormwater infrastructure cost share, based on the projects, the existing projects in the plan, they're averaging $7,511 per pound. That is so much more than every other project type. I put in here $1,600 because it matches. It puts it on par with the $1,600 that's offered for septic systems. But, you know, you could pick whatever number you were comfortable with. Do you want to talk now, or do you want me to finish going through? I have a series of questions. Okay. Very helpful, thank you. All right. So that's it for the middle column, for the changes in the middle column. Going over to the right-hand column, in the current plan, we have been investing in improving and upgrading wastewater treatment facilities to get the nitrogen concentration down to 6 milligrams per liter. Advanced wastewater treatment is half of that. It's 3 milligrams per liter. And so if you want wastewater to be cleaner than the current targets, the next reasonable target is that AWT. It's going to cost more to get there. I assumed an $8 million cost share for each facility, each of the 15 facilities in the county, to upgrade to AWT. It will cost them $20, $30 million each to get there. But I just didn't know, you know, how much the committee and the county commission, you know, how much everybody would want to spend on those upgrades that are mandatory. So utility fees will have to fund these mandatory upgrades. This would be assistance to help them achieve those upgrades. Patch plant connections. This is based on the two existing projects. The way that they have been, they've actually cost $1,663 per pound, but we made up the difference with grants. For septic to sewer by extension, those projects have also been costing more, but we have been making up the difference with grants. As we project forward, grants seem to be harder to get these days. We have no idea what's going to happen with new leadership in Tallahassee. So I think that needs to increase if we want new applications for septic to sewer projects to come in. Muck removal also has been costing more than the Severo Lagoon cost share. We have been making that up with grants, but those grant funding opportunities seem to be rare these days. So that would also need to increase if we want more of those projects. Oyster bars, it's a very small increase for inflation, similar with the clam restoration. And so that's where these numbers came from, and I'll try to answer any questions that you have. Thanks. First of all, putting this together is very helpful. I assume, one, there's a standard definition of green stormwater infrastructure that we would include to ensure that those projects fall underneath that, correct? Yes. Okay. You don't have to go through it or anything. The increase for that wastewater treatment facility just kind of blew my mind a little bit when I saw it, and you said that that is to, you were very helpful to take it down to three milligrams from six. I was wondering why it was so high. But also, is that assuming we fund it all, you said, or is that assuming we funded a portion of it, I think is what I heard. Right. It's assuming that we provided $8 million to each wastewater treatment facility to help them with what's probably a $25, $20 to $30 million project. And as you get these bids, and you say, hey, we got these bids in, and we're now seeing an increase because our average bid rate is X or whatever. Do we typically get a large number of potential companies to bid on this, or is it just a couple of them, and so we're kind of struggling because of that, too, in terms of trying to get pricing? Post-COVID, there was a time frame when there were very few bids coming in. More recently, we've been getting more bids. It seems to be a more competitive process. So, you know, it just, it changes through time. Okay, let me see if I had any others here. I think that was... And I need to correct one thing on this slide, Terry. So, for stormwater projects, the priority basins, that should be $814 in both columns instead of $816. I think it's correct in your packet. The packet's correct, yeah. Okay, great, thanks. And is it always, I mean, we get this pushback, we're funding a bunch of companies we know to make money. And I see that sometimes in social media. Is it typically the same companies that we're seeing because there are just a few of them? I don't think that that statement is true. Sure. I'm just trying to figure out how to... No, no, I get it. I'm just trying to figure out how to then explain to somebody that, wait, that's not what's pushing this issue. It's not where... Yeah. Yeah, it's an open procurement process. It's not even our staff that... Sure. We prepare the documents, but it's public. The county has a procurement department, and everything is posted online for full competition. The cities have similar processes. So if there are few companies getting the work, it's because there are few companies doing the work or doing that work here locally. Obviously, with some projects like muck removal, more local companies are going to have an advantage for smaller projects. So trying to do bigger projects has the potential, or bundle multiple projects, has the potential to bring in vendors from further away, which is what happened with the Cocoa Beach golf muck dredging project. Yeah, no, that's great. And that brings up the nearest point I hadn't thought of before. So when we used to bid on projects, we had a... You know, with my company, we had a contract that pulled nationally. Do we post to those kinds of things, or do they grab those? Yes. Okay, great. Thank you. With Septic to Sewer, we bundle three Septic to Sewer projects together to be able to get, you know, a bigger vendor coming in. Thank you. Oh, I'm sorry. Thank you, Chair. Okay, for just my own clarification, and when we're talking about wastewater treatment facility upgrades, you said that they were going to happen. Thanks. They were, like, required, right? So if they don't get the additional funding from us, that'll come out of their pocket, and their pocket is our bill. So would the average homeowner end up paying more if we weren't helping them pay for those upgrades through the Sorrel program? Potentially. So, two things. One is that the timeline for them to comply is, you know, 10 years from the next renewal of their permit, so it could be quite some time away, whereas this might incentivize them to do it sooner. Okay. That's a benefit to the agreement. Or, to your question, if it comes out of rates, then it is entirely funded by the rates that the homeowners or the businesses are paying. If it's funded, or at least partially funded, with the sales tax, then we have tourists that are also contributing to paying the bill. So that sounds good, then, to me, that we would maybe be incentivizing it to happen earlier, which is good for the lagoon, and reducing the cost to homeowners, which is good for the folks that live here. Thanks. Great. Thank you. So, Titusville, there's a couple of others that have finished with their upgrades to advanced wastewater treatment, and I assume that they may be at the six milligrams per liter. Are they, is there a limit? I mean, does the state have a number that they need to reach? Are they going to have to do additional upgrades to try to get to the three milligrams per liter? Correct. So, Titusville could be going through this again? Yes. So, my next question. So, we budgeted $8 million per facility, but now we're raising the cost share considerably. Does that mean that they'll get $15 million per facility? No. I assume they're getting more than $8 million? The $431 is the average cost, the average Saver Lagoon cost for the facilities that have upgraded to six milligrams per liter. The $2,088 is to go from six to three if we contribute $8 million per facility. So, will the facilities that have already done, they're already done, but they're at six, will they be able to qualify for additional funding then to try to get to that three milligrams? They would get $8 million. Okay. They have not gotten $8 million before. The quarterly performance table shows you how much each facility has been approved for. And so, you know, Palm Bay was like $2 million, and Titusville was $11 million. They range anywhere. $2 million to $9.5 is the highest. Yeah. Thank you. Anyone else? Yep. I'm sorry. Go ahead. So, quantitative questions. What does that, in your opinion, represent as a percentage of our future? If we are renewed, that 2088 number, does that, because it's a dramatic increase, it would then consume a large portion of our annual spend. Yes. What do we think that percentage is? So, in the current plan, wastewater treatment upgrades are receiving 7% of the total $583 million. To do this $8 million per facility would increase that from 7% to 15%. Okay. And does that equate to they're the largest, those 15 facilities are the largest contributors to nitrogen in the lagoon? Therefore, we're paying the most attention to them. They are not the largest, but they have been, you know, at that 431, they have been one of the most cost-effective options that we have had. Yeah. So, you can sort of see how 2,000 fits in the right-hand column. So, this, instead of being one of the most cost-effective solutions, it becomes one of the upper-cost solutions. Right. But it receives a lot of headlines from the public, and so, you know, every time there's a break in a reclaimed water line, this would ensure that that reclaimed water that's escaping to the lagoon is of a better quality. No disagreement there. I've spent a couple decades in the world's largest water and wastewater treatment company, and this is very problematic for competitive private companies, and it really subsidizes the municipal companies or organizations. That's what the rate payers advocate is all about. They have a standard. They have to meet that standard, and they have to justify what it costs to meet that standard, and those costs already have a mechanism that is laboriously designed to pass those costs to the rate payer. The advantage here is for acceleration of them getting to a treatment earlier. They will get there. It's not a – they won't get – no amount of funding or not funding from us, they will achieve these standards. The costs will be borne by the rate payer, period. The advantage to us doing this is will they get there faster, and I'm not sure I have enough data to understand what those millions of dollars and tens of millions per year would be doing. Could we be deploying that somewhere else to have benefit that wouldn't get done if we weren't investing? That's the issue to me. The opportunity cost. What's the opportunity cost? It will happen. It's mandated. It's not an option. The rate payers, all of us, will pay for it. If our main value add is our incentive is to get it done sooner, then maybe we should look at what that value is compared to if we take that same money and invest it in something else that was never going to get funded if we don't fund it. That's where I'm on on this. The concept of making that large of investments into utilities is problematic because they already have a system that's designed to capture all of their costs and pass all of those costs on. So in general, I guess, without data, so what are we getting for it? How much faster would they do it? And what are we giving up for things that we would be investing in with that money that we can no longer invest in and won't get funded? I think that's the tradeoff that we would have to sit on. Just a second. Yes, ma'am. So my question is regarding septic system upgrades because we did pass a pilot project last year, and so my question is two parts. One, if we approve the cost share as proposed, are we actually saying it's no longer a pilot program to make sure that we are allowing homeowners some funding for the minimum? And also, do we have any information about how allowing that in year one as part of the pilot project may have or may not have affected how the money is spent or the performance on the measures of reducing nitrogen? We will have Joel, I don't know if you're prepared to talk off the cuff, but we're going to have him come back and present how that program is going. I have noticed that when properties are only eligible for $6,000, they seem to get septic systems upgraded for less than when a property qualifies for $20,000. And so I think we are getting some more honest prices that we can dig into that may help the entire program. So the pilot project was a good idea? We are gaining some good insights from the pilot project, and we are assisting a lot of people who are mandated to update their system and don't qualify otherwise, don't qualify for assistance otherwise. I think you answered my question. Thank you. Yes, sir. Yeah, getting back to your comment, and you said, you know, obviously they have to do this and they're going to increase the rates to do this. You've heard that if we fund this, 20% of that potentially is coming from tourists and not out of the county's individual pocket. Do they then have a lower rate increase because they've received this grant? Yes. Yeah, it depends. Less, it depends. So it should bring that rate down, 20% of that change would increase. Increase it. Yeah, yeah. And that makes sense. Yeah. So, and I'm sorry, I meant to bring the sheet where I did the calculations on the load reduction benefits, but if you just look at the performance table, the load reductions from the current wastewater treatment plant upgrades is a total of 82,000 pounds. That's a really large reduction, right? All the septic to sewer projects, the 42 septic to sewer projects combined are 80,000 pounds, so it's a place where you can do a dozen projects and make meaningful impacts. No doubt. If you're concerned about the proportional share of money going to that project type, right, increasing from 7% to 15%, you know, this is why we bring this to you. You know, if you want that to be a $1,000 cost share instead of $2,088, right, that would get it back down to close to 7% in line with what we've been doing so far. Well, if it's the biggest polluter and it's the best affordability bang for the buck, then it's the best investment, especially when it's accelerating things. I just, I get concerned when, what are we missing for doing that? Correct. Good poll. Yes, sir. Bruce, I really appreciate your point. Is there anything that we could do with flexibility to say that, you know, if there's a project of similar value of removal that is newer and wouldn't get funded in other ways, that it would take priority, but if it doesn't come to be that there is such a project that's proposed, then the funds go to this budget line item. But we put them in, like, a limbo kind of place until that decision needs to be made so that there's an opportunity to spend it on something that might be as equal value. Is that possible? I need to kind of think through how we would do that, but certainly every year you get a list of projects, and you have the opportunity to look at which projects are proceeding and which projects aren't. And you've had this conversation before about, you know, how long do we let Community X or, you know, applicant Y sit on these dollars if they're not actually proceeding. And Terry contacts everybody annually and says, you know, you might lose the money if you're not actually making progress. And often they'll say, yeah, you know, we've had this, this, this hurdle impediment, and it's just, it doesn't seem like it's going to happen, and so they withdraw. And then we come to you and say, you have this many dollars to reallocate because so-and-so withdrew. So, you know, all of that process would still be available to potentially reallocate those funds if they weren't moving ahead, you know, in a more timely. If the idea is that one of the benefits is that they would do these projects sooner, if they're not doing them sooner, then, you know, take the money and reallocate. Oh, perhaps maybe another question I didn't understand is, is that that's the maximum, or that's what everybody will get? Because if it was a maximum, then as we get through our plan in a future year, if we are becoming quite challenged of, well, this $10 thing that four other ones will get no funding. Well, if we do five on this and spread that, if we could make those types of decisions in future years, plan year by plan year, then by setting these as maximums, then it might be, allow us to spread the butter on the toast a little bit better. Can I add, this is just for the 2027 plan update, so 28, 29, we will go through a similar process. Well, I think since we don't see this 27 projects yet, I think that's what my point was, is if we could set these as maximums, then we could fall back off of it. Because when you have mega projects like this that are of great value and great benefit and are efficient, everyone, maybe if you do half of one, you may still get a lot of value and allow other projects as well. So setting that as maximum and allowing us in planned discussion to equitably and favorably cut everybody's back on each category, that might give us the tool we need. Sorry. Oh, I'm sorry. Could I make a motion that we accept this with one caveat based on what Debra said, that in terms of the septic-to-system pilot that we're doing, that we just allow that to continue and see the data before 2027 starts? It sounds like it's going great, but gives us the opportunity to say maybe that pilot didn't work. Does that make sense? Yeah, because really what you're adopting here is the $1,600 per pound. I was just noting that there is also the minimum. The minimum, which was the pilot. Yeah. Right. But you don't have to make that decision now. You don't really need to make that decision until November when we're putting the plan together, which we'll have Joel's presentation on how that's been going. So we don't need a motion then, right? We do. We have to accept this, as I understand it. Yeah. Second. Okay. Comments? Got a private one coming. Thank you. Hi. Rebecca T. Bear from the City of Melbourne. Just specifically related to the wastewater treatment facility projects, I just wanted to mention, because you guys didn't really touch on it, is the leveraging that the Sorrel program has been able to allow us to achieve, not related to AWT, but specifically our Grant Street project. We do have a Sorrel cost share agreement on that, which I think is about $9 million now, has been in the plan for some time. We're about to go out to bid in June for that, rebid in June. To your point, Fred, that project originally was bid, only had two bidders, came in at over $100 million, so there is a lack of competition in the market for those types of projects. But with the Sorrel funding, we were able to leverage that with DEP to secure almost an additional $20 million for DEP to do that project. With the cities, I think the cost estimates at about $50 million, so we have $30 million or $20 million of city funds in that project as well. So that's how we're able to leverage our rate payers, the Sorrel funding from the tax share, and DEP, who is implementing on the state side those regulatory changes. So as a utility that is, you know, regional, we're serving all of Melbourne, the beachside communities, and then a bulk utility to the city of West Melbourne. It's a large portion of Brevard County. That's a lot on the water side and the wastewater side for our utility customers, and so we have a lot of advancements on the water side. We did have a very large rate increase to our rate payers this year. It was, I think, 15 percent. That's a lot, and when Danny was here last month talking to you guys on the panel, we have our residents that are struggling to buy a gallon of milk. And so when we come to them and save 15 percent on your water bill, we're trying to be the best stewards we can on their property taxes but also on their utility rates. So as much as we can do to secure grant funding from any source, this helps us in every bit. So we appreciate Sorrel's support. The AWT is excellent for us. We would definitely do that type of project much sooner if we had support from Sorrel for both of our wastewater plants. So just wanted to mention the leveraging. We do that on almost every single one of our projects. We have multiple funding sources. So we appreciate you guys for that. So just wanted to mention that. Yes. One quick question for you. Virginia mentioned the fact that grants may be harder to come by. Are you seeing that as well? Yes, yes. For instance, on the water side, not funded by Sorrel, but we had a project in for alternative water supply through DEP that we really needed for our water plant project, and that was denied by DEP. So it's very competitive right now, and I think that is because of all the regulatory changes, and that's everybody's trying to get as much money as they can, plus the construction cost escalations. Everything is more expensive. When Grant Street started, what was that original estimate, Danny, $25 million? $25 to $30 million, I think, was our original cost estimate for Grant Street, and we bid it out. It was over $100 million. Could. Yeah, and so we can't keep up with that. We're trying the best we can, and we're trying to get as many grants as we can, but it's, you know, we had to go back and redesign the project and pull some things out and some value engineering to do what we could to be able to build the project. So we're almost there. It's an excellent project next month, so we'll be back with an update on that one. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate you coming up. Yes, ma'am. I'm going to change the subject. I just wanted to thank staff in Virginia for adding the green stormwater infrastructure category, and I'm going to, you know, say a little bit about it so people that are watching on TV or the tape, and this would reduce nutrient pollution and reduce the stormwater volume that's going into the Indian River Lagoon. So it reduces the associated freshwater impacts to the lagoon and upland risk of flooding, which is a big, big deal for people whose houses are flooding. So I really appreciate that, and I'm really thankful that you guys have put it in, and that would also cover the low-impact development projects, which you hear a lot about. So we really appreciate that getting included in the plan now. Thank you. Any other comments before we vote? We have a motion on the floor. We have a motion on the floor. Second. Second. Second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. All opposed? Thank you, Fred. So the next agenda item is building off of last month, working on sort of creating a framework framework for having a homeowner grant program for stormwater, this could be, we talked last time about homeowners and HOAs, but in truth, right, this could extend to nonprofits and churches and businesses. So, you know, all sorts of, you know, all sorts of individual action out there on private property to reduce the nitrogen load, but as Laura Lee just reminded everybody, reduce the freshwater load and reduce the flooding concerns. So we sort of scrolled through the typical green infrastructure types of projects that have been offered through other grant programs and called down the list to what we thought were maybe the easiest, most affordable ones to get started with. And then worked with our stormwater engineer to come up with, you know, how much rain would fall on the surface and what would the concentration of nutrients be in that, in however many gallons that was. And so these are all calculated based on capturing a half-inch rainfall, you know, up to the half-inch rainfall events. The larger events, we know those happen, but traditionally the worst pollution is picked up in that first half-inch, so we're getting most of the benefit in that first half-inch. And then we looked at what is the market cost to actually implement these things, and then we took that cost and divided by the load reduction and to calculate the right-hand column, the cost per pound. And so you see a very, very, very wide distribution there in the cost per pound. And so rather than propose what we should offer, I wanted to just bring you the raw math and get your input on whether you want to proceed with this program, what kind of cost shares you're comfortable offering. You know, obviously, you know, obviously this is the beginning, this could be the beginning of a program, so we could start with a shorter list and expand over time. And another way to deal with especially these high-cost options is in addition to or instead of contracting with individuals for each little project, we could try to partner with NGOs in our community to take on one or more project types and then do, you know, a dozen projects at a time or something, you know, that would make them more cost-effective. Oh, I'm sorry. This is great. I've been hoping to see something like this. Does, wouldn't you say the plants, does that imply native plants or encourage or suggest or...? Whatever you want to recommend, yeah, Florida-friendly or native or, yes. Okay. And then, you know, because I would almost see this expanding for, I mean, this is associated with stormwater ponds, but, you know, we all end up, our discharges end up somewhere, whether a stormwater pond or directly to the lagoon. So just going to planting natives in a yard would have a lot of benefits, as we discussed. This is some of the first time I've seen some quantification with the nutrient removal, which can, I think, help us make our decision a lot better. The tree planting was based on 20 different native trees. Over the lifetime of the tree? Brad? Over 10 years. Brad? Thanks. Again, this is great. Agree. A couple of questions and comments. First, how do we ensure that this just doesn't become something that looks like a program to reimburse the well-to-do? We heard it with the canals, and so how do we ensure it generally gets pushed out to individuals throughout the community? Second, do we consider it the same no matter where in the county it's done? And on the rain barrel assumption, I have two of them. I'm going to four. Seven's a bunch of rain barrels. I'll tell you what. But if you're trying to, is this like one measurement, or is this considering every half-inch flow? Because if people don't empty the barrel, then obviously it doesn't do any good. So did they calculate that out a certain way? So, yeah, this is based on the barrel being empty before the half-inch rainfall event happens, which means you've got to actually use the water in the rain barrel before the next half-inch. Great. Which would probably need some education programs to get people to understand that, because trying to figure out when you're going to go ahead and use it, depending on, oh, it's going to rain Wednesday or not, get a little tricky. And you wouldn't have to put seven barrels out. Right. You would do it based on the number of barrels. I was just noting that, yeah, the traditional, the average size home in Brevard County has a square footage of 2,400 feet. And so if it was a simple roof line, you know, going to a gutter, you're going to capture half of that roof 1,200 square feet. So the half-inch, that's why the half-inch is calculated on that 1,200 square feet. And I would just add one more quick thing. I would recommend to remove your lawn program and actually put in all natives. Maybe it's by 100 square feet or something like that. I'm trying to figure that one out now. But I think that may be something. Obviously, some homeowner associations don't allow for that or things, but we have this love of St. Augustine grass, and it would be good to remove that. So just an idea. Thanks. Yes, sir. Virginia, thank you so much. This is incredible to see this all on a table. Well, the impacts or the improvements that can be made from native plants, to Charles' point, Spartina grasses in particular are something that, you know, to incentivize certain species. But I remember when we were, when I was working for the city of Satellite Beach, we had presentations on Spartina grasses versus mangroves. And I was blown away at the nutrient uptake of the Spartinas and the different vegetation types based off of the different places that they'll grow. You know, alternative flora with the wetter and baccarat with the dryer make for a really good variability for the homeowners to be able to put in their rain garden. And so a recommended list of plants, native plants, would be great. A couple other comments about this. The aquatic plants buffer, it seems more littoral shelf for ponds. I would recommend adding the living shoreline component to it as well for the folks on the lagoon side, because the amount of uptake that can be achieved through those living shorelines is immense and directly related to the lagoon. But again, to Fred's point, we want to make sure that we include everybody in this in some way. So maybe at least a low barrier to entry of first $500 is free. And then above that, there's a percentage that you have to pay back kind of a thing. So that if you're going to spend $5,000, okay, yeah, you get 50% back or whatever the cost share is. Or if it's 100% cost share, if we can afford that, great. You know, then we could really push it up to who can do it. I just absolutely love it. I think it's fantastic. It definitely deserves discussion, educational components, absolutely. And organizations like Keeper of Art Beautiful and Marine Resources Council might be able to help to pick on Teb a little bit. KVB has the Lagoon Friendly Lawn Campaign, Florida Friendly Landscaping that they do. And that's tracked. And there's pictures that people have to send in to continue that certification, if I'm correct, if I remember correctly. And it's mapped and stuff like that. So I don't know if there's a way that you could kind of use that model to help monitor some of this. And if it is an NGO that's putting it in, maybe the NGO is also responsible for some of the monitoring of that. And, I mean, I just, I love it. And I think there's a lot of potential for it to help the lagoon. But those are my three main points are the spartina grasses and native plants that have to be included. The mangroves on living shorelines components because you could add, you know, everything from the mangroves to the oysters and different organisms that live in that ecosystem all the way up the slope. And then also making sure that, to Fred's point, that we include everybody because everyone should be able to plant a tree in their front yard. An oak tree, you know, that's native, that survives the hurricanes and storms and everything, you know, that we have here. And our hot days and our wet days and all that kind of stuff. It's amazing when you drive through the towns that have the oak trees, the impact that, you know, they have. I could go on and on about it, but, you know, I'll leave it there. Yes, ma'am. Definitely agree with making sure it's reachable for any resident that wants to. And great point with coupling with the NGOs, Keeper of Art Beautiful's plan. My question was going to be what is your proposed management follow-up to make sure that they're, you know, keeping the plants alive. That, you know, everything is a success. So implementing a template like KBV, Nick mentioned, is definitely, you know, instead of reinventing the wheels, a great opportunity. And the amounts, if you will, I'm having a little issue. The reimbursement would be take the tree, for example. You said that's based on a 10-year lifespan of the tree. What would be the reimbursement, or would there be a set fee, or is that for us to determine for a cost share? Right. So what we're proposing here is $70 per tree with a minimum size, you know, one-inch DBH of tree. We specifically looked at natives. So we use the iTree program that Camille Hadley told us about last month. And just to give you a range, so, you know, cypress trees came to, like, $6 benefit. Red maple, $7. Water oaks, $10. So, you know, it varies by species. And the tree benefit that we've counted here is just the stormwater, the nutrients in the stormwater that the tree would take up through its roots. Great. So the tree is obviously also providing all sorts of other benefits. But if you take into account the nitrogen oxides that it's pulling from the air and the – there was something else? Carbon sequestration. Well, no, I'm sticking with just the nitrogen. Of course, you know, there are, yeah, all these other tree benefits, too. But, oh, the shade component reduces people's use of power, and so that reduces emissions from the power plant. So if you take those two additional things into account, then the species that we looked at varied from $140 per pound to $560 per pound, rather than this $10,000 a pound. So the reimbursement wouldn't be the $10,000? No, the reimbursement is going to be the – what we're proposing here is the $70 of tree. The cost of the tree. And, again, with the NGOs, have you identified – I mean, we know KBV, our MRC, little growers that was here, they're already out there planting trees and doing things. Would there need to be, like, a management program for them? Do you have that worked into staff already? Is that, again, for us to discuss and work out? We don't have staff for any of this, so I did not want to get out there in front and contact all the NGOs and have them all excited about this, and then the committee says, no, no, no, right? Or the county commission, for that matter. So really, you know, that's why I sort of listed the questions in the agenda, right? First, you know, does the committee want to recommend creating a program, creating a grants program? Just to answer to that question right there, I think it's excellent, and I think we do so much promotion of each little step. What you can do at home makes a big difference. To actually put some money behind that for people to access and be involved with one-on-one, I think it's brilliant. I think it's definitely a great opportunity for education, as Fred has said, as well as Charles talking about, you know, Florida natives. So there's endless opportunities to really make touch points on how to be lagoon-friendly, lagoon-loyal at this point. Yes, sir, Fred. Yeah, thanks. Just one real quick comment. When you brought up the NGOs, I forgot to mention this. You know, universities have a big issue. They get a grant, and 40% of it goes to overhead. Can we sort of ensure that there's some sort of a limit to what that overhead might be so that the money goes down to the individuals and the things we want done? And I'll leave it at that. Thank you. Yeah, go ahead. I can't make a motion to approve this, but I would. I'll make a motion to approve this program as a research to study how to create the program. What exactly are you wanting here, that we approve making this program, and go from there? Yeah, if you look at the agenda on the last page, right, I have sort of a five-step process here. So the first is, do you want to recommend creating some kind of grants program? And I listed there to incentivize homeowners, businesses, churches, not-for-profits, HOAs, right? If there's anything that you don't, anybody that you don't want us to include or you want this to be as inclusive as possible, we'd like to know that. And then, right, the next question, I think, is do you like all of these programs, or do you want us to start with a smaller subset of these programs, or are there other things that you want added to the list, like Nick just said, include living shorelines? Leave it open for proposals, like if an organization comes up with something we haven't thought of or something new that they can bring to us, can we leave the exact, can we make it more of an umbrella that these types of projects would fall under for approval per month or per quarter or per however you determine is best to approve? Would these applicants need to fall in the main application once yearly, like the other applications, or how would they be governed? So glad you asked that, right. So, no, the goal would be to not have them come as part of that annual thing and have everybody waiting, and then you get a zillion applications. The goal is that you would set up this program and tell us how you want it to operate, and much like Quick Connects and septic upgrades happen throughout the year, where Joel's phone is ringing however many times a day with new applicants, that's how this program would run. Yes, ma'am. So, I think all of these are good projects. I think maybe in terms of the next question, in terms of what types of projects, what maximum cost share, et cetera, some of these, maybe we should pass this as a pilot program to maybe including all of these to use year one to gauge interest in the types of projects, to give us some information on the success of those projects and maybe some of the challenges of the long-term maintenance. Those, you know, let's do some work to see what the uptake is in the program, what seems to be most successful. And then we could revisit that in year two or three if we need a couple of years to do that, and really gauge what the community interest is in doing this, because we are talking about sort of a fundamentally different audience for things that are not as concrete as, like, a septic tank. The other thing I would suggest we consider is perhaps also prioritizing some of the things that already we know work in terms of how we list and promote these. For example, I think about the Swell Swales presentation, and maybe it's more about marketing, but a lot of beachside communities have the same kind of flooding issues that are in the Atlantic. I mean, coming to some understanding of where some of these things have really impactful application would be part of what we would do in that first year to understand, because just taking that story from in the Atlantic to another beachside community could be very high value on the uptake side of it. I think that's an excellent suggestion. I have a concern about the tree one, not that it's a good thing or a bad thing. It's not – I'm a tree guy. I mean, we own a tree farm. But when you're putting in trees, I think the slowness is a little bit. You know, somebody puts one over a septic tank, and now we're arguing over which is best. It's not – the trees are a wonderful answer. The right answer probably is Fred's, but I think to ease into it would be a good idea. And I can – and our counties and cities are – for every new development, you know, they cut all the trees. And so I think moving into it a little bit slow, like she suggested, is a good idea. Perfect idea. So three points. Ditto on that, including saving legacy trees instead of planting just new ones. It should also be incentivized. Would this be – would this category of grant applications be available to municipalities and the county government? I think that would be – because they're – they have a lot of land. If you can incentivize a lot of value to that, or is that incentivized at a different rate? I don't know. And then having participated in programs like this in the past, it becomes very difficult to get into your backyard to measure if you did put that tree in. A little less difficult when you've got a septic system that you've gotten paid thousands of dollars. But to monitor or audit a $70 tree planting becomes cost ineffective. So much like the rainbow program has in the past, come get your rain barrel over here. If you're motivated enough to go get one, then come get it and we'll give it to you, becomes a higher chance of it not being misused or the money being misused. Rather than, here's $70, go buy a tree. Do we know if you bought it or not? Sure. And I'm not sure – the same applies rain barrel for tree. But the concept there, management of it becomes a problem not only on the project delivery, but in the audit of did we follow through. And lastly, in tree planting in my town, we inevitably – we have regulations. We have a code that says it's got to survive for this many years. And if it doesn't, you have to replace it again. That's always a bone of contention with residents. But the intent is plant a tree that's going to survive. And again, back to how do you monitor those things. So pilot program, perfect. Capture the audience up to the municipal and government levels. And also, to Fred's comment earlier, add a category of Florida native, all non-lawn, whatever the right terminology for lawn is. And just one more thing on this one, just getting back to action. We did that earlier, Bruce, on a different topic. What's the offset? These tend to be small. So what did we not do because you're doing this? But I think from a community perspective, this will bring in a lot more better understanding of what we're doing and what people can do as well as actually doing something. Sorry, can I respond to the opportunity costs? So in the agenda item I explained, there's $59 million in stormwater priority basin money, the projects that are not moving forward. So that's the opportunity cost, is taking money that's sitting in the bank and putting it to work with the pilot program. Might there be another project in a different type that we need to get $59 million for that would have a bigger impact? Yeah, that's a good point. Just a quick question. Was a reduction of impermeable surfaces considered in these recommendations? We did look at that quickly. So the pervious pavers and pervious cement, they're so expensive. So if you're talking about removal of impervious surface and replacing with landscaping of some sort, that could be affordable. But the putting in pervious pavement systems was going to be very expensive. The maintenance is extremely difficult. Especially at a homeowner level, it would be, we thought that was a hard one to start with. Thank you very much. I'm sorry. I thought we were through. Any kind of educational component already thought of from you guys? It's been mentioned repeatedly, just like the maintenance and management of that investment. But just a general, this is a 10-minute video even with like a three-question quiz at the end. Or I think it's just more feasible than putting together a physical workshop that someone would have to attend in person. Just some kind of accountability. This is how to plant a new tree. Nick, I believe you created a program at Satellite that was right tree, right place. And it was for Satellite, which I don't think would be cost feasible, per Bruce's point especially, where the tree actually had to be delivered and you had to approve the spot where it was going to be planted so that it didn't impede on infrastructure and such. So maybe you have some resources that could be shared from Satellite? Chair, I'll speak to that. The trees program in Satellite Beach was designed in a way that a resident could apply and then through a review process, through the sustainability department, environmental programs coordinator, would call for locates, would make sure that the underground infrastructure wouldn't be impacted and that the tree would be planted in the right place. Because as Sally Scalera always says, right plant, right place, making sure that it wouldn't impact the homeowner's home or the sidewalk or any infrastructure was part of the process. Thank you, Kimberly. Absolutely. The trees that were used were all natives. They were all procured as locally from a tree farm as possible. And the homeowner was responsible for the maintenance of that tree. However, a little bit of a sunk cost was assumed that, you know, if the tree did die and the homeowner was unable to replace it at their own cost, that was the sunk cost of getting the tree out there. But making sure that it was planted at that time was my job and I planted all those trees and it was a lot of fun. We had volunteers doing it and that type of thing. And they were located on GIS maps to make sure, like, again, using the KBB model, really, of the program to look where the trees are and to map them and then to have sustainability board members report on their locations over time was part of the process. And staff would also do the same. To speak to that, just as a final note, a lot of those trees survived and those folks that have them are now proud owners of, you know, five-foot-tall oak trees that were, at one time, one-gallon oak trees. What was the year of that pilot or that program? I believe it was, like, 2020, 2021, maybe. So you're far enough out that you can quantify that it was a success? I don't have the data. If we could close with the inputs, please. One last point, because all of this brings up something that Virginia said, which is we don't have staff for all of this. So my assumption and part of my thinking in proposing a pilot project is that my assumption is that there is some kind of program development associated with the project types that will have to be done to get things started. That will be a cost to the program as well, over and above the cost of these things, which is why I suggest maybe a pilot program. But I think we need a motion to do anything. Right? And one really quick comment. I'm sorry. But I know in some communities out here where they level everything, like you said, in the net to put in a tree, right? Yeah. So are we going to allow a builder to come in and say, I've got to put in 100 trees here, like one tree? I think we've got to make sure we watch stuff like that as well. Okay. In closing, do we need a motion? I've moved. Just, no, I'm asking a question. Yes, please. Okay. Could we do that first before your input? Or do you want to give your input? I was just repeating my motion. Oh, okay. I'm sorry. I thought she made it. That's okay. That's why I waited for you to finish up. Virginia, you directed me to the last page. Do you have specific wording that you want verbiage for the motion or just a motion to adopt the citizen program, homeowner program? Is there a specific, to Fred's point as well, to not include that developer? I think Bruce mentioned cities. I mean, do we need to keep this specific to individuals, non-businesses, individuals, NGOs? It's up to me. You're just looking at me. I forgot you can't direct me. Okay. I move that we adopt the homeowner, private citizen reimbursement program and that it be created as a pilot and once a cost share is established, if you bring that back to us. Do we have a second? Second. Comments? Friendly amendment. Could we add to that, that this is the approval for the development of that program, that you bring that back to us and then we'd say go forward? Because there's a lot of details around how this is done, what the scale is. So, fully, fully righteous program, let's develop what that means. I just don't want the vote to be confused as approving the entirety of the program. I agree. I omitted the word development of the program, but agree. Other comment? It looks like the wording here was in this was to take it beyond just the homeowners to, like, some businesses and churches, et cetera. Did that get included in the motion? I didn't hear it. I did not say churches, but NGOs, those other entities, to be vetted. Again, a developer, we would decline that application on that basis. Other comments? Oh, I'm sorry. Hello, Danny Straub, City of Melbourne Engineering Department. I want to make sure when we start looking at these homeowners programs, which I love, we do a lot of them ourselves with our own rain barrel program. You have to make sure that the homeowner understands, A, where they own land and where they do not. The area out in the right-of-way between their property line, be that what that shows on the map, some neighborhoods, it's the back of the sidewalk. Some in my neighborhood, it's just about where my water meter and the power pole is. There's always that assumption that that's theirs. They own that. There is stuff in there, and you cannot put a tree, you cannot put a swale, you cannot do all sorts of good things out in that location. Additionally, when you talk about removing all of the sod that's in a yard and replacing it with something other than sod, you have just changed how that lot drains. You have to make sure the permitting process occurs with those things, and the understanding is, yeah, you can do this, and we're going to give you some dollars, but you have to hire a surveyor to come out and survey your lot to make sure we know what your existing lot grades look like and what your proposed lot grades are going to look like. Because when you just start pulling up your grass and you start putting it back, now the water's running onto somebody else's yard, and that causes more problems than benefit, unfortunately. So we just want to make sure what these homeowner programs, you know, French strain, people are like, oh, you can put a French strain in. Well, if your groundwater is only about three inches before the ground, we're going to give them dollars, and it's not going to help. It'll just make things worse. Some of these, like, tree plantings and things, those would be open to HOAs to help replant some of their open space areas. I think that's a great idea. But again, when you start looking at trees, you've got to know where your septic tank is. You need to know where your water line is. You need to know where your sewer lateral is, because it doesn't do any good for us to go line sewer laterals and fix them. So if you put a plate tree over it, that today isn't in the way, but in 10 years is going to be in the way. The other thing is not all oak trees are great for everywhere. You've got to know what to put there and what can be there. Power lines, underground and above ground utilities have to be looked at when we're doing all of these things. And then you have to figure out a way to make it quantifiable for everybody. So our municipality has tree requirements for placing trees for development. And homeowners, in some cases, are the owner-builder of building a new house. If you're building a new house, do you qualify for these trees, even though you're not a developer? So you have to kind of keep some of those things in your pilot program together. Not part of permanent compliance. It's got to be above and beyond. Above and beyond, correct. Thank you. You're welcome. Very good. Thank you, Danny. Any other comments? Oh, wait. Sorry. If we're going to put these bioswales and rain gardens in, and someone has a house, we've given them the grant money, it looks great, new homeowner comes in, and they're from some other state that doesn't understand what that is, and they fill it in, is that now the city's responsibility to do a code enforcement action against them. I don't like that idea. I don't like that idea because I don't have the staff to do that, to go out and do those kind of things. So we need to make sure that when we do all these things, that, A, they meet each municipality's code requirements and what is allowed by both the city, the state, and the local government. I think that are the city, state, and government. Yeah. Thank you. There's no more comments. We have another one. I apologize. We're running out of time. That's why I'm trying to hurry. It's not your fault. I really want to implore you to not be overly concerned with all the things that are barriers to success with this because the only way that it's happening right now is either in a municipality or with these NGOs. In my HOA, individual homeowners subsidize the HOA in order to plant 1,000 shoreline aquatic plants in the pond. We looked to keep our beautiful memorial tree planting program to get homeowners to sponsor trees that the HOA wouldn't pay for. They're not in the budget. You know what's in the budget? Spraying. That's it. Mow, blow, go, spray. If you want to change that paradigm on that 70% of privately owned property in Florida, in Brevard County, on the Indian River Lagoon, I don't qualify for anything. I'm a mile away from the lagoon. So there's no money for this association. Literally, 70-year-old women in the pond, hand weeding, paying the sprayer not to spray, paying to plant the plants, paying to plant the trees, because this needs to be done. And the only people that can make this happen right now are you. You must vote for this so that it can get to the commission, so that the people can see that they have an opportunity to make that change. You need to make that connection with people like me, not the person that's already invested, but my neighbor, who maybe isn't quite invested, but they're interested. And just so you know, Century Master Homeowners Association planted almost 4,000 shoreline aquatic plants, including the Spartina, just this week. And it was based on the idea that we could potentially get a grant, but we sort of know that we won't. So whenever we pitch the funding, it's like, we'll write it to the grant proposal, but you must know that we're not going to get the money, but we're going to meet those exacting standards. And you can set that standard, but don't be afraid of utilities and code enforcement, all of these things. People are already following all these rules. And what does that mean? We're cutting down trees. We're spraying the shoreline of our ponds. We are contributing to the degradation of the lagoon. So I really appreciate your commitment, and I encourage you, and I applaud you. Thank you. Thank you for speaking. Yeah, can I just say thank you, and I'd love to donate some plants to your project. Okay. Bring this to a close. Okay. You ready to vote now? Okay. All four for it? Aye. Aye. All against? Okay. We have one person to speak, and I think I'm pronouncing it Megan Murphy. I'm all back. I spoke out. Oh, okay. You gave your time back, Megan. Okay. Very good. And then final comments by chair and committee members. Yes, sir. I do have one. I know it's not Sorrel-related, but as tourism, I do work for the Sebastian Rivera Chamber, and we do have an event coming up that I just wanted to let you all know about in case you are in the neighborhood and would like to attend. June 20th at the Sebastian Inlet, the Chamber of Commerce has partnered with some members and some sponsors to do an Alzheimer's charity, Surf Contest and Family Fun Day, a local luau. It is the first of its kind for us, and it's a little bit of a pilot project of itself, and the idea is to just come out and support a good cause on June 20th. It's the longest day, longest ride, local luau, charity surf contest. Longest day is also the International Surfing Day, and in an effort to, you know, revitalize a lot of our inlet surf activity, which is still there. There's still surf contests going on. ESA's still doing stuff. But this is an opportunity that we had to try to create something new through tourism that could benefit the community and make it family-friendly. So a lot of surf contests are really big, big pro stuff. This is a little more amateur-focused for anyone that wants to compete. For $25, you know, they can go in and compete, not to win a big prize, but to help support the charity. And then also the family fun aspect, games for the family, wiffle chips, limbos, hula hoop contests, and fun things like that. Again, all proceeds go into charity. So that's just a little something going on. It also happens to be on my birthday, so I do hope that you all attend. Other comments? Yes, ma'am. So I want to get back to my sign idea. So, you know, when we're doing a sorrel project, we put up a sign that says, this is a sorrel project. So a baffle box is going in, and then after the road gets paved over and all the equipment's gone, you can't tell that anything happened there. So instead of having big signs, now I'm thinking, okay, just a little sign, you know, that has the sorrel logo, and then it might say project number three, stormwater baffle box. Just, just, and then people will see these signs as they're going up, and they'll see the numbers going up, and they'll see all the different locations, and it'll be a constant reminder as they're driving up and down the streets that sorrel is out there using their money to do good projects for the lagoon. And I think that, I think it would be good, you know, keep us, keep us in the public's eye all the time, and it wouldn't cost that much. You'd probably have to coordinate with DOT to put signage along the roadside, but there'll be little signs, just something with our logo, you know, that says project number 82, baffle box or whatever. But I, I think that we need to, there, the, the public doesn't really know how much work is being done with this money, and I think that would be a way to, to help, help publicize the, the immense amount of work that's, that's being done all over the county. And you can put signs by digits, too. Any other comments? Yes, sir. In the past, there's, there's been a, a meeting we've canceled in June on a regular basis because staff was busy working on budgets and all that sort of thing, and I just wanted to make sure, are we meeting next month, or are we not meeting? June, there is no meeting in June. I just wanted to make sure. It was, it, the reason it wasn't, how far we got today had some bearing on whether we had a June meeting. Right. We were, that's why I was pushing hard. Apologize, I should have said that early. Yes. I just want to say that it's not even disappointment that no one was on board to, to vote for the elimination and accountability of use of herbicides. I know many of you personally have the same fervor as I do for the elimination of poisons that do go directly to our lagoon. But I just want to make sure you all know that I am going to be relentless, and this will definitely just be the beginning. And I will continue to educate my peers on this committee as I get educated by many of you regularly to learn more about how to best care for this. But someone did mention Green Industry Best Management Practices, and I got that certification a decade ago before it was even a law. Appreciate it. And Demetri. Move to adjourn. Yes. Second. Second. Sorry. All in favor. Aye. Aye. Thank you. Thank you. The opinions expressed by any member of the public during any period of public comment do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the Board of County Commissioners of Brevard County, Florida, Space Coast Government Television, or the program sponsor, and are solely those of the presenter. The Board of County Commissioners of Brevard County, Florida, Space Coast Government Television, and the program sponsor hereby expressly disclaim any and all responsibility or liability for any defamatory or slanderous statements expressed by any member of the public during any such period. Thank you.