Thanks, everyone. You've had the minutes that have been submitted. I will entertain a motion to approve those minutes from our last meeting. It's been moved and seconded. I noticed in those minutes that were sent out, I just wanted to make it clear for legislative services, it did not. We reversed the order of the minutes of the agenda for last time, so I just wanted it on the record that those minutes should reflect the fact that the agenda was, we took it out of order so that we could get to everyone, especially, and Dr. Pinto was not with us at that time. So, with that on the record, it's been moved and seconded. All in favor, say aye. Aye. All opposed? The ayes have it, and the minutes are approved, right? And this is the time we've all been waiting for. Statutorily, we have to do this, but it's something I've been looking forward to. I looked at a few of the other past reports. This is the St. John's River Status Report on Water Quality in Manatees, and for that, we have a presentation from Dr. Gerard Pinto from Jacksonville University. Thank you. So, actually, I just usually give it from my seated position over here, if that's fine. You will see an updated version of events in the river here. So, in terms of rainfall, we are still below normal for the year, probably about four or five inches below normal. And so, this is the reason why our salinities are kind of kicked up a little bit. We're still in somewhat drought conditions. And so, at Mayport, we have 25 to 30 parts per thousand salinity. Normal seawater is around 35 parts per thousand, so it's a little bit lower than normal there. JU and Dames Point Bridge, between 13 and 18 parts per thousand, which is what we expect with brackish conditions. You'll notice downtown and Buckman Bridge are slightly elevated. 11 to 15 parts per thousand downtown is not too unusual, but it's slightly above normal. And then Buckman Bridge is usually below a part per thousand under normal conditions, so it's kind of salty down there. I had the opportunity to do a manatee survey last week. There are only about seven or eight manatees in the area. Most of them down past the Buckman Bridge down towards the St. John's and Putnam County border down there. But, we also noticed a lot of dolphins that were quite far down around NAS Jaxx, and that's probably because the salinity is elevated in the river down there. There's some graphs here that show you water levels and so on, tides. Second page shows you the rainfall. So, Jaxx International, we're at minus four for the year, four inches. We're below of a deficit there. If you look at the whole basin, the St. John's River Basin, we're at minus eight inches there, so still in drought conditions. And I think on the water management website, you'll see that we are still in considerable drought conditions. One other thing I noticed, and this is moving on to the third page here, HABs, harmful algae blooms. There's a lot of algae in the area. Doctor's Lake was covered in algae when I flew over it last week. And so, there's a considerable algae bloom out there. Whether it's producing toxin or not, we don't know. But the most recent sampling that was done by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection on the 8th of September showed that microcystis is around in Doctor's Lake and around the Shands Bridge, but wasn't producing any toxin. So, there will probably be a sampling that is in-house right now and going through the process, and so we will know. Last month when I wasn't here, there was a red tide in Fort George Inlet, and that's an unusual event. We don't tend to have those here very much, although there have been some over the years. And these are usually caused by the very high temperatures and rainfall and nutrients that feed these algaes and these blooms. Apparently, and so the health department put out an advisory because red tide produces a neurotoxin that's dangerous to humans and animals and wildlife and fish. But we didn't see any large-scale fish kills or any fish kills that I know of, and it seemed to die down very quickly, and so it didn't affect many people at all that I know of. I'm going to move on to manatee mortalities. We haven't had any since last month and this month. We had one in August in Little Pottsburg Creek. We stand at 16 total this year, and notably, four of those are watercraft mortalities, and three of those are caused by channel canal lock. And the canal lock mortalities are unusual, and we're keeping an eye on those. The watercraft mortalities, we've had as many as three or four or five in a year in the past. We have a busy port. We have a lot of boats in the area. It's not unusual to have that. We've had lower numbers of mortalities in the last few years, primarily because there have just been less manatees coming up here. Remember, we had that starvation event in the Indian River Lagoon, and we lost about 1,200 manatees in Florida. So we just had less manatees coming into the area, and as a result, we didn't have as many watercraft deaths. But it seems like those are starting to pick up again. The final pages kind of give you an idea of the last survey in July where the manatees were. So if you imagine maybe six or so red dots towards the bottom of that map there, that's what I saw last week. So usually by June, when the hours of daylight are starting to decrease, manatees start to leave. And it's a little bit counterintuitive because you think that, oh, the temperature is still high. You'd expect them to stay here, but it's the daylight that they're responding to, and they're starting to leave the area. So we're down to about six or seven now. And then the map below is a new feature that we started a couple of months ago where the public can call in their sightings and report their sightings and upload pictures. And there's a QR code there for you guys if you would like to do that, too, if you ever see any. And so these are public sightings that are showing in this area. With that, I will be happy to take any questions. We don't have a queue for this, so if you'll raise your hand, I'll acknowledge if there are questions from the commissioners or anyone here. Commissioner, you're recognized. Did you call on me? I'm sorry. Through the chair to Dr. Pena, thank you for everything you do. Has Queens Harbor been pretty good lately? I know the last conversation we had, they were kind of stonewalling you a little bit. I just wanted to make sure we were being as diligent as possible with the deaths over there. So I did get to go and look at the lock. And, you know, it's an old lock. It has some recess areas that could do with better supervision. And there may be some technologies that could be employed to do that. So far, the Queens Harbor have been kind of reticent to do anything. And their manager has said that he doesn't believe that the manatees that were killed by the lock were killed by the lock. He thinks they were killed in the intercoastal and washed into the lock. And so he's disputing the findings of the state. So at the moment, U.S. Fish and Wildlife, the federal agency is dealing with them and trying to see if there's some retrofitting that they can do that's not expensive, that can be done to prevent this from happening in the future. So we don't normally have a lot of deaths in those locks. They allow the animals in and out and have done so safely for a number of years. Last year, we had one lock death. And then this year, the first, you know, April, May, and June, we had one a month. So that kind of flagged something going on that needed closer inspection. And so that's where we are. I'm not sure it would be fruitful to have them come to waterways and explain or see if we could aid them in any way in what they're doing. But that's always a possibility. We could always do that at some point. Are there any other questions from? Through the chair, Dr. Pinta. It seems like every year we hear about the bloom in Doctor's Lake specifically. Do we know what's causing it specifically, that reoccurring always, it seems like, unless I'm wrong, in Doctor's Lake? Yeah. So the simple answer to that is Doctor's Lake is sort of a closed kind of a system compared to the river, which actually, although it's slow and lazy, it flows. And in Doctor's Lake, you have what we call an increased residence time for that water and those nutrients. And then, of course, people are fertilizing their yards around there, and everything is washing into that system when it rains really heavily. And it kind of sits there for a while. And so that's why you get higher propensity for algae blooms, just in general. Commissioner, Mr. Hoyles? That was actually related to the manatees, but Dr. Pinto answered my question. I didn't see your hand, my apologies. No, that's totally fine. Thank you. Thank you. Are there any other questions? I do have a few, but are there any others from us? Okay. My question, and thank you so much. I appreciate that they're running to that report. I wanted to know the salinity, was there, and as well as the algae bloom, are there things that can mitigate those things? Are there things that can be done that community groups, that the city, other organizations find, what have you, are there things that can be done to mitigate those findings? So these algaes that produce these toxins are actually freshwater algaes. So when the salinity kicks up enough, it actually kills them back, and that helps. But on occasion, the other thing that feeds these are nutrients, and so we have nitrogen and phosphorus going into the river. And of course, during the spring and summer, we have people fertilizing, so we have the increased load of that. So, you know, there are various types of things that can be done, like having buffers on shorelines that capture that before it enters the waterway, and fertilizing using the city's ordinance, fertilizer ordinance, following that, making sure you don't use too much, making sure you don't put it out when it's about to rain kind of thing. So there's various things that can be done to mitigate it, but for the most part, reducing nitrogen and phosphorus is the main thing, and that's why we have our BMAPs and our TMDLs to try to prevent that from happening. So TMDLs, total maximum daily loads, and the BMAPs are the action plans to try to achieve those, the basin management action plans. So we'll talk about the state of the river report in a minute further in this agenda, and that report sort of looks at some of those things and tracks those. Thank you. Most of them I had to answer because I jotted down. It's quite interesting to me. But any of those things, the life of the manatee, though, they're not adversely affecting. That's my last one, and I thank you for being so thorough again. Yeah, that's a great question. I get it a lot. You know, do these algae blooms affect the manatees? The manatees don't seem to be affected. And primarily, when I fly and I see algae blooms, I don't see manatees. So they're avoiding the area somehow. They're not in the same area as these things most of the time. But, you know, the algae can disappear, and the toxin can be there and persist for several weeks afterwards. And so you know that everything's being exposed to it anyway. But we've never had any manatees that have specifically died from it or had any problems because of it. The manatees that do die and have problems are from things like Red Tide, which is more of a southwest Florida thing. And so when we had our Red Tide, I was concerned, but it didn't affect anybody. Thank you for that. If there are no further questions, we will move on to the next agenda item, which is public comment. But the public is reminded, please keep your comments to three minutes. You see the information. I'm not going to go through reading it, but it has been noticed. You need to remain on topic about waterways. And so we only have two public comment cards. If there are others, I will entertain a separate public comment section at the end if there are more that come in. But at this time, our first public commenter is Mr. John Nooney. Please come forward. Don't forget to state your name. And you are welcome to say address on file when you make your comment. Hello. I am John J. Nooney, 8356 Baskin Road, Jacksonville, Florida, 3216. I'm in City Council District 4, CPAC Planning District 3, School Board District 3. And like a good neighbor, fishing with the crew is there. Now, I'm wearing my FWC hat. You know, it's a spin off the Fish and Wildlife Commission. You know, Chris Wynn, I wonder if he's still a representative for the North Florida region. But, you know, it's also FWC, Fishing with Crady. And, you know, I just want to, you know, I've just got two minutes. But, you know, yeah, I'll touch on a couple of other things. But, you know, I'm wearing my Boat Ramp Billy shirt. And for those that may not know, that's St. John's County. But public access on our waterways in Duval or actually anywhere is just getting crushed. But, and when you check the minutes, you know, you just see how I was reflected in that. And so, anyway, first one is going to be 2026-0396. That is the movie Trust Fund. You know, I'll be making a donation, bringing that one up. The next one is 2026-0004. That's the Parks Trust Fund. And, you know, you could use that for the bridge up there. And so, anyway, you know, when you go through and, you know, you got the Manatee stuff. Well, you know, you got Manatee Park on Pottsburg Creek. But another thing, there's going to, we just had a public hearing. But 2026-670, that's another $103,000. You know, and that's another Manatee agreement with JU. And that was in Neighborhoods and Finance, but, you know, not in waterways. So, in other words, you're getting, you know, picking and choosing which comes before waterways. Ask about that one. So, to me, I mean, is that a double dip? Okay, I'm only down to 50 seconds. But right now, also, on the agenda is fined. I hope Adam Hoyles, I hope, you know, that Mr. Barker, who's been excused, he's also going to be on that fine subcommittee. You know, fined, here it is. It is. Our Abdelurin, 12 counties, east coast of the state of Florida. I've been going to them for decades. And right now, you know, there's only three properties on that potential fine land acquisition list. We're one of them, along with Amero and Boylan. So, we're taking the show on the road. Here's Clay County. You know, here's St. John's County. Here's the Northeast Florida Regional Council. You know, September 3rd. And then here's Resilient Jacksonville. You know, and I'll tell you something. One second left. Visit Florida. Thank you, Mr. Nooney. I appreciate it. Our next speaker will be Ms. Leitris Bell. As she makes her way down, Ms. Bell, you will be proud to know that I have my angler shirt. I am proudly in support of, and I will join you. I promise you one day I'm coming to join you fishing on the Crady Bridge. And you're going to have to help me, because it's been a long time since I've been out there fishing that high up. I don't play when it comes to fishing. You know I know. Good morning. Come forward. Good morning. Leitris Bell, my address is on file. And Johnny Turner and I are here to represent the George Crady Bridge, Fishing Pier State Park, slash Salt Pit Bridge. And I want to just say thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. We were not here, but I did. Bethany gave me the video. And I want to give you two thumbs up, because our heart is proud. In the absence of Rep Black, we did have a little more to say, but he's not here. But we want to thank you, because you all said that we were not going to be forgotten. And we really appreciate that. You don't know how much. But whatever we do, we just ask that it will be expedited, because we have waited 30 years. This has been a long time. And if the DEP have anything to do with it, it'll be 30 more years, because they don't intend to do anything. But we say they will, because he said all things are possible. And we believe that. Thank you. We love you. Thank you, Ms. Bell. Good to see you. We love you more. And I have to say, I know this is a little unorthodox, but I must say I have not seen a more fierce fighter for your community than our Vice Chair, Mike Gay. You may not, I don't hear it a lot, but I see you behind the scenes really fighting to get that bridge open on the state level, the federal level, locally. You have a really fierce champion to get that done. And so whatever we can do, Vice Chair Gay, certainly we're right behind you. I'll recognize the Vice Chair about the George Crady Bridge. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate Ms. Bell and her group being steadfast and consistent on supporting our efforts to get this resolved out there. We are continuing to have meetings, and with Brian Burkett, we are exploring grant options as well, working with the state. And I just want to encourage the group, in November, when the Duval delegation is here meeting, please come and share your passion with them so we can have that transferred to them as well to where they understand the seriousness need of getting this. It's a fishing pier, but it's a historic fishing pier, and it's something that needs to be restored and opened back up to the public because that's what it was intended for, and we see other piers getting funded, so we just need to make it happen. Thank you, thank you, and not to prolong it, Council Member, Vice Chair, I know that many of us on the day has even brought up taking the Community Benefits Agreement funds and helping you to do it. Unfortunately, the General Counsel's Office advised us you can't, so if there's ideas the community has as a whole, we'll be more than happy to entertain them so that we can get that bridge back open. Thank you again for the work you're doing. Let's move on to agenda item number seven, which is new business. The first order of business there is item number 2026-648. I'll entertain a motion to move the bill. The bill has been moved and seconded. Could I get one of the council to explain the bill, please? To the chair, routinely it would be the representative from planning to explain the bill. Mr. Lukachovic, if you could come and give some context to the bill. Thank you. Did I say it incorrectly? I apologize. Good morning, everyone. It's good to see you all again. For the record, I'm Ed Lukachovic for the Planning Department. With me this morning, I have Hayden Phillips for the application. And any questions that you folks may have, hopefully we could answer them for you. This morning, we are looking at a large-scale land use amendment. Its number is L613626A. Its ordinance number is 2026-648. It's a transmittal ordinance because it's a large-scale, and what basically is going to happen if City Council approves this bill, it will then be referred to the state for the state's review. If the state reviews it and doesn't have a problem with it, it will come back to the city for the city council to provide an adoption ordinance. Generally, once it leaves here and goes to the state and comes back and we set it up again for a more round of public hearings, it will take about six months. This present application we are looking at now, the public hearing dates, the Planning Commission will look at this application this afternoon. The first City Council public hearing is scheduled for Tuesday, September 22nd. And the Land Use and Zoning Committee of City Council will look at this application on Tuesday, October 6th. And the final City Council public hearing is scheduled for Tuesday, October 13th. Here are some specifics of this application. It is located at 9800 Plummer Road, 0 Kings Crossing Drive, 0 Paddington Way, 0 Garden Street, and 0 Messer Road. It actually consists of several properties. The subject site is 300.87 acres, of which 167.17 acres are wetlands. It's currently in the agricultural land use category, and it's proposed to go into the rural residential land use category. It is located in the upper reaches of the Trout River, located in the Trout Creek, an unnamed branch drainage basin, which then eventually flows into the Trout River Basin. Looking at the development potential right now for this property, under the current agricultural land use category, you can have up to 120 single-family dwellings with a density of one single-family home per two and a half acres. And that's when there isn't any sanitary water and sewer available for the property. Under the proposed rural residential land use category, you can have two scenarios. Scenario one, you can have maybe up to 300 single-family dwelling units with a density of one dwelling unit per acre when there is no sanitary water and sewer lines available. However, under scenario two, you can have up to 600 single-family dwelling units with sanitary and sewer water lines available at a density of two single-family dwelling units per acre. Now, looking at the current land use map, you'll see the area is located within the agricultural land use category. And it's surrounded by the agricultural land use category, except the area to the northeast is rural residential. And it's being proposed to extend that boundary down to the application site. We're looking at an aerial photo or aerial map of the application site. You'll notice that most of the area is either forest land or wooded wetlands. There are some pasture and some overgrown pasture. There is an open sand pit located to the southwest of the application site that is within the boundary. Now, looking at some of the surrounding uses, if you look west of the site, you'll notice basically is pasture. But north, you'll see a large lot, single-family subdivision, with an average lot of two and a half acres or more for each lot. Then you have some pasture land, a little bit of timber, and a few lakes. If you go east of the site, you have wetlands and pasture. And then if you look south, you have various uses. You have wetlands. You have pasture land. You have timber, single-family homes. There's a sand mining operation. And you have some mobile homes. I don't know if I mentioned that. But then there's several single-family development subdivisions to the south. Now, the area is located into two development areas. You have the rural development area and the suburban development area. Since the application is going into rural residential, we do not need to extend the suburban development line. So that's going to stay the same. What's important, though, is that the sanitary sewer and water lines are on Garden Street. To extend the water line, you need to bring it in about a little over 3,900 square feet to where you can start developing lots with water and sewer. And the sewer line has to be extended about a little over 5,100 feet. This area basically shows it's a Florida Department of Transportation. It's a land cover classification map, which basically says that the area is either a mix of some type of forest land or different wetland types and pasture land. This area basically shows the city's GIS wetlands layer, but it shows the areas that could potentially be developed out of the wetlands. And so you have two areas on the north portion of the application site and one area to the southwest portion of the site, totaling about 133.4 acres. Now, to develop the site, you need access roads. Now, this property already has a series of access roads, you know, traversing through the property. Some of those access roads already cross wetlands. Now, if you're going to develop some of these areas for single-family subdivisions, you need to improve the access roads, which I'm sure that's what's going to be done and engineered. You may have some impact or increased impact to the wetlands from the improvements of the access roads, but that has to be mitigated and approved by the St. Johns River Water Management District. And this is the only access to a public street. This is the access off of Garden Street, and this is already there, but this is what it looks like. Now, this is a wetlands map using the city's GIS system. The wetlands map isn't often accurate, but it does give us an idea of what's out there. You have approximately 167.17 acres total in wetlands, of which 135.09 acres is Category 2 wetlands. In other words, wetlands that have a direct impact on the city's waterways. And basically, you have the Trout River Creek and some of the drainage areas that feed it. Then you also have an additional 32.0 acres of wetlands. These are Category 3 wetlands that do not have a direct impact of wetlands. Now, those particular wetlands, if they do get wet and flood, they do not drain directly into the waterway system, but instead percolate down into the soil surface and into the high water table. It may eventually reach the waterway system, but it takes some time, and then there's a filtration process that happens if that were to happen. This map shows the area, the 100-year flood zone, the AE flood zone. You have 126.4 acres of the application site within that zone, and then a smaller number of the 500-year flood zone, which I have X, is 4.74 acres. Most of all your wetlands, now most, not all, are within the 100-year flood zone. Now, this area is an adaptation action area map, and that's a combination of two things. It's a 500-year flood plus a Category 3 flood surge. However, because this property is so far west from the coast and its higher elevations, the Category 3 flood surge really does not affect this area. So you're looking at the area, which pretty much is the 500-year flood zone. Now, this is an elevation map with the various elevations of the property. The highest elevation is 61 feet above sea level, and the lowest elevation is 25 feet above sea level. The lower elevations of this property follow the wetland area. If you look at the elevations closely, you'll notice that there's no real creek bed that traverses through this property, even though we have areas that we claim are waterways. If it does run, it runs during a heavy torrential downpour over a period of time where water accumulates and then does flow. Now, this is a soils map, and you have wetland soils from the soil survey. This is from the USDA soils survey. You have the area called 22 Evergreen Whiskunet. Then you have the 35 Lynn Haven Fine Sand. You have a Rutledge Mucky Fine Sand, and they have the Yulee Clay. Now, these are all wetland soils. However, the soils maps aren't really that accurate, although it does give me an idea of what's out there. One of the biggest mistakes I find, for example, is that in some cases what is described as wetland soils is not a wetland soil at all. So if you look to the north on the application site, the northern portion, you'll see a lot of Lynn Haven wetland soils. These, as I look closer, are not really wetlands at all, and it will be determined what areas are wetlands when the development has to go before the water management district, get a wetland boundary determination, and then they can take a closer look. But a lot of that area is not wetland soils at all. I can just tell just from the property itself. This is a drainage basin map showing most of the application site is within the Trout River Basin. There's a small area called unnamed branch that never was named. That drains into the Trout River, so you could basically say it's all within the Trout River. And then the final slide shows how this application drains. It drains from the site to the unnamed branch of the Trout Creek and the unnamed branch, and also it drains into the Trout River, which then eventually drains eastward into the St. John's River. And that's the last slide. And Hayden and myself will be glad to entertain any questions that you may have. Thank you for the presentation, Mr. Lukovic. Are there any questions from any members of the commission? If not, it's been moved and seconded. All in favor of this proposal, please say aye. All opposed? There's one opposed. You can record it. Rebecca, you got it. Okay. This passes. Thank you so much. Our next order of business is going to be item number 2026-698. Dr. Pinto, if you could give us a brief explanation as to the necessity. Okay. Thank you. So I received an e-mail from Mr. Richardson from Environmental Protection Board, and I'm basically going to read his e-mail to you because this is very concise and spells out what this is speaking to. So this is for the State of the River Report, the 19th State of the River Report. Legislation appropriating funding for the 19th State of the River Report was introduced to council on Tuesday, so that's the 8th of September, I believe, and assigned to several committees along the waterways. And it will go before the agenda on the Jacksonville Waterways Commission meeting today. The legislation order 2026-698 is simply appropriating $111,233 to Jacksonville University for the 19th State of the River Report. This continues funding for the project, which the Jacksonville Environmental Protection Board has funded annually since inception. So this started in 2007-2008 year. It provides a snapshot of the health of the St. Johns River. There are also a couple of waivers attached to the legislation. There's a waiver to allow for the continuous nature of the funding. There's a waiver to allow for the JU to receive the funding without going through the competitive bid process, competitive award process, rather. And this invokes an exemption of the procurement code because JU is listed in the appropriating legislation. All the waivers are normal and have been done with the past funding of the report. And with that, I think that captures everything James Richardson wanted to convey. I know that Adam Hoyles may be able to speak to this, too, and I'll be happy to answer any questions, too. Mr. Hoyles, you're recognized. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, the Environmental Protection Board has really felt this was an important process to happen every year to help synthesize data that's already being collected on the river and provide it in a digestible format in one place. The Environmental Protection Board does have a funding mechanism. We collect fines and fees from violations of NPDES permits, sewage overflows, things like that. The intent of that fund is not for recurring expenses. So we're not really supposed to fund things every year, the same thing over and over, and considering the importance for the city at large and the economic development of the city and all of that, we felt like it made more sense for the city of Jacksonville to actually pick up the cost of it. And happy to discuss that any further if there are questions. But, you know, we feel like this is a very important document. We feel like it's a very important exercise, and we feel like it's something that the city really should support. And happy to take any questions along with Dr. Pinto. Thank you, Mr. Hoyles. I know I did some research and spoke with Mr. Richardson personally. Are there questions from anyone else here? I don't have a problem with it. All right. Councilman Beluso, did you have something to add? Please, you're recognized. Thank you, Chair. Very much in support of this. I'd be elected to be listed as a co-sponsor once this does move forward. One of the things that I wanted to ask during your original presentation, but because we were talking about this, I wanted to ask. Are there, whether it be at the end of the report or somewhere in the report, does it provide action items? Does it say, these are things that the city of Jacksonville can do right now to help kind of support the health of the river? Obviously, we know base management action plans exist, which provide a slew of different things that major partners could do. But even if it's, okay, there's seagrass that we could, that the city of Jacksonville could be putting in without having to go through, you know, state appropriation and other larger efforts. Like, are there things that we can do to help clean up the river right this second that are in this report? And I'm just, I'm asking that because, you know, candidly, I haven't read the whole thing. All right. Out of an, thank you, Councilmember. Out of an abundance of caution, if I could, before we move on, if I could get this, and I know this is discussion, but I wanted to make sure we are procedurally proper. However, I'll entertain a motion to move this forward. All right. It's been moved and seconded. Back to discussion. So I was going to say that the whole point of the report is to convey what is happening with the river and what people can do on an individual level as well as to convey what the management agencies are doing. But on an individual level, what you can do to improve the health and state of the river. I don't know if that captures it exactly. There is a, at the beginning of the report, there is a guide to the public. So there are five sections to the report. The first part is a guide to, a general guide to the public. In that section, there are a lot of areas that are outlined that the public can follow to improve the plight of the river. In terms of some of the things we talked about earlier, nutrients going into the river and so forth, buffer systems and so on to prevent, you know, don't blow your yard trash down the drains, things like that. So there are some things on an individual basis that can be done. Council member, correct me. Thank you, Chair. Yeah, no, I mean, I think my pursuit in this, right, is we're policy. We've got three policymakers up here. It's obviously a 19-member city council. You've got the mayor's office and others. You know, none of us are really experts in environmental policy. And so we're big, dumb, you know, we're politicians. We don't always know everything. And so to be able to have a report where you could pull a few, oh, look, here's a draft resolution, ordinance, whatever else. I remember back in the day when I was at the Water Management District, we had a big push trying to go to local governments so that they could enforce water restriction laws, right? And we gave ordinances to City of Neptune Beach and Atlantic Beach and Jacksonville and all the other ones saying, you know, here's something you could pass right now. And things like that are a benefit and a value to us. And so as this report gets published every year, I know that we hear a lot about the things that are occurring in the river right this second, right? These are the phosphorus levels. These are the nitrogen levels. This is what's going on. But it doesn't always say, hey, what can be done right this second that a policy-making body can do or environmental quality division within the city of Jacksonville can do right this second? It'd be helpful to have that. I know that the members of the public, you know, it's good so that they know which fertilizer is not to use and things like that. But, you know, hey, does the city of Jacksonville pass a fertilizer law? I'm not saying that we necessarily do that, though. I mean, I would like it. The point being is, are there things like that in this document or can there be in the upcoming documents? Well, we can certainly take that back to our group and address that more fully. But I think for the most part we're trying to convey to the public in an easily digestible manner what the state of the river is in terms of what some of these policies that are already in action, B-maps and things like that that are already in action, are achieving or not achieving. And so in some ways that brings focus to, like, for example, in our water quality, we've seen reductions in nitrogen in certain parts of the river. But we've identified that there are some problem areas that are chronically have high nitrogen. So that may be something that can bring more focus, actually, in the existing policy. But, yes, that's a good point. Thank you. Thank you both. Did you have one final point? Yes. Thank you, Chair. Let me put it to you this way. If we're spending over $100,000 in taxpayer money on this, I'd like to see some exact things that policymakers can do. We had something called the Critical Quality of Life Committee. That was done a couple years ago under then-Council President Terrence Freeman, Council Member Michael Boylan. You know, there was one for housing, one for homelessness, one for health care. It's three different reports that provided policy recommendations. I know that I have pulled that report off the table, which I know some council members don't always do, but I do because the work's already been done. And it's good to be able to say, hey, guys, look, we can pass this, we can do this, we can do that. Tomorrow we're actually having a press conference at 930 because of something that was in one of those documents, right? We're creating a rental registry, which is going to benefit all of Duval County. Clearly not an environmental issue, so I apologize for bringing that up. But the point is these reports can be very helpful, especially to policymakers who don't always know what they're doing. So if we're going to be putting this kind of money into this report, which I'm glad we do every year because the river is the reason why this city exists, let's make sure that we have maybe a few policy recommendations to help make sure we can, you know, really kind of drive forward how we keep this river healthy. I tend to agree. Thank you, Ms. Palusa. Did you have any? Noted. Durely noted. Okay. Thank you, Dr. Pinto. No more discussion for this. All in favor? It's been moved and seconded. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. All opposed? The ayes have it. And 2026, 698 has passed. A little bit of a deviation. And item number eight, rather than just the fine subcommittee, if we could do all of the committee updates in this portion, so we'll call subcommittee updates, we'll start with the fine, well, we will work on the fine subcommittee formation last, but if I could, the artificial reef from Chair Hardesty, if there's an update from you on the artificial reef, task force or committee, or subcommittee, rather. Yes, thank you very much. This is kind of an update because we had not had a meeting in several months due to the break, and then I was out of town. But I have great news to report, and you may have seen it on the news and that sort of thing, and we've gotten a lot of traction lately. But we deployed our first artificial reef that the city has directly been involved with in a large capacity at the end of June. And this was a reef about 28 miles off of Jacksonville, off of Mayport, and the deployment, quite frankly, couldn't have gone any smoother. The barge left Green Cove Springs and made it out to Mayport, and the whole deployment was done by like 9 o'clock in the morning. We started at First Light, and it was extremely successful with very large concrete culverts that were donated by some various businesses in town. And the exciting thing is that the Jacksonville Offshore Sport Fishing Club has really picked this project up. I still scratch my head as to why we hadn't been doing this for quite some time. The money has been there in grants, both state and federal grants, out there for many, many years. And it was just there for us to, quite frankly, tap into, and now we are tapped. The other exciting part of it is this is developing into a more public-private relationship than even I thought was possible. And with the Jacksonville Offshore Sport Fishing Club setting up a foundation, so a 501C3, and they are actively seeking contributions, both money and in-kind contribution for the things that are being deployed as the reef itself. We, our plan is, and we are actively pursuing to deploy three reefs this coming year. As I said last, you know, in June, it was our first reef, but this thing has really picked up steam quite well. And so we will be deploying hopefully three more reefs this year, and we are in the application process right now for some of these state grants. Governor DeSantis has authorized a multimillion-dollar expenditure to develop this because I think he realizes very acutely how important this is, not only environmentally to the coastline of Florida, but also economically. It's a true economic driver. We've talked about it multiple times in this commission. And it is all the way from, you know, sales of gasoline to boats to bait and tackle, filling local hotels, motels. There's just a tremendous number of aspects to the recreational fishing industry and diving that is a real benefit to Jacksonville. Just to remind you, commissioners, we have, we had been the state leader for many years back in the 70s, 80s in reef deployment. And this is an opportunity to get right back there and be a leader again. And Okaloosa County right now is the number one reef deployment county in the state of Florida. And that's a small little county. But they are reaping the benefits of the economic shot in the arm that these reefs give them. And so I'll be bringing you regular reports now. And one thing I would ask, Mr. Chairman, is if the Artificial Reef Committee could have a place on the agenda and we'll just regularly revisit that as we need it. Sometimes I won't have a report, but I will certainly keep this commission, you know, informed. So does anybody have any questions? Doesn't seem like there are any. Thank you for that. Thank you. And it will be added moving forward. I have it documented. Our next subcommittee report, I'm sure it's nothing yet, but Commissioner Jones, if you want to bring us up to speed on the Port George-Sambar Speed Task Force. Thank you, Chair. As of right now, we're forming a formal committee hearing for the Joint Task Force just so everything can fall in Sunshine Law and be publicly noticed. Thank you. And that's currently in the works right now. Thank you much. I would like to add one thing to Mr. Hardesty. Reefs equal revenue, bottom line. Jacksonville has the capability to be the next Key West. And it's millions of dollars of revenue, especially when you have world-class tournaments. People travel from all over the world to come here to fish. It's a lot of revenue for the city. So I think we should all stand behind that. And it was done with zero taxpayer dollars, wasn't it? It was taxpayer dollars. Initially, the older ones, a lot of stuff was donated. Yeah, I wanted to ask. There was rumors floating around there, and I wanted to – it can be done with zero taxpayer dollars as well. But if we can stand behind that program, the benefits that that will pay in 20 years from now, absolutely. But thank you for all your hard work with that. Sure. Please, please, please. Yeah, this one was done with taxpayer dollars. They're out there. They're earmarked. It's sitting there. And it basically comes down to who is going to tap into that resource that is going to be expended, and why not Duval County? And so this one in particular was – but the reason – and you hit a great point. The reason that it is so important as to what the Jacksonville Offshore Sport Fishing Club has done in setting up this foundation is that as we move forward, I anticipate that there will be a number of deployments that will be all privately funded or a combination. And let me backtrack a little bit. This also had private funding involved with it because to get it off the ground, to get the very detailed application done, and to get the folks that had experience doing artificial reefs, the Jacksonville Offshore Sport Fishing Club stepped up and basically funded that application process and engaging the consultant. And so it was – in order to get this to happen, it was – what the club did was instrumental in getting us to the finish line. And it got us to the starting line in order to make this happen. So they are to be commended, and they've been a great partner to work with. Thank you for the update. This is just my second meeting, so they're making sure that I stay in the right posture. So thank you. And I didn't say it, but Shannon McGillis, who is our legal counsel, has been a superstar making sure that I'm ready for this. So thank you, Shannon and Rebecca, for moving things forward. Our next order of business – and, again, thanks for that in both of the updates – is going to be the Florida Inland Waterways Navigational District Find Subcommittee Formation. As you know, there is a subcommittee that must be formed. So we will – I believe at this point we don't have anyone earmarked for that position, but if we could take a volunteer – oh, we do have someone? I did not see that on my notes. So, Commissioner Barker, we will entertain – we'll hear from you. Oh, I thought he was going to – well, I was under the impression that we had to form the subcommittee. Forgive my ignorance. Could you get on the mic so we can – can you – because I wanted to be on the record. I thought we had to form it based on what I read and what we discussed. Right. And you can – to the chair. You can form it in one of two ways. One would be a charge memo. Or you can simply declare it and then declare that Commissioner Barker is the chair and then give him the discretion to recommend or request some other committee members. Any subcommittee can have non-commission – non-waterways commission members so long as the chair, Commissioner Barker, is the chair of the subcommittee. Let me ask you this. Is this something – and forgive my not understanding of this because I went back and read the previous commissions – does the Waterways Commission every session have to declare this particular subcommittee to reform it each time? That's what I was a little confused about. That is the best practice. Gotcha. Understood. It's a little confusing when I didn't see it in that way. Okay, so thanks for helping that. So without any further ado to move things along, Commissioner Barker will be reappointed as chair of this. And, Mr. Hoyles, if you will speak to this. And also, just so it's on the record, when Mr. Hoyles reaches out or comes back and needs other committee members or subcommittee members, we will then appoint them at our next meeting if necessary. Okay, that's fine. I've typically worked with Michael Barker on that committee and I'd love to continue participating. It's a lot of fun. Please. I look forward to joining the fun. Maybe I can be in a real ex-officio and come out. I'm working on touring all the waterways. That's kind of my thing. I've been trying to go to as many waterways as I can get to around the city while I'm in this space. So thank you for that. Great, thank you. Are there any other comments? Comments, questions, concerns? If not, thank you for your service. Thank you to the community for your public comment. It is now 12.04. This meeting is adjourned. Under.