CM Gaffney Jr. re Retention Pond Discussion - Aug 25, 2026

All right. It's 2 o'clock. We'll go ahead and get started. We good to go? Okay. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Councilman Reginald Gaffney Jr. If we could quiet up, we'll go ahead and get started. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Councilman Reginald Gaffney Jr. It's an honor and a pleasure to be here. Today is a very important day. It comes at a critical time. Everyone has been seeing the news, and, of course, myself and we all are devastated. And I think now is the time for the city. I will let the officials to get behind this action and take action. So before we get into this agenda, you know, I want to start with prayer. We've got a very lengthy agenda, and then I'm going to go down the flow of the agenda. So State Rep. Kimberly Daniels, if you don't mind, you can lead us in prayer. Father, we just thank you for this gathering of leaders and community members. First of all, we pray for the families who have suffered loss. And, God, we thank you that we will find a common denominator in this room today to solve this problem. God, what we're dealing with is not by power and might, but we need your intervention. And I thank you for your spirit in this place as we come together and as we agree and as we get things done. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen. Thank you so much for that prayer. So I don't plan to keep us here all day. Hopefully we'll be out in the next hour, the next hour and 30 minutes. We've got a lot of things to talk about. You know, my goal today, you guys, is to hopefully walk out of here with some type of legislation. You guys are aware of what took place this whole entire month. August 5th, we had Chance, who wandered out of his house, and JSO found him in a pond 16, 14 hours later. Once I found out about that, my office immediately took action. I reached out to our public works department. I also reached out to our developmental services department. I reached out to the mayor's administration. We met and we agreed that we should have a notice meeting. And the reason why we decided to have a notice meeting, because the city in 2021, Councilwoman Pickman, who can't make it today, she actually took a stab at creating legislation five years ago. So, you know, upon, so we scheduled the notice meeting, and then just yesterday, you get another call that a three-year-old who have yet to be identified passed away to retention drownings. So, the way I put it, you know, we really got an active neighborhood emergency, and I think we need to do something now, you know. So, before I get further in the agenda, I do want to allow my colleagues and everybody around the table to introduce themselves. I think that's very important before I go into the agenda. So, Jason, if you want to start with you left, to my right. Sure. Jason Teal, City Council Secretary and Legislative Council. Joe Underhees, Deputy Chief of Staff, Mayor's Office. Good afternoon, everyone. Tyrone O'Clock Murray, District 9. Good afternoon, Matt Carlucci, at large, Group 4. Ron Salem, Group 2 at large. City Council. Councilman Reginald Gaffney, District 8. Mike Gay, District 2. Randy White, District 12. Kimberly Deans, Florida House, District 14. So, thank you guys for coming. I really appreciate that. So, this is how the agenda goes flow. So, the first thing on the item of the agenda, obviously, I want to talk about why we're here, you know, and I think we already know that. I think, number two, we're going to talk about the data. I think it's important to know the why, and it's important to know the data over the last five years, how many deaths we had in these retention ponds. And, number three, I think we need to talk about the current landscape of what systems and methods the city and the private entities have in place. I think we need to see what we're currently doing, what's working and what's not working. And then, I think, number four, we're going to talk about solutions. And, hopefully, that's the part I'm looking forward to because, at the end of the day, you know, my biggest fear is receiving another call two weeks from now saying we have another drowning. So, as I stated before, and I want to make myself clear, I know there's been a lot of conversations around fencing. You know, I'm not stuck on fencing in terms of making a mandate for every apartment complex and subdivisions. What I want to discuss today, you know, types of barriers, any types of vegetation, we maybe can increase the distance, you know, and I'm not stuck on that. And, I want to bring that to the forefront because I have received a lot of calls, whether some support it and some don't, saying, hey, Councilman Gaffney, please do not pick fences up. So, I'm not stuck on that, but that is on the forefront. Before we move forward, I think it's important that, I think, Roshonda, Roshonda, what I want you to do, if you can, over the last five years, if you can inform us of how many kids have lost their life to these retention ponds. Thank you. Roshonda Jackson, with the Office of Jacksonville City Councilmember Reggie Gaffney, Jr., address is on file. Councilman, as of April 2021 through as of yesterday, we had a total of six deaths, ranging from young as three years old to 17. Five of these will be very clear what we've learned, and this is from resources from our News for Jack partners and also First Coast News. Councilman Gaffney, Jr. actually went back and did the research with each of these families to verify the data that we've learned. And so, five of these were involved retention ponds, and one was a detention ponds. And that's what we have now, Councilman. So, in the last, I guess, five years, we pretty much averaged, you know, one death a year, you know. And let me be clear. I think what we need to point out before we get further deep into this issue, those six deaths was all autistic. Now, we're not counting the deaths of other individuals who have drowned their retention ponds. So, hear me out. It's two separate issues what's at stake right now. You got your autistic kids that's wandering off, you know, going into these retention ponds, and then you have other deaths that were the adults, our kids, that have died at retention ponds. We've been trying to get those numbers. I think we got somebody from the health department, and now I give everyone a chance to speak a little later. I don't have those, that data, but we do have two separate issues. But the primary focus, what I did want to focus on is autistic kids, since that's the last two tragedies this past month. I do want to emphasize and kind of hone in on that. So, that's what we do know. The next item on the agenda, what I want to know, I guess, from the city, and someone from Public Works Development Services come up, what systems and methods do we currently have in place to prevent this from happening? And it might be nothing. I don't know. You know, I just want to see, before we even talk about legislation, what currently does the city of Jacksonville, and also, can somebody come up from the private development side as well? I'm not sure if anybody, you know, they want to speak, you know, from the private development, any HOA or any subdivision want to come up and speak in reference to that too? Go ahead. Steve, you can introduce yourself. Yes, sir. Steve Long, Operations Director of Public Works. First, things that are in place today, and it kind of varies between public and private, there are some that are in place for both, some that are in place only for us based on policy that we follow. Some of the things that are in place for all of them, pond slopes. When ponds are designed with a four-to-one or less slope, then they aren't fenced because of the fact a pond that's less than four-to-one, so that's basically, you know, if you go out four feet into a pond, it would be one foot deep. So it means going out eight feet into a pond, it would be two feet deep. Those are shallow enough. If somebody were to fall into the pond or something like that, you're not rolling eight feet out into the pond. You're falling into it. You're getting up. You're exiting. But, of course, like you said earlier, this is more focused on autistic children. But that's a standard we have in place, and that's for private and for public. For public ponds, one of the things we do is with our mowing program, we do not mow down next to the water's edge. We leave a strip of grass and don't have an exact width, but five, six feet wide that we do not mow. We let it grow up so that it makes the pond, it uses word, but it makes it unattractive to actually go into or near the pond. And I don't mean when I say unattractive, I don't mean from a physical look of it, but from the actual, you know, want you to go down and get near it. You know, when things are overgrown like that, they can have various wildlife in it along the edge, along the banks. That tends to keep you away from it. If it's manicured, looks like a golf course right down into the edge of the water. If you've ever played golf, ball goes in, you pick it up. If you're near a lake, your ball goes in it, and it's got like, you know, the bushes and, you know, various overgrown things, you don't go near it, you don't go get it. And so that's sort of the same process we have with our ponds. Another thing about city ponds is in a lot of cases, and not just city ponds, but also private ponds, ponds are actually landscaped. They actually can be used as features. You'll see walk paths around ponds, things of that nature, because you don't want to just put a pond somewhere, and it's very unappealing. So they'll do walk paths, they'll do trees, things of that nature. So you have the public and private individuals coming to these locations for various usage. So, you know, on the one hand, you want to keep people out of them. On the other hand, they're being invited to come near them. So last thing is when you were talking earlier about detention and retention, typically when we look at those two, a detention pond is a pond that is dry in between storms. So if it rains, a detention pond will fill with water, and it'll stage up, and then over the course of a period of time, within typically 36 hours, it's recovered half the volume. Within 72 hours, it's dry, so then it's a dry pond, and we call that detention, whereas retention is what we call a wet pond. So it's one when you go out and you look at it, and it sort of resembles a lake. When you go out to those, you'll see those. They always have water. The water stages up, then it slowly bleeds away while it's getting treatment, and then it still remains as a wet pond when you're done. And those are the ones where we have these features in place on public ponds to keep them, you know, try to keep people away from the actual water's edge. Come near it. You can see it, but don't go near the water's edge is what we're trying to have done. Thank you. My thought, Lisa, you all have a question? What defines a public pond? When I say public pond, that's a pond that's owned by the city of Jacksonville. There are other public entities such as DOT, Port Authority, that sort of thing, but when I'm using the term public pond right now, I'm talking about a city pond. So if we do a roadway project and we have to put a pond in, it's not necessarily in the middle of a neighborhood. It's along a roadway edge. It's not, you know, in within the houses in most cases, but it's owned by the city, maintained by the city. So ponds that we create where we put a road or something in, generally not near a neighborhood, are the public ponds? That's correct. Yes, sir. Thank you. Yes, sir. So state ponds, what are their guardrails and policies? Councilmember Carlucci, that's a very good question, and I apologize that I do not have that in front of me. I know they follow some of the similar policies that we have, and in some cases, there are areas on state roads that the city maintains. And so if it's something that we're maintaining it, we would maintain it to a city standard. But then there's also, you know, state ponds that they maintain that may be slightly different, but they would still meet things such as the minimum slopes. If you end up being steeper than, like, say, a four-to-one slope on a pond, we require fencing. So you'll go into some of these, you know, some of the shopping centers. And to save space, you'll see they actually have walls around their ponds where it's not sloped down into it. It's a vertical wall. Well, you'll see on those, they actually have a ladder out of the pond, and then around the pond, it's completely fenced. So if you're steeper than that four-to-one slope, they put a fence up. And so that's private, that's public, that's anything. A pond at 295 and Merrill around the – Yes, sir. Is that a state pond? Yes, sir. That's a state pond. Okay. Thank you. Yes, sir. So if I heard you correctly, Steve, right now the city, the state have no mechanisms or no specific guardrails in place to prevent these tragedies. Only standard, I guess, policies in place. But there's nothing specifically in place to prevent these. If a child got out, I mean, I guess they could just walk down. Right. The policy that we use, the practice that we use, was what was developed during the 2021 situation. When this – maybe an ad hoc committee, whatever you may want to call it, when it was called, as we went through a series of a couple meetings, that was sort of what was decided upon. Because at that time, it kind of became a consensus that they didn't want to go in and try to fence off hundreds upon hundreds of ponds throughout the city of Jacksonville. And so they asked, what could we do? And this was one of the things that we put into place with that committee, you know, understanding. And on city ponds, it appears to have been working without issue. Now, you know, like I say, that's on city ponds. It's not necessarily on private ponds. But there are mechanisms on private ponds. There are things out there like fertilizer rules where close to ponds, they don't apply fertilizer. They actually are encouraged to plant plantings around the ponds to form a buffer. It wouldn't be a buffer you couldn't go through. But, again, it's another type of buffer. And that's actually in city ordinance code. Once again, good afternoon to everyone. So, Mr. Long, I know you've talked about city code, and I know you've talked about our public ponds. I don't know if you – you or Ms. Parola, I don't know if – I'm scanning the room to see if she's in here or someone from planning. So, these two deaths, if I'm not mistaken, have occurred on private ponds. So, I'm wondering at what point in the planning portion for the developments in which these – and both developments are fairly new. I think one had to do with the – near the Veterans Center across the street from a multifamily development. And the other was a new kind of townhome development that's off of I-95. Yes, off of Broward. Thank you. So, at what point in the planning phase do we know what type of pond structure or retention or detention structure they're going to use so that we can make sure that they're using whether or not they need to put a fence or some other type of barrier so that we don't have these types of tragedies? Yes, ma'am. As they go through their planning and design phase, when they get to their design phase, they submit plans into our development services group with Chief Cabin, and she's here with me today. But they submit plans into her division. And when those plans come in, one of the things they do is they review those plans. They check the pond cross-section to see if they're within, you know, acceptable limits on the slopes. If they're steeper than those slopes, then one of the things is if they don't already have a fence included, that'll be a comment that goes back to them. Their plans won't be approved until they put fencing in. So, it's during that submittal into the development services group, into the development services division, that all of that gets reviewed and makes sure that they meet city standards. Okay. Thank you so much for that. So, right now, the issue is not so much whether or not the pond, whether it's retention or detention, if it's going to be safe. It's whether or not it has a certain slope where I'm assuming that the measurement for the slope had to do with an adult because you say if you walk out to a certain point in the pond that you won't necessarily just drown or go under the water right away. So, children weren't considered, and this is rhetorical, children weren't considered at all in the planning portion or just the ordinance portion of this particular rule or city ordinance. So, we need to, to the chair, who happens to be Mr. Gaffney, that's the portion that we need to focus on, how the ponds affect children. Because most adults have enough common sense to not walk into a pond, especially if it's whether it's retention or detention. And just considering the fact that, the other thing I wanted to know, signage. Is there any signage there? It's not that these babies would have been able to read it, but is it automatic in city ordinance that there are signs posted that wildlife may be here? Do not enter. Are any of those signs automatic, at least with public detention or retention ponds? No, ma'am. We don't have signs on our ponds or anything like that. No, ma'am. Thank you for that. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Gaffney. Steve, on the four-to-one requirements, is that a city requirement or is that a state requirement? It's in our land development procedures manual, but that's one of the things that's also required, like through Water Management District. So, you know, they're a state agency. So, it would be, when you submit your plans, it would go to us and to the state, and it's one of the things they would review as well. So, if we did any modifications to that, does it have to go to the state for approval? No, sir. If we were to be more stringent than the state, we wouldn't have to go back to the state. But if we wanted to do something that was less stringent, then we might have to meet with them and get their approval on it. So, the House Bill 180 wouldn't apply to this because that did keep us from, in certain situations, from doing something more stringent. And I do not believe House Bill 180 addressed retention ponds. I know it talked about a variety of things. You know, some of our MOUs we have with our local, you know, cities and things of that nature, but I don't think it addressed the retention ponds issue. All right. Thank you. I appreciate it. So, two children have passed away, died tragically, and had autism, which is near and dear to my heart. But one was three, so that's very young. Steve, you may not be the right person to ask, and I don't think this would apply to the three-year-old, but there may be other kids that have actually gone in ponds that we don't know about. And I'm just wondering if you or anybody else, public safety, might have any idea if the actual heat that we're experiencing right now attracts kids, not a three-year-old, but maybe other kids, to these ponds as a place where they might get some relief, you know, with the water, like a lake would or something. And so I'll just throw that out there while I'm thinking about it. And so just a question, and do you have any idea on that? No, sir. I would be speculating. I don't know if that would be the case or not. All right. All right. Thank you. Do we have anyone from, I guess, the Builders Association, the developers? I just want to talk about the next five minutes from, because it's development going on left and right. Everywhere you look around, Jacksonville is growing, the city is growing. And every development have two or three retention ponds. Can someone from the private sector speak, I'm not sure if anyone is here from the Builders Association, speak on, I guess, what mechanism restrictions are in place when it comes to retention ponds? It don't look like no one here. So I guess it brings me to my next point. So do we have enough mechanisms in place right now to, I guess, prevent? My goal is, and the reason we're talking about it, because right now I feel like it's a public safety matter, right? That's why I think we're here. Somebody asked me this morning, is it the government role to get involved in this? I think it's a public safety matter right now. And right now, I feel, as the city, us, we do not have enough protections and restrictions in place to prevent this from happening, you know? So the next thing I would like to discuss, you know, I mean, it's obvious, and I know it's very subjective. I mean, six kids, some people might say, well, Councilman Gaffey has only six kids. But that's enough for me. Jacksonville is growing, obviously. Jacksonville is growing, obviously. This matter is not going anywhere. I assure you not, we'll be talking about this in two, maybe, you know, hopefully not this year, but the next couple of years. You know, so I guess Curtis, right on time. I'm being held in the other room, sorry. Do you want to introduce yourself and let everyone know who you represent? Curtis Hart, 8051 Terrell Lane. I'm a real estate developer here. And it's your own, what Mr. Long's title is, but he indicated we build according to the City Land Development Procedures Manual, which is on a very slow slope so that if a child or someone walks into it, by the time they get six, eight feet out, they're just a foot or two into the water, and it drops off at a later date. And if we don't develop to that standard, we have to fence. So, what you go from here, that's the way we develop now. I mean, we follow the state and local rules, which is water management and the City of Jacksonville Land Development Procedures. And, you know, and we had this discussion four or five years ago, and the avenue that we agreed to would be to help teach some of these children how to swim. Now, there's a certain sector that can't learn how to swim, and that's the sector we're, you know, certainly worried about. A lot of these ponds are in people's backyards. For many years, the City of Jacksonville required us to give the ponds to the adjoining property owners. So, now you have many, many ponds of the City of Jacksonville that are owned partially out into the middle. We actually used to have to plait to the center of the pond, and that pond is actually owned by the adjoining property owner. So, that is not so much so now. We have a lot more control, easements across the city doesn't require us to do that anymore. We put that pond in a tract so we can have more control over it. So, if there are solutions you want to see us do, we certainly will follow those solutions. We've got to answer any questions. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thanks for being here, Curtis. That's super that you're here, because I appreciate your leadership and development over so many years. Just a thought I had, and I'd just, you know, raise the flag and see who salutes or see who boos or whatever. But I really feel, as a council member myself, and I think there may be others that feel the same way, that there's a need to do something more than what we have now. But also being sensitive to the fact that it costs money to do certain things from fencing and so forth. But it seems like it might not be a bad idea, and I'm suggesting this mainly to Councilman Gaffney because he's the one that's leading this effort. But to have maybe a group of council members and other interested parties like yourself, Curtis, and so forth that could put together perhaps a menu of ways to prevent this, whether it be fencing or landscaping, slopes, and so forth, that could be used to prevent these kind of drownings that property owners, developers, local government, state could use according to which works best for them. It works best for the public safety. But to come up with a menu that would be more than what we have now, and if that were to pass, perhaps giving a one- or two-year time frame for people to go back and to retrofit some of their retention and detention ponds, I suppose, I suppose, over a period of time, wouldn't happen all of a sudden, but it would give a time frame that would allow for this to happen to prevent these kind of drownings. I just think if we do nothing, and this happens again, we're all going to be not happy with our souls inside. But I also know that it's not easy to go back, and if you're a landowner or a property owner, to just suddenly have to retrofit to a certain way. But if there's a range of ideas that can be implemented, and you have a certain time frame to do that, and it's codified in the ordinance code, and it's put together by a group that's made up of interested parties, Councilman Gaffney. I just throw that out there for my fellow council members and for Curtis, who represents a varied interest of private landowners and developers, what the thought might be on that. And I wouldn't mind responding. I think the combination of landscaping and fencing in the children is what we're worried about, our children. And, you know, a small fence, a four-foot fence probably prevents a lot of these things from happening. But a combination of fencing and landscaping to make it attractive is, you know, probably where the solution would we like to see go. I think retrofitting is pretty tough because the ownership of that pond has now moved to HOAs and individual owners. And, you know, do we have control of water management, of course, still has easements over all these ponds. And so there may be an avenue that we could pursue towards water management because they have easements across these ponds, you know, to be able to get to them as a service and that kind of stuff. And most HOAs are responsible for the maintenance of these ponds afterwards. But in the future, on future developments, we're certainly open to taking a look at a combination of landscape and fencing. I don't think it's out of question. I recently built a subdivision and fenced it because it was so tight and out of fear of that kind of stuff. I mean, you do things like that. But, yeah, we're open to whatever you guys want to do. We'll be at the table and contribute. If I might add something. So, Council Member Carlucci, you're not out of the realm of possibilities. In Florida, we enacted a law back in 2006. It was called Chloe's Law because there was a young lady who drove her car, and she drove her car into a retention pond. And so that law gave landowners and the state an opportunity of a span of about 10 years to go back and put fencing in if it was within a certain distance of a state road. So, it's not out of the realm of possibilities. It's not unprecedented. So, it is something that we need to look at because we don't – although both of those developments where this has occurred recently, they're new. But who knows? I know that I had a death in my district a year ago where the retention pond had been there for years. So, the fact that it is an attractive nuisance, especially to a student, to a child who has autism, they are attracted to water. So, I think retroactive, making a law and making it retroactive and giving property owners a certain span of time – 10 years was a long time, in my opinion, as far as the state law – to go back and retrofit so that we make sure that no child is lost again is not unprecedented and not out of the realm of possibilities. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. I would just say – I think government has a role. How big a role is the question? But I think we definitely need to be involved in this discussion. Is there a way to categorize the ponds that are out there as high risk, low risk, medium risk? I mean, if they're near apartment complexes and that kind of thing, I think those would be high risk. And maybe we need to identify those as first before we move on to others. And I've got to believe this is not a new issue throughout the country, throughout Florida. Can we get research within our area to research other communities? What have they done? What has been successful in other cities, communities across the country, for that matter? Because this is not new. This is not a new problem. And I don't think we would be helping ourselves to start from scratch here and developing something that may be working somewhere else. Just a couple of ideas. Mr. Chair, one other thing I'd like to mention, on the slope of a retention pond, that certainly is, I think, important. The shallower it is, the safer that it would be. But you've also got to consider how soft the bottom is. Because I can tell you, I've stepped into waters before where the bottom wasn't like a hard, sandy bottom. It was a very mucky bottom. And you step your foot into it. And you can hardly get your foot out. And then when you try to get your other foot out, the other foot goes in. And it goes deeper than the first foot. And then now you're in really deep problems. And so what might look like low risk, which I agree with my colleague, Councilman Salem, but just because they're shallow or they might be looked at as low risk, depending on how mucky the bottom is, that can be a very high risk retention pond. And Sid, the kid that used to go fast fishing and wading around in retention ponds when he was a teenager. So throwing that out there. I conclude and I'm going to let somebody else talk. But listen, we'll be at the table. There's a path to make it happen. We just want input. And then we'll abide by the rules that are passed. So appreciate the opportunity to talk. Thanks for being here. So this is pretty much where we're at. So thank you, Curtis. I appreciate that. So Councilman Carlucci, Councilman Salem, you guys both are right. This is what we'll do. We'll try to get some research to see what other cities are doing, try to find some best practices before we move forward. You're right. I mean, there's got to be a nationwide issue. You know, so and y'all just heard Curtis. You know, he said the builders are open to potentially doing a four-foot fence as well as vegetation. So we do got some wiggle room. We do got some starting room. One of the things I would like to know, and I don't know if you're the right person to ask, Jason. I want to ask somebody from OGC, maybe Mary. Is that, you know, because this question was brought up to me as well, whether does Council have the authority to, I guess, write legislation for private property. You know, this came up. I know a couple of people who, a few people who was opposed to it, they asked, you know, I stand at HOA or I stand at 55 and over community. You know, I stand at overlay. You know, you just can't come write legislation and mandate that, I guess, a four-foot fence or whatever, how the fence is going to be. Can we write legislation, I guess, for these subdivisions? To Council Member Gaffney, Jr., so you all write legislation that affects private property all the time. Our zoning code, our land development code are just that. A couple of the things that I'm very cognizant of with respect to this conversation, and it kind of depends on which pathway you all want to proceed on. And Dr. Salem had mentioned asking research to look into what other jurisdictions may have implemented, both within the state and in this area and outside, which I think is a good start, because invariably in local government, we don't have to reinvent the wheel, and there might be something out there that works. One of the things that we're going to be looking at based on kind of the direction that you or the Council wants to go is there is still the implication of Senate Bill 180. I know Mr. Long indicated that it doesn't specifically reference retention ponds. However, with respect to development standards and trying to impose a more stringent standard than what is currently on the books, irrespective of what it is, retention ponds or anything, Senate Bill 180 will be a factor. And as we've seen in a number of other pieces of legislation that some of your colleagues have filed, it's precluding us from being able to take some of those actions because we're locked in until a certain date when that requirement or restriction ends, and if it gets extended by the state, we're locked in for an extended period of time. So that's something, in light of where you all want to go, we would be looking at that. The other thing that we would be looking at is this retroactive application of more stringent standards, and our concern whether or not that would open us up to a series of Burt Harris claims. We've seen those over the years. And so those are the different types of legal implications that we would be working through with you as you try to find your way through what are some reasonable and appropriate solutions to give you all the most information and the best legal risk analysis to help make that decision. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman. To dovetail on what Mary said, so typically when we looked at regulating or enacting new regulations, there's kind of two paths forward. You can either regulate or you can incentivize. And especially when we're dealing with retroactive application of onerous requirements, depending on your perspective, one way to look at doing it that is a softer approach is to provide incentives for private property owners to be able to do this. Now, whether that's tax relief, whether that's financial, whether it's some other type of avenue, is one approach that probably would not trip Senate Bill 180 or the Burt Harris Act because then it's a voluntary agreement by private property owners that want to just do the right thing, and you've properly incentivize them to do it. The other approach potentially is another voluntary type approach, which is what we have similar to like our dredging in our undergrounding of utilities, which is to authorize private property owners to agree to put the fences around the ponds or landscaping or whatever it is. And the city would front the cost for doing that, and then it would appear on the tax bill for the next 10 years for whatever your private property is that's benefited from those improvements. So Mary's exactly right. I mean, unfortunately, the state has put some burdens in our way that do impact our ability to do certain things at all or either with the risk of a lawsuit, but that doesn't necessarily mean that's the end of the road. You do have other approaches that you can take that would allow private property owners to, under the right incentives, to agree to do the right thing. So I don't want you to just get so focused in on passing a law that says that thou shalt do this by a certain day because there's another approach where you could say you can do this, and if you do it, then – and that may help us run out the clock with Senate Bill 180. that may help us deal with existing conditions like Mr. Hart was talking about and Mr. Long was talking about, you know, there's a lot of these properties that are out there that have been in place. I mean, stormwater treatment, and that's been in place since, you know, at least the early 80s. And so I think in, like, 1987 is when the state required HOAs to be responsible for taking over these ponds. But you do have, you know, situations where every adjacent property owner owns a pie piece of the pond out to the center line. And so thinking of something or crafting something that is going to enable you to be flexible because there's a lot of conditions under which these things were done. You want to have something that can be applied in a multitude of different realities. So just something to think about is, you know, maybe that's something that research can look at is not just the mandatory regulatory aspect of it, but what other sort of incentivized programs might be out there. Thank you, Mr. Gaffney. I think we've got two issues here. I think everything we've talked about is a long-term issue to try to fix. I think we need to look at some short-term things we can do, and that would be if we could identify where these children live and put some public service announcements out and send somebody out from the city to see if there's a pond within 100 feet, 500 feet, or 1,000 feet from their house and try to look at the house and try to educate the family with some locks. They make clamp-on bands with a GPS on it for autistic children, that if they get 50 foot away from mama and her phone, her phone. Anyway, I think there's two things we're looking at. Everything we've talked about is a long fix with thousands of ponds here. So we need to look at the shortest avenue of getting some hopefully better response and education to hopefully save these children. If I may, Mr. Gaffney, I think that's a very good point. One thing that I was thinking about, and Steve, if you're still in the room, Steve Long, if you could come up. Okay. Thank you. So we know that in various communities, if there is a child or an adult who is deaf, you see signs that are placed in the community. Mr. Long, would it be out of the realm of possibilities to, if we have, if there is a child with autism or an autism program near a body of water, would it be out of the realm of possibilities that we could use city signage? Because I'm not sure what the process is where communities are able to get the deaf child signs that we see around town or in neighborhoods. Is that something that we could potentially do as a city once we identify if a student with or child with autism lives in a community to actually post a sign that is within a certain proximity of a water body? Privately owned. We wouldn't be able to put them onto the private property. And then if there's even a sign that does that, I'm not sure if there's actually a sign in place that does that sort of thing. Are we announcing it to other community members so they're aware of neighbors that may have autistic children? Is that kind of the goal so they can help look out? Yes, so that everyone is aware. Just like I said, I know in my community we did have an adult who was deaf. And so there was a sign that was placed in the community to let everyone know that there is a deaf adult in the community. So just like I said, I know it's been done before, so it can't be out of the realm of possibilities to do it for another level of child. Right. And the deaf signs are one of the standard, you know, warning signs that are out there through the MUTCD. We would just have to do some research on something for a potential situation like this. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. All right. Thank you, Steve. So it's 245, and this alone is not a government issue. You know, we have partners that we need to partner with. As a matter of fact, I think we're going to spend this next 10 to 15. Oh, I'm sorry, State Rep. You want to say something? Go ahead. Go ahead. First of all, I'm here, and I'm State Representative Kimberly Daniels, and I'm here, first of all, to mourn with the community on the loss of these babies and to, you know, situations like this always work better when city and state government work together. And I'm here to, first of all, to hear what's being said on the local level, to gather information, to be a part of the team, because there are certain things you can't do. You'll say, oh, that state or that city. So I'm here, and I know that my colleagues, even though they're not here, I know they're here with me. And whether it's through the Duval delegation, my office has already started research on the state level. So I believe that whatever we have in place now is not working, and I really think that while we're approaching this situation, we need to know that lives are more important than money. You know, I hear money, and I think about the families that have lost their babies. They will give billions of dollars to get those children back. So I believe that this is not a local problem. This is happening all over Florida. They're probably, and this is what we need to look into, because I am truly not the expert on this, but I know how to work whatever I get information on and make it happen. I believe that there probably needs to be a statewide standard. Don't know if that's already in place. If it needs to be upgraded, enforcement mechanisms and timeline and funding provisions. I have faith in Florida, in Duval County, and in our districts. But faith without work is dead. We cannot continue to meet to meet. We cannot just talk about it. This is something that really needs action, and I'm so proud to be here and to see all of the different working parts coming together. Because whenever you want to solve a problem, you have to have a common denominator. So I want to be a part of that common denominator. Children with special needs, they need safe spaces and safe places. All children need protection. And more than anything, I think about the parents and the citizens who have children in this situation, that that hasn't happened to, and they need to feel confident that we are doing our due diligence. And I'm here on behalf of the state of Florida to say that I'm gathering information, and I plan on working on if there's some possible legislation we need to do on the state level, but I don't want to be working against each other. I want to work with the city. Just had a thought, Councilman Gaffney. I think the key to this is continuing the momentum. And I was going to make a suggestion to you is to speak to President Howland and see if we can incorporate this discussion into one of our standing committees so that it's there every two weeks and there's an update and it's discussed and so we don't lose what we're doing today. Because it's hard to have a notice meeting and bring all these people together. But if they knew it was in neighborhoods, for example, or something like that, that meets every two weeks and it was on the agenda, I think that would maintain bringing all these pieces together as a suggestion. I really appreciate that. I'm sorry. Okay. All right. If we can, I do want to. We've got several guests in here that we definitely need to recognize. We've got individuals from Baptist, St. Vincent's, Department of Health, Jacksonville School of Autism. I think they play a great role in this process as well. So I'm not sure who, all right, Roshonda just texted me and said they're here. So, I mean, if you're a partner representing an agency, if you can, if you feel comfortable, you want to speak, two minutes, you know, because I know there's some individuals. We do, and we do also have a parent here who's willing to speak. But I would like to hear from our partner companies first, from the hospitals. I'm not sure if y'all want to speak or not, and who here, I don't even know who here. So if you can, and Roshonda, if we can, let's try to time it two and a half minutes, if we can, if y'all can. Hi. Excuse me. Okay. My name is Dr. Rebecca Penna. I'm a pediatric neuropsychologist with Baptist Behavioral Health. I'm the chief of the neuropsychology and testing service line, and I work a lot with this population, so children and families with autism. And I'm really grateful to be able to be a part of the discussion today. I wanted to highlight two things. One is this is an extremely vulnerable population on many levels. They need all the help they can get. And autism doesn't just affect kids. It affects adults as well. So the autistic children grow up to be autistic adults, and many of them continue to experience some of the same challenges that we're talking about today. So, unfortunately, some of these children grow into be adults who still have very poor safety awareness and don't know how to swim and can't communicate and are still drawn to water. So I worry about that end of the spectrum, if you will, because it doesn't just affect children. The other thing I wanted to mention, and I think we're probably all aware of this, is this is an increasing concern, right? We all know that rates of autism are, they have been growing and growing. So I believe right now it's 1 in 33, I think, is the current estimate of folks in the United States diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. That's a lot of people, right? And so I think it is incumbent that we consider this a public health, a public safety concern. Thank you. Thank you so much for speaking. Anyone else from any of the hospital or agency can't hear you? Hi. I'm Dr. Karen Sandback. We are colleagues at Baptist Behavioral Health. I am Associate Clinical Director of our testing services and also our consultation liaison services. So my specialty is slightly different, and I have seen and worked with many of the families of the children that have near drownings or a drowning that is happening and they will be dying. And so sitting with those families as they are losing their children really does change your perspective. And speaking to the vulnerability, we're talking about young children with very different muscle strength than what we've planned for. If they can pull themselves out of water or walk out of water that adult could, they cannot. So just please consider those layers of vulnerability as well. God bless you. Good afternoon. I have a question for either of the doctors. Dr. Karen may be best suited. Could you talk a little bit about the mindset that if there were a city program that would ask the parents to come forward and volunteer their information so that there could be a check-in with maybe a JFRD, can you talk about what the appetite, what the reception for that kind of program would be? Sure. So in my experience, I see both kind of ends of the spectrum, if you will, in terms of reactions to that. Some families are very eager to get connected to local law enforcement, really want their child to be identified on a registry so that, God forbid, the child does get lost. There's people who can help find their child. Other families are very nervous about disclosing, you know, in particular this diagnosis and are very reluctant to share that information. So I think you have a mixed bag. Some families, I feel like, would be very, very interested, and I think others would be quite nervous. Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks so much for convening this group. This is such an important topic that we've been talking about for a long time. My name is Jessica Winn-Berry, and I'm the injury prevention coordinator for Wolfson Children's Hospital, and I can respect that this is not always going to be a quick solution. So as we talk about different stages, one of the things I just wanted to say is I think oftentimes working in the community that we all live in, people don't really understand the risk of drowning. So I think as a quick solution is just there being a little bit more awareness throughout our community, however that may happen, that kids are at risk for drowning in all of these different places. So just kind of wanted to share that as we're looking at big-picture items. I think a lot of the families that we serve just didn't understand how much their child was at risk for drowning. Thank you. I'm not sure if we have any other hospitals, apartments. Okay, go ahead. All right. Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead. Hi. My name is Jaycee. I'm a behavior analyst. I work locally in autism services. So just to sort of follow on what previous speakers have stated, the short-term issues I think that need to be considered is swimming lessons are often inaccessible to the autism population. A lot of these children may have communication deficits. They may have high-intensity behaviors. They may have aggression. It's difficult for them to participate in swim lessons the way our neurotypical children do. So something that we could support more immediately would be to increase accessibility of swimming lessons. These would need to be things that are, you know, one-to-one or smaller ratios, but also thinking about accessibility to those services if we did do that. So are we in schools? Are we in ABA centers communicating to parents that these services are available? And then someone else also mentioned locks and alarms. I know that we've had some gun tragedies recently, and the city has responded with free gun locks. So similarly, offering alarms for doors, locks for homes, but most importantly, offering the support for installation, considering that families with these children often find it difficult to even get out of the house due to their children's behaviors. Good afternoon. My name is Chanel LeBlanc. I'm the communications director with the Florida Department of Health in Duval County, and I'm here with Dr. Richard Ward, who's our assistant county health department director. And that's where we come into play. We handed out, or you should have gotten a folder, and in the folder we have lots of resources targeted to swim safety and drowning prevention, but you'll also find a page with our swimming lesson voucher program. And so basically we have two providers here in this region, and the first provider is YMCA, so any YMCA in the area, and Jack's Mobile Swim School. These vouchers are prioritized to children with autism, followed by military, followed by those with Medicaid, and those without Medicaid. And the vouchers are for those ages one to seven. They're valid now until the end of the year. And so that's something that the state has done that we've really just started assigning this week to the families, to those who have expressed interest. And to basically, so with the children with autism, that would be our priority. They are our priority with this program. And also in the packet, you'll see that we also have other swim safety, drowning prevention information. And that's it. Do you have anything to add? If you know of anyone who has a swimming organization, they can qualify for this voucher. There are some minimal qualifications. And as Chanel said, it's geared specifically toward our children in the community with autism. But what we don't see in the health department is a lot of people taking advantage of those opportunities. That program has been out almost two years now. Now, it's open to everybody, but that specific target population is something that the leadership in Tallahassee identified that we want to make sure that we give them the resources they need to prevent any kind of tragedy moving forward. So I would encourage you, you can go to our website, you can reach out to the health department to apply for those vouchers. And it is an easy process. So please, if you know anybody in your community that's dealing with autism, have an autistic child, we would encourage you to reach out to us and use that program. So basically, that's two asks. We want people to come who can give swim lessons, who can provide swim lessons. They will be reimbursed by the state. And then also children in need of swim lessons. All right. Thank you. God bless you. Can you hear me? Yeah. First off, I want to thank you for bringing everyone together today and starting this conversation. I wanted to address one question that you had. There are handicap signs for people with autism. I have one in my neighborhood. I'm here today as a parent of two boys with autism. One of my sons, Brock, who is non-speaking, has been an elopement risk. So when we talk about children wandering from supervision and reaching water, this is not an abstract issue to me. I'm also here representing disability advocacy and support specialists, which participates in several statewide drowning prevention efforts, including steering committees for Water Smart Florida. We also provide statewide training focused on creating water-safe families and communities. The most important point I want to make today is that drowning prevention requires layers of protection. Supervision is one layer. Locks and alarms are layers. Swim instruction, CPR, water safety instruction, wandering prevention plans, rescue equipment, safe pond design, maintenance, signage, and physical barriers are all additional layers. A fence does not replace parental supervision, just like a seatbelt does not replace safe driving, and a smoke detector does not replace fire prevention. We use multiple safeguards because no single layer is perfect. And sometimes a barrier does not have to stop a child forever. Sometimes it only has to slow a child down long enough for an adult to catch up. That is especially important in children with autism who may wander, be strongly drawn to water, and have limited danger awareness, or be unable to call for help. I also want to address something discussed today about the four-to-one slope and whether retention pond is less appealing because it may be overgrown, muddy, or poorly maintained. For many children with autism, whether the pond looks appealing or not is not the issue. The issue itself is the child is attracted or adults are attracted to water itself, the movement, the reflection, sound, sensory experience, or simply the presence. So unattractive pond, an overgrown bank, a muddy water should never be viewed as a reliable deterrent. A child who is drawn to water may still go directly toward it. And that is why I believe that we have to focus on access barriers, not on whether an adult believes the pond looks inviting. A four-to-one slope might be an important engineering standard, but it's not the same thing as a child safety barrier. A gradual slope does not make the water harmless. Young children can drown in as little as one to two inches of water. The issue is not simply how deep the pond is at the edge. It's whether a child has access to the water at all. It may reduce one type of hazard, but does not prevent the child from reaching the water. And safety depends on the part of that slope and the maintenance, too. That raises an important question. If current safety models depend on a four-to-one slope, how often are those slopes inspected to make sure that they are actually being maintained to that standard? And I think the lack of signage matters as well. I don't believe signage alone would stop a young child with limited danger awareness, but signage is still another layer of protection. If there's no fence, no signage, and an inconsistent maintenance, then we are relying heavily on one design feature to do a job that was never meant to do itself. If you could state your name and address, please. Yes, Shannon, and I live right inside Jacksonville. Okay, all right. Address on file. Yeah, address on file. Shannon, I think on behalf of everybody in the room, thank you. Thank you for coming forward. Thank you for speaking for your boys. Yes. You're welcome here any time. Thank you. Thank you. So this is what we're going to do now. We're going to go to the last segment. No, we passed an hour. So the next, I guess, 15 minutes, and I want to wrap us up. I'm going to give the welcome, Councilman Amaro, for joining us. I really appreciate it. I also want to recognize a newly elected state rep, Audra Gibson, as well, for joining us as well. Yeah. So this last segment, I want to hear from the public, because you guys, we have parents in the room right now who have lost kids to drowning, and we also have a lot of autistic parents in the room. So if you can, I know you guys have been very respectful of our time. If you could speak two minutes, we got, I don't know how many cards we got, but if you guys could speak two minutes, be mindful of the time, that would be great. So I'm going to call you up, and we can keep this question. State rep, you're the first one. Cara, if you, Ms. Gibson. You are allowing me to speak, and good afternoon, council members and staff. That's 30 seconds. I'm happy to be here and sad to be here because of the purpose that I'm here. And as Representative Daniels mentioned earlier, state law pretty much, and it was mentioned earlier, state law trumps city, unfortunately. However, there is a way to build that bridge if we include other cities and areas across the state. And there was something mentioned earlier about collecting data. So we want to know across the state because we can move mountains when it's across the state. It's harder when it's just one entity, right, even though that entity is suffering. So if we can collect the data across the state about our young kids, our young babies dying as a result of retention ponds, that would be very helpful collectively to move the mountain in Tallahassee. The other thing I wanted to mention really quickly is in terms of being able to standardize things, actually, Councilman Carlucci, I think we can address that through some insurance incentives, right, so that when it's a collective build and they're pretty much similar, we can incentivize insurance costs by making it a little bit lower, particularly when homeowners associations are involved because almost every development now is a homeowners association, and the cost associated with that as one who has lived in one is very high. We have a retention pond. But maybe we can reduce some insurance costs by incentivizing every single development to build the same type of time around their water retention ponds. Thank you all very, very much. Thank you. Corinne Spass. You got a question? Oh. Ms. Bass. Good afternoon. I am Corinne Spass. I am the founder and CEO of Making Strides for Autism. I'm also the parent of an autistic son. My son is actually here with us today. He's 19, and he's overcome a lot of odds. Making Strides has actually submitted a retention pond safety and drowning prevention legislation proposal, and I think most of you received that. I do have information to add on to that as well. Today, because we believe that Jacksonville needs a risk-based, layered approach, not simply a requirement to fence every pond. To me, that's a little bit unrealistic as far as for city and also as far as for our developers, apartments, but we do need an actual solution. Other jurisdictions are already using pieces of what we're proposing. Orlando considers pond slopes and barriers and its standards. Annie Arondale County, Maryland, considers factors such as proximity to residential areas, elementary schools, and places where children congregate, and Virginia incorporates safety benches and other shallow areas around certain ponds, addressing not only how we prevent some entering into the pond and water, but we give them a better opportunity to get out. So I would like to encourage Jacksonville to examine those best practices and determine what can reasonably work here in both existing and future ponds, regardless of ownership. But legislation takes time, and our children are still at risk while we wait. That's why I'm also proposing a 90-day interim retention pond safety initiative. Let's use existing city data to begin identifying our highest-risk ponds now. Let's immediately correct known hazards at city-owned ponds and invite HOAs, apartment communities, and other private owners to voluntarily assess and address obvious hazards on their properties. Let's also review whether nearby bodies of water are being immediately prioritized when vulnerable adults and children go missing and expand outreach based upon Jacksonville resources that we already have, our REVAMP, JSO, JFRD, and JAX-REV. Time. Appreciate that. Thank you. We'll get to go. This won't be the last minute. No. That was pretty much it. Okay. All right. Thank you. Bessie Williams. Ms. Williams. Ms. Williams. Bessie Williams. All right. Well, let's try to focus on the individuals that's in here. Ashley Kwan. Okay. All right. Jessica Winberg. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry about that. Okay. All right. J.C. Reed. Oh, I'm sorry. How y'all all together? I think it's a Nihon James. Did I get it right? Nihon James. Oh, you just go to that. Okay. That's fine. Eric Henry. Today, my name is Eric Henry, and I'm an aquatics pest manager, so I deal a lot with retention ponds. And, yes, I've been seeing the problem for a while. For a number of years with retention ponds, and it's not just, you know, the landscape, you know, of the pond. What actually happens is erosion, and that's where the problem comes in with the retention pond. Normally, that's what causes the child or any adult to fall into the pond, because if you have a retention pond in your neighborhood, you'll notice the erosion. And that won't stop because we have a tide in Florida, and water never stops. It moves continuously. So, if you put a fence up, erosion will eventually cause the fence to fall. So, yes, there are measures that can be put in place. And, yes, sir, and I understand that there will be further conversations. So, I'm open to it. I appreciate that. Thanks so much. Yes, sir. All right. Steven Speed. Mr. Mike, don't check your notes. Hello, councilmans. How are you guys doing today? I just want to say I hear from this council, and I want to speak to you about these developers. As you say, Jacksonville is growing. And these developers, they're making millions and billions off these communities. And they're not spending any money on these retention ponds. They dig a hole, they throw in some grass, and they leave. With this being said, I've called the city about signage. I've reached out to the city about the developers and the property managers. I've asked them multiple times. My child is autistic. My child has eloped twice. I have bells, whistles. I have locks on my doors. I've put up a fence around my house. He has still gotten out to the ponds. With this being said, like I say, we can allow these communities and these developers to get away with, you know, the cheapest thing, or we can make them spend a few hundred dollars, a few hundred thousand dollars to prevent this stuff from happening. Now, I'm not trying to be the angry, you know, person to come up here and all of that. I'm just worried about my son and the other autistic kids in the neighborhood. Along with the signage, other communities have for signage. I'm from, I just moved here from Virginia. I'm military. There's signage all over Virginia. So I don't know what's going on with Florida, but we got to do better. Thank you. Karen, stand back. Oh, I'm sorry. Jamie, Travis, Leonard. Oh, I was just going to add something. You know, we do, of the drowning deaths that do occur, it's kids that are coming from other places to visit family here. So even if we are taking care of our kids here with their swimming lessons and everything like that, which we absolutely should, we do need to take care of our visitors, too. And they may not be having the same protections that we've been finding for our residents. Thank you, Ms. Chair. Appreciate that. Good afternoon, council members. You probably recognize me. My name is Jamie Travis-Litter. My address is on file. So this is near and dear to my heart. One of the little boys that drowned this year was near my neighborhood, and I was one of the participants that tried to search for him. I think something that we need is a multi-layer approach. I know you'll have discussed this. I actually did the research, though, into what the previous council did when they had an influx of drownings in 2021. And it stopped at an educational campaign, and I don't think that's enough. I think that this council needs to take this issue to a full conclusion. 2021, you had the educational campaign. Kids are still drowning. This means there's still issues, systemic issues. We have a diverse community out right now to try and address this problem. You have an opportunity to do something in our city that has been asked of many, many councils before you and has not been fulfilled. So I encourage you to not only look at the short-term solutions. I agree with some of the, you know, speakers so far who have given you short-term options. But we need a long-term solution. So that way, in five more years, I'm not back up here asking you to do the same thing. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Tarina Atbar. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. You just set it up. I'll set it back. Press the button. Okay. Good afternoon. I'm actually up here just speaking from my heart. I lost my 3-year-old due to a drowning. And I wanted to bring awareness, you know, to children and parents about educating them on retention points. And what I birthed out of his drowning is a foundation called Swim for Rakim. And I just started that where we're educating children on retention points, you know, like actually teaching them, having a class, and then having free swimming lessons. I'm coming to the city for support, and, you know, I will need financial support, too, as well, to fund the swimming classes, to find a pool, you know, the lifeguards to help. And I also want to educate the parents, too, as well, on, you know, getting in the pool with your children and learning how to swim, as well. You know, they'll drop their children off to swimming lessons and don't help them. But I wanted to read something here that was really concerning because he passed away in 2024. He gained his wings in 2024. But here it says that children and family are reported as 76 children drowning as the late of July 2026, putting the state on the track for the deadliest year on the record. And that's in the state of Florida. That is absolutely insane. When my baby drowned, I was like, why isn't it a fence? And it's a Disney resort around in that area, no fence around where these children are running around and playing that I think is very necessary for them to have a fence in Pond and actual neighborhoods where children are running around and resorts. So this can, it's very tragic, and I'm trying to deal with it. But I also heal through helping other, you know, women get through losing their children. And also, I want to provide counseling for the mothers because if the mother's no good, we cannot raise our other children. I didn't want to live after I lost them. And I heard my daughter say, no, mommy. And I forgot I had two other children. You know, I was out there at the pond on my knees. So it's very tragic. And I think that we need to educate the children. And I think that this should be a curriculum in elementary school to teach them about retention ponds, coloring books, and cartoons. I created a cartoon where Rakim is actually teaching the children about not running into the pond or go get an adult, don't go into the ponds. And it needs some type of floodlights around the ponds that will come on when you're asleep and your children get out of the house, some type of safety measures. But I'm getting through it. But God is with me, and he's in heaven now. Yeah. Tarina. Yeah, thank you for coming forward. And let me extend my condolences, you know. I know it got to be tough. It got to be tough. You alone with all the other parents. I can tell you this, that the members around this table, we just won't sit on our hands. We will move forward. It will be action, you know. So I appreciate you. I'd love for you to be a part of this conversation. I'm not sure how we're going to move forward after the day. But, you know, we will put safety measures in place going forward. And thank you so much. Thank you. Sonia Leggett. No, she didn't come before. Good afternoon, everyone. Good afternoon. I want to start by saying with an opening statement. Children don't know about slope, nor do they care. My name is Sonia Leggett. I have a grandson. He's five. His name is Ricard Leggett. And he has autism, and he comes to my daycare afternoon. It's a lot of retention ponds in Jacksonville. And the solution I came up with is to put cameras on a retention pond or sensors. The cameras would allow you to see who is around the pond. The sensors would detect who is around the premises of the pond. If all fail, put fence around the ponds. Last but not least, we need an organization to help these parents who's dealing with these children with autism. Sometimes being a parent of autistic children can be overwhelming to them. I also, like I said, have a child, a grandchild, who has autism, too. And I never want anything to happen to my grandson. Last but not least, these subdivisions and these apartments and these neighborhoods should be mandated to provide safety for the children that live there. Thank you. Thank you so much. I appreciate that. Jocelyn Turner. I appreciate that. Sharon Bivins. And I feel Michael after Sharon Bivins. Good afternoon. Yes. There are new homes that are being built all over Jacksonville, Florida. And why not have the builders, when they're building these beautiful homes in Jacksonville, in the state of Florida, why don't they go ahead and put fences around there and then have, lock them up so with the ponds, so these kids and all kind of people can't just get out there and start and drown. This is so sad about what happened to these children. We need warning signs. We need fences with locks. And adults also need to track their kids when they're going outside. They need to do something. You know, when your child's going outside in the backyard, it is your responsibility to make sure they are safe. Also, we have Alzheimer's patients and people that live in the neighborhood also. Sometimes they think, wow, look at that water out there. I'm going to go out there and fish. Okay? And they go out there, do some fishing, and they get drowned. So, this is something that we can do. This is not hard to make a decision. City, neighbors, and the state come together and save lives. God give us common sense. Let us stop drowning and do something about it. Thank you. Thank you so much. Our last speaker card, Ms. Athea Michael. Hi. Good evening. Good evening. My name is, my address and name is Anfal. First, I want to thank my councilman, Gaffney, and my state representative, Kimberly Daniels. They have been there for us. I live on the north side. And some of the dronings that happen is in my district, and it's on the north side. One of the things that I tried to do earlier this year is to call Park and Rec, because we have a pool that's been closed for many, many years. And this year, it was open, and they were able to hire teenagers to work at the pool. A lot of the residents didn't even know it was a public pool. A lot of the pools in our community, we need to be renovated, and they need to be open. And my condolences to the families. I'm an educator. I'm a retired educator. And one of the things that's close to my heart are children and elderly. And my heart goes out to every single family that I've lost a child. I've heard a lot of comments and solutions, and I'm hoping that we'll come together on behalf of our children and our communities and do the right thing. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman, I'm sorry. I didn't get mine in on time. Okay. Well, just until we get it filled out. Give me the last one. My name is Ken Moore, and I am the neighbor to Mr. Stevens-Speed. And I want to thank you all for meeting here today. If you want to start with cleaning up a disaster, our community is in development. It is the world's worst that I have ever seen. I live at 8531 Lillias Circle. It's Cooper's Meadow. So they're developing it right now. I invite you all to come to my house and go to the back and take a look at all of the mess that they have created. We stop Mr. Speed's son all the time from going back there. We have tried to talk to these developers. They don't hear us at all. So if you want to start and you want to pass legislation and want to say, how can we fix, come see it in the developing stages. Come take a look at it while it's on the forefront. Then you can start making legislation because this is what they do everywhere. And you would be amazed, Councilman, of the lies that we have been told. For a grass can stop a child. Just come take a look at it. And if you're serious about it, 8531 Lillias Circle. Kenneth Moore. 870-703-2745. That's my phone number. What side of town? What side of town? Yeah, zip code. 8531 Lillias Circle. L-I-L-I-A-S Circle. Cooper's Meadow. It's west side, north side, east side. I'm trying to. Where is that? North side. Okay. Just make sure Councilman White's assistant is not here. He just had to leave. But we'll make sure we connect with Councilman White. Okay. All right. So this is what. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Before I wrap us up, I want to give my colleagues and everyone around the table to get some closing statements before I wrap us up. Councilman Carleach. Thank you, Councilman Gaffney. I really want to thank you for your leadership on this. This is an issue that demands action. And you've taken that. And I thank you for that. I've not been to many notice meetings where there was an overflow in another conference room. And I just, and I also want to thank our legislators from the Florida House for being here. Because if we had more collaboration like that with our members of the House, we would be a better city and a better state. With that said, and with what Councilman Salem mentioned earlier, there's an urgency here. And I would like to hear from my colleagues around the table. But I think it would be, at the very least, well to have a special committee. I think you should chair that special committee. And it might be well for you and Roshanda to put a request into our council president to create a special committee on this issue. Because as Councilman Salem said, we want to keep this moving. And if we have a special committee, that will keep it moving by demand because you'll have to, you know, schedule those meetings. And it will also include the public and those that are here. If we don't have a special committee, you'll have to keep calling scheduled notices. You won't have a nucleus of a committee around you that will be helping. And that's just my suggestion to you. And if my colleagues think there's a, I'd like to know what they think. But, you know, I would urge you to, in whatever legal way that you can, one-way notice, whatever, to our council president. I think a special committee on this is begging for that. That's my thoughts. And I agree to the chair that we should form a special committee and that our current president should allow us to convene that special committee. And I want to thank those of you who are here today. Thank you so much for your input. Thank you so much for your presence. It is always encouraging to see the public come out and voice your concerns because, ultimately, it's not just the council, but it's everyone, and especially those of you. I think it was just pretty much Baptist Health. Thank you so much for your input. And those of you with the health department as well helped us to be aware of just the programs that are available. I was speaking with a gentleman who teaches swimming to autistic children, and he was explaining to me the fact that, and I work with students with autism, and so how difficult it is to talk for them to master the swimming techniques. So, it's a start, and to know that there are programs that are available that we can meet with you and connect so that we can make sure that this is communicated to those who need to know the information. So, once again, thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much, Council Member Gaffney, for hosting this meeting. I truly appreciate it. And those of you at the state level, thank you for being here as well. I just want to say that I feel like this has been a very productive meeting. I feel real good about it. I'm ready to work. Please remember to keep in contact. I'll be communicating with the Duval delegation. Former Senator, soon-to-be State Representative Audrey Gibson is here. It's refreshing to have members that work together, not just at the state level, but at the state level that we will connect with the city, because when city and state work together, sometimes there's a bumping of heads. We can get ahead of that, and I can tell my colleagues, I've already met with my representatives locally, and I'm looking forward to giving the people relief and letting them have a fresh breath, because you can look into the eyes of the people. They need us now, and I just want to say, from the state level, and I know I can speak on behalf of my colleagues on the city, that we're here for you, and we're ready to put boots to the ground on this situation. Thank you, Council Member Gaffney. As you know me pretty well, I love organization, and this meeting was extremely well organized, and I'm looking at Roshonda over there, because I know she did a lot of the work here. She did most of the work. And I appreciate you, what she did. She made this meeting go very well. And you've had some great ideas. I think all of us are here to assist you. You determine that path, and I think the rest of us will follow you, because I do think this is an issue that needs to continue. We can't stop today, whether that's in a special committee or in a normal committee. You know, we have a special committee set up already that the president has set up. That might be a venue for this. But you have several options, and I encourage you to think about those and determine what works best. But I can assure you, from my standpoint, I'll be with you. Thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you, Councilman Gaffney, for having this meeting, and my colleagues and all our state representatives for showing up. And most importantly, thank all of you from the community that come out to show your heart. We see it. We feel it. And I, with Councilman Gaffney and Councilmember White, we probably have the three fastest-growing districts in the city. And so it's a problem that's growing and that we need to get dealt with. And I'm here to commit with you, Councilman Gaffney, that we're going to find a solution to whether one life is too many. And there's no measure of any money that could ever account for that. And so what we do is critical. And so I'm here to support you, and thank you and all the community for being here. Thank you. I just wanted to conclude by saying, on behalf of the mayor's office, thank you for doing this. A parent should never have to bury their child. It is out of the natural order of things. It offends us. And it is why I think we are all here today, because that offense binds us together. I agree that this meeting has been incredibly productive. And I think part of that is because of the spirit that the meeting was held in. You have taken the idea of doing nothing off the table, and you will not let perfect prevent progress here. And so I appreciate that. And the mayor's office is here to support you and the council in any way. I just want to thank all you guys for showing up. It's what happened about the media, obviously, all my colleagues. I really appreciate it. You know, it's a concern of mine. You know, it's not a black issue. It's not a white issue. It's not a Democrat issue. It's not a Republican issue. We've got different parties. We've got different ethnicities around this table and this community. This is a people issue. I stated it before. You know, my biggest issue, my biggest fear is receiving another call about a child. And as legislators, I told my colleagues this a couple of weeks ago, as legislators, it's our responsibility to do something. And we will do something. So as I close, everybody brought a lot of great points. I can't recap it. I did take some notes. I heard a lot of you guys say 90 days, you know, auditing and things in that nature. I think we'll be communicating through the media because I'm not sure how we're going to move forward. You know, but as Councilman Sellers did say, I don't want to stop this train from moving. So just be on the lookout for an email from me, you know, because like I said, I don't know how we're going to move forward. What I won't do, and let me say this on the record, I won't draft legislation right now because it is some data and some things that we need to get first. So just be on the lookout for an email from me, and I let everyone know how we're going to move forward. Again, I thank you guys. I appreciate it, and God bless you.